New York State Of Mine

On the first day of the rest of her life--last Wednesday, when she flew from Washington to upstate New York to begin the obligatory "exploratory" phase of her campaign for the U.S. Senate--Hillary Rodham Clinton ordered her motorcade to stop just outside the Binghamton airport. She hopped out of her van and, as a look of uh-oh, here-we-go flickered across the face of one of her Secret Service agents, plunged into a crowd of 50 well-wishers--the first spontaneous mosh-pit moment of Clinton's strange and improbable proto-campaign. She hugged children, signed autographs, posed for snapshots, and made deep and significant eye contact with as many peepers as possible. (There could be no doubt who had taught her the mystical arts of the rope line.) When 15-year-old Stephanie Stein handed her a photograph, Clinton gazed at it for a few long, respectful moments, and one got the feeling that the photo contained the apotheosis of youthful achievement. Then Hillary locked eyes with the girl and asked, "You've been a cheerleader for how long now?" "Four years," Stephanie said proudly. In the picture, she was going through her pom-pom paces for Binghamton High. "Four years," Hillary marveled. "Wow."

Looking for the sunny, specious hucksterism of the campaign trail? Step right up--Hillary will give it to you. This year's model is advertised as new and improved--less formidable and more fun, tenderized by a year of public humiliation, performing the silly rituals that campaigns are made of (hefting Hank Aaron's bat at the Baseball Hall of Fame, tucking into barbecue at a local rib joint) and loving them. Though one can't help suspecting that she sometimes feels she's slumming, she never lets it show. No doubt she is genuinely enjoying this moment of stepping out on her own, serving her ambition after 25 years of serving Bill's. (She has been thinking about doing this since at least 1990, when, according to former Clinton strategist Dick Morris, she considered running for Arkansas Governor if Bill decided not to stand for re-election.) The simple pleasure she takes in campaigning--probing genuinely serious policy issues; meeting people who regard her with thunderstruck awe, as if she were Joan of Arc in a minivan--may seem banal, but it's crucial to the whole venture. If it weren't fun, she'd pull the plug, but right now that's about as likely as her switching to the G.O.P. She told a group of reporters last Thursday, "It is a different feeling to be the person who is in the spotlight voluntarily and speaking on my own behalf... You know, yesterday was the first time I had ever done it... I loved what I did." Says an adviser: "I don't think there's any way she's going to tire of this."

But will New York tire of her? Sixteen months before the election, Clinton is a vessel for the hopes, dreams and sympathies of her supporters (typical refrain: "I admire you so much as a person") and for the fears and hatreds of her many detractors (HILLARY GO HOME signs sprouted wherever she went last week). There are legions on both sides, and neither can quite believe she is actually going to bring her soap opera to their state. But bring it she will. Where a lesser person might be having a post-traumatic breakdown right about now, Hillary is having a campaign--and, it would seem, the time of her life. Is this politics, psychotherapy, or a little of both? Whatever the answer, the campaign for Senate is filling a large need. It would take a cataclysm to keep her out of this race.

After all those years spent learning from the master, it's no surprise that her candidate's persona last week was profoundly Clintonian--by turns folksy and falsely humble, dazzlingly smart and suddenly peremptory, as when she ignored or brushed aside inconvenient questions about the Lewinsky scandal (the affair that helped make this run possible, after all, by boosting sympathy and softening her image). All week long she tried her best to stick to a script that called on her to listen and learn, seeming to absorb knowledge and wisdom from local experts and average folks in Oneonta, Cooperstown, Utica, Rome and Syracuse. The self-effacing, studious pose is supposed to buy time and get people accustomed to a startling sight: the first First Lady ever to run for office, doing so while her husband still occupies his. But this phase of her campaign, which will involve two- or three-day jaunts around New York most weeks through the summer and fall, is designed to accomplish an array of other objectives too.

First, her "listening sessions"--90-minute round-table discussions on health care, education reform and the like--are meant to bore the daylights out of the press corps, driving them on to other stories, dousing the flames of hype, reducing the size of her pack so she can campaign in a quasi-normal fashion. Some 300 media types covered her kickoff endorsement at Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Delaware County farm last Wednesday, and the education event that afternoon began a war of attrition. Says an adviser: "It was fun to watch the TV cameras shut down and leave the room one by one." On Thursday the media horde had dwindled to 200; by Friday it was down to 75.