Another Clinton White House? Despite her repeated pledges not to run for president in 2004, Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign machine is going full blast

New American, The, Oct 6, 2003

The "Clinton for President" campaign has not been officially launched, but it is running full-tilt nonetheless. When she ran for the open New York Senate seat in 2000, Hillary Rodham Clinton repeatedly pledged that she was not using the race as a stepping stone for a 2004 White House run. She promised to finish her six-year Senate term, meaning 2008 would be the closest presidential race she would consider. She has repeated this promise in numerous interviews. However, Federal Election Commission records show that as early as 2000, even as she was campaigning for the Senate seat, she had already filed an FEC re port as a presidential candidate. (Her FEC identification number is P00003392.)

Since then she has launched her own political action committee, HILLPAC, and Friends of Hillary, her Senate re-election committee. Both organizations are raising tons of cash, and Hillary watchers--both friend and foe--note that she is using the money to buy key party votes as she stumps the country for Democrat candidates. Much of her cash and campaign "face time" have been lavished on candidates in Iowa and New Hampshire, the two early presidential primary states that are essential showcase events for any serious candidate. HILLPAC has showered tens of thousands of dollars on candidates in tight races in the two states, including Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen.

The conventional wisdom has been that Hillary will bide her time until the 2008 elections, since President Bush is a shoo-in for re-election. But the president's ratings have been crumbling, as the economy has been tumbling, and the ever-expanding War on Terror has left more and more taxpayers and soldiers grumbling. Deja vu. Hillary certainly remembers a similar situation with the elder President Bush and Desert Storm. With Bush's post-war ratings phenomenally high, Democratic candidates jumped out of the 1992 race believing him invulnerable. But President Bush's positives evaporated almost overnight, leaving Bill Clinton as the only alternative. Hillary remembers. She is also aware that polls of Democratic voters show her beating all other candidates the Democrats can muster. Syndicated columnist Richard Reeves pointed out in an August 27th column: "Democratic polls right now show [Sen. John] Kerry, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, former House majority leader Richard Gephardt and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean as the Democratic leaders, each of them with 15 or 20 percent of the Democratic vote nationally. Throw Hillary's name into those polls and she gets between 37 percent of the vote (ABC News poll) and 48 percent (Quinnipac institute). Kerry and the rest drop to single digits."

"Sen. Clinton has to check some numbers," notes Reeves. "If a Democrat, say Kerry, defeats Bush next November and then runs for re-election in 2008, then her next chance to run would probably be in 2012, when she will be 65 years old. And who knows what the world will look like then?"

Hillary's campaign has already been boosted with free media promotionals that no candidate could ever buy. The publication of her autobiography, Living History, launched an orgy of adulatory interviews, stories, and photo-ops. Time magazine, always solidly in the Clinton camp, gave her the cover of its June 16th issue and a full 15 pages inside. ABC's Barbara Walters, CNN's Larry King, and other interviewers gave her millions of dollars worth of free time.

Besides her celebrity status, Hollywood money connections, and high-placed media friends, Hillary has another big advantage: Terry McAuliffe. The man who ran the fundraising for both of Bill Clinton's successful presidential campaigns is now chairman of the Democratic National Committee and has brought many other Clinton loyalists into the DNC. McAuliffe, a master fundraiser and bare-knuckles political fighter, is seen as solidly in Hillary's corner. With McAuliffe and the DNC behind her, Hillary is far-and-away the leader of the Democratic pack. She knows it. And she's running.

As important as the McAuliffe/DNC connection is, however, it pales in significance next to the political weight of Hillary's ties to the one-world power elite at the Council on Foreign Relations, the World Economic Forum, and the Bilderberg Conference. Her husband Bill is a CFR member; of coarse, and she is likely to be soon. In October 2000, during her race for the New York Senate seat, the CFR hosted a "Conversation with Hillary Rodham Clinton," with CFR veteran Theodore Sorensen presiding. A New York, Times editorial praised her performance at the CFR event for setting forth "a broader, more sophisticated vision of America's place in the world."

A top member of her Senate staff. Andrew Shapiro, served as moderator of the April 14, 2003 CFR meeting on "China Over the Next Decade." Among her high-level CFR friends are Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Laura D'Andrea Tyson. Mickey Kantor, Donna Shalala, and Geraldine Ferraro. Media maven Lisa Caputo (various executive/analyst/commentator posts at CBS. NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Disney), who was Hillary's White House press secretary, now heads a major division of Citicorp and is a new mover in the CFR.