The Fall and Rise of Hillary Clinton

What she won by losing.

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By John Heilemann
Published Jun 15, 2008

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he victor and the vanquished are standing in a cluttered

hallway backstage at the Washington Convention Center,

conducting a conversation short and sweetfor one of them, at
least. Its just around noon on June 4, less than twelve hours
after Barack Obama crossed the finish line ahead of Hillary
Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination. Obama and
Clinton are here to speak to the annual conference of the
influential Jewish lobbying group AIPAC. I am here to meet
Hillary for what will be the final interview of her campaign
and, apparently, to clock a little history in the making.
The scene unfolding in front of me is a semioticians fantasia.
For months, Clinton and Obama have battled (and battered)
each other more or less as equals. But now there is no longer
even a faint pretense of parity. When they first spy each other
in the corridor, Clinton hugs the wall deferentially to let
Obama pass; their brief tte--tte only ensues at the latters
instigation. When the chat is over and the nominee strides
toward the freight elevator to make his exit, his Secret Service
agents brusquely shoo away Clintons aides: Stand aside for
Senator Obama! Make way for Senator Obama!
Illustration by Laurent Fetis

AFTERWORDS
Patron Saint of Lowbrow Sinners
The Real Mick Jagger of Politics
Back to the Scene of the Crime
Evita and Her Juan
Like a Natural Woman

The question of the moment is whether Hillary herself will heed those directives. The night before, as the
results of the Montana and South Dakota primaries rolled in, shed delivered a speech in New York that
the cable-news bloviators and even some of her supporters deemed an egregious, churlish attempt to
stomp on Obamas buzz. She hadnt conceded, hadnt endorsed, hadnt so much as acknowledged her
rivals historic triumph. Her audience chanted, Denver! Denver! Denver! She seemed to revel in it. Was
Clinton engaged in an ill-conceived effort to strong-arm Obama into putting her on the ticket? Was she
being supremely Machiavellian? Or had she simply lost her mind?

The Hillary I encounter a few minutes after Obama leaves the building is somber, prideful, dark-humored,
aggrieved, confusedand still high on the notion that she is leading an army, Napoleon in a navy pantsuit
and gumball-size fake pearls. She is keenly aware of the weird dynamics in play as she contemplates her
endgame: Albeit temporarily, the loser has more power than the winner. She, not Obama, is in a position
to bring the party together or rip the thing to shreds. She, not he, has the capacity to orchestrate a merger
of their warring factions of supporters.
The real lesson of the campaign is that neither my base nor his base alone is sufficient for a general
election, she tells me. Thats important to stress, because now we need to look to November and how we
put together a winning majority. Weve gotta get this coalition to work together, because clearly the
Republicans have been more successful at picking off the people who voted for me, and thats exactly who
theyre going after again.
But the situation is volatile. Her voters are angry, they feel dissed, they have to be coaxed along. The
question is how to do it. She is hearing from countless allies, but much of their adviceas it has been all
along through this marathon campaignis useless. A war is raging inside her between rationality and
denial. Maybe she should wait a week before doing anything. Or maybe two. Keep her options open. See
what happens. You never know.
More than an hour later, Clinton, a clutch of her aides, and I set off in an informal mini-motorcade for her
campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. She addresses her staff. There are tears and hugs. Then a
come-to-Jesus phone call with Charlie Rangel, Barney Frank, and other Clinton-backing congressmen.
The message is clear: The jig is up; she should go quickly and graciously. Three days later, Hillary does
and the gusher of postmortems begins.

his story is not one of them, however. The whys and wherefores of the collapse of Hillary Clintons

campaign are already achingly familiar. The more interesting question is what Hillary achieved in spite of
losing, and maybe even because of it.
The rapidly congealing conventional wisdom is that the answer is worse than nothing: Her legacy has
been tarnished, her status degraded, and her reputation diminished by the brass-knuckle brawl she waged
against Obama. But arguments can be made that, by historical standards, Clintons treatment of Obama
wasnt all that rough; that, far from weakening him for his tussle with John McCain, she made him
appreciably stronger; that by fighting until the end, she helped gin up a fever-pitch level of engagement
among Democrats that will redound to the partys benefit this fall, rather than undermining it.
What strikes me as inarguable is that Hillary is today a more resonant, consequential, and potent figure
than she has ever been before. No longer merely a political persona, she has been elevated to a rarefied
plane in our cultural consciousness. With her back against the wall, she both found her groove and let
loose her raging id, turning herself into a character at once awful and wonderful, confounding and
inspiringthus enlarging herself to the point where she became iconic. She is bigger now than any woman
in the country. Certainly, she is bigger than her husband. And although in the end she may wind up being
dwarfed by Obama, for the moment she is something he is not: fully, poignantly human.

