Will Enough Men Stand By This Woman?

For the Clinton campaign, these last few weeks before the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary are a push to sweep away such personal reservations for voters. The New York senator continues to be ranked highest nationally among Democrats in polls on key traits, such as most presidential, knowledgeable about the world, electable and experienced. Still, it is Democratic men rather than women who in interviews have the long memories for the long-ago rumors and White House scandals that portray Clinton as an angry woman -- the travel office fiasco when she pushed to have the longtime staff fired, or the never-proved rumor that she once threw a lamp -- or an ashtray, pick your weapon of choice -- at her husband.

"She can't shed her past," says Doug Wheeler, a retired University of New Hampshire history professor who recently decided his candidate was Sen. Barack Obama. "Obama doesn't have that problem. There's a charisma about Obama and I like his answers to questions. John Kennedy had that charisma, and you could argue that he didn't have that much experience when he was elected."

Listen to McLaughlin, the airline pilot, and his wife, Debbie, 50, a school librarian, talk about Clinton in separate interviews.

Debbie: "[Matt] says the fact that she is a woman doesn't matter, but down deep I think it does. He believes women should be treated equal but . . . men don't want to be beat by a woman. They don't want to be beaten by the other sex."

Matt: "I wouldn't not vote for her just because she's a woman. That wouldn't throw me over the edge by any stretch. We had a female governor of New Hampshire [Jeanne Shaheen] and I supported her."

Debbie: "What I like is that Hillary is connected -- she can hit the ground running right away. She could start making the changes she needs to make almost immediately."

Matt: "What qualifies her to be president? She spent eight years as first lady. She didn't have a Cabinet. She wasn't elected to any position of power."

Debbie: "She is an extremely intelligent person. . . . She was an adviser to Bill."

Matt: "If she came to Washington, she certainly would not be a uniter. She brings divisions. She doesn't come with a clean slate."

Ed Beattie, a history teacher and girls' varsity basketball coach at Winnacunnet High School in New Hampshire, agonized for months about who would get his support. He worked hard for John Kerry in 2004. A well-known union activist in the state for the National Education Association, and a tireless Democrat, Beattie was heavily courted. In August, he declared for John Edwards, which in effect meant rejecting Clinton in a state where she had secured the lion's share of institutional Democratic support.

"If she wasn't married to Bill Clinton, where would she be in this election cycle?" Beattie says in an interview. "Name me one state she could carry that John Kerry didn't carry in 2004."

Beattie adds that this was a particularly important election for changing the partisan tone in Washington. "Look at where the country is now -- the American people don't need anyone more polarizing," he says.