By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 2, 2007; 1:12 PM

Boy, that didn't take long: Hillary Clinton is now being depicted as a girl.

With stunning swiftness, the media have bounced from ripping her performance at the Williams/Russert debate to questioning whether she is a perpetual fudger to charging that she's playing the gender card in complaining about the men ganging up on her.

I always wondered what it would look like when a woman was a serious White House candidate, and now we're finding out.

There are advantages, of course, to being a female politician. Male candidates say it is difficult to attack a woman without arousing sympathy for her. And Hillary is drawing considerable support from the sisterhood.

But it can be harder for a woman -- especially a potential commander in chief -- to project toughness without being seen as harsh and shrill. And at the moment the press seems to have put the New York senator in something of a box: If she complains about rough treatment, she's acting like a whiny daughter who's had her Barbie taken away.

The initial wound is certainly self-inflicted. Hillary did sound like someone trying to have it both ways by praising Eliot Spitzer's plan on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants without endorsing it, by saying that she and her husband aren't blocking release of her first lady records when they've certainly slowed it down.

It's the damage-control phase, though, that's really striking. Was it wise for Hillary strategists to gripe, on background, about Russert's questions? And would the media reaction have been the same if Rudy had been grilled by Tim and complained afterward about unfair treatment? Somehow I doubt it.

Salon's Tim Grieve goes right to the gender issue:

"Is there something a little disappointing in the way the Clinton campaign is explaining away what happened at this week's Democratic presidential debate?

"To wit: The boys ganged up on the girl.

"Clinton has said before that while she's proud that her candidacy might result in the country's electing its first female president, 'I'm not running because I'm a woman. I'm running because I think I'm the best qualified.'

"But in spinning away her unsteady performance at Tuesday night's debate, a Clinton advisor tells the Washington Post: 'Ultimately, it was six guys against her, and she came off as one strong woman.'

"It wasn't just an offhand comment: On Clinton's Web site, her campaign -- once again complaining that John Edwards and Barack Obama have abandoned the 'politics of hope' -- says that Clinton emerged from Tuesday night's 'pile-on' as 'one strong woman.'

"Clinton strategist Mark Penn predicted last month that as many as 24 percent of Republican women nationwide might 'defect' from their party to cast their votes for Clinton, and Clinton herself has worked hard to woo female voters in her own party. So maybe the post-debate spin is just another entirely appropriate step in that process.

"But imagine for a moment that it was Barack Obama who stumbled in the face of criticism and pointed questions Tuesday night. Would his campaign dare to declare that it was 'ultimately five whites and a Hispanic against him, and he came off as one strong black man'? And how would America be feeling about him today if it did?"

Time's Joe Klein isn't getting out his hanky:

"I'm not sure that if you're 'not running as a woman' the first thing to do when attacked is to say, 'The guys are ganging up on me!' Boo-hoo.

"She has every right to keep her private White House correspondence with Bill private, and should have said so. Or perhaps, 'I'll lay out all my private correspondence if the rest of you will lay out yours. Fair's fair.' "

The right is in mocking mode, as exemplified by this Red State post by Erick Erickson:

"Damn Tim Russert. He actually asked tough questions of Hillary Clinton in the debate Monday night. And now, Hillary's campaign is on the attack.

"This is all part of Hillary's Victorian Campaign Strategy. You know the one. She is to be seen and heard, but not 'listened to.' You are to presume that she is a dainty, delightful creature with pleasant opinions acceptable enough to be welcomed into polite society, but never you ask her tough policy questions, that would be cruel, offensive, and impolite.

"And so Hillary Clinton seeks to have it both ways. A strategy we all knew was coming because of what happened to Rick Lazio when he ran against Clinton for the U.S. Senate in 2000. Lazio walked across the stage, dared to one up Mrs. Bill Clinton, and the media had a field day. Hillary Attacked! read the headline. 'How *dare* Rick Lazio do that. She's a woman! This is mental, verbal rape! *And* it's the FIRST lady!', the left wing pundits in the New York Times sneered.

"And now Tim Russert has done it too . . . Tim Russert roughed up a girl, is the spin. He dared to ask the front runner who leads by a wide margin tough questions. And she's a girl. That's unfair."

The left, meanwhile, is on an anti-Russert jag, such as Kos poster Alegre: "I never expected to see the moderator go after her in such a vicious and unbalanced manner. He's supposed to be a journalist for cryin' out loud."