The Fall and Rise of Hillary Clinton

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Winning and Losing: Watching the election returns in Puerto Rico, June
1.
(Photo: Brigitte Lacombe)
The sound system is blasting Ricky Martin as Hillary climbs down from the stage in
the ballroom at the Condado Plaza Hotel & Casino in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Clinton
has just given her victory speech after mashing Obama in the Isla del Encanto
primary, and Im standing at the foot of the podium, behind the Secret Service
barricades, with one of her aides, Jamie Smith. Smith is dancing. I am not. Or, at
least, not much.
As Clinton works the rope line, we get in close behind her so I can hear what her
supporters are saying, get a sense of the frenzy she inspires. And a frenzy is exactly
what it is. The crowd, ten deep, presses up against the barricades, thrusting their
hands in her direction. Women are screaming, giggling, crying, brandishing
countless items for her to autograph: posters, T-shirts, bumper stickers, books
(Living History), boxing gloves, crumpled cocktail napkins. (One placard already
bears the signature of her husband; but whereas he has scrawled out his full
name, Bill Clinton, she writes only Hillarylike Madonna.) As I hover behind Clinton,
Smith shows me her BlackBerry: Someone has sent her an e-mail saying CNN
caught us dancing. I wasnt dancing, I protest, a feeble rejoinder that Hillary

somehow hears through the din. She whips around, faces me, and intones in her
best mockMother Superior tone, John, you were dancing. I saw you dancing. To
Ricky Martin! And Im gonna tell everyone!
To say that the elements of this tableauthe craziness for Hillary, the pleasure she
took in it, her casual charm with a reporterwere not exactly commonplace during
most of Clintons run would be an understatement of epic proportions. Although
Hillary was a formidable candidate from the start, she was never an electrifying one,
nor one at ease with political performance. She began this campaign, one of her
close friends and advisers tells me, with people saying shes terrific at policy, shes
unquestionably smart, but she doesnt have the political skills. And I think she
wouldnt disagree.
Clinton, in fact, makes no bones about the matter when we speak. Im not a very
comfortable public figure, she explains. I dont particularly like the attention. I like
the work. I like the sense of forward movement and progress. At the end of the day,
what Im interested in is what weve donethat actually moves the agenda forward.
It was Clintons lack of faith in her political chops that caused her to be so deeply
reliant on her chief strategist, Mark Penn. Penn, after all, had helped her win her
Senate seat in 2000 when many said that it was impossible, just as hed aided her
husband in securing reelection in 1996 in less-than-promising circumstances. Penn
was convinced that Hillary had to run as the candidate of strength; that she should
focus relentlessly on her ruggedness and rsum, on her ready-from-day-one-ness.
He argued strenuously that the most significant hurdle she would have to surmount
was the doubt that a woman was capable of being commander-in-chief. Clinton
came to agree, and spent more than a year talking of little else.
Back in January, Clinton told me that she made a fundamental miscalculation in
fixating so obsessively on the commander-in-chief hurdle. I frankly made a wrong
assumption about how to present myself to the country, she said. But looking back
on it now, she has concluded that she had no other choice. This seemed to me to
be looming over everything, she explains. I knew if I couldnt cross it, nothing else
would matter. That Clinton clearly did cross that threshold is an enormous source
of pride for her, an accomplishment she expects will have lasting implications
despite her loss to Obama. I believe that Ive succeeded certainly in diminishing if
not eliminating the commander-in-chief barrier for women candidates in the future,
she says.
Nobody on Team Clinton disagreed that clearing the C-I-C barrier was necessary for
their boss. But there were plenty of her advisers who feared it wouldnt be
sufficient. Prominent among them were her communications czar, Howard Wolfson;
her media consultant, Mandy Grunwald; and senior adviser Harold Ickes, who
argued that she should present herself as someone who had spent her life working
on behalf of children and families. That she should be more empathic, more

approachablemore human, in other words. Penns response? Being human is

overrated.
But Iowa proved otherwise, to Clintons lasting chagrin. All along in the Hawkeye
State, shed come across as remote and guarded, mirthless and mildly paranoid.
Although she was rock-solid in debates, she was awkward in living rooms and
uninspiring on the stump, her speeches either wooden or shrieky. As the caucuses
drew closer, her affect alternated between chillingly astringent and sickeningly
saccharine (please recall her infamous likability tour).

