Can Hillary Join the Club?

By MICHAEL DUFFY

Last Thursday was as good a day as any to chart Hillary Clinton's steady progress from junior Senator to Democratic presidential front runner. She attended a press conference on port security in the morning, had lunch with some eBay executives, did an event about kids and car safety with New Hampshire Republican Senator John Sununu and then attended the promotion ceremony of a female Army officer on loan to her staff. Later that evening she joined Republican Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi to talk to CNN about their joint plan to make the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) independent again. Asked by Anderson Cooper whether the Lott-Clinton duet was the beginning of a beautiful relationship, Clinton was unable to stifle a guffaw. Lott, on the other hand, adjusted his coat, moved half a step closer to his partner and replied, "How do we look?"

As she begins her campaign for re-election this year, Hillary Rodham Clinton is laying all the necessary predicates for a possible run for the White House in 2008. In part to deflect the attacks of Hillary haters around the country, she has teamed with Republicans who once spat out her name like a curse. As a New York Senator, she has emerged as an outspoken booster of terrorism-preparedness programs at home and for more money for U.S. troops and better force protection in Iraq. And she is quietly constructing a nationwide fund-raising network capable of bringing in at least $40 million for her race this fall and twice that much, if not more, in the crucial 18 months that follow. Clinton and her team have spent the past year executing a mostly careful, mostly moderate and quietly deliberate game plan. "They are not," said a Midwestern ally who recently jumped on board, "taking anything for granted."

Clinton remains, by a large margin, the candidate both Democrats and left-leaning independents prefer to win the party's nod in 2008. But she is also the candidate who many believe cannot win in 2008, because she is simply too divisive a figure. Which means she is the party's best and worst prospect for '08.

That's one reason everyone in Hillaryland dismisses the chatter about the White House and talks instead only of November '06. Her last rival for the Senate job, Rick Lazio, quickly raised almost $40 million when he volunteered to face her in 2000, and that came on top of the $23 million that fellow Republican Rudy Giuliani had raised before he dropped out of the race because of prostate cancer. Finding someone to take on Clinton this time around has been harder for the G.O.P. The party's top choice, former Westchester County prosecutor Jeanine Pirro, quit the contest in December. The White House last month turned to Manhattanite Kathleen McFarland to play rope-a-dope, though Empire State Republicans believe the nomination will eventually go to former Yonkers mayor John Spencer. The best title the Republicans could come up with for McFarland was "former Reagan Pentagon official." No matter who emerges to challenge Clinton, both parties will treat the race as a useful warm-up for whatever comes next--and will pour money into it to test their theories.

To date, Clinton has raised $33 million for her re-election and has more than $17 million in the bank, a figure she can easily double this year. She had two fund raisers in New York last week, and she is set to attend events in Dallas and St. Louis, Mo., in the next two weeks. More than 75 party fund raisers gathered at a Washington hotel last month so that Clinton's inner circle could brief them on the New York race, her probable opponents, the G.O.P.'s history of using every weapon and tactic against her and the plans for raising money through personal appearances and on the Internet. Participants reported that each presentation was focused on 2006, and organizers underlined their short-term focus. The day was capped by a dinner party at a Georgetown mansion where Clinton spoke after her husband introduced her.

Some of the moneymen who attended the D.C. sessions, however, remain loyal to other probable '08 contenders. Several who spoke to TIME said that while they are happy to help Clinton in 2006, they are leery of a presidential bid. A few cited the Senator's high unfavorable ratings in national polls, ratings that have held for some time now above 40%. One fund raiser who asked not to be identified put it this way: "The concern in the community is how do you put together a national campaign with numbers like that?" Clinton's ratings are especially daunting given that the front runner among Republican '08 contenders seems to be Arizona Senator John McCain, who enjoys considerable popularity with the public. It is clear that Clinton's people are thinking about him a lot.

The other man Clinton has to watch out for is her husband. The Senator and the former President got crossways a few weeks ago on the Dubai Ports deal when it turned out that he was informally having conversations with United Arab Emirates representatives about how to cope with opposition in Washington at the same time she was helping get that opposition organized. No one who knows either Clinton has any idea how to bring a man renowned for his voracious need for information into anything approaching the marginal role of political spouse. How--or even whether--to integrate into her tight circle of advisers the former President's vast network of allies, strategists, hangers-on and second-guessers is a task no one has begun to contemplate. And even the Senator can sound a little sensitive about the Clinton presidency at times: when talking with Lott last week on CNN about how FEMA was better organized and led during her husband's Administration, she referred to the period simply as "the '90s."

Already, there are signs that Hillary's attitude about economic policy is slightly different from the ex-President's. While her husband was an ardent free trader who talked with guarded optimism about the global economy, Hillary voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement last June and has spent a lot of time meeting with economists and other experts to develop strategies for retaining the U.S.'s dwindling manufacturing base, in part because it forms the economic base of upstate New York.

Clinton remains a strong performer on the stump who has nonetheless been known to misread a crowd sometimes as thoroughly as her husband was known to work one. At a glitzy Kennedy Center event on AIDS last fall, she harangued an audience already deeply engaged with the epidemic with an awkward demand that they do even more. After an almost flawless 2005, when she emerged as the party's most sought-after spokesman, she has seemed to stumble a bit this year. She attracted a little more attention than she intended when she likened the G.O.P.-controlled House of Representatives to a plantation. Her advisers say that did not hurt her in the polls.

If she runs for President, Clinton will bring to the race more assets and experience than almost anyone who has never run before--and the kind of liabilities that would send other politicians into permanent rehab. Which may explain why a Clinton ally, aware of all her pluses and minuses, last week struck a fatalistic chord about a 2008 race. "Let's just get it on," he said.

With reporting by Barbara Burke/New York