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FLASHBACK:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/11/take-two-hillarys-choice/305292/

(Take Two - How Hillary Clinton turned herself into the consummate Washington player)

Hillary Clinton was no one’s obvious bet to succeed at this game. But she seems to have decided to conduct herself almost point by point in response to her failures in her husband’s administration. Before she was even sworn in, she went to pay obeisance to the very man who had all but driven a stake through her health-care plan, Senator Robert C. Byrd. Smart move. “I was not exactly a disciple,” Byrd told me. “I thought she would play upon her having been a president’s wife and expect to have a lot of favors done, a lot of bending and bowing.” He added huffily, “That didn’t concur with my impression of what a senator should be.”

Instead, Clinton asked Byrd for advice on being a good senator, and got a primer on how to comport herself. Afterward, she announced her intention to heed Byrd’s advice: “Be a workhorse, not a show horse.” (Surprisingly, I found that he said the same thing in 1973 to a fresh-faced young senator named Joe Biden—proof that, however well intentioned, advice doesn’t always take.)

The meeting with Byrd accomplished two things: it sent a public signal about how Clinton planned to conduct herself in her new job, and it sent a private signal to Byrd that she wanted to apprentice herself to him. A Senate staffer told me that Clinton also asked Byrd at the meeting if he would lead a series of classes for the freshmen, which she would arrange, on his specialty of parliamentary rules and procedures. Byrd delightedly agreed. For more than a year, groups of senators large and small filed through Byrd’s ornate office in the Capitol for their lessons. There was no question who was the star pupil.

Clinton made a big impression on Byrd, but she didn’t get what she wanted right away. When she tried enlisting his help to gain a seat on the Appropriations Committee, she was rebuffed. But the apprentice had studied hard. One afternoon Byrd was meeting with staff in his office beneath the Senate chamber when a knock came at the door. It was Clinton, and with a companion. She apologized for dropping by unannounced, but she was just walking by and, well—“Senator Byrd, I wanted you to meet my mother. She just loves to listen to your speeches on Mother’s Day!” The three fell into eager conversation.

Clinton has kept up the role of courtier throughout her term, nourishing Byrd’s vanity with flattery and deference. A prominent early supporter of the Iraq War, she nevertheless nominated Byrd for the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute’s Four Freedoms Award, which he won for his outspoken opposition to the war. To get an idea of what a big deal this sort of thing is to Byrd, consider that his 2005 autobiography painstakingly details what must be every honor he has ever received, a topic of remarkably little interest to just about anyone else. Yet it fails to mention in its 817 pages the historic Clinton health-care plan. In Living History, Clinton absolves him of even his ruinous refusal to attach it to the reconciliation bill: “In retrospect and based on my service in the Senate, I agree with his assessment.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/not-fight-article-1.265476

This is not our fight

BY
ROBERT BYRD & HILLARY CLINTON
Tuesday, July 10, 2007