The Fall and Rise of Hillary Clinton

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Famous Last Words: Bill and Chelsea watch Hillary's last speech in New
York on June 3.
(Photo: Brigitte Lacombe)
Then came New Hampshire and her apparent breakthrough: the brimming tear
ducts, Obamas youre likable enough, Hillary, the sense that the media was
trying to declare the game over in the second inning. The combination of
vulnerability and tenacity was new for her. It seemed to spark something, not just in

her, but among the voters, even those whod never felt an ounce of admiration or
affection for her.
But the lesson was immediately lost: In the contests that followed, from Nevada and
South Carolina to Super Tuesday to the eleven consecutive losses at Obamas hands
in February, Clinton reverted to her old, bad form. Or maybe the lesson was never
actually grasped in the first place. She didnt understand what happened in New
Hampshire, says one of her top advisers. It was like, What did I do?
Hillarys weaknesses on the stump would have been problematic on their own. But
they were exacerbated by the strategy that Penn had concocted for her. It was
conventional, safe, inherently conservative, and not obviously wrong. It played to
what he and many others, including Bill Clinton, perceived as Hillarys advantages.
As the architects of her campaign, they believed they were designing a wellappointed estate in which the candidate would be comfortablebut instead it
turned out to be a prison, where the iron bars were the leaden rhetoric of 35 years
of experience, ready to lead, yadda yadda yadda. And although it took Hillary
some time to realize that shed allowed herself to be thus incarcerated, realize it
she eventually did. The jailbreak she staged came too late to save her from defeat.
But not too late to keep her from emerging as a hell of a politician.
Ed Rendell remembers vividly the moment when he saw the transformation with his
own two eyes. It was the first Saturday that Clinton spent campaigning in
Pennsylvania, the state over which Rendell presides as governor. We went to a
Saint Patricks Day parade in Scranton, and the women were treating her like she
was Brad Pitt, Rendell recalls. She was connecting with voters who were never
considered part of her baseworking-class folks, poorer folkswith fairly complex
and sophisticated ideas that she put into good, simple, emotion-producing terms.
To Rendell, a retail politician par excellence, the difference from the Clinton on
display a year earlier was astonishing. Back then, it seemed like she was afraid of
making a mistake; she was on tenterhooks all the time. But by Pennsylvania, she
was much more comfortable in her skin. She was so good, so up, having so much
fun, she almost reminded me of Hubert Humphreya happy warrior.
The new Hillary had first emerged, in fact, in Ohio and Texas. After Obamas elevenstate streak, it wasnt just the media who were telling her to cash in her chips. The
Obamans were claiming it was now mathematically impossible for her to secure the
nomination. Some big-name Democrats were starting to grumble that her
continuing would fatally wound the party. On the night she pulled off her unlikely
twofer, she opened her victory speech with this refrain: For everyone here in Ohio
and across America whos ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out,
and for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, and for everyone who
works hard and never gives up, this one is for you.

With that speech, Clinton had finally found a theme: the resilient fighter, the
underdog, the victim. And with each successive contest, as the calls for her to fold
grew louder even as she continued winning (nine of the final fifteen primaries, for
the record) that theme only became sharper. Having abandoned her corporate,
Establishment campaign, she seemed more than liberated; she seemed intoxicated.
Suddenly, she was giving terrific, well-modulated Election Night speeches
speeches that were every bit as good, in their way, as Obamas more-celebrated
orations. Suddenly, she was loving the rope lines, working them feverishly, hungrily,
as if well, as if she were her husband. Suddenly, the hustings were no longer for
her a royal pain in the ass but instead a source of sustenance, vitality, and even joy.
What changed? What turned her from someone roundly dismissed as an automaton
into a campaigner whose skills were routinely given props by the likes of Pat
Buchanan?
First of all, I think a lot of the stereotypes were never true to begin with, she says.
But I dont think that Ive ever been a particularly effective television persona. Its
probably the most common thing that people say to me when they actually meet
me. So the chance I had to connect with so many people, and then for those people,
through the ripple effectsaying, Oh my gosh, shes really nice, shes really warm,
she really cares, I really liked herthings really took off. But Im sure I got better.
Clinton pauses, then begins to laugh. Look, I believe in experience! So the more
experience you have, the better you will be! And therefore I got better!
The Fall and Rise of Hillary Clinton
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Hillary's Good-Byes: Clinton embracing supporters on June 2 in Rapid

