Here Comes Hillary

She's in to win. The national polls have her way ahead of her Democratic opponents. In a sign of the strength she brings to the table, she has already decided to say no to the government's offer of public financing and begin raising private money for both the nominating and general election campaigns. Since her website launch on Saturday, she has been everywhere: on television, on the Internet and dominating the print press. The media may be in love with Obama, but Hillary is impossible to ignore.

"If her name were Hillary Rodham, we wouldn't even be talking about her," a caller said to me on the radio this morning. I disagree. Of course we'd be talking about a charismatic, second-term Senator from New York; an ambitious woman with substance and style who has worked endlessly to develop the fundraising network and political team to compete at the highest levels. We're talking about Obama, and he has all of two years in the Senate, for all his charisma.

What we probably wouldn't be doing is comparing her to her husband, angsting about her marriage and trying to figure out whether she can undo the damage that eight years in the White House with him did to her.

For all the times people will ask, "Is America ready for a woman president?" that really isn't the question. Hillary isn't just any woman. She is an independent woman who achieved her greatest fame through her connection to her husband; a heroine to some and a horror to others; the best-loved and most-hated candidate of the crowd. Typically, women candidates worry that they will be perceived as weak. In Hillary's case, the question people ask is whether she is too tough.

At this point, Hillary has two major problems. The obvious one is her negatives: She has to do in America what she did in New York, which is why she's out there listening. In New York, she started with almost half the people saying they disliked her, a situation that literally leaves no margin of error. To win, you need the votes of everyone who doesn't hate you going in, which isn't easy. But she turned that around, dramatically so, even in the most Republican regions of a Democratic state.

The trickier problem may be the system she has to navigate on her way to the nomination.

Hillary Clinton is better positioned, politically and substantively, for a general election or a national primary than for the process Democrats have established for picking their nominee.

Sure, she will have an easier time than anyone else meeting the escalating financial threshold to play this game — Hillary's hundred million will probably be easier for her to find than anyone else's. But running first in national polls doesn't mean much in a system that consists of a series of state-by-state contests, many of them dominated by ideologues and true believers who may not easily forgive her centrist stand on the war. Hillary has to move without looking like she is moving for political purposes, to feint left without giving up the center.

The most important thing to remember in understanding how the nominating process works is the basic principle of Hollywood: No one knows anything. The rules may have been written to produce a certain result, but that doesn't mean they do. Super Tuesday was initially created by Southern states determined to produce a more moderate nominee. The beneficiary, the first two times around, was the very liberal Jesse Jackson.

A calendar that finds big states rushing to move their contests up so as to have an impact on the decision means it is possible that the nomination will be settled earlier than ever. Or not. Iowa could be more important than ever in providing the momentum that means more than money when no amount of money is enough to compete in that many places at once.

On the other hand, it is also possible that with a strong field and so many primaries and caucuses taking place so early, the first stage of the process won't produce a winner at all, turning a sprint into a marathon in which the later states award the prize.

The danger for Hillary is that she will be expected to win everywhere. If she does, from the beginning, she can lock up the nomination, but if she falters, alarmists will declare that the sky is falling on her.

A woman, a black, a Hispanic, not to mention a former vice presidential nominee, two seasoned Senators and the former governor of Iowa make this the strongest field in recent memory. Bill had it easier. Hill's will be more fun to watch.

To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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