President Obama' s job rating is suffering, as I argued in my most recent Washington Examiner column, from voters' sense that things are in disarray and the world is spinning out of control. But he's not the only one whose job rating is suffering. So is that of Hillary Clinton.

A Politico poll conducted July 3-13 asked respondents to rate Clinton's performance as Secretary of State. The results: 14 percent excellent, 28 percent good, 21 percent fair and 32 percent poor. The number rating her performance poor was around double the number rating it excellent -- a ratio that suggests that strength of opinion is on the negative side.

And when you add up the results, with excellent and good being rated, as is standard practice, as positive, and fair and poor being rated negative, it comes out as 42 percent positive and 53 percent negative. That's almost exactly identical to the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls on Obama's job rating: 42 percent positive and 52 percent negative.

Yes, the Politico poll is just one poll. But it strongly suggests that Clinton's attempts to put some distance between herself and the president's record are unavailing and perhaps doomed to failure. Voters evidently regard her as responsible for policies that have, in their view, left the world in disarray and things spinning out of control. Her fans will surely argue that things were better in the late 1990s when her husband was president. But the Politico poll results suggest voters are judging her on her own, more recent record. And the fact that she's at a 42 percent approval rating tends to strengthen the judgment of veteran journalist Robert Merry that she “isn't likely ever to become president of the United States.”

Merry takes seriously the possibility that she will not run. Perhaps she will too, after looking over this poll.