'Angry' Hillary Clinton Plays Gender Victim

Responding to Republican claims that she may be too angry to win national office, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton told an audience Monday to wear such criticism as "a badge of honor" and suggested that gender played a role in the attacks.

"When you run as a Democrat, and in particular, when you run as a Democratic woman, whether you're running at the local, state or national level, it's likely you're going to draw some unfriendly fire," Clinton said at a breakfast fund-raiser hosted by black and Hispanic women supporters. "People will be attacking you instead of your ideas; they may impugn your patriotism; they may even say you're angry."

She added, "If they do that, wear it as a badge of honor, because you know what? There are lots of things that we should be angry and outraged about these days." She cited, among other things, the federal budget deficit, lobbying scandals in Washington, and the government's slow response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

It was the latest volley in a rhetorical back-and-forth between Clinton and leading GOP strategists that began last month, when Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman said Clinton "seems to have a lot of anger" and that American voters tend not to elect angry candidates.

He pointed to comments Clinton made on Martin Luther King Day, when she called the Bush administration "one of the worst" in history, and compared the Republican-controlled House to a plantation.

Top White House strategist Karl Rove later echoed that view, telling Washington Times reporter Bill Sammon in a new book that Clinton could have trouble winning the White House because there is a "brittleness about her."

Clinton, who has not yet said whether she's considering a presidential run in 2008, has responded in various ways. At first, she called the attacks a diversion from Republican "failures and shortcomings." And in a radio interview last week, she said "Karl Rove spends a lot of time obsessing about me," suggesting he spends more time thinking about her political future than she did.

Until now, she has not said she considered any of the criticisms gender-based, although many observers have done so.

They include New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who said Republicans "are casting Hillary Clinton as an angry woman, a she-monster melding images of Medea, the Furies, harpies, and a knife-wielding Glenn Close in 'Fatal Attraction.'"

Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, said he agreed with Clinton's assessment but questioned whether she should have said anything.

"I think she's right, but whether or not it was prudent to acknowledge it this way is another thing," Baker said. "I think another politician might have dealt with it more humorously, to defuse its influence."

For her part, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Tara Wall declined to address the suggestion gender played a role in the attacks.

"When you vote to consistently raise people's taxes, vote against common-sense judicial nominees and use Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday to divide Americans along racial lines, you're likely to encourage criticism of both your ideas and temperament," she said.

Clinton's comments came the same day Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland, a former Pentagon official under President Reagan, said she would seek the Republican nomination to challenge Clinton's re-election bid this year.