The Hillary watch begins . . .
■"If I Had Hillary Clinton's Ear …," by Michael Slackman, New York Times, 5 December 2004, p. WK3.■"Everyone Knows This Senator, and for 2008, That May Be Precisely the Trouble," by Raymond Hernandez, New York Times, 5 December 2004, p. A32.
Every time I make even the slightest noise in the direction of Hillary, boy do I get emails from the right, and they're all the same: "She's got too many negatives and too many people hate her!"
My reply is always the same: So does Bush, and he does just fine.
I read an op-ed in my local Newport newspaper last week from a Republican (retired Navy captain, natch) declaring that the left's hatred for Bush was unprecedented in U.S. political history and that all he could compare it to was Nazi Germany. The sheer stupidity was stunning, for obviously all you have to do is go back to the last president, Clinton, to see just as bad or worse.
Cripes, they just make snarky movies about Bush. They tried to impeach Clinton for getting oral sex and then—can you believe it?—trying to hide from his wife!
The reality of today's political situation in the States is that any serious candidate will have to fire up the faithful big time and thus accept the reality of being labeled "evil" by a big chunk from the other side. Hillary will be no different—for better or worse.
As she herself noted: "We have a president who is quite polarizing—and very successful, I might add."
The prevailing advice to Clinton right now is both good and pretty basic: 1) win re-election; 2) position yourself as bigger than both a senator and somebody representing New York, and 3) show the country you're not the wishy-washy liberal many believe you are.
And she ain't. Frankly, she's the closest thing to Margaret Thatcher we'll ever see anytime soon.
That's why she'll be formidable.
Remember, Clinton, at least before this Bush, used the U.S. military more frequently than any president before him. Mrs. Clinton is likely to be very similar, but she's also likely to be someone who won't fail us on the diplomatic front in terms of being able to explain American foreign policy in such a way that it doesn't piss off so much of the planet.