Clinton sheds tough image

LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Meet the softer side of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Gone is the tough and all-business presidential candidate who regularly blared at rival Sen. Barack Obama, who lately is instead battling self-inflicted wounds. In her place is what most people who know her well say was there all along — a warm and engaging woman willing to laugh at herself.

“I’m riding shotgun!” Mrs. Clinton exclaimed to local radio jocks while joining an Indiana commuter for his trek to work yesterday, explaining that because of her security she rarely gets to ride up front.

“The best part of what I’m doing right now is I’m sitting in the front seat. You can’t imagine what that feels like.”

She also hammed it up for the tollbooth operator and beamed that despite being tired from a rigorous campaign, “I’m having such a good time, I’m really out here enjoying myself.”

It was similar to the glimpse she allowed voters back in New Hampshire, when the former first lady got choked up responding to a question about how she keeps it all together. That moment earned her sympathy from many voters who sometimes deem her calculating in favorability polls, and even her aides said it was “humanizing.”

Video: Superdelegate switches from Clinton to Obama

The next night, when she won the Granite State’s primary, Mrs. Clinton announced she’d found her voice. Such moments have popped up on the trail since, but lately she has been relaying stories from her childhood and engaging voters with tales of people she’s met along the way that have emotionally moved her.

Several of her television ads, as the two Democrats continue to fight for the nomination, feature photos of Mrs. Clinton as a young girl, and she tells voters she is the candidate who is comfortable in the kitchen.

She was photographed doing a shot with a beer chaser and has been charming older women with hugs and knowing smiles about the challenges women have faced.

She’s even joined in on a self-parody on Saturday Night Live, telling the Indiana radio hosts yesterday that she figured, “Oh, why not? I thought it would be a lot of fun.”

The comedy skit marked a turning point for the campaign when she began to get more personal, and the strategy helps the New York senator retain her core supporters — women and older voters — and longtime friends say it is truer to her personality.

To underscore her plan to improve the student loan system, last night she told about 1,000 voters here at a town-hall forum about her agreement with her dad when it came to college — he’d pay for it but if she wanted a cup of coffee she had to buy it herself. When she opted to go to law school, she was on her own, she said, to chuckles.

Voters later said they found her more “real” than other politicians.

“She’s got so much energy, I don’t know how she does it,” said Beth Dahl of West Lafayette.

Mrs. Clinton began her campaign with an “experienced” theme, running as a no-nonsense policy wonk who commanded audiences with her knowledge of the facts and figures while tackling issues such as autism and retirement savings.

Over the last few weeks of the Iowa campaign, when aides began to worry she would not fare well in the kick-off caucus, she began a “Hillary I Know” push, bringing out old friends, her mom and her daughter to offer voters a more intimate side of the candidate. Sometimes she would talk about feeling rejected as a young girl when she wrote to NASA inquiring how to apply to be an astronaut.

“I got back an answer saying that they weren’t taking women. I have lived long enough to see that change,” Mrs. Clinton said last fall.

Now, after a months-long and bruising campaign with Mr. Obama, of Illinois, she’s personal all over again.

Mrs. Clinton outlines her American dream upbringing in a new ad in which she says, “My mother taught Sunday school and took care of us.”

“I carry with me not just their dreams but the dreams of people like them all across our country,” Mrs. Clinton says in a soft voice in the ad. “People who embrace hard work and opportunity, who never stop believing in the promise of America. It’s a promise I intend to keep.”

During Mrs. Clinton’s Pennsylvania victory speech, she talked about a woman who handed her a photograph of her father receiving the Medal of Honor from President Truman after World War II.

“He had risked his life on a daring mission to drive back the enemy and protect his fellow soldiers,” Mrs. Clinton told her audience. “In the corner of that photo, in shaky handwriting, this American hero had simply written: ’To Hillary Clinton, keep fighting for us.’ And that is what I’m going to do because America is worth fighting for. You are worth fighting for.”

The campaign itself also has taken on a more personal feel since she announced she had loaned herself $5 million to compete with the Obama fundraising juggernaut.

When appealing personally to people in Web videos and by saying people shouldn’t count her out, Mrs. Clinton attracted thousands of new donors. Her Web site now features their comments, along with voter testimonials about Chelsea Clinton and videos showing huge screaming crowds.

“I’ve just made my 3rd $100 contribution to the campaign! Hillary, I’m one of those mothers whispering in my daughters’ ears … they really can be whatever they want! Keep paving the way!!” reads one comment featured prominently on the home page this week.

Maya Angelou uses a soft-spoken tone in a new Clinton ad running in North Carolina — where voters Tuesday join Indiana Democrats in heading to the polls — to call Mrs. Clinton a woman “who can make a difference in our country.”

“She dares to say human beings are more alike than we are unalike,” Ms. Angelou says.

Mrs. Clinton’s recent uptick in polls and her Pennsylvania win suggest the strategy is working — she is winning over women in bigger numbers than ever.

Despite showing the softer side more often, she did pause to tell Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly she found Mr. Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., to be “offensive and outrageous.”

The backlash over Mr. Wright’s anti-American sermons — and his subsequent media tour when he accused Mr. Obama of just acting like a politician — have been a headache for Mr. Obama for weeks. He publicly divorced himself from Mr. Wright in a press conference Tuesday but still faces questions from Republicans and Mrs. Clinton.

“I sure don’t believe the United States government was behind AIDS,” Mrs. Clinton told Mr. O’Reilly, referring to Mr. Wright’s claim that the AIDS virus might have been developed by the federal government to attack the black community.

But the Obama campaign was flush with good news yesterday — announcing backing from three new superdelegates, the elected officials and party activists who supplement the delegates earned during state contests and who will decide the nominee.

Mrs. Clinton won two new superdelegates but still trails Mr. Obama overall. Including superdelegates, he has 1,731 toward the 2,024 needed to win the Democratic nomination, while she has 1,597, according to an Associated Press tally.

Mr. Obama holds a strong lead in North Carolina polls while a Real Clear Politics average of Indiana polls show her with a 2.2-point lead.