Although I stopped reading that rag ages ago for its wishy-washy coverage of Bush II and his wars, this overall positive piece was written by Tina Brown (yes, THAT Tina Brown of the many lives, ex-editor of Vanity Fair and New Yorker - for better or worse - and author of last year's 'The Diana Chronicles'. She's currently working on a book about Bill and Hillary Clinton).
Good story overall, despite a few, small subtly snarky remarks on page two - or maybe I've just become ultrasensitive to criticism of Hillary anymore!
http://www.newsweek.com/id/120064/page/1
THE TRAIL
Hillary and the Invisible Women
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Up Against the Wall: Clinton is at her best when things look grim, as they did before the Texas vote, when her traveling press corps was stashed in a men's room
By Tina Brown | NEWSWEEK
Mar 17, 2008 Issue
Hillary Clinton's run-up to the Texas and Ohio primaries was the political equivalent of Hell Week for a Navy SEAL. At least it felt that way for the reporters who'd been participating in this killing Democratic marathon since the Iowa caucuses in January and now, dosed up on Airborne and bad coffee, were covering what was being billed as Hillary's last stand.
As a campaign virgin who joined the press bus on Saturday morning in Ft. Worth, Texas, I was staggered by how isolated accompanying reporters actually are most of the time. It's like being trapped in a moving bathysphere. You can't buy newspapers or watch TV in real time. Occasionally, as you fall into your seat on a plane hop from Dallas to Columbus, Ohio, wanly clutching a boxed panini, you catch a glimpse of a familiar large, frosted head in the first-class section that's rumored to belong to the candidate. She doesn't come back much to visit the press, except for the odd bright-eyed moment of managed conviviality. One senses a moment of trepidation on the flight from Cleveland to Toledo: "I intend to do as well as I can on Tuesday and we will see what happens after that."
The Hillary coterie up front in the plane always includes the stylish brunette Huma Abedin, a.k.a. the "body person" who maintains the senator's power wardrobe and unfailingly fresh appearance. Sometimes the candidate is joined by friends and endorsers. Ted Danson and his wife, Mary Steenburgen, show up for some Ohio gigs and are surprisingly effective, especially Steenburgen: "I looked at my friend Bill 30 years ago and I thought, If there is anything inherently healthy in the universe, you should be president one day. And I looked at Hillary and thought, 'Wow, do I dare to dream?' " Chelsea, Hillary's no-longer-secret weapon, joins the flight on the eve of Election Day, visibly lifting her mother's mood. The warmth and complicity between them is evident as they crack open a bottle of wine and squeeze hands together in the first-class cabin. Chelsea, 28, is all soft power to her mother's pre-emptive strike. There is steel beneath Chelsea's girlish charm.
The grueling, brutal pace Hillary maintains (14 cities in four days) even sets a pace for the younger Senator Obama. Perhaps she deserves to prevail simply because she's tougher—tougher than the media following ashen-faced in her wake, and clearly tougher than the other Democratic and Republican candidates who've already gone down in flames. Let no one dispute the grit of a woman willing to get up at 4 a.m. on a Monday in time to deliver doughnuts to workers on a shift change at the Chrysler plant in Toledo. Refreshed by the excursion, she then summons the bleary-eyed reporters and camera crews down to an impromptu "press avail" in the hotel lobby, where she coolly defenestrates Obama on his economic adviser's "wink wink" double-speak about NAFTA. Back on the plane a photographer pins up a sign over his seat: DON'T CALL ME AT 3 A.M.
MORE AT LINK:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/120064/page/1++++++++++ Edited to add amazing fourth paragraph! ++++++++++
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