THE NOTE: A Kinder, Gentler Hillary

October 24, 2007 — -- Sometimes politicians say things that sound like gaffes and are. (Ask Mitt Romney.)

Sometimes they say things that sound like gaffes but aren't. (Right, John McCain?)

Sometimes they send things out with typos that are hyped into being gaffes. (Was Barack Obama's mailing was a rush rush job job?)

Sometimes candidates shamelessly pander and hope that Yankee fans chalk it up to a gaffe. (Now you're an American League fan? Seriously, Rudy, how could you?)

And sometimes their spouses do the talking for them -- and there may or may not be gaffes involved when you get them going. (Let's let Elizabeth Edwards speak) for the entire political class: "If it ended up on the front page of Drudge, I didn't say it right."

But when you get a candidate talking about his or her spouse, some things that sound like possible gaffes aren't. In the case of the scripted candidacy of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., where little is left for chance, the actual gaffes are few and far between. So when Clinton told Essence magazine that her husband is "so romantic" -- "He's always bringing me back things from his trips" -- it's a good bet that a larger strategy was at work.

Bill Clinton bought her a Chanel watch because the white cubes reminded him of her teeth? That's just weird enough to actually happen in a real-life marriage. And this is Clinton as we've rarely seen her before: "I never doubted that it was a marriage worth investing in even in the midst of those challenges and I'm really happy that I made that decision. Again, not a decision for everybody. And I think it's so important for women to stand up for the right of women to make a decision that is best for them."

It's another step in the great softening of Hillary Clinton. She has never been the touch-feely emotional type, and she isn't now, either. But she's reaching out to female voters, and marveling at how much attention a 60-year-old woman (OK, 50-something for two more days) is getting from all these men. Her pollster is predicting a seismic shift in voting patterns if a woman is nominated. She talked recently about her struggles as a young working mother, as she learned to master the basics of parenting while pursuing her legal career.

Clinton has her gaffes, too. As ABC's Jake Tapper asks, did she really intend to dis Mississippi? (Some in Mississippi think so.)

But this kinder, gentler Clinton on the trail appears to be having an impact on perceptions many thought were too baked in by 15 years of the public spotlight to melt during a campaign. "Clinton has neutralized the political fallout from some of the most difficult moments of her eight years as first lady, with Democratic voters looking favorably on her failed effort to revamp healthcare and either supporting or having no opinion of her decision to remain loyal to an unfaithful husband," Peter Wallsten and Janet Hook write in the Los Angeles Times.

She's up 15 points since June in the Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll, while Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has dropped 5. That's another 30-point advantage in a national poll for Clinton, who is running up scores like the old Chicago Bulls.

"Nearly two-thirds of Democrats and nearly half of all voters say Hillary Clinton's famously unsuccessful effort in the 1990s to provide health coverage for all Americans makes her better able now to deal with healthcare as president," Wallsten and Hook write. "And 42% of Democrats agreed it was the 'right thing' for Hillary Clinton to stick with her husband after his affair with a White House intern, compared with 5% who said it was the wrong choice."

Clinton is relying on her husband's old team every step of the way. Newsweek's Howard Fineman reports that she's set to receive the endorsement of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

"And so the Clinton Family Machine grinds on," Fineman writes. "Lord knows Hillary's campaign could still implode . . . but with each passing day the evidence mounts of just how methodical her campaign is, and just how much it is built on the legacy and contacts of her husband's career."

And her fund-raising advantage is in red states as well as blue -- sorry, former senator John Edwards, D-N.C. "Clinton expanded her donor pool during the summer into states that previously favored Obama -- like Iowa, Colorado and Connecticut -- to beat his third-quarter cash haul, $27.3 million to $20.6 million," Michael McAuliff writes for the New York Daily News. "Other early Obama states that flipped to Clinton in the latest quarter include Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Carolina -- states many experts would consider tough for Clinton to win in a general election, but where party faithful are apparently now more willing to put their money on her."

As for Obama, he's pressuring Clinton on Iran to get at her over Iraq, and last night he celebrated an endorsement of a prominent former Clinton administration official who lives awfully close to New Hampshire.

At a massive rally last night on Boston Common, Gov. Deval Patrick, D-Mass., "offered a forceful argument for Obama, casting the presidential election as one of historic proportions in which merely a change in party would be insufficient," Scott Helman reports in The Boston Globe. Said Patrick: "You see, this election is not just about who we want. It's about who we are."

Helman writes, "Last night's event underscored the potential value of Patrick's support. Before Patrick and Obama spoke, field workers on Obama's campaign were recruiting people from the crowd to canvass in New Hampshire, even as early as this weekend. And in a measure of Obama's organizational strength, his Boston-area supporters have been receiving text messages, e-mails, and personal phone calls over the past several days urging them to come to the rally."

But it was Obama's interaction with Patrick's predecessor -- or, at least, his predecessor's tangled tongue -- that drew the biggest headlines yesterday. Former governor Mitt Romney, R-Mass., unfurled a classic clunker in South Carolina: "Just look at what Osam . . . Barack Obama said just yesterday. Barack Obama calling on, on radicals, Jihadists of all different types to come together in Iraq."

He's not the first politician to make that mistake, and he won't be the last. Obama said he didn't really care, but his campaign denounced the "fear-mongering" it claims is "at the heart" of Romney's campaign, ABC's Matt Stuart, Teddy Davis, and Sunlen Miller report. "Apparently, Mitt Romney can switch names just as casually as he switches positions, but what's wrongheaded is continuing a misguided war in Iraq that has left America less safe," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.