Getting to know Hillary
Rob Price

I like to imagine running across four famous people in casual surroundings. One of them - Richard Nixon - is dead, so it's unlikely my fantasy of meeting him in a clubby bar with dark wood paneling will ever work out. But there is still a chance for the other three.

One, Mario Cuomo, I imagine seeing in an outdoor cafe in Venice. I'm sitting at the cafe myself, sipping an espresso, when I notice Gov. Cuomo and his wife sitting several tables over.

"Why Gov. Cuomo!" I say. "I'm Rob Price from Hornell, and we've spoken several time on the phone. Let me show you a nice restaurant that serves great seafood."

The other two, Bill and Hillary Clinton, I imagine meeting in the parlor of a nice bed and breakfast in upstate New York. I imagine my wife and I returning from dinner and meeting the Clintons in front of a roaring fire. A bottle of brandy is on the coffee table, and the night is still young.

It's not that I have much in common - politically - with any of these people. I just think they're interesting individuals who like to talk. They would have interesting stories to to tell - Nixon and Cuomo individually, and the Clintons as a couple, riffing off each other.

The context for these get-togethers is important. The clubby bar where I run into Nixon would be a comfortable, private place, Nixon could enjoy his scotch and unwind. Venice is a beautiful city, and Cuomo would be happy visiting Italy. He would be impressed I speak a little Italian and know a restaurant where the seafood is well-prepared and not too expensive.

And then there are the Clintons. A bed and breakfast late at night seems like a good neutral space to get close to them. So much has been written about both of them as a couple, and each of them as individuals, I figure we would need a particularly cozy atmosphere to get to know each other, to get behind the verbiage.

Which is growing at an incredible pace. In the past two weeks, Hillary Clinton in particular has been the subject of intense media speculation, not just because she's running for president, but because she's Hillary.

What does it mean to be Hillary? It's a two-faced situation. On the one hand, there is the pleasant woman with the pleasantly throaty voice smiling at you from her website and telling you she's "in to win."

On the other hand, there is the woman whom Newt Gingrich this week called "nasty." And that wasn't a simple blip. Two weeks ago, David Geffen, the Hollywood mogul who runs Dreamworks along with Steven Spielberg and David Katzenberg, called her "an incredibly polarizing figure." He also referred to her political organization as "Clinton Inc." and predicted the machine would be "very unpleasant and unattractive and effective" in dealing with Hillary's main competitor, Barack Obama.

I have had some occasion to watch Mrs. Clinton in action, and it seems to me the two faces of Hillary are both real. She can be kind, even warm and bubbly. Just don't disagree with her. She reminds me of a certain school superintendent I used to work with who was pleasant enough as long as he wasn't arguing with you. As long as you agreed with him, you were on the side of the angels. Disagree, and there was some suspicion you were an associate of The Evil One.

That's why the upcoming presidential campaign is going to be so hard on Mrs. Clinton. She is going to find that there are lots of people who disagree with her on a wide range of issues. From her perspective, it will look like half the world is part of what she referred to, about 10 years ago, as the "vast right wing conspiracy."

That is a huge mental burden to carry through a campaign. It's much easier, emotionally, to accept the fact that people are always going to disagree with you and many will disagree for honorable reasons. They're not necessarily your enemy.

But I'm not sure Hillary can make that jump. That's why, if we're ever going to be friends, it's going to have to happen in that charming little bed and breakfast. We'll pass the bottle of brandy around and talk of this and that. "Tell me a story," I'll say, and I'll look like someone safe and friendly, definitely non-threatening.