What's wrong with Hillary?

An article in Saturday's NYT explores the promise and peril of Sen. Hillary Clinton's national name-recognition. The piece painfully avoids the obvious reasons why Hillary can't win in 2008:

"No one factor accounts for the deep misgivings many voters express for Mrs. Clinton, but to some degree it stems from a view that has taken hold, fairly or not, that she is a hugely ambitious woman with a liberal agenda that was most significantly illustrated in her efforts to overhaul the nation's health care system during her husband's presidency.

Mrs. Clinton sought to counteract the damage posed by the anti-Clinton feeling by spending nearly two years traveling around the state in a calculated effort to force voters to re-examine what, if anything, is so objectionable about her."

Let's be honest - it is precisely because of the reality that Clinton is both a hugely ambitious (and successful) woman with a liberal agenda that she is so hated by the Hillary-haters. Indeed, her liberal commitments provide a convenient excuse for the many (some even among my own associates) whose primary, unstated, and entirely misogynist objection to Clinton is that she is an ambitious and successful woman who has upheld none - really subverted all - of the norms of the role of political wife. If, in fact, she does run in 2008, I hope she will not permit such sexism to lead her to pander and compromise.