Hillary as presidential candidate: It's about time that women made serious, organized runs for the White House. But Hillary, despite claims by the liberal press, is not the first credible candidate: That laurel belongs to Republican Elizabeth Dole, whose funding dried up but who was indeed a legitimate contender in the lead-up toward the 2000 primaries.
My attitude toward Hillary has bounced up and down like a rubber ball since Bill Clinton's first run for the White House in 1992. I thought Hillary was great -- decisive and tough-talking. Then came the debacle of her bungled stewardship of healthcare reform in 1993. Hillary's secretive, arrogant, elitist side came out, and it wasn't a pretty sight. By 1996, I was writing a controversial cover story about Hillary for the New Republic called "Ice Queen, Drag Queen" (which may have been a factor in editor in chief Andrew Sullivan's quick departure).
As a native of New York state, I was indignant about the travesty of Hillary's don't-ruffle-my-feathers "listening tour" campaign for U.S. senator from that state where she had never lived. Then as now, she floated from place to place in a Secret Service bubble that protected her from contact with anything or anybody real. However, Hillary has now put in her grunt time at the Senate and gained credibility, even if she has few tangible achievements after her first six years in office.
When I was asked to review Hillary's memoir, "Living History," by the Times of London in 2003, I was skeptical but pleasantly surprised by what I read. The book made a convincing case for Hillary's long-standing political commitment and her credentials for the presidency. But I remain uneasy about her -- she lacks spontaneity and instinct, and she's too programmed by her amoral cabal of shadowy handlers. Her wandering political positions are transparently and sometimes incoherently dictated by expedience rather than conviction.
Nevertheless, Hillary Clinton is as qualified for the Oval Office as scores of leading male candidates over the past 40 years. If she is the Democratic nominee, I will vote for her. (Ralph Nader, for whom I voted in 2000, has irresponsibly shirked from solidifying national support for the Green Party and doesn't deserve another run.) But I'm still hoping that a stronger Democratic candidate will carry the day -- perhaps a dark horse from among the governors with executive experience in managing budgets and working with fractious legislatures.
Right now, I'm leaning toward John Edwards in the primaries. He has problems -- a thin political résumé, a fancy estate at odds with his populist message, and a dated hairstyle that looks femme and foofy at a time when military buzz cuts and Caesarian close crops are in. But Edwards is a ferocious, knife-sharp debater with foxy, seat-of-the-pants smarts, and I hope he creams his opponents. It would be a relief to have an articulate president again. When George W. Bush speaks, it's a contact sport -- can he lurch to the end of the sentence without murdering English?
I love the way Barack Obama has nimbly upstaged the ponderous Hillary machine. It's a Bette Davis/Joan Crawford bitch fest! But Obama's effusive gusts of generalities irritate me; it's all sizzle and no steak right now. He needs seasoning: 2012 may be his year. I wish Nancy Pelosi were running. Despite her foot-dragging mishandling of the flap over her transcontinental military jet, Pelosi has style and pizazz and knows how to put the shiv in while smiling ever so brightly at the cameras. She's brass knuckles in a velvet glove, and I'm loving every minute of it.
On the Republican side, I've never understood liberal journalists' infatuation with John McCain, who's as mercurial as Hillary in his ideology-of-the-day. Those two are peas in a pod -- always dialing up the weather report and sleeping next to a window with their fingers in the wind. If Rudy Giuliani improbably wins the Republican nomination, which would require primary voters shutting their eyes to his liberal social views and checkered sex life, he would roll like a juggernaut into the White House on the strength of his macho authoritarianism in this time of war. Giuliani's got balls, but do we want this democracy drifting any further toward a police state?
Don't count Mitt Romney out. Not yet nationally known, Romney harks back to the patrician days of sophisticated Republicanism. In 1994, on my book tour for "Vamps & Tramps," I was sitting late one night in the empty lobby of WBZ-AM NewsRadio, located on a lonely road in Boston. While waiting to go on the David Brudnoy Show (Brudnoy, living with AIDS, would die a decade later), I listened intently to the guest on air before me -- Mitt Romney, whom I had never heard of but who was then mounting his unsuccessful senatorial challenge to Ted Kennedy.
I was very impressed. When Romney emerged, I shook his hand and said, "You're going to be president!" -- something I have never said to anyone, before or since. He flushed with pleasure and embarrassed surprise -- as if I had uncovered a secret. Afterward I followed Romney's career from a distance -- his return to private business, his directorship of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, and then his surprise election as governor of Massachusetts in 2003. Stay tuned.
