Clinton Is A Politician Not Easily Defined

That she polarizes the electorate is clear from a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The survey found that 84 percent of Democrats have a favorable impression of Clinton, while 73 percent of Republicans have an unfavorable view. As a point of contrast, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), a leading potential candidate for the Republican nomination, is viewed favorably by 65 percent of Republicans and 50 percent of Democrats.

Although she has drawn criticism from the left for supporting the Iraq war, Clinton remains more popular among liberal Democrats than among moderate Democrats. Overall, 37 percent of Americans said she is too liberal, which is less than the 45 percent recorded for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) during the 2004 campaign and almost identical to perceptions of then-Vice President Al Gore in 2000.

Clinton's advisers argue that most Americans have formed opinions about her based not just on Iraq or health care but also on how she has conducted herself through personal circumstances. In the Post-ABC News poll, for example, 68 percent said they see Clinton as a strong leader, 16 percentage points more than Bush received a few months ago.

On balance, most of those around Clinton say her hard-to-pigeonhole profile is a political asset -- the product, they say, of a curious intellect, the absence of rigid ideology, an instinct for problem solving and a willingness to seek consensus even across party lines. Her detractors see her career as the work of an opportunistic politician who has sanded the sharp edges off her views, so much so that there is little sense of authenticity when she speaks.

On Iraq, she has tried to be a critic of Bush without renouncing her support for the resolution that authorized him to go to war, as other Democrats have done. She opposes both a timetable for withdrawing troops and an open-ended commitment.

In the interview, Clinton defended herself. "I've said many times I regret how the president has used his authority," she said. "But I think I have a responsibility to look at this as carefully as I can and say what I believe, and what I believe is we're in a very dangerous situation and it doesn't lend itself to sound bites, and therefore I have resisted going along with either my colleagues who feel passionately they need to call for a date certain or colleagues who are 100 percent behind the policy and with the president and [British] Prime Minister [Tony] Blair. . . . I know I take criticism from all sides on this, but I've tried to work my way through it as clearly and responsibly as I can."

Bill Clinton is also a defender. At a meeting of a group of well-heeled liberal donors called the Democracy Alliance this month in Austin, he lost his temper when an audience member suggested that Hillary Clinton should follow the lead of 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards and renounce her 2002 vote authorizing military force in Iraq, audience members said. He glowered and lectured the donor that it was more important to look to the future than to debate the past in Iraq.

In the Senate, Hillary Clinton has introduced about 190 bills. Of those not strictly involving parochial New York matters, about half include at least one Republican co-sponsor, her advisers say.

But a Congressional Quarterly analysis found that she has voted with a majority of Democrats 95 percent of the time and has consistently recorded one of the highest percentages for opposing Bush on legislation of any of her potential 2008 Democratic rivals.

No One Label

Those who have dealt with Clinton say she is not easily caricatured. "Reviewing her writings, which I've done, having chatted with her and knowing personally something about how the Clintons raised Chelsea, I believe she holds what we sometimes call traditional values about personal responsibility and family," said Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute.

Peter Edelman, who resigned in protest from the Clinton administration after the president signed, with his wife's support, the welfare reform bill in 1996, said no label fits her. "Anybody who thinks she's some sort of down-the-line liberal who has tailored her thinking for electoral reasons, I think that's just not true," he said.

The defeat of her health-care proposal in 1994, advisers say, taught her to respect the limits of the political system to absorb major policy changes.