A POLARIZING WOMAN

Samantha Power, when she was a star member of the Barack Obama team, provided one of the latest proofs that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a polarizing force in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. In an interview with a Scottish newspaper, she blurted out that Mrs. Clinton was a “monster.” She tried in vain to put the remark off the record and had to resign from the campaign.

The incident typified the reaction of some women to the Clinton candidacy. But many others, probably a substantial majority, stand enthusiastically behind her. Votes of women were key to her decisive victory in Ohio and her narrow win in Texas and could determine the outcome in the April 22 primary in Pennsylvania.

While Sen. Obama is an inspirational force, Sen. Clinton clearly will be a polarizing force all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August – and, if she should win the nomination, in the race against John McCain.

Hatred is not too strong a word for the visceral dislike expressed by some women. Consider a string of columns in The Wall Street Journal by Peggy Noonan, a former speech writer for Ronald Reagan. In mid-February, under the headline “Confidence or Derangement,” she said Mrs. Clinton’s way was “bluster and combat,” while “a better way might be honesty.” She explained the Ohio and Texas victories by calling Sen. Clinton “hardy, resilient, tough,” and “a train on a track, an Iron Horse.” She went on with a dour prediction if Sen. Clinton should win: “The very qualities that impress us are the qualities that will make her a painful president. She does not care what you think, she will have what she wants, she will not do the feints, pivots and backoffs that presidents must. She is neither nimble nor agile. She will wear a great nation down.”

And then there is Maureen Dowd, a sharp-tongued New York Times columnist who fawns on Sen. Obama. She wrote on March 5 that some women in their 30s, 40s and nearly 50s who favor Mr. Obama speak of Mrs. Clinton’s “shoulder-pad feminism.” That is, “that women have moved past that men-are-pigs, woe-is-me, sisters-must-stick-together pantsuits-are powerful era that Hillary’s campaign has revived with a vengeance.” So much for the women who want to see the first woman president.

On the other hand, The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz was able to find no commentary that said Sen. Obama was “whining,” a term often pinned on Sen. Clinton. Ms. Rabinowitz suggested in a March 7 column that media criticism may have done Mrs. Clinton some good, since Americans had begun to notice “all those recitals, by pundits and reporters, of her bleak chances – particularly compared with the celebratory tones accompanying reports on Mr. Obama’s crowds and prospects.”

In physics, polarization is measured in pluses and minuses. Hillary Clinton is working on the pluses.