Among my many guilty pleasures — bad reality television, solitary nose excavation, the Fox News Channel — hating Hillary Clinton was once near the top of the list. The senator from New York somehow managed to arouse every one of my love-to-hate zones.

She was a self-righteous feminist (boo) who married her way to power (double-plus-boo). She wanted to turn American medicine into the National Health Service (grrr) and all her friends were wealthy lawyers (triple eye-roll). She was Lady Macbeth when she wasn’t some goo-goo liberal ideologue.

There were as many ways to despise her as she had hairstyles. Then we even got to hate her hairstyles as well. One of my most treasured moments editing The New Republic in the 1990s was publishing a cover story by Camille Paglia on Hillary called “Ice Queen, Drag Queen”. Ah, those were the days.

She can still provoke something of the same response. A while back I was musing with Pat Buchanan, the old Republican warhorse, about the parlous state of his party. “Only one thing can save us now,” he grumbled. “And it’s Hillary.”

Even her allies loathe her. Two years ago David Geffen, the billionaire Democrat, told a New York crowd: “She can’t win and she’s an incredibly polarising figure. Ambition is just not a good enough reason.” She is currently fourth in those too-early-by-a-year polls in Iowa. And if you miss seeing an unflattering photograph of her, just check the Drudge Report. Before too long, one will probably pop up. And I’ll find myself in a wave of nostalgia.

Why am I having a hard time keeping the wave afloat? The answer is relatively simple. Clinton has been an almost painfully reasonable, centrist, sensible senator. I’d like to hate her but she’s foiling me every time.

Take the Iraq war. She voted for it but with shrewd reservations. “If we were to attack Iraq now, alone or with few allies, it would set a precedent that could come back to haunt us,” she told the Senate before voting to give Bush authorisation. “For all its appeal, a unilateral attack, while it cannot be ruled out, on the present facts is not a good option.” In retrospect those were wise words — but they are not helping her now with an increasingly anti-war Democratic base, especially since she continues to refuse to disown her vote.

Or take her recent manoeuvring over what the Pentagon had called a “surge” and last week was calling “plus-up” in Iraq. She opposed the new plan but did so in a written statement before jetting off to see the troops. She is close to David Petraeus, the gifted general who has been tasked with calming the non-Sadrite parts of Baghdad with a handful of troops.

Her critics call this calculation. Arianna Huffington says Clinton reeks of the scent of fear. John Edwards’s campaign, which has staked out the strongest anti-war stance, has already tried to reinforce this perception. Edwards recently charged, in a veiled reference to Clinton: “If you’re in Congress and you know that this war is going in the wrong direction, it is no longer enough to study your options and keep your own counsel.”

Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s aide, responded a little touchily: “In 2004 John Edwards used to constantly brag about running a positive campaign. Today he has unfortunately chosen to open his campaign with political attacks on Democrats who are fighting the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.”

Is Clinton “fighting” the Bush administration’s Iraq policy or trying to ameliorate it? Both, I’d say. It’s a perfectly rational position for a grown-up politician to take. When you consider her statements as a whole throughout a confusing, dynamic, dangerous war, what comes across is reasonableness and responsibility. “I am cursed with the responsibility gene. I am. I admit to that,” she told The New York Times last week. “

You’ve got to be very careful in how you proceed with any combat situation in which American lives are at stake.”

Quite so. But the line between prudence and calculation can be a thin one. And at times the centrism seems almost pathological. Here she is explaining her foreign policy philosophy to The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Goldberg: “We can critique the idealists, who have an almost faith-based idealism without adequate understanding or evidence-based decision making, and we can critique the realists for rejecting the importance of aspiration and values in foreign policy. You know, I find myself, as I often do, in the somewhat lonely middle.”

There are two things to say about that. The first is that she shouldn’t use “critique” as a verb. The second is that it’s very hard to disagree with her. The question in American foreign policy should never be whether one is a realist or an idealist. It should always be which blend of each is appropriate in the face of any specific challenge. I have no doubt, for example, that the first Bush administration in 1988-92 was too realist; and that the second one, which we are currently enduring, is too idealist. But who do we trust to get the balance right in the future? Hillary is essentially saying that we should trust her. She is giving us a clear signal of what a second Clinton administration would be like: all the centrism and responsibility of her husband’s eight years but without any of the charm.

Is that what Americans want? It seems that what they want is a form of escapism (in the form of Edwards), charisma (in the shape of Barack Obama), or integrity (in the guise of John McCain). But when the decision nears and the stakes, especially abroad, begin to seep in, might Hillary be right? Might they actually be yearning for dullness, competence and responsibility? Americans historically elect presidents who are an antidote to the flaws of the previous one. Nixon begat Carter who begat Reagan. When you think of George W Bush, the word “reckless” springs to mind. And what is the antidote to reckless? “I am cursed with the responsibility gene,” said a candidate last week. She may be revealing extremely good political instincts. Or she may, of course, be calculating again.

Dammit. Hating her was much easier.

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