(2 of 2)
"The President was the one who was wrong," she told me, smacking the table at which we sat. "The President led people to believe that he would be prudent in the exercise of the authority he was given, and that proved not to be true. Keeping the focus on the President and the Vice President, about what they did and didn't do, the mistakes they made, is really where it needs to be, because he's the only one who can reverse course."
On some issues, however, you can hear Clinton charting a new course for herself. She was criticized for cooking up a health-care plan in secret during her husband's first term, but she now polls her audiences to see which route to universal coverage they would prefer. Usually, the majority of hands go up in favor of the Canadian-style, government-run system known as single payer--something Clinton says wouldn't have happened when she first took on the issue in the early 1990s. "Back then, when I used to speak about health care, there were a lot of people who honestly didn't know Medicare was a government program. I remember being stunned by that," she says. "People know a lot more about how health care is delivered now. They know a lot more about what they pay." But don't expect her to be pushing that or any other specific universal health-care alternative as part of her presidential campaign. "I want to set the goals," she says. Then she will lay out some options, she promises, and listen to what voters have to say.
Just as delicate: embracing what Democrats love about her husband while finding her way around the land mines where his policies are at odds with party sentiments today. Where he was an unapologetic free trader, for instance, she declares, "If all you say is, you're for free trade, I think that's denying reality." Hillary distances herself--gently--from Bill's hardest-fought achievement in that area, the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement. "NAFTA was inherited by the Clinton Administration," she insists. "Bill believed in it, and I believe in the general principles that it represented, but what we have learned is that we have to drive a tougher bargain."
Iowa voters know a thing or two about bargaining too. "I know I have to earn every vote. None of that worries me," Clinton says. "I'll go back, I will answer people's questions, I will make them feel more comfortable and open to me." Oh, and one other thing: "I'm going to take a warmer coat next time."
To read more of the interview with Hillary Clinton, go to time.com/hillary