Here's your best chance, MSI. Get Hillary to run.
Hillary - Democrats’ Spirit of ’04
Lawrence C. Levy
NEWSDAY
Des Moines - In the chilly mist outside the arena, campaign workers had taped and staked hundreds of placards. Since most were a similar shade of blue, as in patriotic red-white-and, the sea of them created a sense of unity. But it was an illusion for a Democratic Party that hasn't been as fractured since the Vietnam Era.
Inside, where nearly 8,000 converged for a raucous fundraiser that signaled the final stretch toward Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucus on Jan. 19, the crowd clapped and screamed as if it were at a rock concert or college football rally. The energy and enthusiasm, which startled many old party hands, turned the cold, damp auditorium white hot.
But when a candidate would send the crowd to its feet, the cheers would disintegrate into a cacaphony of factions competing to outshout each other. It was only different when one person entered and spoke to the warring minions, dominated by busloads of volunteers for Howard Dean, John Kerry, John Edwards and Dick Gephardt. It was only different for Hillary Rodham Clinton.
When New York's junior senator and the former first lady emerged, she ignited a sustained surge of emotion normally linked to the likes of the Beatles or, at least in Democratic circles, her husband and former president, Bill. The Democrats shouted themselves hoarse, many standing on chairs to get a better look at her as she shook hands along the way to the stage she would dominate as mistress of ceremonies for three hours.
As she slapped high fives with Iowa firefighters wearing yellow T-shirts for Kerry or signed hundreds of autographs and books thrust at her even as she sat before her chicken dinner, the chants of "Hil-la-ry, Hil-la-ry" never devolved into "Dean, Dean, Dean" or "J.K. all the way!" Clinton may be the party's useful past and its promising future, as part of a team that showed Democrats how to band together and bring in voters who don't usually back their candidates. But even though she is not a candidate in 2004 - really, despite the wishful thinking of some Democrats and Republicans alike - she is integral to its present.
For a party struggling to find a singularity of purpose and a single clear set of political principles, much less a standard bearer to lead them back to the White House, the Clintons are its only unifying force.
The only other person who comes close is President George W. Bush, just as Hillary Clinton is second behind Bush as a rallying point for Republicans. ("I guess I also raise a lot of money for them," she told me with a chuckle before the dinner.) And since Bill Clinton so far has taken a more laid-back, statesman-like role, it is up to his wife to play the party's most ferocious fundraiser and, even, enforcer of etiquette.
It's a tough job, as they say, but somebody better do it - particularly for a party whose candidates are ratcheting up the attacks on each other. If not, even the increasingly obsessive desire to banish Bush will not be enough to overcome divisions among Democrats with tax cuts, trade pacts, health care and, of course, Iraq.
On Saturday night, she discharged her partisan responsibilities well. If she is running in 2008, thousands of Iowa Democrats will not forget what she did, turning into a sell-out an event to which, until she acceded to the pleadings of party leaders to be the guest star, few tickets had been sold.
As for concerns that her presence would overshadow the leaders, it turned the rally into an international media event, including live broadcasts on two cable news networks that gave the candidates a chance to shine as well. Most of them did. And far from being the fabled prima donna, Clinton did everything asked of her - including reading what each candidate wanted her to say about them.
Although Clintonian tchotchkes are usually the hottest seller at Democratic events, the official vendor, Tony Baltes, told me the Iowa party "politely" asked him not to bring any into the arena. Some of the candidates were concerned, he said, of a room filled with people sporting "Hillary for President" buttons and not their own.
Clinton not only told the Democrats what they wanted to hear, but what they needed to hear. Although "we have great candidates whose records of public service are exemplary" and Bush "has no vision for a future that will make America safer and stronger and smarter and richer and better and fairer," she said, "We have to do more than criticize."
Although she excoriated Bush for "squandering" the twin surpluses of money and "good will in the world" after 9/11, she implored her party to shape "a vision of where we want to lead this country." So far it is lacking. And whichever "great candidate" manages to survive political warfare in Iowa and beyond, "we're going to have to stand behind our nominee."
It will not be anybody named Clinton. Despite the fervent desires of Republicans, who stoke up contributors with scenarios of Hillary redecorating the ideology of the Oval Office, or of some Democrats, who feel she is their best hope to beat Bush, she is not running in 2004.
"What part of 'no' don't they understand?" she has told me more than once. Her rescue mission in Iowa, sans coy comments about her own career possibilities, should be proof enough. Instead of worrying about how much Clinton's star status could hurt it, the party's leaders should be thinking of ways she and her husband can help it - and not just in raising money. They should consider why the Clintons not only unified the party but how they managed to do something even more crucial - holding together its angry liberal base while attracting the moderate suburbanites whose preference again should decide the winner.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.
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