Dispatches

By MICHAEL DUFFY, in Honolulu, Hawaii

She sat facing the sea just off the beach under a massive yau tree; she likes the shade, she said. Black Esprit sandals sat atop one another at her feet; she had pulled a flowered sun hat snugly on her head and thrown a new green canvas bag over an arm of her chair. She wore no jewelry. Nearby lay a copy of The Night Manager, John le Carre's new novel, closed on one dust-jacket flap at around page 300. Vacationing in Hawaii, just after her triumphant visit to Japan, just before a grueling few weeks in Washington, Hillary Rodham Clinton might have been just another tourist.

Shirtless beachgoers carrying buckets and pails and snorkeling gear walked past the woman behind the Serengeti dark glasses without noticing (although the unsmiling muscle-bound guys lurking nearby, with wires in their ears and hiding automatics in their knockoff Jams, should have aroused some suspicions). While her husband golfed to his heart's content (36 holes on one day) and her daughter frolicked with two friends in the Pacific surf, Mrs. Clinton -- who does not golf, who does not do handstands in waist-high water -- remained aloof from island fun. Aides had billeted at the hotel half a dozen of the 100 reporters and photographers trailing the Clintons, so the notion of walking the beach or sunbathing or doing laps in the pool seemed to have made her somewhat skittish. Mrs. Clinton's husband was not at all reserved about being photographed in his trunks, but she was more modest.

On this morning she sat nursing an iced tea and talking with several aides for a couple of hours, her fair skin well covered in a sea-green cotton skirt and top, and she then called over six lunching reporters. Under the bright Hawaiian sun, waves lapping a few yards away, she began discussing the single- payer health care system, or the Canadian Plan, as it is sometimes known -- the more fully centralized approach favored by many liberals. Mrs. Clinton criticized it, and promoted the hybrid scheme that she said would finally be announced in the fall. "There's a lot to be said for crafting an American solution to an American problem," she said. "But I want people to know what the trade-offs are."

Working on a holiday may not seem odd for a woman who has spent many New Year's weekends talking policy and trading fax numbers with new friends at the Renaissance Weekend retreats for the well-connected on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina.

And as it happened, the President cut short his vacation and hurried to Iowa to inspect flood damage. For her part, Mrs. Clinton was not in Hawaii two days before she was visiting businesses participating in the Hawaiian health care system and viewing hurricane damage in Kauai.