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Whether you’re a big fan of Hillary Clinton or can hardly stand the sight of her name, know this about the former first lady:
She is a political phenomenon — every bit as much as Barack Obama and maybe more so. She’s just gone about her phenomenon-ness more slowly than the shooting star that is Obama.
Let’s go to the tape. Aug. 20, 1998. On that day, the caption beneath a Time magazine photo of Clinton asked a simple question: “When did she know?”
At that time, a little less than a decade ago, the suspicion was that Clinton had long known that her husband, the president, was engaged in an ongoing affair with intern Monica Lewinsky. Given Bill Clinton’s philandering history, how could she not?
But that summer, in the months before her husband was impeached, she and her staff used their all-too-familiar care in choosing their words. Hillary Clinton “didn’t know” what happened with Lewinsky despite the months of headlines. Asked point-blank once when Hillary Clinton learned of the relationship, spokeswoman Marsha Berry sidestepped the question altogether.
A Gallup Poll taken that month revealed that though 40 percent of Americans believed that Hillary Clinton was committed to her marriage, 34 percent said she was supporting the president because “she liked being first lady,” and 16 percent said it was because she was committed to her husband’s policies.
In other words, Americans had real doubts about their president and his wife.
And this is a woman who today stands on the brink of becoming the Democratic nominee for president? In a kernel, that’s it. In less than a decade, Hillary Clinton has run the long race from scandal-plagued spouse with questionable credibility to almost nominee.
It’s a feat of, well, phenomenal proportions, especially given what she’s endured since. The decision to run for senator from New York, where she was not a resident and was immediately branded a carpetbagger. The nip-and-tuck race (at least early on) with Republican Senate contender Rick Lazio. The $8 million book deal. And, once a senator, the votes on Iraq.
She worked doggedly to get elected, assiduously courting — and winning over — upstate New York. By all accounts she has worked doggedly in the Senate, carefully working her way into the club by occasionally fetching coffee for her colleagues. Imagine that: a former first lady turned senator turned … waitress.
What a long, strange trip it’s been. You wonder whether any other contemporary politician could have endured it, much less pulled it off.
Obama today has a lead of around 100 delegates, a total that doesn’t seem like much in a battle of more than 4,000. But it’s a lead that’s insurmountable unless Clinton grabs twice as many superdelegates as Obama in the weeks ahead.
That’s unlikely. But it sure didn’t stop her from the “kitchen sink” strategy prior to Ohio and Texas, where she threw every dirty dish she could get her hands on at the senator from Illinois.
It worked.
Some Democrats are suggesting that the woman who kept on ticking now quit the race so that the party can unite behind Obama and heal up.
That, folks, will happen when marshmallows rain from the sky.
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