Cover Girl: America's Love-Hate Relationship With Hillary Clinton Examined In This Week's TIME Magazine Cover Story

America does indeed have a love-hate relationship with the junior senator from New York.

But it's not the traditional love-hate thing (where you both love and hate someone at the same time).

No. It appears that some Americans really love Hillary, while nearly as many really hate her.

How will all this play out in her bid for the presidency in 2008?

The Guardian (UK) has this take on a Time poll released today. According to the poll Hillary is just two percentage points behind in a one-on-one battle with Republican Sen. John McCain of Ariozona. That's her best showing against McCain to date. But, as the poll itself shows she now is just a few percentage points ahead of 2000 Democratic presidential candidate and former vice president (under Hillary''s husband) Al Gore, who claims he has no intention of running again.

Some other findings of the poll: Some 81% consider the senator to be intelligent, 67% consider her politcally moderate. But beyond that, there seems to be little consensus about Clinton.

One interesting tidbit in the poll: 57% of Democrats agree Sen. Clinton did the right thing in staying with her husband after the Monica Lewinsky affair. Just 32% of the Republicans - the party of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act - think she made the right decision in remaining in her marriage.

Personally I wish those questions would go away. But the electorate often makes its decisions on things that would seemingly have little to do with a person's competence for the job, so we would be remiss for ignoring such information.

TIME also offers you a chance to weigh in on the Senator. These so-called flash polls are not worth much, except for an occasional "lookie here!", but click here if you want to ad your two cents.

Just FYI, while our computer was down for a few days the Clinton senate campaign announced the opening of its regional offices, including one in Westchester.

Here are the particulars:

Meeting Times:

Saturday, August 26 at 10 a.m.
Tuesday, August 29 at 6 p.m.
Wednesday, August 30 at 12:30 p.m.

Office:

Friends of Hillary
170 East Post Rd
Room 210
White Plains, NY 10601
Email: westchester@hillaryclinton.com