THE SAME OLD (NEW) HILLARY

In 1992 I spent part of the day with the wife of the putative Democratic candidate for president. We covered the issues, the campaign and her husband's plans for the future. And we talked about faith, about how both of us believed our religion had led us toward a heightened interest in various social-welfare issues.

That's the real Hillary Rodham Clinton. A lifelong Methodist, she's as reticent about her faith as a Sunday-school teacher--and she once did teach an adult class, back in Arkansas. Yet recently when she's mentioned God, knowing snickers have erupted. Ultraconservative pooh-bah Gary Bauer was quoted as saying it was "the ultimate makeover."

Actually, a makeover has been underway since the former First Lady went to Washington under her own steam as a senator. It's just not the one Bauer means. People are finally seeing past the stereotypes and fabrications. In New York state her approval rating is just shy of 70 percent. After years of free-floating propaganda, her colleagues in the Senate are astonished to discover she is collaborative and congenial. "Those people wanted to hate Hillary so bad," Harry Reid said when she visited Nevada. How disappointing: she's likable, not to mention smart and hardworking.

The so-called Hillary truth squad is ratcheting up again for her re-election race in 2006 and the widely rumored run for the presidency in 2008, suggesting that on all kinds of issues the senator is changing her tune to a hummable version of "Hail to the Chief." The truth is that she is now who she has always been. The suggestion that common ground needs to be found on abortion, common ground around better access to contraception, is nothing new. Her concern that the culture is deadening our kids to sex and violence has been one that she has discussed before.

Consider these sentiments:

"Our ancestors did not have to think about many of the issues we are now confronted with. When does life start, when does life end? Who makes those decisions? How do we dare to infringe upon these areas of such delicate, difficult questions? And yet, every day in hospitals and homes and hospices all over this country, people are struggling with those very profound issues."