The first woman home secretary in British history won immediate plaudits for the "cool and steadfast way" she reacted to the attempted bombings in Glasgow and London in her first week in the job in June 2007.
But having demonstrated that she doesn't panic in a crisis, Jacqui Smith's time at the Home Office has been dominated by trying to make sure her department becomes "fit for purpose" and by the failure to get 42 days pre-charge detention on to the statute book. In the space of 10 days in October last year she had to admit defeat over the counter-terror legislation and lost a political tug-of-war with the London mayor, Boris Johnson, over Sir Ian Blair, leading to the resignation of the Metropolitan police commissioner she had stood by so firmly.
It was a key moment. As a former government chief whip she could have been expected to deliver a Commons majority for 42 days. As home secretary, she could have been expected to sustain her chosen Met commissioner in office. It was a blow to her political authority. Since October she has tried to maintain a "business as usual" approach. But she has not been a "lucky" home secretary. Her party political relationship with the Conservative frontbench became embittered with the arrest of the Tory immigration spokesman, Damian Green. In the process she managed to staunch the flow of embarrassing leaks about the Home Office - mainly over the failure to tackle illegal immigration - but at a high cost to her reputation as her repeated insistence that she had nothing to do with his arrest fell on mostly deaf ears.
Home Office insiders say she has successfully implemented the division of the department, with prisons and probation shifting to Jack Straw's justice ministry: "The focus has become much more on to the specifics of delivery on crime, immigration and counter-terrorism. She is seen as someone who gives a clear strategic direction. She is not a grandstander."
The departmental split means some of the more traditional Home Office trouble areas - such as released prisoners who strike again - are now on Straw's plate.
She has spent much of her time touring the country promoting neighbourhood policing in general and her local "policing pledge" to get the police to deliver an accountable service. Recently she started a national campaign over violence against women. But there are no signs that all this is translating into a Labour lead on crime or immigration in the polls.
She has also overseen big policy changes. The introduction of the points-based immigration system reaches a new stage this week but having left much of the media work to first Liam Byrne and more recently Phil Woolas, she is not associated with it in the public mind.
Despite her hawkish line on 42 days, on counter-terrorism generally she has not adopted the kind of belligerent approach demonstrated by some of her predecessors, such as John Reid and David Blunkett. She has impressed by insisting on a proper consultation before a decision was taken on the new communications super-database tracking every email and text.
On the other hand her decision to press ahead with the reclassification of cannabis against the recommendations of her scientific advisers smacked less of an independent mind than someone simply implementing the Downing Street line. More than anything else her supporters fall back on the argument that she has been a civilising influence because she has '"lowered the volume" on law and order compared with those that went before.
She has tended to steer clear of the combative interviews with the BBC's John Humphrys or Jeremy Paxman and instead opted for appearances on the GMTV sofa or a signed column in the News of the World outlining an initiative.
The drive on neighbourhood policing and on violence against women tends to be done through the regional press. The effect is that a lot of her personal activity falls below the national political radar, leaving the impression that she is a "do nothing" home secretary.
So when the story about her expense claims and her sister's Peckham home broke she found little sympathy among her colleagues and the public. The latest disclosure that her husband watched pornographic films on expenses only confirms that impression. She will last until a possible reshuffle in June but only because, as one Whitehall insider put it yesterday: "Gordon Brown has no appetite to deal with this now."
