One of the cliches that have grown, lichen-like, around Hillary Rodham Clinton over the past six years is that she is very hard working. Like many of the other Hillary cliches (she is ambitious, determined, ruthless) it sounds good but fails to do justice to the extraordinary political operator she has become.
Take her schedule in the past five days: on Thursday night she celebrated her 59th birthday not with a candlelit dinner with Bill, but with a fundraiser for 1 100 guests that added $1-million to her war chest; on Friday she was off to Syracuse in upstate New York where she campaigned for the Congressional Democrat candidate and spoke in support of biosciences; Saturday it was more campaigning for the candidate in Yonkers, outside New York City, and then back to Manhattan for a fundraiser for Bill’s foundation; on Sunday she enjoyed a day of rest by giving a press conference on identity theft; on Monday she was back on the stump in Rochester.
This nonstop whirlwind activity is the kind of background noise that has begun to give Republicans sleepless nights. Behind their immediate worry that they face a drubbing at the mid-term elections this time next week is an underlying deeper fear, that looks to 2008 and a Hillary presidential race.
”Hillary Clinton — the one that was so easy to dislike, even outright hate — won’t be the one running for president,” says the right-wing commentator John Podhoretz in his book dedicated entirely to the question: Can She Be Stopped? ”She’s older and wiser and cleverer — and therefore more dangerous. She’s shown the most important quality a successful politician can have: she’s learned how to adapt.” And that’s coming from her political enemy.
Short-term prospects for the junior senator from New York are straightforward enough: next Tuesday she will be handed a second six-year term with a whopping popular endorsement. She stands 65% to 30% in the polls against the hapless Republican, John Spencer.
But then what? With a resounding victory, will Hillary stand for president? And if so, will she win?
She has certainly built up the electoral machine for a powerful run for the top job. Her own frenetic schedule is amplified by an electronic network of daily e-mails, conference calls and websites that generates enormous sums. She has raised more than $50-million for the Senate race even though victory was always certain, much of which will sit in the coffers once the mid-terms are over.
Those in the heavily fortified inner-circle of the senator insist no decision has been made. All her efforts are focused on the Democrats winning back Congress. Bill has told close friends that the mantra is genuine and that she really has yet to make up her mind.
Poppycock, respond the pundits. ”She’s definitely going to run,” says the former Clinton adviser Dick Morris. ”You don’t go to all the trouble of repositioning yourself on gay marriages and over the war in Iraq, you don’t vie with Al Gore to be the most outspoken on global warming, if you are happy to settle for senate majority leader.”
That careful repositioning was evident at a fundraiser in Manhattan recently for her ”young professional” supporters. It bore several Hillary hallmarks, from the fashionable venue — the Roxy club in Chelsea — to the Marc Jacobs T-shirts for one-year-old fans, to her call for a tax on oil companies to support research on renewable energies.
She won the biggest cheer from the twentysomething crowd when she repeated her call for Donald Rumsfeld’s head: ”We have a terribly difficult situation in Iraq. The Republicans should start by changing the secretary of defence and putting in somebody who will listen to sense.”
The wording is a tacit recognition that she has a difficulty with Iraq. Outside the Roxy anti-war protesters were pointing out she voted for the war and has never retracted that position, and she has also said that immediate withdrawal of troops would be a mistake.
Such a stance is the first hurdle to any successful presidential campaign: securing the nomination of the now largely anti-war core of the Democratic party. The plethora of alternative candidates in this most open of electoral periods was helpfully reduced by one when arguably her greatest potential rival, Mark Warner, the former governor of Virginia, announced two weeks ago he would not run. But that still leaves John Edwards of North Carolina and Evan Bayh of Indiana, not to mention Democratic flavour of the month, Barack Obama of Illinois.
The second hurdle would be harder, and that is her appeal to the wider electorate should she stand. That’s where another cliche that has stuck all these years becomes important: that she divides the American people, who love her and loathe her in equal measure.
Even those close to her admit she has a problem. ”Her negatives are very high,” said a senior figure in her 2000 Senate race. ”The question is: are they too high for her to run for president?”
A clue is contained in a poll by Manhattanville College which asked New York women from across the state what they thought of Hillary. When they first conducted the exercise in 2000 she was seen as aloof and polarising, and white women in particular distrusted her.
But the poll found that the perception had shifted markedly. Though a quarter of women still saw her in a very unflattering light, her performance as senator had swayed many, with 64% saying they viewed her favourably. When asked what she had done to dispel their doubts, many women said she was determined, dedicated and, yes, hard-working. There’s a pattern emerging. All that scuttling around must be working.
Hillary’s helpers
Bill Clinton Her greatest asset, or her greatest liability? Probably both. His crowd-pulling magnetism has reached heights unthinkable when he left the White House, and some rubs off on her. But the Monica Lewinsky hangover means she must keep him a little at a distance.
Lady Lynn de Rothschild Dubbed Britain’s most influential political hostess, Lynn Forester, as she used to be known before becoming the third wife of the banking family’s Sir Evelyn, is also a great friend ofthe Clintons. The Rothschilds honeymooned at the White House when Bill was incumbent. Lynn is now involved in fundraising for Hillary.
Rupert Murdoch The News Corp chief raised eyebrows when he held a fundraising breakfast for Hillary in July. Observers have noted a thawing in ties between Murdoch and the Clintons which could be significant. His Fox News is not known for its Democratic sympathies, and he was forced to justify the move to shareholders at an AGM 10 days ago. ”I have given to both sides,” he said.
Friends of Hillary Most fundraising work is carried out at a smaller populist level. Her network, Friends of Hillary, holds regular dinners and events at which every guest is asked to make the legal maximum donation of $4 200. Hillary will then make a brief appearance. It sounds small but when repeated over and over for five years it mounts up. – Guardian Unlimited Â