THE line was long but the crowd at the book-signing event was disciplined. No screaming, no shoving.
After all, they were not waiting to meet a movie star but a 59-year-old woman who just might be the next US president, at least according to recent polls which put her ahead of her Republican foes.
Hillary Clinton was at an Upper West Side bookstore on Monday to hawk the 10th anniversary edition of her book on child-rearing titled It Takes a Village.
Hours earlier, the New York senator was the guest at an NBC morning show when she was asked the question that has been on everybody’s mind: Does she want to run the village?
Her reply was direct from Politician-Speak 101. “I’m working hard to make a decision. It’s very flattering and overwhelming. I’m trying to approach this with a big dose of humility. I’m honoured people are urging me to run (for the 2008 presidency).”
When she appeared for the Monday book-signing, two TV screens at the in-house Starbucks transmitted the event although no one inside the cafe paid particular attention to it.
However, press cameras flashed in a manner befitting that of a potential contender to the White House.
“I love her,” gushed Richard Darden, 65. He had no qualms about a woman presiding his country, saying that women had been powerful from time immemorial. Look at Gaia the Mother Earth, he said, referring to the Greek goddess.
A carpenter from Anchorage, Alaska, Darden was visiting a friend in Manhattan when he decided to come to the bookstore upon finding out that Clinton was also in town to promote her book.
“Her husband was one of the greatest presidents we ever had. He was more tolerant and more liberal,” he said, citing his efforts at helping the impoverished native Americans living in Indian reservations.
“The Bush administration, on the other hand, merely helped the rich to get richer while the middle class disappeared.”
Clinton may have her devotees like Darden and the woman who handed her a rose during the book-signing, but she has formidable competition for the Democratic presidential nomination.
For one, there is a young sensation from the Democrat Party who seems to have a magic wand in charming the crowds who have met him.
Barack Obama, the Illinois senator, has been on the mind and lips of the American media especially.
Born to a Kenyan father and a white Kansas mother, the African-American Obama has been described as exciting, charismatic and charming with a smile that helped him own any room he walked into.
His book The Audacity of Hope, which is a memoir of sorts, is currently at the top spot of The New York Times’ non-fiction bestsellers list.
When talkshow host Jay Leno pressed him recently on whether he was making a 2008 bid, he deadpanned: “You know, I have made a commitment to the Food Network that I would announce there.”
(The Food Network is a cable TV network which airs cookery shows.)
“Obama is to politics what Tiger Woods is to golf; they simply transcend the issue,” a reader wrote in The New York Times.
But a lot of people feel that it is all just hype and that Obama’s biggest setback is his inexperience in the rough-and-tumble of politics. The 45-year-old Harvard-trained lawyer has been a senator for less than two years.
“Obama’s problem may be less that he’s black than that he’s green,” said Newsweek in its latest cover story.
Of course, it is not all about Clinton and Obama. Over at the Republican side, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s possible candidacy has generated buzz as well.
It’s a topic that gets everybody talking, except that potential contenders remain tight-lipped.
But here in the Empire State (a.k.a New York) where the colour is blue, the Democrat Party spells fervour and the flavour now is all about Clinton versus Obama.
