Posted on 12/22/2003 9:07:07 PM PST by Pokey78
Hillary from Westchester was on the line, and she was upset.
"Literally, I have been accused of everything from murder on down," the first-time caller complained. "And it's hurtful and personally distressing when it first happens. But when it continues . . ."
Hillary was Hillary Rodham Clinton, the junior United States senator from New York, who surprised Brian Lehrer by unexpectedly phoning his call-in show on WNYC radio in New York this month to respond to a sensational charge that a listener had made about her and her husband.
There was a time when Mrs. Clinton did her best to fade into the woodwork and be seen as just another lawmaker on Capitol Hill. But these days, the woman who started her Senate candidacy with a "listening tour" cannot stop talking — or so it seems to politicians and strategists in both parties.
Relentlessly and ubiquitously, Mrs. Clinton is out there, pounding away at Republicans, responding to her critics, staking out distinct positions on everything from Afghanistan and Iraq (she is a hawk) to terror money and unemployment insurance benefits (she wants more). By design or not, in the last few months she has been showing a feisty side that her critics long suspected was there but that her advisers say she has been reluctant to display.
"She's just much more comfortable," said Harold M. Ickes, a longtime friend and adviser who acknowledged that Mrs. Clinton was "gun-shy" at first, largely because of her turbulent days in the White House. "She's much more sure afoot," he said.
In the last several weeks, it has been all Mrs. Clinton almost all the time. She has made a string of high-profile appearances — visiting troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, giving back-to-back interviews on the Sunday morning political programs and delivering speeches to prominent foreign policy experts in Manhattan.
Last month, she was the M.C. during a big Democratic dinner in Iowa attended by her party's presidential candidates. On Nov. 10, she addressed an influential business group in Manhattan about her plans for upstate New York.
More remarkable, though, has been the increasingly partisan shots she has been willing to take at Republicans, who once praised her for her low-key, deferential style.
Why exactly Mrs. Clinton has decided to turn up the volume is open to speculation, as is most everything in her life.
Mrs. Clinton did not respond to a request for an interview. But her Senate aides say there is nothing more to it than the fact that she has learned the Senate ropes after nearly three years in office, and that she has landed some of the chamber's high-profile assignments — chiefly a seat on the Armed Services Committee — and has a lot to say.
People in both parties agree that one reason Mrs. Clinton has become such a presence may be that she can. Not only is she a huge celebrity, whose memoir became a big-seller around the globe, but she is also the most popular elected Democrat in the nation, at least as measured by polls.
And, according to her advisers, she is not running for president this year, so is more free to speak out than the nine Democrats who are.
This, naturally, has only renewed speculation about her motives.
Some people say she is riding her celebrity status and popularity among Democrats to establish herself as a party leader, perhaps to run for president, perhaps because — as she has complained to intimates — she believes the Democratic Party is in trouble.
Others say she feels a personal obligation to speak out against Republicans, particularly President Bush and his allies, for squandering what she regards as the policy successes of Bill Clinton's presidency.
But Mrs. Clinton's closest advisers say the changes reflect a long and complicated evolution that she has undergone since leaving the White House, where she was bound by the strictures of being a president's wife.
"She's increasingly found her sea legs in the Senate and feels an obligation to speak out against the ruinous policies of Washington Republicans," said Howard Wolfson, one of Mrs. Clinton's advisers.
Whatever her motives, this much is clear: Mrs. Clinton has come a long way from her early days on the campaign trail in New York, when she and her advisers ran a bland, low-key campaign consisting of lots of handshaking at county fairs and other upstate sites and had an almost religious adversity to saying anything that could be construed as controversial.
The pattern continued when she first took office. Mrs. Clinton routinely declined offers to make high-profile appearances that might underscore her celebrity and upstage more senior members of the Senate. And she avoided picking partisan fights in public.
Some Republicans on the Hill acknowledged that they were shocked that the woman whom they had seen as a pathologically ambitious liberal with a radical agenda managed to work cooperatively with them.
