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Hillary seeks to win over sceptical Iowa

Ewen MacAskill

— PHOTO: AP

Hillary Clinton waves during a press conference in Davenport, Iowa, on Sunday.

Des Moines: Everyone knows Hillary Clinton has to overcome many obstacles if she is to return to the White House as President in 2009. There is her image as cool, distant, elitist; the persistent doubts about having a woman as President; her Senate vote for the Iraq war; and, for some voters, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

Ms. Clinton set out on the long presidential campaign trail at the weekend, holding her first rally in Des Moines, Iowa. Though the election is still 23 months away, it was the first of the full-blown rallies, complete with a 12 piece jazz band, hundreds of placards reading ``Iowa Welcomes Hillary For President'' and more than 1,000 persons, nearly all Democrats or undecided, crammed into the East High School gymnasium.

A few of her entourage had flown in from New York in high heels, appropriate for the metropolis but awkward in the icy wastes of Iowa. First campaign lesson: different shoes needed for hopping from state to state.

Mrs. Clinton needs to do well in Iowa, traditionally a key state. She is ahead of Barack Obama, the party's rising star, in national polls, 41 per cent to Mr. Obama's 17 per cent and John Edwards on 11 per cent. But in Iowa she has been in second and fourth place, behind Mr. Obama, Mr. Edwards and the former Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack.

She has to persuade Democrats such as Angela Thompson, a health care worker, who had gone with her mother and sister. She said she was enthusiastic about the idea of a woman President, but being a woman candidate was not enough: she had to have the right personality and politics. She described herself as ``not 100 per cent committed'' to Mrs. Clinton and wanted to hear not only her but Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards before finally making up her mind.

At the rally, Mrs. Clinton conceded there were problems in being a woman candidate and that more would be written about her hair and clothes than the other candidates. ``I think you've got to move beyond that,'' she said. ``I am going to be asking people to vote for me based on my entire life experience. The fact that I'm a woman, the fact that I'm a mom, is part of who I am.''

She presented herself as a midwesterner, middle-class, brought up in a household committed to traditional American values. She lacks the charisma of her husband but she is sound and serious, and is building a formidable, well-funded campaign team, one capable of surviving the campaign slog.

Watch the rally on television and it looks like a love fest, the waving campaign placards, and a chant.

But listen to the audience, predominantly women, before and after, and the doubts about Mrs. Clinton are there. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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Hillary seeks to win over sceptical Iowa

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