'They are very similar-both hard-nosed characters.'
-Nicholas Wapshott, long-time New York bureau chief for The Times of London
The Odd Couple '08 by Ben Smith
Hillary Clinton hasn't had her Hayman Island moment. Yet.
Hayman is a resort off Queensland, Australia, to which Rupert Murdoch flew Tony Blair in 1995 for the annual conference of his right-of-center media megalith, News Corp.
It was a crucial step in the complex and surprising negotiation between the two men that would boost Labour's Mr. Blair up the little stoop and through the door at 10 Downing Street two years later.
Now, the specter of an alliance between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Murdoch-two of the most powerful and guarded figures in the world-is beginning to whet the appetites of the chattering classes.
At the moment, the two speak of each other (through surrogates) in notably similar terms:
"Senator Clinton respects him and thinks he is smart and effective," said a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Philippe Reines.
"Rupert has respect for her political skills and for the hard work that she's done as a Senator," said an executive vice president at News Corp., Gary Ginsberg.
Other evidence is still a bit lean. Lunch has been taken at News Corp.'s midtown headquarters, friendly noises have emanated from the New York Post's editorial page, and Mr. Murdoch has retained a key advisor to Mrs. Clinton, Howard Wolfson.
But what a couple they'd make! For the 74-year-old native of Australia, an embrace of Mrs. Clinton would be only the latest in a long string of daring and (mostly) winning political plays. For New York's junior Senator, it would be the perfection of an art that she and her husband have practiced for more than a decade: keeping your enemies close.
Mrs. Clinton has spent her time in the Senate working her way down a dance card full of ex-enemies. First there was Lindsay Graham, the former House impeachment manager who has become a Senate ally, and with whom Mrs. Clinton recently founded a Senate Manufacturing Caucus. Most recently, she debuted a health-care proposal at the side of her old nemesis, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Mr. Murdoch, too, has surprised his friends before. Alienated from John Major, Britain's then Prime Minister, in 1997, he directed his Thatcherite British tabloid, The Sun, into an energetic campaign for the post-Hayman Island Mr. Blair. The paper helped deal the British Conservative Party a blow from which it has not yet recovered.
Some long-term observers of Mr. Murdoch see a logic to his flirtation with Mrs. Clinton.
"It makes perfect sense," said Nicholas Wapshott, the long-time New York bureau chief for Mr. Murdoch's Times of London, of the notion of an alliance between the two. "Although Rupert is widely assumed to be an ideological creature solely of the right, the fact is that he's a businessman before he is an ideologist, and he likes to be with a winner."