People close to her say no single event triggered the changes in her public persona. Rather, they say, it has been a gradual process — beginning with the 2002 midterm elections, when she aggressively campaigned for Congressional Democrats, and continuing through last summer, when she promoted her recently published memoir in a book tour that drew crowds.
Within Mrs. Clinton's tight inner circle of friends and advisers, there is a difference of opinion over how far she should go with all this. One camp has been arguing behind the scenes that President Bush is a much more vulnerable figure than some polls suggest, and that 2004 provides an opportunity for her to make a triumphant return to the White House, this time in the Oval Office. But another camp wants her to move carefully, concerned that anything she does could feed into the persistent criticism that she became a senator only to have a base from which to start a presidential bid.
Whatever the impact, she is everywhere, including the most unexpected places. She even sat for an interview with George Stephanopoulos, the host of ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos."
In an interview, Mr. Stephanopoulos, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, said he had been requesting an interview with Mrs. Clinton for months. But Mrs. Clinton never took him up on the offer — possibly because she was said to have been enraged with him for writing an insider's account of his years in the White House.
Her interview with Mr. Stephanopoulos allowed her to achieve a trifecta: appearances on three network Sunday morning political programs to share her observations on Afghanistan and Baghdad and to criticize the Bush administration for some of its policies.
Meanwhile, this new side of Mrs. Clinton is emerging at the same time that the Democratic candidates for president are struggling to break through to the public. Her most audacious, if not provocative, move may have been her decision to be the M.C. at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner/Iowa, a fund-raising event.
Mrs. Clinton's advisers defended her decision, saying she was invited to Iowa to raise money and interest for the event. But even some of her most ardent supporters acknowledged concerns about the reaction her appearance might stir among other Democrats. It is a matter of conjecture, even among people close to Mr. and Mrs. Clinton, whether they are enjoying — and deliberately inviting — speculation about her prospects as a presidential candidate.
Closer to home, Mrs. Clinton has actually been a little more cautious about the fights she picks and the toes she steps on. Her advisers note, for example, that she has gone out of her way to avoid clashing with New York Republicans, some of whom she has good working relationships with, even as she chastises the party's leadership in Washington.
But a few weeks ago, Mrs. Clinton surprised the political establishment in the state when she took a swing at Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, accusing him of failing to give local governments their share of the antiterrorism money Washington sent to New York. The issue exposed a rift that had been opening behind the scenes between the governor and the senator, fueling speculation that both are gearing up for a face-off when Mrs. Clinton runs for re-election in 2006.
Even people closely following her career have been surprised by her vigorous efforts to raise her profile.
Mr. Lehrer, who hosts the radio show Mrs. Clinton contacted, said her telephone call came out of the blue. "I was pretty shocked," he said. "I didn't see it coming at all."
As it turns out, Mrs. Clinton was at home in Chappaqua, N.Y., listening to the program when a caller telephoned to complain that the Clinton administration had established a policy barring military personnel from entering the White House while wearing their uniforms.
Mrs. Clinton picked up the phone and got through to the show to set the record straight: it never happened.
"Wait a minute!" Mr. Lehrer said, interrupting a guest he had been chatting with. "I'm getting a flash from the screening room. Guess what? After a half-hour of talking about Hillary Clinton, she's calling in."
I'm sure Vince Foster is crying for her hurt feelings in his grave.
I contributed funds to Rick Lazio's campaign in his effort to slap the carpetbagger down. Mr. Lazio would have been an excellent counter for Chunky Schumer.
I feel sorry for anyone that has to put up living near/around the wicked witch from IL.
Trajan88
p.s. I miss the Polly-O Cheese, fine Genoa salami, and Runzoni pasta - so I have relatives stock up before they visit.
When will one of these maggots in the media ask her about the items her and her impeached husband lifted form the White House and new damn good and well they didn't belong to them?
It wasn't to dispute that silly ol' RAPE charge, was it?
Didn't think so.
To be honest, I forgot. Forgive me. ;-)
He's got a point. :)
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