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Read other letters about this article
From me - just a supporter.
She has actually already proven she can deliver hope, change and unity.
From CBS: "For the Record" on Hillary continued:
Her grassroots victory would go down as one of Bill Clinton's most significant gubernatorial accomplishments.
It prompted her husband to hand her an even larger policy initiative as soon as he won the White House - health care reform.
"Now is our chance to beat the historical odds and give the American people the health security they need and deserve," Clinton said at the time.
Defeated, but not deterred, Clinton set her sights on more manageable goals, like creating the State Children's Health Care Program and increasing vaccination rates.
Still, behind the scenes she had the last word on so many issues, staffers had a nickname for her: "The Supreme Court."
It was her idea to tap Janet Reno for attorney general … and Madeleine Albright for secretary of state.
Her position on NAFTA has become a point of contention in job-strapped Ohio.
Publicly, she supported it in those early days. But within White House walls …
"She had grave reservations about NAFTA - was probably against it," said Reporter and biographer Carl Bernstein.
Clinton has cited her extensive travel - 80 trips as First Lady - as part of her foreign policy experience. She promoted microfinance in Latin America, peace in Bosnia and, famously, human rights in China.
..For the most part she functioned as more of a Goodwill Ambassador.
But instead of retreating from public life, she decided to run for office herself.
"I want to be the next senator from New York!" Clinton said.
Like Sen. Obama, she faced a relatively weak Republican opponent. Unlike Obama, she shunned the spotlight her first few years in office.
"She went into the Senate not as a show horse but as a work horse," said former Hillary Clinton press secretary Lisa Caputo.
Learning the Senate power structure, landing a coveted spot on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and reaching out to former Republican foes.
She teamed with Bill First on modernizing medical record - and with Tom DeLay on foster care. She teamed with Lindsay Graham, who had led the impeachment effort against her husband, on benefits for veterans. She worked with Newt Gingrich on health care policy.
"We were agreeing with each other so much, I think people were thinking: 'the end is near!'" Clinton said about her collaboration with Gingrich.
"The most fascinating thing about Clinton in the Senate was to hear the conservative Republicans that had gone back home and often advanced their own political careers by using Hillary as the great whipping person," said Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, "going around saying privately and for some of them publicly, 'wow what a nice person and what a terrific colleague.'"
But all of her efforts to bridge the gap with the right were seen by some on the left as burning bridges with her base.
Her vote to authorize the Iraq War in 2002 still haunts Clinton on the campaign trail.
She said at the time: "We say to him use these powers wisely and as a last resort!"
She has won over her adopted state, cruising to reelection in 2006.
Last year, she steered more money to her state than only a handful of senators - $342 million worth of infrastructure projects, defense contracts and other earmarks.
"Her record in the Senate has been one of finding allies in strange places, and after a period of building confidence then using her celebrity not to take credit for everything but to get leverage," Ornstein said."