City, South Dakota, and on June 3 in New York.
(Photo: Brigitte Lacombe)
Experience, no doubt, was part of the story, but so was desperation. By the time
she arrived in Texas and Ohio, Clinton had a loaded gun pressed against her temple.
And nothing concentrates the mindor motivates a polso effectively as the
prospect of imminent demise. Yet even this explanation doesnt completely account
for Clintons transfiguration. The truth is that her improvement as a political
performer began when the nomination was effectively beyond her grasp. And it
continued steadily even as her prospects dimmed to the point of blackness.
One explanation, offered by several of her advisers, is that even in the face of the
daunting delegate math touted by the Obamans, Clinton refused to let herself admit
the possibility of defeat. Right to the end, and I mean the very end, she believed
that she would somehow win, one says.
Harold Ickes offers a different kind of psychopolitical analysis. My sense is that its
almost going for brokeyou decide you have nothing left to lose, Ickes tells me.
This isnt an exact parallel, but I worked for Ted Kennedy in 1980. He started with a
series of stumbles in his campaign going back to the Roger Mudd interview. He lost
Iowa and a number of other states. And at some point it became clear that Carter
was going to be ahead in the delegate count and probably unmatchable, and only
then did Kennedy slip the shackles that were constraining him, and he became

really quite an extraordinary candidatefocused, coherent, compelling. It seems to

me that Hillary, like Ted Kennedy, began trusting her own instincts and speaking in
her own voice, and that made a dramatic difference.
Chris Matthews was to Hillary in some sense what Ken Starr was to her husband.
And whatever else one thinks about the Clintons, theres no denying that
martyrdom has been very, very good to them.
The shackles constraining Kennedy were the memories of his fallen brothers and the
expectations they imposed on him. For Clinton, the bonds holding her back were
greater in number, if more prosaic. The strategy set by Penn was one. Her doubts
about her own political gut another. Her front-runner status yet another. But when it
comes to the leg irons in Hillarys political life, none has been as constricting, or
simply annoying, as the Man from Hope.
Its late in the afternoon of June 2, the final day before the final primaries of
Campaign 2008, and the Clinton traveling show is occupying a high-school gym in
Yankton, South Dakota. On the bus ride from Sioux Falls, we experience an only-inAmerica moment: the sighting of a combination bowling alleykaraoke barhourly
motel. (Trifecta!) Later tonight, we will head back to Sioux Falls, for Hillarys last
campaign rally, at which both Chelsea and her husband will be in the house. As it
happens, Sioux Falls is the place where Bill Clinton delivered the last campaign
speech of his own political career, on a cold Election Eve in 1996, just past the
stroke of midnight. I mention this coincidence to Times Joe Klein, because we
shared a bleacher for that momentous event twelve years ago. Klein smiles and
says, She just cant escape that guy.
The truth of that observation is hammered home all too garishly a few minutes later.
While Hillary is speaking to a couple of hundred of the good citizens of Yankton, an
e-mail alert hits my BlackBerry from the Huffington Post: on a rope line in Milbank,
South Dakota, 42 has apparently blown his stack about the just-published story on
his post-presidency in Vanity Fair, calling the author, former Timesman Todd
Purdum, a sleazy dishonest slimy scumbag. All of which would have been
bad enough, but then Clinton went further, venturing deep into nuthouse conspiracy
territory: Its part of the national medias attempt to nail Hillary for Obama. Hoo,
boy.
By now, as youd imagine, Hillarys staff has grown accustomed to outbursts from
WJC exquisitely timed to wreak maximum havoc with HRCs plans. But when I
wander backstage, I find her people in a blue funk. Its the last day of his wifes
campaign, and he couldnt keep a lid on his emotions for her sake, says one aide.
How much more narcissistic can you get? I ask how Hillary will handle it. She
used to get upset, but at this point, its been so bad for so long, I think her attitude
is, like, Whatever.

