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But to some who have watched her in the past three years, her child-care initiative represents a new attempt at public redemption after wandering more or less by herself in the political wilderness. She tried "reflective meditation" sessions with New Age psychic philosopher Jean Houston, who persuaded her to enact conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt and Mahatma Gandhi; she talked about tracking the progress of welfare reform for her husband but has done so only from the sidelines in an unofficial capacity; facing the empty nest, she thought of adopting a baby. Says longtime friend Diane Blair, a member of Hillary's inner circle: "She was trying to figure out how she could be who she is--a thinker, a doer--without arousing hostility from those who felt she was overstepping her bounds. I think she's figured it out." A former White House official puts it more bluntly: "Fundamentally, Hillary was seared, and seared badly. She's trying to carve her niche so she can be remembered."
Hillary has learned the perverse Washington lesson that a First Lady succeeds in public at her husband's peril. Presidential power being a zero-sum equation, it was impossible for her to look strong without the President's looking weak. She learned the hard way what First Ladies before her had assumed: that her influence was better felt than seen. So late in 1994 she vanished from the West Wing. She sent her chief of staff at the time, Maggie Williams, to meetings. If she needed to make a point, she did it one on one with such trusted aides as deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes and political director Doug Sosnik. And she became the covert campaigner, keeping the national media off her plane as she stumped from city to city. Save for her star turn at the Democratic Convention, the First Lady hovered below radar.
It was in her stealth phase, for instance, that she recruited political consultant Dick Morris to craft the move-to-the-center strategy that kept Bill Clinton in the White House. She and Morris were the earliest to press the President into adopting the consultant's campaign of bite-sized, family-oriented initiatives. And after the election, she was one of the most important forces behind the first major decision of his second term: to balance the budget. She did not stay out of personnel decisions either. She backed Erskine Bowles as chief of staff, putting pragmatism over friendship by passing over her ally Ickes, and she put her old pal Ann Lewis in charge of White House communication operations.
But she cut back in the size of her public role. Her causes became Gulf War syndrome, the need for more micro-lending by banks in poor areas, the troubles of American couples trying to adopt 90 babies from Paraguay, and Naina Yeltsin's crusade for Russian children suffering from a metabolic disorder called phenylketonuria. In the White House she moved back into the safety of a world that even its denizens call Hillaryland, a world made up of ferociously protective aides and a collection of friends from Arkansas like television producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. (Just two weeks ago, in fact, Hillary called with suggestions for a title for Bloodworth-Thomason's latest sitcom pilot. Bloodworth-Thomason was startled. She says with a laugh, "You want to say, 'Shouldn't you be off inspecting meat somewhere?'")