Hillaryzilla

Yes, I’m a genius. No, it’s not a big deal. True, I haven’t really taken a test to see if I’m a genius, but people tell me all the time that I’m a genius. I took an IQ test, but Bill had the results sealed under executive order until 2016. What can I say?

I know I’m a genius because when Bill was in Wolfboro, New Hampshire today he told people that I’m a ‘world class genius’ when it comes to improving the lives of others. I’m not sure of the ‘world class’ part, but I have to agree with Bill about the genius part.

Besides, if anyone should know, Bill should know. I proved it to him years ago because I didn’t kill the bastard after the Monica Lewinsky affair, even though I wanted to, and even though I promised Bill I would do it for sure if it ever happened again. He’s behaved himself since then, so that makes me something of a genius.

The guy who’s not a genius is Bill Richardson. The man is so desperate that he called a New York Times reporter and blasted me on my plan to withdraw troops from Iraq. The man called me a flip-flopper on Iraq. Me? How smart is that for a guy who once had a shot at getting his name on a Hillary-Bill bumper sticker?

Hey, Bill. Take some advice and head back to New Mexico to look for a job because you won’t find work in Washington until sometime after 2016.

What goes around, comes around, and all I can say is it’s about friggin time. I’ve been the poster child for bad political news for the past month, but it looks like the tide has changed.

Rudy Giuliani got hung out to dry because the city footed the bill for his mistress when he was mayor. That cost him 10 points in the polls. Guess what? He actually paid the expenses fair and square. How does he get his 10 points back?

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee looks like a Christian crusader swinging his self righteous holier-than-thou sword against the evil incarnate he sees in everyone else politics. That played well with the religious right but gets too bloody for everyone else who plans to vote.

Poor Mitt Romney. He can’t keep the inflation out of his resume. Romney said he saw his father walk with Dr. Martin Luther King, then said he didn’t (he didn’t). But he walked with King in spirit. Right. Romney also said he was endorsed by the National Rifle Association, then he said he wasn’t; the NRA just liked him a lot.

The good thing about that kind of bad news is that it keeps bad news away from me and I need the break. The only bad thing about that kind of bad news is that it’s all on the Republican side, so there’s no leftover bad news for Obama or Edwards.

I’ll take what I can get. If it weren’t for bad news, I wouldn’t have any news at all.

It’s time for the home stretch in Iowa, what with their little caucus votes in early January.

“The Hillary I Know” ad campaign is off to a good start and playing well in Peoria. Now I find out that Peoria isn’t even in Iowa. Anyway, we found dozens of people willing to tell others what we told them to tell others about me.

My staff is calling this latest motorcade through Iowa The Warm and Fuzzy Tour. It is. I’m all warm and fuzzy just thinking about how much we can do for people in Iowa. They need government assistance up here. Just look at all that dead corn lying around in the fields. It’s a mess.

Yesterday we brought a real African-American to Iowa so the voters here could see the difference between a watered-down black man, Barack Obama, and an original black black man.

I’m grateful that Bill’s buddy, Magic Johnson, a really, really big African-American, decided to endorse me and help out the campaign instead of helping Obama with his beleaguered campaign. It’s not really beleaguered. I’m just practicing the power of positive thinking. It works.

Anyway, we did some photo shoots and public appearances with Bill’s friend, Magic. He played professional football or hockey or something, and we thought it would be a good chance for Iowans to see a really black black man so they could compare. He’s bigger than Oprah. If he stood next to you in a dark alley and told you to vote for Dick Cheney, you’d do it.

My communications director, Howard Wolfson, complained for months that we don’t do enough human interest advertising. So, we also got my mom to come over and do a few of those soft light, family television commercials with Chelsea. They talk about how nice I am, what a good daughter and mom I’ve always been, and that I’m not cold, and remote, and bitchy anymore.

We tried to get this Magic Johnson guy to do some television commercials for us, too. But we couldn’t get the lighting to work. He’s so dark that all you could see on the commercial was a big, dark shadow with eyes and teeth. Scary.

For whatever reason, nobody liked my “Free Hillary” campaign slogan. My alternative was “Let Hillary Be Hillary” but even that catchy phrase was panned by everyone except Patti Doyle. She agrees with me on everything.

Mark Penn hired some ad agency types who deal in political campaigns. They came up with a new slogan. Even Bill likes it.

The Hillary I Know.