Few turns of events in this campaign season have been more unexpected than the
declining status and stature of Bill Clinton. Even just six months ago, there were two
prevailing views in Hillaryland about the former president: that he would be an asset
of no small importance to his wifes candidacy; and that the only way that would not
be the case was if he overshadowed heri.e., made her look second-rate by
comparison.
The Fall and Rise of Hillary Clinton
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But with his antics in South Carolina, the Y-chromosome Clinton rendered those
assumptions inoperative. His comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson was interpreted
by many people, and certainly most black leaders, as an instance of gratuitous
race-baiting. And from that point on, Hillarys support among African-Americans,
which last fall had been competitive with Obamas, diminished to the vanishing
point, seldom registering above single digits. Now, part of that swing is undoubtedly
attributable to her rivals having proved himself a plausible nominee with his victory
in Iowa. But all of it? Not likely.
For Hillary, her husbands increasingly erratic behavior was obviously a problem. But
it was also a kind of opportunity: It allowed her to put some needed distance
between them, both literally and metaphorically. On the one hand, there was no one
whose political advice she valued more than his. On the other, his incursions into
her campaign all too often devolved into exercises in solipsism. About halfway
through his infamous, finger-wagging fairy tale tirade against Obama in New
Hampshire, Clinton suddenly wandered off into a self-pitying denunciation of Ken
Starrwho spent $70 million and indicted innocent people to find out I wouldnt
take a nickel to see the cow jump over the moonwhich had exactly what to do
with helping Hillary win? She had to wonder.
So as the campaign wore on, Bill was dispatched to small-town Americato places
that have never seen a president, as the campaign liked to put itwhere he was
less likely to step on her headlines. At the same time, Hillary began to carve out for
herself a substantive and political identity distinct from his. The truth is, she is to
the left of him on domestic-policy issues, one of her top lieutenants says. The
health-care mandate. Freezing foreclosures and interest rates. Renegotiating nafta.
And then shes to the right of him on foreign policy. Im not sure we knew thatIm
not even sure thatshe knew thatbefore this race started.
Nor did anyone know in advance to what extent Hillarys support was truly hers or
the product of residual affection for her husband. But from South Carolina on, it
would be hard to make the case that she benefited much, if at all, from Bill.
Actually, from that point on, says one longtime friend of hers, I think youd have
to say that people were voting for her in spite of him, rather than because of him.

And vote for her they didin numbers that mark one of great accomplishments of
her campaign or any other. Forget her operations dubious argument that she won
the popular vote (a claim only true if you count her lopsided victory in Michigan,
where Obamas name was not on the ballot). As her adviser Ann Lewis points out,
After March 1, she got 500,000 more votes, at a time when she was being outspent
by two to one. Shes got a significant nationwide following that is unusual in that it
is both broad and deep.
Clintons coalition was indeed both of those things. And if it had been just a tiny bit
broader, she not only would have beaten Obama but put herself in a position to
become a kind of female reincarnation of Bobby Kennedy, odd as that may sound.
By the time I sat down with Clinton, RFK had been on my mind for more than a
month, since I traveled with her in Indiana, a state in which Kennedy won one of his
fabled primary victories almost exactly 40 years earlier. The day before the vote
there this year, the Times ran a front-page story headlined Seeing Grit and
Ruthlessness in Clintons Love of the Fight. It occurred to me that many of the
same traits attributed by the Times to Clintonthe cutthroatness, the grudgeholding, the scrappiness, the battlers stancehad also been applied to Kennedy, so
I offered this observation in an e-mail to Wolfson. FunnyI just finished reading a
book on RFK and the Indiana campaign, he wrote back. I am obsessed with RFK.
Wolfsons obsession was understandable, for the coalition Kennedy was engaged in
assembling in 1968 before Sirhan Sirhan took his life was a fusion of white workingclass voters, Catholics, Latinos, and African-Americans. By the time of this years
contest in Indiana, it was clear that Clinton had succeeded in bringing together a
remarkably similar coalitionexcept, of course, for the last voting bloc on the list,
whose overwhelming allegiance to Obama arguably proved decisive.
When I ask Clinton if it pains her that shed been unable to stitch together the
coalition RFK promised (and that her husband, to a degree, delivered in 1992 and
1996), she slowly shakes her head. We came close, she says quietly. The fact
that I received so many votes overall with such a minuscule amount of AfricanAmerican votes demonstrates the power of the coalition I did put together. But I
respect those who voted for Senator Obama for all kinds of reasons. You know, with
me, it was a much broader base, but he had a very deep base in places where he
needed iteither a deep African-American base or an activist liberal base. Thats
why it ended up in a virtual tie.

