Hillary and the Passion Question By Howard Kurtz --WaPo

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/12/05/BL2006120500382.html?referrer=email



Hillary and the Passion Question

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 5, 2006; 7:38 AM



An anti-Hillary drumbeat is building in the media.

(Hey, the holidays are coming, what else we got to do?)

The other day, MSNBC kept running the headline "Hillary Overrated?"

There was obviously going to come a point when journos and political types would question whether the former first lady was indeed such a formidable front-runner. But now? Before she's even declared? I wonder what's driving this--some sort of whispering campaign in Democratic circles?

Hillary Clinton's advantages are formidable: Her name, her stature, her ability to quickly raise huge bucks (and spend it just as quickly, if her cakewalk Senate campaign was any indication). Plus, she's a connection to the Democrats' glory days, which runs roughly from the '92 campaign to Monica. And what other candidate has already lived in the White House?

Her disadvantages? Well, maybe they're all the same, except for the fundraising prowess, although Howard Dean's $40-million war chest didn't end up doing him much good last time. And her connection to the peace and prosperity of the Bill years also means that Whitewater, billing records and the failure to get Osama can be dredged up and recycled against her.

The rap against Clinton is that her base is not terribly excited about her (especially given her vote for the war) but the other side finds her scary--in short, that she's a polarizing figure. But she got plenty of upstate Republicans to vote for her this time around.

The truth is, we won't really know what kind of candidate Hillary is until she takes the plunge--which she has been telling New York Democratic leaders she is going to do, the NYT reports. (Guess she won't be writing a book titled If I Did It.) And part of the test will be how she handles the press, of which she was famously wary while in the White House.

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