The Evolution of Hillary Clinton

From the New York Times:

This is a fascinating New York Times article showing how New York senator Hillary Clinton has evolved from a Democratic partisan to a robust, centrist and respectable senator. She could become a major player in the 2008 presidential elections.

As she gears up her re-election campaign for the United States Senate, Hillary Rodham Clinton is presenting a side of herself that might have given some of her supporters great pause just a few years ago. Nothing captures this new face of Hillary Clinton better than the Web site her campaign started this week: It portrays her robust stand on national defense and her desire to reduce the number of abortions, among other positions.

In fact, in the last few months, Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly confounded the expectations of people who judged her from her White House years. She has appeared publicly with Newt Gingrich, her onetime political foe. She has called abortion a "sad, even tragic choice." She has stood fast in defense of her vote authorizing President Bush to go to war in Iraq. Over the last few weeks, she has found defenders among prominent conservative commentators who feel she was maligned in a new unauthorized biography.

It is a striking departure from just five years ago when she was seen as a fierce Democratic partisan and a symbol of the liberal excesses of the Clinton years.

Today many Republicans acknowledge somewhat grudging respect for Mrs. Clinton as a senator and say they often find common political ground with her. Mrs. Clinton has become known as anything but the political extremist that many of her critics expected her to be, and has done and said things that have surprised friends and foes alike.

Although she has found allies on the Republican side of the aisle, her public statements and positioning on issues have aroused suspicions that she is setting the stage for a presidential run. Tellingly, some liberals, who make up the core of her political base, have complained that she has been ceding too much to the right, especially in her support for military action in Iraq.

In fact, Mrs. Clinton has defied simple ideological labeling since joining the Senate, ending up in the political center on issues like health care, welfare, abortion, morality and values, and national defense, to name just a few.