Hillary Clinton

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Along with the live killer-bear show, the best-in-fair guinea pig, the Caribbean high-dive team, the "Dough-Licious" fritters and the cooking-with-cheese demonstration at the New York State Fair yesterday, there stood another main attraction: Hillary Rodham Clinton.The all-but-declared Senate candidate spent a breezy day in upstate New York doing what any hopeful New York politician would do. She threw herself into a sea of nearly 100,000 folks at the fair, offering her best campaign-style pitch as she went.

Cheer up. Can't be more than eight more weeks of these temperatures, tops.Polls show conclusively that no one who filed in either party can be elected mayor of Baltimore this year.Benjamin Nathaniel Smith had all the advantages except humanity.Hillary Clinton is no New Yorker. Nor are all those folks bubbling over in outrage at her carpet-bagging.Pub Date: 7/07/99

LET ME acknowledge my bias up front: I subscribe to the old-fashioned notion that party activists and voters -- not the mass media -- should be the main players in nominating political candidates.As for Hillary Rodham Clinton, her New York Senate candidacy -- launched by political reporters left dangerously idle by the closing of Monica-gate -- rocketed through the studios of "Crossfire" and "Nightline" to the covers of Newsweek and Time. A real grass-roots mobilization of the media elite.

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- Law Professor Ray Guzman is in full "Paper Chase" mode. His lecture on the rules of evidence is clipping along, he is surprising students with sudden questions -- "Miss Doherty, how would you rule?" -- and he's jumping from case to case to illuminate the finer points of admissibility.Guzman is training the next generation of lawyers with this time-honored, doze-off-and-die method, much as he's done almost continuously since the 1960s here at the University of Arkansas Law School.

WASHINGTON -- In the final moment of the first act of "Eleanor: An American Love Story," we see Franklin Roosevelt embracing Lucy Mercer, the young assistant who was not specifically his wife.As everybody knows, such things happen. If Lucy Mercer wasn't exactly the Monica Lewinsky of her day -- for one thing, the country mercifully lacked a Kenneth Starr to out her -- her theatrical image at least helps us sense the family pain when Franklin found affection outside the marital bedroom, and shows how fortunate their timing was to live in a less vulgar era when the public's biggest concern was only an occasional world war."

NEW YORK -- Over pancakes and eggs at the El Greco diner in Brooklyn's Sheepshead Bay, four pals usually argue about everything from the ponies to the weather. The one thing they do seem to agree on is how much fun it is to flirt with the waitresses.But one morning last week, the subject took a detour -- New York politics and the Senate campaign in 2000. The prospect that Hillary Rodham Clinton will run -- possibly facing Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in a race for retiring Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's seat -- was cause for another debate.

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Rodham Clinton met yesterday with Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan at the White House to discuss a possible Senate bid by the first lady, a few hours before her husband cautioned that the momentum building around her potential run for Moynihan's seat in 2000 may be "a little premature."In their 90-minute meeting, Moynihan, a New York Democrat who will retire next year, brought to the White House a synopsis of his four Senate races, including statistics reflecting the unpredictability of New York voters.

WASHINGTON -- Attacked for months over the costs to taxpayers generated by her New York campaign trips, Hillary Rodham Clinton now finds herself criticized for her foreign travel, which opponents are calling a not-so-oblique campaign tool in her race for the Senate in New York.Clinton's two-day trip to Israel, which began yesterday, is raising ethical questions: The problem, some say, is that no one is quite sure which hat Clinton is wearing on which day -- whether she is first lady, undeclared Senate candidate or some uncomfortable amalgam of the two."

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton may make of herself a gift to the state of New York, which must replace Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who is retiring. So she may wish to prepare answers to the sort of questions she can expect, such as:In upstate New York (yes, Mrs. Clinton, there is such a place; it is somewhat north of the Carlyle Hotel), the industrial corridor from Schenectady-Troy to Buffalo is hurting. The corridor includes Seneca Falls, birthplace of women's suffrage, to which you have made a pilgrimage.

WHEN SOME people shout "run, Hillary, run!" they're pointing to a short dock that leads to a deep lake.Hillary Rodham Clinton's bid for New York's Senate seat will be interesting, but it's not a lock. Sure, she has a guaranteed base; if the Democratic Party dug up Alger Hiss and wheeled the corpse around Manhattan, some people would vote for the bones just to stick the shiv in Richard Nixon one more time.New York City is a quaint, little petting zoo of old-style liberals who'll happily vote for Clinton.

