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For all Clinton's protestations that she is not thinking beyond her Senate race, the re-election campaign will strengthen a political infrastructure that could easily be retooled for a presidential run. "What they are really road testing is money," the adviser says. So many fund raisers are vying to hold events that staff members are having trouble finding spots in her schedule to accommodate all of them. The $6.1 million she raised between April and June included contributions from all 50 states, suggesting that Clinton's entry into a Democratic contest would make the table stakes much higher for other contenders. Her direct-mail operation has already built a "house list" of more than 200,000 proven donors.
Her Senate campaign will also be a test for the operatives Clinton began gathering in 2000. It's a group that, except for pollster Mark Penn and media consultant Mandy Grunwald, includes few of the strategists who worked for her husband. "It was part of her determination to create this new identity," says a Senate colleague who discussed it with her. "It was easier if she made a clean break." In some ways, her operation looks more like Bush's. She permits none of the turf wars and few of the leaks that characterized her husband's team; she is the Clinton who always put a high premium on loyalty and discretion. Patti Solis Doyle, who runs the political operation, got her start as Hillary's scheduler in Bill's 1992 presidential campaign.
Should she run for President, advisers say, Clinton is fully aware of what she would face: everything that was hurled at her when she was First Lady, only now the attack army includes bloggers and independent organizations with unlimited and loosely regulated fund-raising ability. She will never escape the way people feel about the man she married, or their doubts about her motives for staying with him. "The real question is whether to revisit the book that people closed called Bill Clinton," says a prominent Republican strategist. "Having him as First Lady, with no responsibility in the White House--people will shudder at that." But Hillary has told allies privately that the simple fact she survived it all will inoculate her from anything yet to come. "I consider that a strength, not a weakness in my case," a Senate colleague recalls her telling him. "I see all those people out there, and I realize, they don't know me. I can persuade them."
Even her admirers, though, are not so sure she will find the rest of the country to be New York writ large. "I'll still have to vote for Hillary, but it would be a vote that would go down the toilet," says John Richardson, a Democrat who runs a milling machine at the Cummins plant she visited. "We'd have to have someone who could pull votes from the other side. I don't think she could do it."
MCCAIN'S PROVING GROUND
The same early surveys show McCain is the strongest candidate the Republicans could offer in a general election, except for 9/11 icon Rudy Giuliani, who runs about as well. But to get that far, McCain would have to win the nomination of his party, where, as he learned in 2000, his independent streak is not such an asset. Ask McCain's team why the primaries would turn out differently the next time, and they will point you to South Carolina.