She’s dished with Ellen Degeneres, charmed David Letterman’s late night audience, made wink-’n-nod jokes about her husband and laughed off uncomfortable questions from interviewers.

When asked if Hillary Clinton still seems calculating, humorless and cold, her surrogates say she is extremely funny and warm and that audiences just love her.

But is love the right word?

A successful career as a U.S. senator from New York, skillful political maneuvering and some reinvention have allowed the former first lady to neutralize much of the baggage from Bill Clinton’s administration, as well as any idea that she was riding in on his coattails, political analysts say. Today, labels like “stateswoman,” “most sophisticated,” and “centrist” have replaced many of the negative character sketches from the ’90s.

But her personality could nonetheless affect her drive to the White House, though no one seems to agree on whether it is a fatal political flaw.

“She’s a little aloof, a little taciturn … a little bit on the cold side,” said Terry Madonna, public affairs professor and director of the Franklin & Marshall College Keystone Poll, discussing some of the negative impressions the former first lady has tried to shake.

“Her biggest problem is the perception of people just not liking her,” said Matt Towery, head of the Atlanta-based Insider Advantage polling company.

But after interviewing her, Towery said, his own view changed. She seemed much more likable in person. “A completely different Hillary Clinton — she was charming and she was open and if it were an act it was a good one,” he said.

Clinton has made efforts to expand on that in television appearances for non-political audiences. On Ellen Degeneres’ talk show, she showed a sarcastic sense of humor and comedic timing, and she laughed heartily when asked pointedly awkward questions, such as why her universal health care reform plan failed in 1993.

Voters in early primary states who have had a real chance to listen to her and shake her hand also say they are pleasantly surprised.

“It might be phony as baloney,” said Towery. “But it doesn’t matter, she is making all the right moves.”

Others complain, however, that Clinton comes off as contrived — another personality bee in the bonnet of critics and voters alike.

A hard-charging lawyer and politician’s wife for over 30 years, it is taken for granted that Clinton is ambitious and driven and half of one of the most politically savvy couples in recent memory. But where Bill Clinton had a near-legendary ability to connect with people, his wife has struggled.

“She is not Bill Clinton. People found him a likable person. We don’t find her a likable person and that is a huge cross to bear if you are running for high-level office,” said Aubrey Immelman, professor of psychology and head of the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in Minnesota.

In creating candidate profiles, Immelman and his research team use a diagnostic tool based on 170 criteria, and they pore through reams of autobiographies, biographies and any political material written about specific candidates to determine which of the criteria they meet. Typically, a candidate will, to some degree, match 30 to 40 of these measures, which are used to build a sketch.

While Clinton’s strong traits are her “major personal strength and her commanding presence,” Immelman has determined that her negatives include ambition fueled by narcissism and an impulse for dominance, a lack of empathy and “cognitive inflexibility” — in other words, “she’s pretty set in her ways.”

Immelman, a former clinical psychologist, said it will be hard for Clinton to truly change. “You can’t script everything,” he said, noting that he has already caught hell from Clinton supporters who charge he is targeting her because she is a woman.

This response is a familiar one, and some analysts say it’s not far off the mark. They say women, and especially the few who run for office, are often scrutinized for not only how “warm and fuzzy,” empathetic and “tough” they are, but on what they wear, and how they wear it. Clinton, as the woman presidential candidate with a clear shot of winning, has been under a microscope from the beginning, said Marie Wilson, head of the White House Project.

“We insist on so much from any ‘first’ that they live up to expectations that other non-firsts don’t have to, particularly when it is a woman. If she were running against four other women in the race … we wouldn’t be looking at every perceived flaw or stereotype,” she said.

The White House Project promotes the role of women in leadership positions. Wilson said today’s women candidates are expected to be tough without losing their femininity. Candidates like Clinton often get the rap that they are acting like men to succeed. Wilson says Clinton has found the right balance, despite the tightrope the media and her critics often make her walk. “I’m feeling optimistic,” she added.

But being a woman doesn’t allow the campaign to make excuses for poor performances. Clinton tussled — and stumbled — in the Oct. 30 Democratic debate, and her campaign’s initial inclination to suggest it was the “boys ganging up on the girl” garnered a sharp response in the media for seemingly playing “the gender card.”

Clinton got kudos, on the other hand for fighting back with tough political rebukes of her male opponents during the followup debate in Las Vegas on Nov. 15. During the same event, however, she invoked the “glass ceiling” that limits women’s success — showing how dizzying the dance can be.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Lawless, author of the 2005 book, “It Takes a Candidate: Why Women Don’t Run for Office,” pointed out that not only does Clinton have to deal with gender entanglements, but the trove of stereotypes that have been formed about her since she arrived in Washington 15 years ago. But while the voters may already have decided whether they “like” her or not, it may not matter in an election fueled by war policy and a demand for change from the current Republican regime.

“This might be one of the only times her liability, disapproval ratings, may not cost her an election,” said Lawless.

Clinton remains far and wide the frontrunner in all national polling and is leading state primary polls as well. Many of the Democratic primary voters polled say she has the best shot at winning the White House in 2008.

However, she also has the highest disapproval ratings of any other candidate, according to recent polling, including a Dec. 20 FOX News/Opinion Dynamics survey that found that 49 percent of respondents view Clinton negatively, a greater number than the 45 percent who view her positively.

“People have made up their minds about Hillary, for better or for worse,” said Sean Evans, professor of political science at Union University in Tennessee. “That provides her with a smaller margin of error, because she has to get all of her people, and a few more to win.”

Eric Dezenhall, a Washington-based Republican public relations strategist, thinks Clinton is “not that bad” compared to the caricature of a “crazy, screeching, Hollywood left-wing, bra-burning, communist, feminist” that he says has been conjured in the past by critics on the right. He also thinks she can win, despite the polarization.

“We have had plenty of divisive people before — you don’t have to win by a landslide,” Dezenhall said. “I do think she is more charming that conventional wisdom gives her credit for.”

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