Going into the New Hampshire primary, Hillary Clinton implored voters to keep a level head and not get carried away with a passing crush. Unable to match Barack Obama's inspiring oratory, she sniped, "You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose." But after winning Tuesday, she was all gooey sentiment: "I felt like we all spoke from our hearts, and I'm so gratified you responded."
Head, heart -- what does it matter, as long as she wins? If it took a show of tears to elicit sympathy from New Hampshirites, Sister Frigidaire (as she was known in her youth) was prepared to engineer a melting thaw. And it worked. The only thing sufficient to summon a wave of emotion, though, was the prospect of losing.
Like the tears, her victory speech suggested that Clinton is resolved to inhabit a new persona, at least as long as she needs to. Instead of her usual power suit, she wore a flowery brocade jacket that oozed femininity. She gushed about her "full heart," and how she had "found my own voice."
Sixty years old, with all that massive experience in the work of transforming the nation, and she's just now finding her voice? More likely, she's just found a new way to disguise her essential self.
