Waiting for the Polls to Close ...

In a little more than an hour, the polls will close in New Hampshire.

I've been reflecting on a running dialogue I've been having by e-mail this afternoon with an old friend of mine who lives in central Arkansas. I've known this friend since my college days at the University of Arkansas. She's supporting Hillary Clinton, but if Hillary doesn't get the nomination, she says she'll support John McCain.

I suppose that's the closest any of my friends has come to creating a political version of "The Odd Couple." (In that analogy, I guess the disciplined Hillary would be "Felix" and the more freewheeling McCain would be "Oscar.")

My friend says Hillary is seen as a polarizing figure because she's been painted that way by the Republicans. I suppose there's some truth to that, but I don't think it's that simple.

Bill Clinton became a part of the Arkansas political scene in the 1970s, and Hillary, as his wife, was part of the package. I remember feeling that Hillary was polarizing, even then, and the Republican Party didn't have the kind of influence in Arkansas that it has now, so it wasn't responsible for that general feeling about Hillary.

Fashion really went haywire in the 1970s, but there was something about Hillary's hairstyle or the clothes she wore or something that made her stand out, made her different, even in those off-the-wall days. And it did so in a negative sense, not a positive one. Hillary just wasn't a sympathetic figure, not even when she was pregnant in 1979 or after she had her baby in February 1980.

In fact, even though he went on to lose the governor's race in 1980, Clinton seemed to get a better reaction from crowds that year when he was alone than he did when he was accompanied by his wife.

Much was made when Hillary changed her hairstyle in the White House after being advised to do something to "soften" her appearance, but that battle was fought repeatedly when she was first lady of Arkansas, starting with the effort to get her to exchange her schoolgirlish eyeglasses for contact lenses.

And those impressions continued to influence the public's feelings about Hillary when she went to every county in Arkansas on her husband's behalf to hold hearings on public education. She handled that assignment in a professional, businesslike manner and came up with several worthwhile recommendations that, I'm sure, most Arkansans appreciated.

But the image had started to harden. And by the time Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, Hillary's image was practically cast in stone. The national Republicans and the national media used that image against the Clintons, but they weren't the first to notice it.

Now, it seems to me, if you're going to be viewed in a certain way no matter what you do, why not use it to your advantage?

Clearly, that image didn't bother the people in New York who voted for Hillary for the Senate.

Hillary needs to find an approach that transcends the negative image. She managed to strike the right notes when she ran for the Senate in New York. But simultaneously presenting herself as the candidate of "change" and the candidate of "experience" isn't going to accomplish that on the national level.

Barack Obama seems to have cornered the market on "change" in the Democratic race so maybe Hillary needs to emphasize "experience" in her sales pitch. Campaigning on the "change" theme makes her look like Obama Lite.