IN 1993 a Clinton aide included a group of Republicans on the guest list of a White House event designed to rally support for the President’s trade policy.

He thought the move astute, tactical, the type that his boss would admire. His reward was a fearsome rollicking from the First Lady.

“What are you doing inviting these people into my home?” Hillary Clinton said, almost sobbing with anger. “These people are our enemies. They are trying to destroy us.”

Twelve years later she is considerably less bellicose on the subject. In fact, when Mrs Clinton is seen in public in Washington, the chances are that she will be making common cause with a Republican. Often they are from the right wing of the party.

Republicans are no longer enemies, more the key to her political future.

A book on the Clinton years published this week — The Survivor, by John Harris, of The Washington Post, serves as a reminder of how far Mrs Clinton has come in her quest to return to the White House as President. There are signs everywhere that it is her goal. For example, in the elections for the Senate next year she will not promise, as she did when first running for her New York seat in 2000, to serve a full six-year term. That would close off the widely expected run for the presidency in 2008.

Mrs Clinton has gathered around her many of those who helped her husband to defeat the first President Bush in 1992, including Mandy Grunwald, Patti Doyle and Mark Penn, her chief strategist, who worked for the Labour Party in the recent British general election. She has developed a clearly defined political strategy to occupy the middle ground with both rhetoric and substance. And she has been careful not to allow a cigarette paper come between herself and the Republican mainstream on anything to do with national security, particularly Iraq.

The woman who railed against the “vast right-wing conspiracy” when the Monica Lewinsky scandal threatened to sink her husband’s presidency now spends much of her time reaching across the partisan divide. Last month she appeared alongside Newt Gingrich, her husband’s nemesis in the mid-1990s, to promote a healthcare initiative that the pair had crafted jointly.

She has previously co- sponsored legislation with Rick Santorum, the most senior Republican senator from the Religious Right, on the impact of television on children.

The rewards for Mrs Clinton are becoming clear. Last week for the first time a majority of voters indicated that they were ready to vote for her to become the nation’s first female President. In a Gallup survey, 29 per cent said that they were very likely to back Mrs Clinton and 24 per cent were somewhat likely.

She has also dodged a serious potential complication with the acquittal last week of her former fundraiser of charges that would have mired her in the all-too-familiar territory of financial scandal.

Her supporters have been at pains to challenge the assertion that perhaps the most divisive figure in modern American politics is reinventing herself. She has always been moderate on abortion, for instance, argued Peter Beinart, Editor of the left-of-centre magazine The New Republic. He said that she was relying on the same formula that her husband had used to cross the cultural divide by saying that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare”.

Nevertheless, Mrs Clinton clearly has made great efforts to show that she is keen to find new ways in which politicians from both sides can discuss issues such as abortion without partisan rancour.

TOUGH TALK

‘This is a f****** coup d’état!’
Bill Clinton to Al Gore, his Vice-President, after the Monica Lewinsky story broke. Gore just stared back blankly

‘What the f*** are you doing up there? You get back here right away’
Hillary Clinton calls Bill after his speech saying 95 per cent coverage under his wife’s ill-fated health plan would be fine

‘I never realised how good Bill was at this until I tried to do it’
Hillary Clinton on her US Senate attempt

‘JFK had real men in his White House!’
Hillary Clinton taunting her husband’s aides during the Whitewater scandal

‘I’m not going out there with that man’
Tipper Gore in 2000, refusing to attend a fundraiser with Clinton

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