Running a textbook, front-runner campaign

US: Hillary Clinton's campaigning for the Democrat nomination for president is a study in focus and Swiss-watch precision, writes…

US:Hillary Clinton's campaigning for the Democrat nomination for president is a study in focus and Swiss-watch precision, writes Mark Z Barabakin Toledo, Iowa

It takes a special kind of courage, or foolishness, to eat a sloppy sandwich in front of a dozen TV cameras and a mob of reporters.

But with poise and a squirt of ketchup on her fries, Hillary Rodham Clinton seated herself on a red vinyl stool at the Made-Rite diner and bit into the loose-beef concoction. "Yum," she said.

Her waitress it turned out (and, yes, it was an unscripted stop) was a 46-year-old single mother, Anita Esterday, who has worked two and three jobs at a time to support herself and her two sons. For the next 24 hours, Esterday played a prominent part in Clinton's speeches as the Democrat trundled across Iowa in a big blue bus, offering a paean to working-class Americans.

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Clinton told a crowd in nearby Marshalltown, "I hear the story of the woman at the Made-Rite." If elected president, Clinton promised an audience in Ames, she will think of people such as Esterday every time she steps into the Oval Office.

Clinton campaigning is a study in focus and Swiss-watch precision. Her experience, gleaned from 30 years on the trail, is evident as she polishes off the $2.59 diner special without a drip on her gold pantsuit, then weaves the lunch encounter into the larger narrative of her candidacy.

During a sweep this week across Iowa - 10 stops in 3½ days - campaign events started and ended close to schedule. The backdrops - rolling fields, a city square and banners that read "Rebuilding The Road To The Middle Class" - were picture perfect. She touched upon her major points like a baseball runner rounding the bases: Bush is bad. Vice-president Dick Cheney is worse. Hard-working Americans deserve a secure retirement and reliable, affordable health care. The "era of cowboy diplomacy" must end. So too must the war in Iraq.

There was much alliteration. On Bush and the war: "From beginning to end, it's been miscalculation, misjudgment, mistake." On his handling of Hurricane Katrina: indifferent, insensitive, incompetent.

The New York senator speaks in a crisp and orderly fashion, as if presenting a term paper. She frequently accents her points by stabbing an index finger in the air. Her voice alternates between a shout - which is how Clinton shows passion - and a sorrowful tone when, for instance, she lamented the president's veto of a bipartisan children's health Bill.

She never seems to perspire, not even inside the swine barn at the Johnson County fairground, where 2,000 Democrats fanned themselves and her presidential rival John Edwards emerged with hair dripping and his collar drenched. Clinton, the last of five Democratic hopefuls to speak at the barbecue, never shed her pinstripe jacket.

At this stage of the 2008 primary race, with the first voting still more than two months away, Clinton is running a textbook, front-runner's campaign.

During her Iowa swing, her media entourage had no opportunity to ask serious questions. She directed all her salvos at Bush, speaking kindly of her Democratic rivals the one time she mentioned them. "We have such great candidates running," Clinton told a crowd at the Gigglin' Goat restaurant in Boone. "This is the kind of election you don't have to be against anybody."

Voters managed to get in a few questions, but not many. Things turned briefly ugly in New Hampton, where a man challenged Clinton's Senate vote last month declaring Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group. Clinton bristled, challenged the premise of the question and suggested the man who asked it was working for a rival campaign. She later apologised.

Such spontaneous moments were all the more striking for their rarity.

One came in Webster City, after Clinton delivered a speech unveiling her retirement savings plan. A woman in the audience noted Clinton's shoes were untied and expressed concern the candidate might fall. A grinning Clinton dropped to one knee and laced the tan moccasins - "so comfortable" and purchased, she said, at a museum gift shop in nearby Fort Dodge. The crowd applauded.

The crowds she drew during her Iowa visit typically numbered in the hundreds and were older and less demonstrative than those who turn out for her chief rival, the more dynamic senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

Clinton arrived and departed to standing ovations, but people rarely rose from their seats as she spoke. Her words seldom took flight. Instead they chugged along, bearing a heavy freight of statistics: 47 million people in the United States lacking health insurance, a child dropping out of school every 29 seconds, college costs rising 40 per cent under Bush, a national debt topping $9 trillion.

The electricity came after Clinton had finished speaking, when worshipful crowds packed against the metal barricades and velvet rope lines set up for security. She often spent as much time, or more, shaking hands, posing for pictures and signing autographs - a swirling "Hillary R. Cli" - as she did delivering her remarks.

In a stock phrase, Clinton insisted she was "not running because I'm a woman. I'm running because I think I'm the best qualified and experienced person to hit the ground running in January 2009." Still, she ended her remarks by saying how thrilling it was to meet elderly women who never thought they would live to see a female president, and little girls who take for granted that they will.

As if on cue, a 99-year-old woman came forward to shake Clinton's hand as she worked the rope line in Dakota City, amid the antique farm equipment and big red barns outside the Humboldt County Historical Museum. Then came 10-year-old Katrine Cadman, who brought a political picture book for Clinton to sign.

"This is historical," said Cadman's mother, Pixie Jensen, 57, who drove three hours to hear Clinton speak. "My daughter doesn't think it's unusual to see a female on stage at the debates instead of just a bunch of white males. I just think that's wonderful."

Clinton beamed as she spotted a group of young women near by. "OK, all the Fort Dodge girls," she said, unhitching the velvet rope and waving 10 of them through for a group photo. "Excellent! Excellent!" But Clinton was never far off task. Over and over she called out to the crowds pressing up to greet her, "have you signed a support card yet?"