/Reuters-Newsis

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a star who is given almost the same treatment as heads of state when she travels abroad, but the former first lady, senator and President Barack Obama's greatest rival during the race to the White House, Clinton is now reportedly being sidelined in Washington.

There are rumors that she wields even less influence at home than her predecessors Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell. Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland wrote on July 15, "It's President Obama's inner circle, advisers such as chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and senior adviser David Axelrod, who are controlling the president's foreign policy message" rather than Clinton. Tina Brown in the online "Daily Beast" described the former New York senator as the "invisible woman at State" and said, "It's time for Barack Obama to let Clinton take off her burqa," giving her some room to perform.

National Security Advisor James Jones, meanwhile, is consolidating his influence. And even Vice President Joe Biden, who some feared might fade in to the background given the number of security and diplomatic heavyweights in the White House, is playing a key role in Iraq policies, AP reports.

Clinton's apparent lack of power can be seen in the appointment of high-level officials. Almost all of the ambassadorial nominees endorsed by Clinton have been rejected. Clinton recommended Harvard professor Joseph Nye, an expert on Japan, as ambassador to Tokyo, but Obama's former campaign fund manager John Roos got that job. Clinton's attempt to bring her close confidant Sydney Blumenthal into the White House was also blocked.

And she has yet to achieve any diplomatic milestones to make up for being sidelined in the power struggle. Reginald Dale, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Clinton "must decide whether she will serve as a mere mascot of the Obama administration or exercise her influence in actual policy decisions," according to AP.

Clinton is clearly offended by such claims. In an interview with ABC News on Monday, she said, "I broke my elbow, not my larynx." In a speech on July 15 at the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, which was her first public appearance since she broke the elbow in an accident, Clinton tried hard to propose a diplomatic blueprint, saying she had invested "significant amounts of diplomatic resources" into sanctioning North Korea. The State Department announced Clinton would make a "major foreign policy speech." In an article on July 16, the New York Times described it as "an attempt to regain her lost influence."