In "rollout" weeks of campaign, Hillary is a familiar political figure trying to reclaim her name

[DeepModem Mom]

Listening and Nodding, Clinton Shapes ’08 Image
By MARK LEIBOVICH
Published: March 6, 2007

....To watch Mrs. Clinton up close during these “rollout” weeks of her presidential campaign is to see a familiar political figure try to reclaim her name....Lamenting that her public image has been distorted by caricature, she often says, “I may be the most famous person you don’t really know.” In the cliché of contemporary politics, Mrs. Clinton is “reintroducing herself to the American people.”

She is, in this latest unveiling, the Nurturing Warrior. She displays a cozy acquaintance (“Let’s chat”) and leaderly confidence (“I’m in it to win it”). She is a tea-sipping girlfriend who vows to “deck” anyone who attacks her; a giggly mom who invokes old Girl Scout songs and refuses to apologize for voting for the Iraq War Resolution in 2002. Her aim, of course, is to show that she is tough enough to lead Americans in wartime but tender enough to understand their burdens.

Over the years, Mrs. Clinton has evolved through a series of female personas. Her outspoken feminism and perceived putdown of cookie-baking mothers provoked fierce criticism. She became the classic “woman wronged” after the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

As a Senate candidate in 2000, Mrs. Clinton embraced the role of an attentive “listener” as opposed to the power-hungry climber many had suspected. In the Senate, Mrs. Clinton has applied herself to winning over colleagues and becoming one of the boys.

In Mrs. Clinton’s campaign now, her operative conceit is “the conversation.” It is impossible to attend a Hillary-for-president event and forget you are joining a “conversation,” instead of hearing a conventional political speech....She contrasts the give-and-take of her chitchats — even though she does most of the talking — with what she suggests are the pig-headed pronouncements of a male bogeyman, George W. Bush. She rails against what she calls the “one-sided conversation” of Washington during the Bush years, bemoans President Bush’s “stubbornness,” speaks of her frustration at getting him to hear opposing views....In appearances in Washington and around the country, Mrs. Clinton — Version 08, Nurturing Warrior, Presidential Candidate Model — is speaking more freely of her gender than she has in years. Her campaign knows that Democratic women are her most loyal supporters. Ann Lewis, a senior campaign aide, points out that women made up 54 percent of the electorate in 2004; Mrs. Clinton garnered 73 percent of female voters in her re-election campaign last year, compared with 61 percent of male voters, according to exit polls....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/us/politics/06hillary.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

[illinoisprogressive]

1. I'm a woman and I loath her.

[Forkboy]

2. "becoming one of the boys."

Oh great! They've done such a good job of things so far :eyes: