05 december 2008.
Hillary Clinton: The new survivor
Politico.com
Hillary Rodham Clinton has a favorite expression for turning setback into opportunity: “Bloom where you’re planted.”
Her three-decade career on the public stage has produced countless examples of Clinton sprouting a flower in a pile of manure.
Few of them are more vivid than this week’s official announcement that she is the nominee to serve as secretary of state to Barack Obama - the man whom she initially refused to talk to on the Senate floor two years ago when he first made clear he would challenge her for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Clinton’s planned ascension to Foggy Bottom is the culmination of a strenuous effort over the past several months to fashion a next act in a career that long has been defined by two distinct halves: flamboyant celebrity on one side and dogged, often lonely, distance runner on the other.
After losing the nomination to Obama last spring, months after the trajectory of the race seemed clear, her associates made it known she was eager to be considered for vice presidential nominee. When Obama made it plain early on that he wasn’t interested in that, Clinton maneuvered for a central role in health care reform, but found that path blocked by more senior Democrats.
Through it all - while Bill Clinton and many of her political hands nursed their resentments toward unfair fate in general or Obama in particular - Hillary Clinton put on a mask and campaigned for him vigorously, while also attending to more mundane particulars such as extracting herself from the onerous long-term lease of her Arlington, Va., campaign headquarters.
“She has a remarkable ability to move on from adversity, focus on the next task at hand and adapt,” said former Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson.
Both Clintons long have labored with a strong sense of grievance against political foes. Over the years both have spoken in unusually public terms about their struggles to overcome resentments and find the right balance between, as Bill Clinton once put it, “the light forces … and the dark forces in our psyche and our makeup and the way we look at the world.”
Her ability to accept a subordinate position to a man she once believed, according to campaign aides, was too callow and inexperienced to be president is a sign of her determination, at age 61, to not let time slip away preoccupied with old battles.
Read more…
Originally published at scott anthony dot org. Please leave any comments there.