Politics—Woman of the Year - criticism of Hillary Clinton's Senate candidacy - Senate candidacy - Brief Article

Hillary Clinton made her fifth listening tour of New York state, as she edges towards formally declaring her Senate candidacy, even as Talk magazine carried an interview with the First Lady which raised questions, not so much about her marriage as about her credibility and character.

"The Intimate Hillary," by Lucinda Franks, is a compound of fibs, reversals, and revenge. If anyone believes that while "cutting Bill's grapefruit this morning" she and he "had the best idea we ever had about day care," they are invited to bid for the Brooklyn Bridge. In describing her marital situation, Mrs. Clinton consistently puts herself and her husband in each other's shoes. "Bill has been subjected to so much abuse," she mourned, not only from his squabbling mother and grandmother when he was four, but from the media (formerly known as the "vast right-wing conspiracy") during the impeachment crisis. Would an unbiased observer concentrate on Bill Clinton as the abused party in last year's events? Alongside such fatuity, there lies-as always in masochists-a vein of contempt for the wrongdoer, and a desire for revenge. "He has been working on himself very hard in the last year," Mrs. Clinton said of her husband. (An excellent argument for fidelity is that it spares one from such icy praise.) Franks herself identifies the Senate race as Hillary's way of improving the balance of power in her marriage. New York always had a high proportion of shrinks; now the state itself is cast in the role of affirming therapist.

Will the psychodrama translate into votes? A Zogby poll released in the wake of the Talk piece found that Mrs. Clinton had pulled even with Mayor Giuliani, though that might have been a response to earlier events, including Giuliani's own amateurish efforts to paint her as a carpetbagger. Could Hillary's sufferings have boosted her to iconic celebrity status, as adultery, bulimia, and early death boosted Princess Di, and as their own tragic or grotesque exits helped boost Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley? Is such status transferable to politics? The Kennedy mystique marches down the decades, as the mourning for John Kennedy Jr. showed. Yet he himself had forsworn politics, while his cousins have had only middling success at it (a couple of congressmen, a lieutenant governor).

Does Mrs. Clinton deserve the votes of New Yorkers? Her campaign swings through upstate and the outer boroughs show her to be cool and controlled, but her thoughts, as vouchsafed in a puff piece, show disturbing shortcomings. "I want to be judged on my own merits," she told Franks. "Now for the first time I am making my own decisions. I can feel the difference. It's a great relief." For the first time-this from a 51-year-old woman who tried to remold the nation's health-care system, cast herself as an advocate for children, and practiced law. A middle- aged woman who feels she is making her own decisions for the first time because of a maiden political race is far from ready for office.

COPYRIGHT 1999 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group