Hillary: Love Her, Hate Her

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Polls aside, what the Clintons know from experience is this: if Hillary runs, the race will be long and brutal and expensive. There are few names that so ignite the Democratic political base. About a year ago, when party pollster Mark Mellman, who does not work for Senator Clinton, asked a focus group of 10 African-American women to name their all-time political hero, eight picked Hillary, he says. But the Clinton opposition is at least as ardent. Hillary has already figured as Lady Macbeth in enough volumes to fill a bookmobile, and in the next year the publishing industry will be adding to the collection with such titles as Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton and Whitewash: How the News Media Are Paving Hillary Clinton's Path to the Presidency. One of her hapless opponents for the Senate seat ran an ad against her last week that featured pictures of Hillary and Osama bin Laden on the same screen. As a presidential candidate, Hillary could count on every attack from the right that Bill gotmaybe worse, because he never had to contend with the blogosphere or the newer kind of independent operation that turned swift boat into a verb in the 2004 presidential election.

And she is not as insulated as she once was on the left, which is far angrier than it used to be. Some liberals say they will not forgive her support for the Iraq invasion or, even worse, her refusal to recant that vote. When Hillary addressed the liberal group Campaign for America's Future in June, she was booed. And everyone there knew whom Kerry meant when he said, at the same conference, "It's not enough to argue with the logistics or to argue about the details. It is essential to acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake."

Hillary of late has made a point of stepping up her criticism of the Bush Administration, to the point of calling for the ouster of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. And in a neat bit of Clintonian triangulation, she distanced herself from pro-war Senator Joe Lieberman even as her husband campaigned for him. But the hard truth is, she doesn't have much wiggle room. National security is the toughest test for a Democrat, particularly for a woman and especially for a woman so associated with feminine causes like child care and education. Her chief strategist has a grim assessment of what Hillary is up against on that front. The country may be ready for a woman President, Bill has privately told friends, but the first one to make it is more likely to be a Republican in the Margaret Thatcher mold.

THE TROUBLE WITH BILL

FOR MORE THAN 30 YEARS, THE Clintons have been the most fascinating tango act in politics. Sometimes they moved perfectly in synch. Other times, they had to make up the steps as they went. But always each has known what to do when the other stumbled. She became a Clinton not when she married Bill but after he lost his first bid for re-election as Arkansas Governor and she realized the state's voters weren't ready for a first lady who kept her last name.