Hillary Edges In on Global Warming Buzz

May 24, 2006 — -- Hillary Clinton chose the day before her husband's former vice president hits the theaters with a documentary aimed at raising awareness about the dangers of global warming to make her own first "major policy statement" on energy and the environment.

Al Gore, the failed Democratic presidential candidate in 2000, staked out his turf on global warming two decades ago, long before the term meant anything to any but a few environmentalists. Clinton, the former first lady and current New York senator who is projected by many as the Democrats' likely candidate for president in 2008, is coming late to the topic, but she may be ready to make it her own.

That's the image RJ Matson, political cartoonist for Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, conjures up today. In his cartoon, named "An Inconvenient Truth" after Gore's film, Clinton drives a Hummer and is just about to run down Gore, who struggles to pedal his bicycle.

"I don't wish to imply that Hillary is not an environmentalist, just that as a politician determined to position herself as a centrist, she would be more likely to pander to SUV-loving voters. She has to play catch-up on the global warming issue," Matson said.

Gore's documentary, which rolls out across the country this week, is a movie that he said is meant as a wake-up call for Americans to become more energy efficient.

But, according to some political analysts, it also seems to have been a wake-up call for Clinton to get on the global warming bandwagon.

Greg Howard, a longtime political operative who worked on Bill Clinton's and Al Gore's presidential campaigns in 1988 and 1992, said Gore's powerpoint presentation-styled documentary must have convinced Clinton that it's a buzz issue she should take a stand on.

"There's no question, on global warming Gore is much better equipped to handle the topic. Hands down. His biggest problem is that he's yesterday's news," Howard said.

But he said Clinton is another story altogether.