Peggy Noonan: Where Are They Now? (Hillary Clinton plots her return)

Opinionjournal.com ^ | Thursday, December 9, 2004

[Area Freeper]

We have been writing lately about Republicans. Let's pay some attention to Hillary Clinton, just for fun.

I wrote a book about her more than four years ago. The idea came from a friend, a bright former-Republican-now-Democrat who thought my Wall Street Journal pieces on Mrs. Clinton's looming senatorial candidacy could be turned into something longer that made the case against her. I immediately thought: Yes, that could make a difference. I went to my publisher, who agreed, and I hit it hard, speaking to Mrs. Clinton's friends and enemies, scouring the record. What I concluded was that Mrs. Clinton was an unusually cynical leftist political operative who had no great respect for the citizens of the United States or for America itself, but who saw our country as a platform for her core ambitions: to rise and achieve historic personal and political power both with her husband and without him.

Since the book came out I haven't written much about Mrs. Clinton. I'd said what I had to say. In interviews on the book tour I said what seemed to me the obvious: she would keep her head down in the Senate and work hard, she would gain praise for her ability to get along with Republican senators, she would position herself as a moderate, and run for the presidency in 2008.

She is, right now, in what is surely the happiest time in all of her life, her zestful, independent and productive 50s. She is the single most powerful figure in the Democratic Party. She is popular and broadly supported in her adopted home state. She has a star's presence at meetings, symposiums, podiums and parties. She is the Democrats' premier fundraiser. She is its presumptive presidential nominee in the 2008 cycle. Her daughter is grown and launched

[Marysecretary]

How do you keep anyone from coming in from Canada or Mexico? Anyone who wants to can get in someplace that's not protected. You're right. People keep saying things to scare others or get them to thinking negatively about almost everything. You'd think we were the worst country in the world! This is the price you pay for being free, I guess.

[Bon mots]

I used the same goofy Hillary picture for this one.