Hillary Without Tears

There's going to be a lot of attention paid in the next few weeks to Senator Clinton's personal life. Her new book, according to the Associated Press, tells of her rage at her husband after his betrayal of her with Monica Lewinsky. If Mrs. Clinton wants to air her personal troubles in public for the purposes of a multimillion-dollar book advance, well, we're all for capitalism.

Our own issues with Mrs. Clinton these days have nothing to do with her personal life and a lot to do with the substance of the policy matters in Washington where she represents us. She has voted against President Bush's tax cuts. These tax cuts are good for New Yorkers, who already pay the federal government far more than they get back in taxes, and who are particularly represented among the payers of the dividend, estate, capital gains, and high-income-tax bracket-levies that the Bush tax cuts help. Mrs. Clinton's opposition to them has been rooted in di visive class warfare rhetoric: "Never in the field of economics have so few been given so much at the expense of so many," she has argued.

Just as disappointing has been her stance on the Middle East. Take a bill sponsored by Senators Brownback, Inouye, and Schumer that would support a plebiscite in Iran to give the people there a chance to remove Iran's terrorist, human-rights-abusing theocracy. Mrs. Clinton says through a spokesman that she's "considering" the bill. Somehow, Senator Schumer managed to see clearly and quickly that this was a good idea. But Mrs. Clinton is still "considering." Maybe if she had spent less time book-writing and dissecting her marital life on network television, she'd have had the time to catch up to Mr. Schumer on this one by now. Meanwhile, each day, the mullahs in Iran get closer to building a nuclear weapon to use against Israel.

Also on the Middle East, there's the Bush administration's nomination of Daniel Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Mr. Schumer has expressed support for the nomination, which has been opposed by the usual crowd of anti-American, anti-Israel Arab extremist groups. Mrs. Clinton, who is on the committee that needs to vote to confirm Mr. Pipes, has hemmed and hawed. It's an area where her leadership is lacking.

Mrs. Clinton has made some gestures in the direction of reason on welfare policy, and she cast a vote in favor of war against Iraq, for which we've praised her. On the Middle East, our general sense is that she's progressed from where she was during her tenure as first lady. But much as Mrs. Clinton's personal travails deserve a certain sympathy, she is at the point where she can be judged by the voters as a senator.