The War She Hasn't Won

CONCORD, N.H. -- Monique Cesna seemed ready to toss a softball to Hillary Clinton. "I have to say, 'You go, girl!" Cesna said, and the capacity crowd in the high school gym here went wild.

But Cesna, 47, a nurse turned third-year law student, then bore down for the cross-examination: Candidate Clinton insists she wouldn't have taken the country to war in Iraq had she been president, yet Senator Clinton voted to authorize President Bush to go to war.

"How can you then explain the seeming contradiction?" she asked -- and again the crowd went wild.

Iraq was the throbbing toothache of Clinton's weekend visit here. The state she once took pains to avoid for fear of igniting presidential rumors -- she hadn't been here since 1996 -- will be key to her ambition to become the second President Clinton. But here and in Iowa, she faces a ferociously antiwar electorate unhappy with her positions, past and present, on Iraq.

On the eve of the primary three years ago, New Hampshire voters fixated on electability: They weren't so much swept away by John F. Kerry as calculating that he had the best shot of winning. Their hearts may have been with Howard Dean and his antiwar stance, but their heads were with Kerry and his pragmatic pitch: "Don't just send them a message. Send them a president."

Today, the mood feels different -- whether it's because that electability strategy didn't work out so well; that Bush will be out no matter what; that Democrats seem favored to win in 2008; that Iraq is more of a disaster; or that the primary is far enough away that voters can vent now and strategize later.

For the moment, Democratic primary voters don't want Kerryesque parsing. "Let the conversation begin," Clinton's banners proclaim, but she's not saying what many of them want to hear -- words like "mistake" and "sorry."

Instead, in the Clintonian formulation, the mistake was Bush's and the regret is that he misused the authority he was given. Iraq "is a gnawing, painful sore," she said. "People are beside themselves with frustration, and I understand that completely."

But people in that agitated state don't want to hear about the 60 votes required to proceed to Senate debate on a nonbinding resolution. "I know that is hard medicine for some people, because people say, 'Just do something,' " Clinton acknowledged.

Yet while Iraq was an undoubted irritant, it was also clear that Clinton is a formidable candidate. She leads in the polls and drew overflow crowds. If Barack Obama is the new rock star of the Democratic Party, Clinton is its Mick Jagger (or, if that status is Bill Clinton's, at least its Keith Richards).

At every stop, Clinton took pains to preempt the can-a-woman-be-elected question -- "My response to that is we will never know until we try" -- but her gender seemed either to be a nonissue or, with women, an energizing plus.

Clinton did a good job mediating the tensions in her Woman Warrior message -- the conflict between the softer, cuddlier "Let's Chat" Hillary and the rip-their-heads-off "I'm in It to Win It" Hillary.