NYT columnist Gail Collins sounds as though she's defending the gal, but turns on a dime:

"She took it all and came out the other end in one piece. She's one tough woman. Kudos.

"Her fighting spirit was all the more impressive because so many of the positions she was defending were virtually indefensible. It's not easy to try to make a matter of principle out of a refusal to say anything specific about Social Security. And you really need a spine of steel to stand up on national television and explain why it was a good idea to vote for a bellicose Senate resolution on Iran that has given George W. Bush a chance to start making ominous remarks about weapons of mass destruction again . . .

"Hillary Clinton is relying on her Democratic audience to understand that all her peculiar positions and triple-waffles have to do with a fear of being demagogued by the Republicans in the general election. But you would have to be a very, very committed Hillaryite to be comfortable listening to two solid hours of dodging and weaving on everything from her vote on the Iran resolution to her husband's attempt to keep records of their White House communications secret until after 2012."

Andrew Sullivan sees a case study in dissembling:

"Senator Clinton said that release of White House papers detailing her past record -- especially her Cheney-like refusal to allow any public daylight into her healthcare task force -- was subject solely to bureaucratic delays. Her former co-president, Bill Clinton, also recently said that he wanted total transparency with respect to these papers. Mike Isikoff finds - surprise! - that these statements are only 'true' in the sense that anything the Clintons say is 'true.' Money quote:

"[W]hile publicly saying he wants to ease restrictions on his records, Clinton has given the Archives private instructions to tightly control the disclosure of chunks of his archive. Among the document categories Clinton asked the Archives to 'consider for withholding' in a November 2002 letter: 'confidential communications' involving foreign-policy issues, 'sensitive policy, personal or political' matters and 'legal issues and advice' including all matters involving investigations by Congress, the Justice Department and independent counsels (a category that would cover, among other matters, Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky and the pardons of Marc Rich and others). Another restriction: 'communications directly between the President and First Lady, and their families, unless routine in nature.' "

Is her entire candidacy based on calculated vagueness (in a field where pols get elected by being sufficiently vague)? Fred Barnes suggests the answer is yes:

"Senator Hillary Clinton tried a new tactic at the Democratic presidential debate Tuesday evening. It amounted to this: a major event or policy breakthrough or something else must occur, she indicated, before she'd be ready to state her view on a number of touchy issues. In effect, she used this tactic to duck issues. And she ducked a lot of them.

"She was asked, for example, if she favored raising the cap on income subject to Social Security taxation. Moderator Tim Russert noted she had both said the cap should remain at $97,500 and, privately at least, said she might favor lifting it to $200,000. In her answer, the New York senator declined to state her position.

"Why not? 'I have said consistently that my plan for Social Security is fiscal responsibility first, then to deal with any long-term challenges which I agree are ones that we are going to have to address,' she responded. To put it mildly, this was a vague answer . . .

"Her tactic was transparent. The other candidates ganged up on her. But she gave them plenty to gang up about."

Hillary, by coincidence, spoke yesterday at Wellesley, her alma mater, and did not deny being a woman:

" 'In so many ways, this all-women's college prepared me to compete in the all-boys' club of presidential politics,' Clinton declared, prompting yells and applause."

It's a blast from the past for the Wall Street Journal, which runs the sketch of a face split down the middle between Hill and Bill:

"In the 1990s, 'Clintonesque' became a by-word for political double-speak. We even became, briefly, a nation of deconstructionists when President Bill Clinton mused on the meaning of 'is.'

"Such existential questions seemed to be in the past. But with another Clinton running as if she's all but a sure thing for the White House, Clintonesque is once again becoming a politically relevant adjective."

Slate's Meghan O'Rourke takes on the burning issue: Is Hillary scary?

"If we need any reminder that it's not easy to be the first popular female candidate for the American presidency, it arrived Monday in the form of an announcement by the AP that Hillary Clinton was leading in yet another poll. This one? The candidate likely to make the 'scariest' Halloween costume. Some 37% of the respondents to the survey chose Hillary as their front-runner. (Giuliani was second, with 14%. More key details here.)

