Hillary: Love Her, Hate Her

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This year the Republicans couldn't even find a credible candidate to take her on, in no small part because of the inroads she has made in more conservative upstate New York. There are other unlikely places where she has won friends and admirers. When Hillary was first elected, General John Keane, then Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, sought an audience, hoping to acquaint the new Senator with some of the Army's priorities in her state, including West Point and the perpetually deployed 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum. It didn't entirely surprise him that it took three months to get on her schedule or that, once he did, her staff called his twice to remind him that she couldn't spare more than 15 minutes.

When he finally got in to see her, however, the meeting did not go as he had expected. For starters, it lasted 45 minutes. "She committed immediately to West Point and the 10th Mountain Division, with follow-up on-site visits," he says. "But it was her enormous depth of knowledge about the military and her sincerity about our people which surprised and disarmed me." As First Lady, Hillary told Keane, she had traveled the globe and had often been able to see parts of the world that security prevented her husband from visiting but where the U.S. Army was always present. "She had an extraordinary grasp of our military culture, our soldiers, our families and what it was like for them," Keane marvels.

Hillary has succeeded in the Senate by recognizing what everyone expected of her and then proving them wrong. Much has been said of the low profile she keeps to avoid having her celebrity bruise any of the tender egos of her more senior colleagues. She shows up early for committee hearings even though her junior status means she is usually the last one to speak. Even more striking is the way she has reached across party lines--sponsoring foster-care legislation with Tom DeLay, then the House majority leader, and pushing health-care proposals with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the Clintons' nemesis in their 1994 effort to reform health care. One of her closest friends in the chamber is South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, who came to national attention as one of the House managers of the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton.

So solid is her standing that some who are close to Hillary tell TIME they believe she will in the end forgo a presidential race and set her sights on rising within the Senate leadership, toward the possibility of becoming the first woman majority leader someday. She has worked to tamp down talk of her national ambition by proving there is no New York concern too parochial to merit her attention. When an Appropriations subcommittee passed a bill that was loaded with goodies for New York recently, Hillary's staff bombarded reporters' e-mail with seven press releases in just over an hour, making sure she got credit for communications equipment for Onondaga and Rockland counties, economic-development assistance for Staten Island, a program for at-risk kids on Long Island, a crime lab for Monroe County and much more.