Inside Politics

Clinton and Murdoch

The specter of an alliance between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, and media mogul Rupert Murdoch “is beginning to whet the appetites of the chattering classes,” the New York Observer reports.

“At the moment, the two speak of each other (through surrogates) in notably similar terms:

” ‘Senator Clinton respects him and thinks he is smart and effective,’ said a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Philippe Reines.

” ‘Rupert has respect for her political skills and for the hard work that she’s done as a senator,’ said an executive vice president at News Corp., Gary Ginsberg.

“Other evidence is still a bit lean. …

“But what a couple they’d make!” Observer reporter Ben Smith said. “For the 74-year-old native of Australia, an embrace of Mrs. Clinton would be only the latest in a long string of daring and (mostly) winning political plays. For New York’s junior senator, it would be the perfection of an art that she and her husband have practiced for more than a decade: keeping your enemies close.”

Fox hires Clark

Former Gen. Wesley Clark, a Bush critic who ran for president as a Democrat last year, has been hired by the Fox News Channel as a military and foreign-affairs analyst, the network announced yesterday.

“I am excited by this opportunity to contribute to Fox News Channel’s coverage and offer my perspective to the important issues facing the United States and the global community,” Mr. Clark said.

Mr. Clark ended his presidential bid after the Tennessee and Virginia primaries in February 2004 and soon thereafter traveled around the United States in support of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry.

A lack of deference

“In the minds of many liberal Democrats, Hispanics and African Americans must seem to come in only two varieties: deferential or defective,” syndicated columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr. writes.

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