Born Again Hillary

Henry IV was a stud. Charismatic, witty, good with the ladies, he was The Man in 16th century France-imagine JFK in puffy sleeves. But Henry IV had one small problem. Henry was a Protestant when it wasn't cool to be a Protestant. Try as he might, no matter how much he charmed, glad-handed, and baby-kissed, at the end of the day the people still wanted a Catholic king. So finally he just said to hell with it: "Paris is well worth a mass." And he converted to Catholicism. Popular and now suitable, Henry IV was crowned King of France less than a year later in 1594.

Hillary Clinton is not a stud. She's a cold, hard, manipulative (insert colorful noun here), reviled by men, soccer moms, and Southerners as a ruthless power-monger who only stuck by her man for her own political ambitions.

Hillary is no fool. She realizes the Democratic Party is in shambles. But rather than step in and try to gamble her political clout on reviving the party, Hillary is preserving herself for 2008. By distancing herself from the current brouhaha, Hillary is ensuring that Americans won't associate her with the whiny brand of liberals that have been filleted at the polls thus far this decade. Sure, she might not be from the South (as the only two Democratic presidents since the '60s have been), but she'll do the next best thing. She'll swallow her pride and reinvent herself religious. If she can't beat them, she'll join them.

And that's exactly what Hillary's been doing. Hillary has peppered her latest speeches with "God" and "faith," and she has begun lauding faith-based initiatives. She has shifted from Bill's "safe, legal, and rare" abortion rhetoric to her own, more conservative, "sad, even tragic, choice to many, many women" shtick. She's been pushing more and more for teen abstinence. Recently, she declared that "I've always been a praying person."

When TV got big in the 1960s, the media was a charming politician's best friend. With tours of the White House and exclusive interviews, JFK had everyone eating out of his hand. He essentially dictated what reporters could and could not report. The press would not divulge JFK's affairs because it was none of their business.

But then Vietnam and Watergate happened and everything became their business. Everything except religion.

Decades later it remains the last bastion from media scrutiny. The press looks the other way at the whole merger of church and state. Even the most meddling reporters won't go there. (President Bush supposedly believes God put him in office-not the Supreme Court-but this has not been touched by the press.) In a nation where more Americans believe in Adam and Eve than Darwin's theory of evolution, the media knows that to stir up any religious controversy is suicide.

But this is Hillary Clinton we're talking about. You can just picture delirious FOX reporters lining up to take a blind whack at Hillary and see who can get her to crack first. With such a polarizing figure front and center, this could be the election where some trigger-happy reporter finally blows open the religious facade in politics.

Or the press could choose to "believe" Hillary. Afraid of prying open Pandora's box, the media will go along with her. They'll eat up her Sunday school anecdotes. They'll broadcast her sermons. They'll reinforce how untouchable religion is. And how brilliant Hillary's game plan is.

Hillary's gamble is a bold strategy and a smart one that Democrats everywhere should notice. It foreshadows the direction Democrats are headed in, by necessity, as they try to get a foothold in the Bible Belt. Hillary could very well be in the driver's seat as Democrats try to catch up to Republicans in the chase for NASCAR nation.

Somewhere, Henry IV is smiling.