"The fright-mask news arrives roughly a month after it was announced that Clinton had led in a Pew poll asking respondents about the relative 'toughness' of the various candidates: In it, some 67% of Democratic-leaning voters said that Hillary was the first candidate who came to mind when they heard the word 'tough.' By comparison, only 39% of Republican-leaning voters thought of Giuliani when they heard the word 'tough.' (Yet he was considered the 'toughest' Republican candidate.) All this might seem to be good news for Clinton: after all, over the past year, she has labored hard to burnish her 'tough' persona, so as to stave off the perception that a woman -- and a Democrat, to boot! -- would prove soft on matters of foreign policy. It'd be easy to think that it had finally paid off.

"But I've been wondering all this time whether a 'tough' backlash was on its way . . . And just last Friday a crucial American institution paved the way for said backlash. In a segment entitled, 'Is it OK for women to cry' -- pegged to Ellen DeGeneres' on-air breakdown -- the Today Show broadcast images of Clinton giving a speech and shaking hands and confidently pronounced that many people think 'that she is too stoic, that she doesn't reveal enough of herself' -- on its way to elaborating on the communicative benefits of crying in public. If media coverage of the last election was filled with accusations about girlie-men, will this one be full of talk about manly-girls? Let's hope not."

What? Do you mean to tell me that Stephen Colbert's candidacy is over? After all the media attention we lavished on him?

"The momentum of the Colbert presidential campaign hit a cul-de-sac today when the South Carolina Democratic Party decided he wasn't a serious candidate and turned down his application to get on the ballot.

"South Carolina is the only state where Stephen Colbert, the comedian and a native South Carolinian, has sought to get on the ballot. He did not try getting on the Republican ballot because that costs $35,000. Mr. Colbert met the Democratic filing deadline of noon today to send in some paperwork and a check for $2,500."

The reason for the rejection? The person had to be "recognized by the media as a viable nationwide candidate; and be actively campaigning for the South Carolina primary."

Or is the Democratic establishment just trying to protect its cozy little monopoly?

Getting back to Hillary, one newspaper, The Hill, got a bit carried away with its Clinton criticism. Which is to say, its story turned out to be fiction.

Yesterday's piece by Alexander Bolton began:

"Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) skipped an Environment and Public Works Committee hearing Wednesday that she called for earlier this year.

"Clinton's absence drew a strong rebuke from Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee.

"Clinton, a member of the committee, praised Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) a few weeks ago for scheduling the hearing on the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, a project that many Nevada voters oppose fiercely . . .

"But if Clinton was seeking answers from administration officials, she was not doing it from the committee dais. She was nowhere to be seen at Wednesday's hearing."

Except -- oops! -- Clinton was there are after all. There are pictures. A Nevada paper wrote about it. And Inhofe's office said he never made those remarks at the hearing, and that the quote was taken from a July 24 press release.

The Hill's editor, Hugo Gurdon, told me: "Any mistake is regrettable, but it's more painful when it negates the story entirely. We'll certainly run a correction."

Speaking of corrections, the Huffington Post just ran one on an Iraq story. It came after the Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb-- who was the first blogger to take on the New Republic's Baghdad diarist -- raised questions about the piece.

Barry Sanders, an author and professor, wrote a story about pollution caused by the U.S. military in Iraq and its effect on global warming.

To its credit, the HuffPost investigated and ran this editor's note, even linking to Goldfarb's criticism:

Sanders "acknowledges three 'flat-out' inaccuracies: Apache helicopters fall under the auspices of the Army not the Air Force; the USS Independence was not, as claimed, headed to the Persian Gulf in 2002 (it was decommissioned in 1998); and Sanders left out the word 'battalion' in the sentence, 'a pair of Apache helicopter battalions can devour more than 60,000 gallons of fuel in a single night's attack.' These have been corrected in the post.

"Sanders also raises the issue of jet exhaust that results when 'a squadron of F-22s, say, fly sortie after sortie, at fairly low elevations, over a crowded neighborhood in Baghdad.' Goldfarb says 'an F-22 has never, ever, flown a sortie over Baghdad, let alone at low altitude and in squadron formation.' In his response, Sanders disputes this, but Air Force spokesperson Maj. Kristin Marposon told HuffPost that F-22s have not been used in Iraq.

"As for the other facts in dispute -- namely the number of jets stationed on aircraft-carrier groups in the Gulf, the number of stealth bombers and US planes in Saudi Arabia, and the number of aircraft carrier task forces stationed in the Gulf -- Sanders offers a detailed explanation of how he arrived at his figures. We'll leave it to you to decide the persuasiveness of his explanation. For us, it confuses as much as it clarifies."

That sure beats a robotic "we stand by our story."