The deal is simple. We’ll get a bunch of people who claim to know me and they’ll go on camera to tell everyone that they know the real me. They’ll say things like, “Hillary is warm and caring,” and use phrases like, “She’s a regular mom, just like me.”

Other supporters will come on camera and say things like, “Instead of being a millionaire lawyer… Hillary went to work for the Children’s Defense Fund to help kids.” I didn’t even know I did that.

I had a chance to talk with ordinary folks in Iowa yesterday. We had a film crew recording the whole conversation, where I said, “Here in Iowa I want you to have some flavor of who I am outside of the television cameras, when all the cameras and lights disappear– what I do when nobody is listening or taking notes or recording it.”

But of course they’re recording it anyway so we can use the clips in television commercials.

Anyway, this “The Hillary I Know” ad campaign looks like the real thing and might have some legs. If it doesn’t do the job in Iowa or New Hampshire, then Mark and Patti are toast.

I’ll be the Hillary they used to know.

Bill doesn’t know when to shut up. All he does these days is tell everyone what to do, when to do it, and why to do it, but not how to do it. I’m not immune, either, and he’s been on my case worse than flies on stink (a little local phrase I learned in Arkansas).

Alright, so I started to slide a little in the polls, and what does Bill do? At a staff meeting last month he says, “Hillary, you need to stop talking ‘to’ people and stop talking ‘at’ people and start talking ‘with’ people.”

So, I ask him, “Bill, what the hell does that mean? Isn’t it enough that I shake hands with some of them? What more do they want?”

And Bill says, “Look, voters want a conversation with you. They want to get to know the real you. They’re tired of you telling them what they need all the time. Clinton fatigue is starting to set in.”

Tell me about it. After Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky and the impeachment trial, I know a little something about Clinton fatigue.

Maybe Bill has a point. I’ve been harping on the need for experience in the White House at the expense of cultivating fresh ideas. So, today I came up with a couple of new campaign mottos.

Here’s the one I came up with for Iowa. “Free Hillary.”

And this one I made up  just for New Hampshire. “Let Hillary Be Hillary.”

Damn. I’m good.

Bill and I just got off the phone with Joe Lieberman. I called him earlier today to see if he would visit Iowa for a couple of days to help out my campaign.

At first Joe said he couldn’t afford the extra expense this time of year. Jews can be such tightwads. Bill said we’d cover the expenses and pick him up in a private plane. Then Joe started stuttering around and talking real slow and trying to back out of coming to Iowa.

Well, Bill gives him the 3rd degree and starts asking all kinds of questions about the presidential race, and who he plans to support, and does he remember how Bill helped him win re-election, and so on. What does Lieberman do? He tells Bill he’s going to support John McCain for President. John McCain?

What a shock. Bill’s face turned real red and I swear it looked like his nose was going to explode. So I grab the phone from Bill and get on the line and say, “Joe, you’re supporting John McCain for President? Why? What did he ever do for you? McCain hasn’t got a chance. You’re just wasting time and money. You know how you hate to waste money, Joe.”

That’s not totally true, of course. Joe’s the big spender on Capitol Hill, always willing to stuff some extra pig in a pork barrel.

So, anyway, Lieberman says to me, “Look, Hillary, it’s not about the money. Honest. It’s strategy. Look at the bigger picture. When I endorse McCain the Republicans won’t know what to think of it, and it’ll split their votes even more. McCain might even win in Iowa and again New Hampshire and that news could help out when, uh, if you lose to Obama.”

Bill wouldn’t even talk to him after that. I wished Joe well and hung up the phone. But if I see one ‘McCain-Lieberman - 2008‘ bumper sticker anywhere in Iowa I swear I’ll tell everyone about the time he put his hand up my dress.

I’ve been on the phone all night trying to get my A-List of Hollywood supporters to come to Iowa to help my campaign. As they say, ‘you can lead an ass to water, but you can’t make him drink.’

Hollywood people can be such asses. Rob Reiner refused my invitation to help out in Iowa. He said it was so cold in Iowa in winter that he couldn’t even get into a heated argument with Archie Bunker.

I’ll admit that it’s been cold here the past few weeks. I did some campaigning outside the Wal-Mart in Cedar Rapids and saw Amish people buying electric blankets.

Even folks in Iowa complain about the cold. Rush Limbaugh is the most popular radio talk show in the winter because people up north are so desperate for hot air.

