The word among the chattering classes in Washington these days is that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has not yet publicly asserted herself as a forceful presence in the foreign policy arena--has, in fact, been a bit in the background while the White House takes the lead on key foreign policy issues such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Russia.

Several things seem to be at work here:

1) The White House is aggressive and energetic in pursuing Obama's agenda and putting his personal stamp on it.

2) Clinton has been busy running her department, getting various undersecretaries and assistant secretaries in place, and launching initiatives to reform foreign aid and better target U.S. diplomatic resources. The buzz is that morale at State is pretty good.

3) The SecState has literally been on injured reserve since fracturing her elbow in a fall in the State Department parking garage on June 17. She pared back her schedule for several weeks, and skipped several foreign trips, including Obama's summit with the Russians in Moscow.

Clinton and her team will try to change her public impression beginning Wednesday, when she is due to give what is being billed as a major foreign policy speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. You can find Politico's take on the speech here. Don't expect major headline news, State Department officials say. Instead, Clinton is expected to lay out her foreign policy priorities and principles.

She'll follow it up with a week long trip to India and Thailand, where she'll participate in a meeting of Southeast Asian nations.

Clinton, meanwhile, let a little bit of frustration show on Monday. The dart, interestingly, was aimed at the White House, The SecState complained that the onerous vetting process for job candidates has meant that there is still no nominee to head the US Agency for International Development.

She told a US AID town hall-style meeting:  "The process, the clearance and vetting process, is a nightmare. And it takes far longer than any of us would want to see. It is frustrating beyond words. I pushed very hard last week when I knew I was coming here to get permission from the White House to be able to tell you that help is on the way and someone will be nominated shortly, and I was unable
– it just was – the message came back we’re not ready."

Full text of her remarks here.