The Fall and Rise of Hillary Clinton

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By groping her way toward a message that put the blue-collar concerns at the
center of the Democratic race, and by fashioning herself into what Rendell describes
as an intelligent, sophisticated populist, Clinton achieved something both
substantial and almost entirely unexpected. Who would have thought a year ago
that we would talking today (with a straight face) about the possibility that the term
Reagan Democrats would be supplanted by the moniker Hillary Democrats?
This achievement would have been impossible had Clinton left the race as early as
many Democrats wished. Though the outlines of hers and Obamas coalitions began
to come clear on Super-Duper Tuesday, it was only after Ohio and Texas that the
depth and severity of the fault lines running through the party became so glaringly
apparent. For Obama and his people, Clintons bloody-minded persistence was
unwelcome, yet another sign that she cared more about herself than the fate of the
party this fall. But it also served, or should have served, as a blaring alarm about
the scale of the challenge the presumptive nominee will confront in the general
election.
I certainly hope so, Clinton replies when I suggest this to her. Because we have
been unsuccessful when weve failed to bring these two coalitions together. They
are largely but not completely demographic coalitions, but there are certain themes
in common that have to be sounded in order to bridge that divide. John Kerry
basically lost because he didnt do well enough with women and Hispanics. And Bill
Clinton won because he cobbled the coalition together. And it is always a challenge
for Democrats: You could go back and look at the arc from the New Deal coalition to
its slow but steady erosion in the sixties to the mantle that Reagan grabbed that my
husband began to try to wrest back and which neither Al Gore nor John Kerry could
figure out how to bridge. So its perhaps more apparent in this race because it was

such a long one and more people had a chance to vote. The pattern has become
abundantly clear, but its always been there for the past 70-plus years.
Clintons history lesson will no doubt strike many Obamans as self-serving. They will
point out that she did more than lay bare the schism in the Democrat ranks; she at
times seemed intent on exacerbating, rather than healing, it. Which is true enough,
as far as it goes. But its equally true, and certainly more important, that if
Democrats want not only to win this November but also to build a lasting and stable
majority for the future, grappling with the divisions that cleave the party will be
essential. And before that can happen, they must first admit those divisions exista
process that Clinton, though it wasnt her intention, has made unavoidable.
It would be hard to overstate the private pessimism that Hillary and Bill Clinton feel
about Obamas general-election prospects. Or the irritation they feel about the
dismissive attitudes of some of his advisers toward her coalition, as evinced by the
words of Obamas chief strategist, David Axelrod, after the Pennsylvania primary:
The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections
This is not new that Democratic candidates dont rely solely on those votes.
But the Clintons frustration with Obamas people pales beside the simmering anger
they harbor toward the media. And in this they are not alone. For months now, my
e-mail box has been full of messages from women across the country, explaining
what Hillarys run meant to them, why it was so important. The reasons vary
depending on age and race and region, but the one element almost all my
correspondents express in common is a furious resentment at the press for what
they see as blatant misogyny in the coverage of Clinton.
When I mention this to Hillary, she laughs and exclaims, Id love to get a look at
your e-mail! And then, more soberly, she goes on, Theres a reason for the
resentment. The level of dismissive and condescending comments, not just about
mewhat do I care?but about the people who support me and in particular the
women who support me, has been shocking. Shocking to women and to fair-minded
men. But what has really been more disappointing to me is how few voices that
have a platform have spoken out against it. And thats really why you seen this
enormous grassroots outrage. There is no outlet. It is rare that you have anybody on
these shows or in a position of responsibility at major publications who really says,
Wait a minute! What are we talking about here? I have a wife! I have a daughter! I
want the best for them.

