Free Republic

Republican loathing for Hillary Clinton used to be viewed as her Achilles' heel. But Tuesday night in Philadelphia, she wore Republican hate as a badge of honor, fending off her Democratic rivals' sharpest attacks yet by casting herself as a kind of partisan warrior queen. Barack Obama, pressed for weeks by his donors and by the media to take on Clinton more directly, came out swinging against her, moving from uncertainty to a more confident criticism. She parried an early blow from him, an accusation that she is too close to President Bush and his party on Iran. "I don’t...

As the serious stage of the presidential campaign begins this fall, Hillary Clinton has clearly established herself in the lead of the race for the Democratic nomination. That makes her the most worthy subject for examination among all the White House prospects. I have been thinking a lot about Sen. Clinton, because part of my vacation reading was Carl Bernstein's fine political biography of her, "A Woman in Charge," published earlier this year. Its 600 pages, carefully reported and written with a commendable evenness of tone, offer perhaps the fullest portrait of this potential president. The single strongest impression it...