Thursday, September 06, 2007
Mr. Fluff
In today's "Politics" section of the "New York Times," reporter Mark Leibovich has a story (login required) of Hillary Rodham Clinton, from her days at Wellesley, that could easily have been written by the Clinton campaign team. In fact, I am not sure "fluff" is the right word to describe it.
Wellesley has opened up the Hillary archive they have at the campus that documents her activities, and some extent her thinking, while she attended school there.
As is fairly common knowledge, Mrs. Clinton came to campus a Goldwater Republican, having grown up in a Republican district in the suburbs of Chicago. In 1964, she worked on Goldwater's presidential campaign and lost her ties to the Republicans as she progressed each year in college, where she was a Political Science major (not that there is anything wrong with that).
Here is the major themes of the article: Hillary is thoughtful, Hillary works to build relationships across the political spectrum, and while Hillary may be a liberal, her liberal values are contained within the confines of the political system (read: No danger in socialized programming).
In working across party lines, Leibovich writes:
She attended both the Republican National Convention in Miami (bunking at the Fontainebleu Hotel, ordering room service for the first time — cereal and a daintily wrapped peach) and the Democratic donnybrook in Chicago (smelling tear gas at Grant Park, watching a toilet fly out the window of the Hilton hotel).
In her tempered approach to governing:
In the bustle of her excursions, she showed the zeal of an emerging political junkie. And, while outspoken and often blunt, Ms. Rodham was hardly a bomb-thrower. She was, then as now, dedicated to cerebral policy debates, government process and carefully calibrated positions.
And let us not forget compassion:
A suitemate, Connie Hoenk Shapiro, recalled asking why she had bought a particularly dreadful pair of muddy-colored shoes (with clunky 2-inch heels and a square toe) and Ms. Rodham explaining, “I felt sorry for them and wanted to give them a home.”
There is also an attempt to humanize Mrs. Clinton:
And I suspect that we will hear a great deal more.
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Wellesley has opened up the Hillary archive they have at the campus that documents her activities, and some extent her thinking, while she attended school there.
As is fairly common knowledge, Mrs. Clinton came to campus a Goldwater Republican, having grown up in a Republican district in the suburbs of Chicago. In 1964, she worked on Goldwater's presidential campaign and lost her ties to the Republicans as she progressed each year in college, where she was a Political Science major (not that there is anything wrong with that).
Here is the major themes of the article: Hillary is thoughtful, Hillary works to build relationships across the political spectrum, and while Hillary may be a liberal, her liberal values are contained within the confines of the political system (read: No danger in socialized programming).
In working across party lines, Leibovich writes:
She attended both the Republican National Convention in Miami (bunking at the Fontainebleu Hotel, ordering room service for the first time — cereal and a daintily wrapped peach) and the Democratic donnybrook in Chicago (smelling tear gas at Grant Park, watching a toilet fly out the window of the Hilton hotel).
In her tempered approach to governing:
In the bustle of her excursions, she showed the zeal of an emerging political junkie. And, while outspoken and often blunt, Ms. Rodham was hardly a bomb-thrower. She was, then as now, dedicated to cerebral policy debates, government process and carefully calibrated positions.
And let us not forget compassion:
A suitemate, Connie Hoenk Shapiro, recalled asking why she had bought a particularly dreadful pair of muddy-colored shoes (with clunky 2-inch heels and a square toe) and Ms. Rodham explaining, “I felt sorry for them and wanted to give them a home.”
There is also an attempt to humanize Mrs. Clinton:
Friends say she had a playful streak, was game for road trips to Vermont and Cape Cod, and liked to call people by goofy nicknames. “She would sometimes refer to herself in the third person as “the Hill,” or “the Hill woman,” said her Wellesley classmate Nancy Pietrafesa, whose childhood moniker, Peach, sometimes became Peacharoo or Peacharooni in Hill-speak.
And
Unlike many of her peers, she never experimented with illegal drugs, Mrs. Clinton said. She embraced collegiate social rituals, attending mixers, showing up to Harvard football games (often with a book, a friend recalls) and planning a strawberries-and-cream bridal shower atop the Wellesley Bell Tower for a roommate, Johanna Branson.
There are tons more examples just like these. Where a critic might describe political opportunism, Liebovich finds bi-partisan appeal.And I suspect that we will hear a great deal more.
