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I'm still here - Hillary
15/02/2008 15:18 - (SA)
New York - Hillary Clinton has drawn back from the political abyss countless times in the soap opera of her life alongside husband Bill, and is now in fighting form after her biggest electoral test yet.
Through political scandal and personal heartache, caused more often than not by the former president, she has retained her steely resolve and is determined to smash through the toughest glass ceiling facing women in America.
Hillary Clinton, 60, now a well-regarded senator for New York State, is on an extraordinary quest not just to bring the presidency back into the family but to become the first female commander-in-chief.
But she says that what truly motivates her is the plight of the millions of Americans who struggle to pay the bills, who lack healthcare coverage, who despair of sending their children through college and on to a better life.
She spelt out those themes in a speech to hundreds of supporters in a Manhattan ballroom, shortly before television projections awarded her the state of California to cap a closely fought Super Tuesday day of primaries.
'Politics isn't a game'
"I look forward to continuing our campaign and our debate about how to leave this country better off for the next generation, because that is the work of my life," she said of her race with Democratic rival Barack Obama.
"Because you know that politics isn't a game. It is not about who is up or down. It is about your lives, your families, your futures."
Fiercely jealous of her privacy and loath to show any emotion, Clinton has opened up on this White House campaign trail as never before, twice coming to the brink of tears under the strain of this most arduous of races.
After her come-from-behind victory over Obama in last month's New Hampshire primary, the Chicago native born to solidly middle-class, Methodist parents in 1947 said she had found her voice.
Obama has never struggled on that score. His electric speeches bring to mind the oratorical greats of the 1960s such as civil rights hero Martin Luther King and slain president John F Kennedy.
From student leader to first lady
Clinton will never be that kind of speaker, her aides acknowledge, but insist that she brings a different kind of inspiration in the story of her life - from student leader to Arkansas first lady and then to the White House.
She cannot match Obama's power at tub-thumping rallies, but excels in more intimate settings when she discusses policy prescriptions with smaller groups of voters - and that wonkery helps her now that the economy is in trouble.
She is the woman Americans most admire, according to one poll, yet she provokes venomous attacks by enemies and rolling hours of bile on conservative talk radio.
That hatred stems from the Clintons' tumultuous eight years in the fishbowl of the White House from 1993 to 2001, and in particular Bill's very public affair with intern Monica Lewinsky and his subsequent impeachment trial.
Scandal
Scandal had long dogged the Clintons, whether it concerned the former president's roving eye, or a stunning return on cattle futures achieved by Hillary in 1978 that for critics smacked of insider trading.
A lawyer with a degree from the prestigious Yale Law School, Clinton put Americans on notice early in her husband's 1992 presidential campaign that she was "not the kind of woman who stays at home baking cookies".
She was true to her word, leading a drive to remake the country's vastly expensive and vastly inefficient healthcare machine to give coverage to all.
The effort failed, Clinton admits, because she failed to reach out to powerful enemies in the insurance industry and in Congress. After that, she resorted to more traditional first-lady duties such as foreign travel.
There was nothing traditional about her decision, while still the presidential spouse, to run for the Senate in 2000.
But she surprised many by drawing votes from conservatives as well as Democrats to win the New York seat, despite having never lived in the state.
Now, in the toughest campaign of her life, Clinton says that Democrats must choose a battle-scarred veteran who can take the fight to the Republicans.
"They've been after me for 16 years and much to their dismay, I am still here!" she declares.
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