I have something to say to Hillary Clinton.

I’m sorry.

I wasn’t a fan when she ran against Obama. I wrote columns saying so.

I take it back. Or at least I sympathize.

I sympathize because she must be looking at Sarah Palin thinking, “How is this happening?”

Clinton came within inches of making history, fighting a valiant, multi-year battle, earning respect, even among critics, as a master of policy. But who, instead, may be the first woman elected into the White House? Someone who winks at debates and couldn’t name a newspaper she regularly reads.

I’m sure 500 angry e-mails are now heading my way because things are so polarized that even a slight negative comment about Palin gets people hating on me.I’ll admit, Palin did better in the debate than I expected, and certainly deserves credit for becoming governor. But when you picture a possible first woman president, I’m surprisingly thinking: Shouldn’t it have been Hillary Clinton?

I guess it took Palin to make me see that.

My questioning of Hillary Clinton goes back years. I was never comfortable with her as the president’s wife taking an office in the West Wing and running health care, but you know what? She had impressive gumption to feel she could do state dinners and critical policy.

Later, I didn’t love it when she left her duties as First Lady to run for the U.S. Senate. But looking back, that, too, took resolve, and the strength to challenge tradition. She could also have sought an easier Senate seat, perhaps waiting for an opportunity in Arkansas where she would have been a slam-dunk. Instead, Clinton ran in New York, the toughest of political arenas — and against the formidable Rudy Giuliani, no less. He dropped out for health reasons, but she didn’t know that when she signed up.

As for myself and others saying that she didn’t rise on her own, merely following her husband to Arkansas and the White House, well, she earned that Senate seat. And perhaps more relevant today, she dominated a field of a dozen veteran male Democrats to almost win a major party nomination. No woman in either party has come close to that. And she did it through almost superhuman discipline and energy as a candidate.

But after all that, someone who winks during debates gets a free pass in the home-stretch as the torchbearer for making history for women.

I could see Clinton accepting it if it was at least someone with gravitas like Condi Rice. But Sarah Palin? –– who as Republican nominee didn’t know what the Bush Doctrine is?

I don’t know how this is happening either, Hillary.

I imagine more e-mails are now heading my way saying I’m a fool and hypocrite because Obama doesn’t have much experience either.

But Obama earned his way onto the ticket through a year of debates, primaries and scrutiny, outgunning all rivals. Joe Biden, too, has been tested by decades in office and two presidential runs. Certainly, John McCain is unequaled in his experience as a national figure. Sarah Palin? She was parachuted in as a Hail-Mary pass. She has made peculiar statements that would have gotten male candidates — and Clinton— laughed offstage. When speaking off the cuff, her sentences make almost no grammatical sense.

Yet people love her. Folks are saying she’s the woman they’ve been looking for.

Hillary, I don’t get it either.

I understand that it’s in part about ideology — as long as Palin’s a true conservative, which she is, she’ll be adored as the party’s potential savior. I suppose it’s about likability, too, and Palin is an engaging every-mom who uses Main Street phrases like “you betcha.”

To which Clinton must be thinking, “This is the White House, not Miss Congeniality.”

Then there are the byes Palin seems to get. If Clinton made the slightest misstep, people like me piled on, but Palin winks her way out of trouble. It must make Clinton crazy, and I don’t blame her.

She must be thinking: Doesn’t a lifetime of mastering policy, and enacting it, count?

I wish it did

But what apparently counts more are the beauty contest skills of reciting a few feel-good lines, keeping a sunny front and beaming through hard questions that you answer with non-responsive stock slogans.

Hillary, having written critically of you in the past, I now have this to say.

Whatever your flaws, you’ve truly earned the scars and credentials of a potential woman president.

Sarah Palin has not.

It’s just not fair.

mpatinkin@projo.com