Summer reading: On Hillary Clinton's campaign trail

By JIM EAGLES

Beth J. Harpaz: The Girls in the Van

Thomas Dunne Books,

$30.95


Frustrated reporters nicknamed Hillary Clinton "Her Majesty" when she ran for the US Senate. One journalist's story of the campaign trail shows why.

One thing - and only one thing, it seems - is for sure about Hillary Rodham Clinton: she is a fast learner.

When America's First Lady launched her bid to become the Junior Senator from New York she had never lived in the state, never held elective office anywhere and carried all the baggage of her marriage to President Bill Clinton.

Beth J Harpaz, who covered that campaign for the newsagency AP, found it hard to believe that with all those strikes against her Hillary would actually go through with it.

Success seemed even more unlikely when she started off by - as Harpaz puts it - "pissing off Jews, homosexuals, Puerto Ricans and nearly everybody else in New York"

But, she acknowledges, by the end of the campaign Hillary "ended up an expert on everything from treating asthma in the Bronx to getting high-speed internet access in Buffalo."

By contrast, her opponent, Rick Lazio, a young, good-looking, squeaky-clean, established New York politician seemed to start with all the advantages.

But he managed to launch his campaign by falling down and splitting his lip, finished it by stepping in a highly-publicised lump of dog droppings, along the way called the leader of tetchy North Korea "Kim Jong the Second" instead of "Kim Jong Il" and generally made a monkey of himself.

"There was only one learning curve in this campaign," concludes Harpaz, "and it was hers."

It seems the learning curve has continued since she got into the Senate because opinion polls in the United States suggest that if Hillary was to make herself available she would be frontrunner to become the Democratic candidate in the presidential election in two year's time.

She has ruled herself out of making a run for the White House in 2004, though carefully not four years later. And why not?

After all, she already made history as the only First Lady to run for office, and the first woman to be elected to any statewide office in New York, when she was elected as Senator for New York.

Not a bad achievement for someone previously best known as the betrayed but loyal wife of a womanising president.

But does she really have what it takes to win the presidency and then to do the job?

Harpaz's account of Hillary's campaign doesn't answer the question.

In part that is because the book is preoccupied with the practical problems of covering a high-profile campaign, the difficulties of getting something to eat and the pressures of trying to get home to see the kids rather than serious analysis of the candidate.

It is also because Harpaz comes across as too concerned with being professionally detached - and maybe too naively nice - to ever give us any sharp insights into her subject.

But, in any event, you get the impression that Hillary is too controlled, too remote, too coolly professional and too protected by her staff for a mere reporter to get any feel for her anyway.

Given the political climate in the US, a heavily orchestrated, highly artificial performance is probably just what is required.

Take, for example, a function at O'Neill's Restaurant where a lot of Irish people assembled to say how the Clintons' names would be writ in gold in the history of Ireland.

Harpaz asked, reasonably enough, if Hillary was going to march in New York's St Patrick's Day Parade. "I would hope so!" she replied equally reasonably.

Bad answer. Scenting blood, the media hyenas bared their teeth and Hillary's staff stiffened. Sensing something was wrong the candidate quickly added, "As long as I've got lots of good company." Too late.

The organisers of the parade, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, had refused to allow a gay contingent to take part.

As a result it was a point of honour with liberal Democrats to say they would not be marching. Hillary's comments were seen as giving the finger to two key groups of Democrat supporters, gays and the so-called liberals, and when she did march in the parade she was roundly booed as a result.

The right answer, the answer the media was expecting, according to Harpaz, was for Hillary to say that she would be in Washington on St Patrick's Day.

But there weren't many mistakes like that later in the campaign because everything was too tightly managed which, because there are so many areas of sensitivity in New York politics, meant the candidate could say almost nothing of substance.

In fact, Hillary's team couldn't even decide on a campaign song, because nothing was bland enough.

Her first outing as candidate was to the tune of "You Sexy Thing" which, in all the circumstances, probably was a bit risky.

Then Billy Joel's "Captain Jack" had a brief run until someone cottoned on to its drug references.

Des-ree's "You Gotta Be" - "You gotta be bad, you gotta be bold, you gotta be wiser, You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger." - might have seemed appropriate but could a controversial candidate afford the reference to her being bad? Nope. So it disappeared.

Donna Summer's "She Works Hard for the Money" was used for a while but then a row erupted over fundraising. It was killed as well. In the end it was safer to have no music at all.

The team showed the same care in deciding what the candidate should wear.

For church meetings, of which she attended a lot, there was a frumpy purple plaid skirt and matching jacket; for sophisticated Manhattan a sleek black pantsuit - she went through six of them during the campaign - augmented by freshly done hair and heavy make-up; for bucolic upstate New York, the choice was for simple brightly coloured clothes (also, it seems, the choice for visits to Bill's home state of Arkansas).

The same caution extended to policy.

In fact her appearances were so tightly managed - not least, of course, because she was First Lady - that reporters had to turn up at least 90 minutes before every event to be scanned for weapons and have an identity check.

They were even locked out of toilets in case she might want to use them. No wonder reporters often referred to the candidate as "Her Majesty."

Far from minding that slightly snide nickname, Hillary's advisers probably liked it, and they made full use of her almost regal status and demeanour.

To offset the fact that she was an outsider, Hillary's team came up with the idea of a "Listening Tour", a sort of royal progress which eventually took her to every one of the 63 counties in New York State, to hear local opinions.

Needless to say, this was a highly orchestrated exercise where the supposed town meetings were high-security, invitation-only, carefully formatted programmes where, according to Harpaz, "most of the audiences were friendly to the point of worshipful".

The format might have frustrated the media but it worked well for Hillary, whose queenly appearances in places that rarely saw state politicians, never mind a First Lady, were like royal tours of New Zealand used to be in the 50s and 60s.

Of one such visit to the seaside community of Jones Beach, Harpaz wrote, "The press might get bogged down in petty particulars but these people were simply too starstruck to care. 'I shook her hand,' gushed a beach maintenance worker as he walked away from his encounter with Her. Another woman dreamily told me, 'She touched my shoulder'."

Small wonder that on polling day Hillary did extraordinarily in what is usually Republican heartland upstate as well as hanging on to the Democrat stronghold in New York City

In the end you get the impression that Hillary Clinton's success in the Senate race was based on three factors.

First, like many a show business personality who goes into politics, she had the priceless asset of being sufficiently famous for people to be thrilled just to see her.

Second, she worked hard to overcome the negative aspects of that fame, putting in the hard yards to be seen as genuinely committed to New York.

Third, she was the Democratic candidate in a state which votes strongly Democrat, who actually didn't poll quite as well there as her party's unsuccessful presidential candidate Al Gore.

So Hillary Clinton for president?

On the evidence of this book she is very wise to wait a few more years, continue on that fast learning curve and build up a better CV of personal achievements.

And after that? A country which can elect George Bush's son could certainly elect Bill Clinton's wife.

But let's hope there is someone a bit more perceptive, a bit more bitchy and cynical than Beth Harpaz to chronicle the campaign.