The Democratic National Convention that begins today in Denver looks to me less like the coronation of Barack Obama than a soap opera wedding. The kind everyone tunes in to for the fireworks. Will the groom find out that the bride is pregnant with another man's child, or that her husband is not dead but in fact alive in a South American jail? You have to wonder what's going to happen when Obama turns the convention over to Hillary Clinton for the roll call of the delegates that she amassed in their overlong primary battle.

WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton's name will be placed into nomination at the Democratic National Convention later this month, ending months of speculation about how her candidacy -- and supporters - would be represented there. "I am convinced that honoring Sen. Clinton's historic campaign in this way will help us celebrate this defining moment in our history and bring the party together in a strong, united fashion," Barack Obama said in a statement issued jointly by their two press offices.

BOSTON - So is the glass half-full or half-empty? Or to pick a better metaphor, is the "highest, hardest" glass ceiling now half-shattered by the 18 million cracks, or does it look as impermeable as ever after this unsuccessful battering? This has not been an easy week for ardent Hillary Clinton supporters who are being told to move on and move over to the Barack Obama camp. The woman who looked improbably energetic and strong as she bowed out last Saturday reinforced both the respect and disappointment of her core supporters.

WASHINGTON - It has been hard for Hillary Clinton to step down, and even tougher for Lanny J. Davis, the longtime Clinton defender from Maryland who is the force behind an online petition to persuade Barack Obama to make her his running mate. The nascent effort has been widely criticized, and Obama said that "everybody just needs to settle down" about his selection. The Clinton campaign tried to tamp down the movement yesterday, declaring that she is not seeking the vice presidency. But Davis remains unapologetic about pushing the discussion and said critics who accuse him of pressuring Obama misrepresent what he is trying to accomplish.

BOSTON - Is there anyone who still remembers the folksy winter tableau? Eight Democratic candidates against the picturesque backdrop of Iowa and New Hampshire. It was a feel-good photo op of diversity. The Democratic Party was black and white and Hispanic, male and female and proud. Our party, its leaders said, looks like America. As for Barack and Hillary? Yes, there were the predictable magazine cover stories asking whether America was "ready" for an African-American or a woman. But these were not long-shot candidates, a favorite son or daughter running to prove a point.

James Carville, an adviser to Sen. Hillary Clinton, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson recently exchanged words over Mr. Richardson's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential primary struggle turned increasingly ugly. Mr. Richardson served as ambassador to the United Nations and as secretary of energy during Bill Clinton's presidency. "Mr. Richardson's endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic."

BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- Campaigning for his wife ahead of next month's primary in this state, Bill Clinton was hardly subtle. "I want you to run up her vote here in Pennsylvania," he told hundreds of supporters last week at the Hotel Bethlehem, some of whom waited hours in the rain to see him. Barack Obama leads in the delegate count, and his campaign continues to emphasize piling up delegates, but Hillary Clinton is attempting to create a new battleground in...

WASHINGTON -- Buoyed by polls showing tight races in today's key primaries, Hillary Clinton is preparing to press ahead with her presidential campaign, even if she wins only one big state. Clinton trails Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, and she has no realistic chance of erasing his lead in delegates allocated through primary and caucus contests, including today in Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island. But officials of both campaigns were resetting expectations yesterday as they prepared for an outcome that once seemed unlikely: a Clinton revival after a losing streak of 11 straight contests since Super Tuesday.

BOWIE -- "Sometimes," former President Bill Clinton told the congregation at the Greater Mt. Nebo African Methodist Episcopal Church yesterday, "God gives us interesting tests." All his life, Clinton told the worshipers, he has wanted to be able to vote for a woman to be president, because his mother was a widow who worked to give him a better life. And all his life, he said, he has wanted to be able to vote for a black to be president, because he came of political age during the civil rights movement in the segregated South.

When Gov. Martin O'Malley endorsed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary nearly a year ago, he was throwing his support behind the presumptive front-runner and building on a long-standing relationship with her and her husband's political machine. Moreover, the risk seemed small. Three years earlier, O'Malley had backed Howard Dean, who dropped out of the race, and still landed a coveted speaking role at the Democratic National Convention. But in recent weeks the dynamics of this year's presidential primaries have changed.