We stopped at a diner in downtown Davenport. It was a slimy little place where local folks go for Bar-B-Q chicken. It’s been so cold that the chicken is only available in Hot and Suicide.

It was so cold in Iowa last week that John Edwards had his hands in his own pockets. It was so cold in Sioux City last week that we saw a dog stuck to a fire hydrant. It was so cold that when we shook hands and spoke with people the words that came out of mouth in chunks of ice and people had to fry them to see what I said.

That’s cold.

It’s been a rough week, what with Obama pulling ahead a little bit in the Iowa polls, and that stupid assed drug comment from my guy Bill Shaheen in New Hampshire. I’m ahead up there but not by much.

Our own polls show voters everywhere want to see some change in Washington. They also want a strong and experienced leader. That’s the conundrum. I’m the strong and experienced leader without warmth and trust. Go figure.

What can I say? I’m suffering from the Al Gore Syndrome. I need a cure.

Everyone knows this. Behind the scenes I’m loving and pleasant, nurturing and funny. But just like Al Gore, the public never gets to see that. I don’t know why. It’s a curse left over from the 1990s, I guess.

In private, Al Gore is a great guy. In public, Al Gore became a piece of wood; stiff, almost not human. My guys tell me I’m suffering from the same thing. In private, I’m surprisingly wonderful, of course. In public, this veil of a tough and calculating woman descends over the real me and I can’t get out.

Martha Stewart has the same problem, except she really is a bitch sometimes.

The voters in Iowa don’t seem to like confrontation in politics, they definitely don’t like the status quo, they hate the war in Iraq, I’m certain they don’t like political bickering, and they all say they want a change.

Is it any wonder that when we finally hold a debate in this God-forsaken state of permanent tundra that nothing happens? No confrontation, no bickering, and suddenly every Democratic presidential candidate is all smiles and the candidate of change, change, change.

If there’s one thing Bill Clinton was good at it, it was knowing what the people want and giving it to them. Of course, he was always giving something to someone, but that’s another bag of worms.

Anyway, the day got off to a bad start. First, Bill Shaheen goes around telling everyone that Barack Obama was on drugs or sold drugs or took drugs or sniffed glue or something before he was a Senator. Big whoop, right? Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds do drugs and what does it get them? A gazillion dollars and a trip to the hall of fame? Hall of shame, maybe.

So, I talk to Bill on the phone and say, “Look, Bill, you can’t run around telling people that a presidential candidate took drugs, or had sex with someone, or secretly wears heels and pantyhose. Maybe it’s true, but be subtle about it, man, or get photos.”

Then Shaheen gets all martyrdom on me, and starts blubbering about how much he loves me and wouldn’t do anything to hurt me and the press just got his comments all wrong and misquoted and out of context and everything. And I say, “Tell me about it.”

Finally, he offers to step down as co-chair of the campaign. Whoa. I know when not to look a gift horse in the mouth, so Shaheen’s out and it’s a good day for my campaign because all he did was talk about his wife and her campaign anyway.

The worst part of the whole deal was having to walk over to Barack Obama and apologize for Shaheen’s comments. I so hoped that there would be television cameras around, but nooooo, it was just me and Obama and a cold winter wind whipping up my panties. I apologize to Barack and then all the Obamites run out and tell reporters that the whole scandal was just part of a larger pattern of negativity from Clinton, yada, yada, yada.

When do we start having fun?

Honestly, I shed tears. Warren Buffett sat down with me in San Francisco and helped bring in over a million dollars at a fund raiser. It was surreal.

The whole thing was set up like a talk show on cable TV and all I had to do was ask Buffett a bunch of questions. People paid big money to hear what the man had to say, and I got to keep the all money. Is this a great country, or what?

Buffett went on and on about the gap between the rich and poor, fiscal responsibility, taxes, and other stuff that rich people don’t want to hear about.

No one seems to notice that good old Hillary hasn’t complained about Bush’s tax cuts. No one seems to notice that I haven’t even been calling for new taxes for the rich, either. Why in God’s name would I do something like that before the election?

I could interview rich people every day, as long as they bring in the viewers who bring in the donations. That kind of TV show would practically run itself. But which network would run The Hillary Show? We’ve been asking around. Fox? Get real. They’re politically right of the KKK. CBS and ABC already said no. Something to do with ‘equal time’ or some other such nonsense.

The only television network left is NBC. No thanks. I’ll pass. NBC’s prime time ratings are at about the same level as Dennis Kucinich’s poll numbers.