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Clinton is fairly worked up now, but shes far from finished. I didnt think I was in a
position to take it on because it would have looked like it was just about me. And I
didnt think it was just about me. So the only time we took it on was in the thing
about Chelsea, which was so far beyond the bounds, I mean, what planet are we
living on? But nobody said anything until I made it an issue. So I just want
everybody to really think hard about the larger lesson here. I know you cant take
me out of the equation, because Im in the center of the storm. But its much bigger
than me. And women know that. Because if it were just about me, those who
sympathize with me would say, Im so sorry. But instead its, Wait a minute! This is
not just about her! Its about us! And when are we going to see somebody stand up
and say, What are you doing here?
Clinton made a point of not naming names in the course of her media critique. But
when I ask her former staff for particular examples of sexism in the press, they
exhibit less restraint. The whole MSNBC crew, says Lewis. I mean, at what point
in Chris Matthewss career do we choose? Then there was night on CNN when
[Republican strategist] Alex Castellanos said, Well, its appropriate to call some
women a white bitch because thats what they are. What especially galls Clintons
fans about her coverage is what they perceive as a double standard regarding race
and gender that (among other biases, in their view) tilted the media playing field
dramatically toward Obama. The argument, roughly put, is that whereas casual
sexism takes place with impunity, the slightest hint of racial bias provokes gales of
protest. I ask Clinton if she agrees. She says she does: The contrast between the
outrage over anything concerning race compared to anything concerning gender
was incredibly out of balance, I thought.
How much any of this affected the outcome of the battle between Obama and
Clinton is impossible to gauge. But whats indisputable is that the belief among
many women that Hillary was ill-treated by the press is one of the most powerful
contributing factors to her renewed, and greatly enhanced, status as a feminist
hero. And in this she shares something vital with her husband. It was only after Bill
Clintons impeachment ordeal that he became a beloved figure on the traditional
left, which had long regarded him warily before his persecution by the special
prosecutor and the congressional Republicans. WJC, in other words, was fortunate in
his enemies. Now HRC finds herself similarly blessed; in Chris Matthews she appears
to have found her own version of Ken Starr. Its been said before, but it bears
repeating once again. Whatever else one thinks about the Clintons, theres no
denying that martyrdom has been very, very good to them.
When Hillary launched her presidential bid in early 2007, she famously said she was
in to win. This is what they all say, these lunatics who decide that they could be,
should be president of the United States. But precious few have a hope in hell of
grabbing the brass ring, and most of them are smart enough to know that. Clinton,
by contrast, expected to win. For weeks, even months, the question has been, what
does Hillary want? But now an equally compelling question is, what will she do next?

Naturally, the answer depends, first of all, on whether Obama decides to offer her
the VP slot. For all the talk of her trying to muscle her way onto the ticket, one
senses in her a genuine ambivalence about whether she wants the job. If Obama
does offer it, however, she will have no choice but to take it. She is all too aware
that if she turned it down and he lost this fall, she would be blamed even more
loudly than she will be already, even though in her view his downfall is foreordained,
and has nothing to do with her.
If the call doesnt come from Obama, Clinton will return to the Senatewhere, in
many ways, she will instantly become the first among equals. Shell be greatly,
greatly enhanced, says former senator Bob Kerrey. Shell have the most valuable
e-mail list in the Senate. Shell be the most heavily sought out person in the
Congress as an endorser, a fund-raiser. Everybody is gonna want to have her come
and campaign for them. Shes gonna be at the very top of everybodys list.
Clinton tells me she has no qualms about returning to the Senate. I think Im both
more prepared and more impatient than I was before, she says. And Im even
more committed to the agenda we laid out. At the top of that agenda, of course, is
universal health care, an issue on which Clinton would almost certainly take the
lead if Obama is in the White House, giving at once a shot at a place in history and
a chance to redeem herself after her searing failure in 1993 and 1994.
Would that be enough for Hillary? Its possiblebut not likely. Its now 36 years
since Clinton, while she was working in Texas on George McGoverns campaign, was
told by her husbands future chief of staff, Betsey Wright, that she might have what
it took to be the countrys first female president. Dreams held that long are dreams
that die hard, especially if theyre held as fiercely and tenaciously as Hillary has
always held the ambitions that propel her forward. The endless, brutal, wrenching
campaign of 2008 would have wrecked a lesser woman. Hillary tells me she feels
just fine: Whatever doesnt kill you makes you stronger. Spoken like a true Clinton.
Patron Saint of Lowbrow Sinners

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By Thomas Mallon

Published Jun 15, 2008

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She isnt a phony, went the best explanation of
Holly Golightly, because shes a real phony. And
now, thank goodness, so is that other transplant
to New York, Hillary Clintonan authentic
politician at last.

