Potomac Watch

A Republican senator running for re-election next year recently reacted this way to Hillary Rodham Clinton's now probable New York Senate campaign:

"Can't you get her to run against me?"

Think of the benefits, added this savvy GOP pol. He could immediately fire his fund-raisers. A couple of national mass-mailings would bring in more than enough campaign cash. The chance to beat the First Tiger Lady would unite otherwise fractious Republicans from Jerry Falwell to Christie Whitman. And victory would make him a national GOP celebrity.

That widely shared sentiment says more about Mrs. Clinton's political ambition than all of the canned public Democratic applause she's now hearing. In private, many Democrats are worried about her candidacy. It's Republicans who are pleased, if also dumbfounded at her audacity.

"I continue to be astonished that she's going to run," says one operative charged with re-electing a GOP Senate. "There's a virtual certainty that if she runs it hurts everything else Democrats want to do."

No Democrat can afford to say this on the record, of course. And the First Lady's media friends have stayed quiet, perhaps to encourage what everyone understands would be a reporter's dream -- two presidential races for the price of one.

The exception is The New Republic, which has trashed her candidacy as loudly as it's promoting Al Gore's -- and which is no coincidence, comrade. Its editors know Mr. Gore has enough problems without adding Hillary's.

Any Democrat not inhaling James Carville's exhaust can tell you the risks: She'll suck money and attention away from other viable Democrats, especially those challenging vulnerable GOP incumbents. Sens. Slade Gorton of Washington and Spence Abraham of Michigan, both likely to have women as opponents, should be especially pleased that the First Feminist will have first call on national liberal cash.

Hillary's run also makes it harder for Mr. Gore to establish his own identity. The point isn't that the vice president won't be his own man. It's that Hillary's political prominence will remind everyone of the controversies of the last eight years.

This can't help a candidate whose standing already suffers from national Clinton fatigue. About half the country says the veep is too close to Mr. Clinton, and 52% say they're less likely to vote for him if Saturday Night Bill campaigns actively for him. Like it or not, Hillary would be Mr. Gore's de facto running mate. Her stumping this week as part of "Women for Gore" was an implicit payback for the veep assuming this burden.

My guess is that Mrs. Clinton's scandals would hurt her less in New York than many Republicans hope (even when Ken Starr's final report includes copious detail about her scandal role). Her bigger problem would be her liberalism and her cool, condescending public persona.

Given all of this, the most interesting question is, Why even take such a gamble? Why not leave Washington gracefully, take a job that keeps you in the limelight (say, the Red Cross) but out of the line of fire, and return to politics after the passions of the 1990s recede into misty nostalgia?

Sure, Mrs. Clinton wants to be president and so needs to show she can win votes in her own right. But she could do that more easily in 2004 in Illinois, a state where she has genuine roots, against a weaker Republican than Mayor Rudy Giuliani in New York, a state where she's a carpetbagger.

No, the only way to comprehend a run in 2000 is as part of a compulsive, almost maniacal attempt at political vindication. Her candidacy only makes sense as an In-Your-Face dare to the country to validate the First Couple's years in office.

Her friends say that, even more fiercely than her husband, she believes the pair have been unjustly maligned. In their first term Whitewater cost her the chance to become Eleanor II, and in the second Monica forced her to become the role model she never wanted to be, a national Tammy Wynette. More even than Bill, she holds grudges and wants revenge.

Victory in 2000 would erase the stain of impeachment and scandal, repudiate her critics, and give her the chance to build the New Progressive era that she put up with philandering Bill in order to create.

Understood this way, her candidacy is a monumental act of political vanity that raises the stakes in 2000 even higher than they already are. And it fits the strategy of the past year, when her husband has put victory in 2000 above any second-term accomplishment. It also puts her own fortunes above her party's, but that's always been the Clinton way. The party, c'est moi.

And, who knows, maybe Republicans will be stupid enough to help her. The best news Mrs. Clinton could get would be a late (September 2000) and vicious GOP primary between Mr. Giuliani and Long Island Rep. Rick Lazio that saps their resources and tarnishes the winner. And that could happen.

On the other hand, the Clintons had better hope that Americans, and especially New Yorkers, don't begin to view them as the house guests from Arkansas who entertained us for a while but grew tedious and now refuse to leave.