New York State Of Mine

(3 of 3)

Before she starts dealing with all that, however, Hillary has to define herself as a candidate distinct from her husband. At first, her advisers were worried that doing so would lead to a spate of "rift" articles of the kind that have been chronicling tensions between Al Gore and the President. But Hillary and her team believe it is most important to ever-so-gingerly demonstrate that she is not his policy clone. (When she considered running for Governor of Arkansas in 1990, Morris has said, his polling indicated that voters would see her as a "stand-in" for Bill. She won't let that happen this time.) And so last week Hillary began opening up about policy agreements and disagreements--programs she had fought for behind the scenes at the White House, such as the child health-insurance plan called CHIP ("I worked very hard to make sure we got it done") and a proposed tax credit to help pay for long-term care ("a proposal that the President and I unveiled together earlier this year"). She tried to inoculate herself against charges of being too liberal by saying she urged Clinton to sign the welfare-reform bill of 1996 ("The system was so broken...we had to clear the decks"). And she stepped away from him on several New York issues--beginning the move from First Lady to candidate in a place where the politics are famously loud and cartoonish.

The most glaring example was a letter she sent to the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, which represents nearly 1,000 Jewish synagogues around the U.S. In it she wrote that she considers Jerusalem "the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel" and wants to see the U.S. embassy moved there from Tel Aviv. Neither position reflects Administration policy, but both reflect New York political reality. Hillary's advisers were feeling swell about the letter, because for the first time, as one says, "she made a judgment that the dictates of New York politics were going to structure what she did. She crossed a Rubicon." In other words, she had the good sense to notch her first abject pander to a New York interest group. (She then wasted no time notching her second, coming out in favor of price supports for New York dairy farmers.) Pop the corks.

With her Jerusalem letter, Hillary was working hard to undo some of the damage she did among Jews in May 1998, when she made the mistake of saying what most Americans think--that the Palestinians should have a state of their own. (Her latest position doesn't preclude statehood, it seems, so long as the new state's capital isn't Jerusalem.)

The other policy friction between Bill and Hillary involves the effect that $5 billion in Administration-proposed Medicare cuts would have on New York teaching hospitals in the next five years. She talks frequently these days about getting New York "its fair share," and here's an issue where she has a chance to do so. Moynihan is sponsoring legislation to restore the cuts; Senator Chuck Schumer and Dennis Rivera, New York's hospital workers' union chief and a key Hillary supporter, recently arranged a White House meeting to discuss them. Hillary attended and voiced support for New York's cause, but has since declined to express anything more than "concern" over the issue.

Hillary is not yet ready to use her juice to alter Administration policy, and perhaps she shouldn't be. She is, after all, only an undeclared candidate. All the same, Rivera was said to be "livid" (New York power brokers are always getting "livid"--that's part of the fun), even though they must know she needs time before she can break with the President on an issue like Medicare. "She's married to the guy--she can't just flip a switch and become a noisy fighter for New York," says an adviser. "It's got to be gradual, appropriate and reasonable." But New York, as Hillary well knows, has never been a reasonable place. It has a way of making you shout, even when all you want to do is listen.