Illustration by Rodrigo Corral

For 30 years, until she started losing, politics to her meant only policy, in both the
wonkish and Elizabethan senses of the term: I need a briefing paper on improving
Medicare reimbursement for Lasik surgery; and I need you to lose these billing
records. The thought of enjoying, even craving, physical contact with the large, Tshirted, camera-clicking masses on the rope line? All those people waiting to have
their pain felt and their backs slapped? No, she looked upon that as Bills thing, all
of a piece with the fries and the poon and the rest of his grubby appetites. She
never liked it or required it, not even in her own first Senate race, during which she
allowed herself to be presented, in one upstate county after another, like some
princess bride whod been magically imported to succor the depressed kingdom.

Heilemann on Hillary
AFTERWORDS
The Real Mick Jagger of Politics
Back to the Scene of the Crime
Evita and Her Juan
Like a Natural Woman
But this time out, as the Democrats got ready to embark on another of their
periodic self-purifying rituals, she turned out to be the designated sacrifice, the past
life that needed to be cursed and stoned by the tens of thousands of lowcholesterol, high-tech progressives gathered to have the new prophet wash away
their sins in the Willamette River. What was left for her to do? Only to accept the
love of the lowbrow sinners who didnt want to repent. She could tumble into bed
with the less educated and more prejudiced and just plain tasteless, the way Bill
had spent a lifetime seeking relief from Hillary Clinton with girls who looked like
Paula Jones.
Thank you so much! She shouted it every Tuesday night she had a win, but it was
only after the wins could no longer do her any good that she meant it, that she
actually felt the raw, rude, you-go-girl love that would now get her up in the
morning, out of the hotel, and over to the breakfast grill near the soon-to-be-shut
factory. Thank you so much!for getting me through the night.
At one appearance in West Virginia, shown on cable news the day of the primary,
the out-of-state viewer could hear her, without a trace of embarrassment or parody,
pronouncing the wordsomething as sumpm. To those whod already left her for
the other candidate, the one whos above politics, the one whos going to bring us
to a post-political era, it was a repellent, sad little display, confirmation that theyd
made the right choice. But to those of us who dont like our politicians pure, who
believe that Eugene McCarthy and Jerry Brown ended up accomplishing rather less

in the world than Lyndon Johnson or even Huey Long, it was a moment to be
enjoyed for its sheer cant-help-herself shamelessness.
The chilly scold whos been around forever has discovered her own id and appetite,
and if the puritans of the blogosphere would also relax for a minute or two, they
might realize that Hillary is now a more appealing creature than shes ever been
before. Good for you, say those of us who could never stand her. To see her drinking
bourbon and stuffing her face and bellowing into the mike is to feel the way her
mother-in-law, that good-time gal Virginia Kelley, must have felt when she finally
saw Miss Priss take off the glasses and put on some makeup.
Its become armchair-shrink c.w. to say that, deep down, Bill Clinton did not want his
wife to win. Its easy enough to see why: If she had, shed instantly have been the
more historic figure of the two. And how else to explain, other than by subconscious
sabotage, the constant political blundering this winter and spring by the smoothest
real phony of them all? Hillarys got a dozen new reasons to hate him all over again,
no?
No. The smart psychological money says that once this is over, the two of them will
be more comfortable with each other than ever before. However hes failed and
betrayed her, from South Carolina to South Dakota, something more important has
happened between them. She gets him now, understands the biggest, best, and
juiciest part of him in a way she never did. She can at last turn to him and, quoting
Linda Tripp, say, Im you.
The nature of appetites is to grow, so once the Obama campaign or presidency has
failed, she will start getting ready for those crowds again, and her preparations
wont include bothering to lose those ten pounds she seems to have put on these
past few months. Her new showbiz equivalents will be Lena Horne, after she learned
to growl like Aretha, and Barbara Cook, after she traded the ingenues pinafore for
the caftan. Noisier and better, Hillary will be the one who gets handed the pen when
shes pushed through the other guys health-care bill, an honest-to-God useful,
compromised piece of legislation on behalf of all those plebs who stuck with
her after the last dog died.
She may turn out to be really sumpm.