The Once and Future Hillary

By JAMES CARNEY/WASHINGTON

Hillary Rodham Clinton has always enjoyed walk-in rights to almost any important meeting at the White House. So when her husband sat down with top aides in the Cabinet Room to discuss his embattled presidency, it was a given that the First Lady would have a seat at the table. But instead of offering the brand of crisp analysis and shrewd advice she is known and admired for, the First Lady was quiet, listening while others did most of the talking. Afterward, one participant couldn't remember whether Hillary had said anything at all. As a friend and colleague put it, she was still "coming to grips" with the Democratic washout at the polls.

That was two weeks ago. Rumors swirled that she was in prolonged post- electoral shock, that she didn't understand November's results, that she was in denial, that she was rethinking her role as First Lady. But there was no self-doubt in the Hillary Clinton who charged back onto the political radar screen in a four-day media blitz last week. Though there were subtle signs of an effort to retool her image, she came across as cheerful, confident and as proudly unapologetic about her role as ever. The Republicans? Let her at 'em. She told a sympathetic crowd after accepting an award from the National Women's Law Center, "In many ways, our best days are ahead of us because there's nothing like a good fight for advocates to get energized."

During a speech in New York City, she dismissed as "unbelievable and absurd" a Republican welfare-reform proposal that calls for sending poor ! children to orphanages if their mothers, after a limited stay on welfare, cannot support them. Whitewater questions did not faze her. The First Lady continued to portray her family as victims of an affair she described as a "sideshow." Later in the week, however, her friend Webster Hubbell, who quit last March as Associate Attorney General, tentatively agreed to plead guilty to charges brought by the Whitewater special prosecutor that he had committed mail fraud and tax evasion when he worked alongside Mrs. Clinton at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock.

She remains unrepentantly suspicious of the press. Asked why it was so difficult to get an interview with her, she impatiently told TIME editors at a private lunch that there were more pressing things to do, adding with some exasperation that "some days my role is just to explain my role." To students at George Washington University, she defended her decision to be active in policymaking. "I don't see how I could change who I am because of the position I'm in. I actually think that in the long run if people have some better idea about you, it may be controversial, but at least they know where you stand."

In public and in private, she is fully convinced of the rightness of the Clinton agenda. She made mistakes, yes, but they were largely superficial. Much of the public simply didn't understand the truth about initiatives like health care and the President's original economic plan. "She is really angry," says a high-powered Democrat who has known the Clintons for 25 years. "She's angry at the election results ((and)) angry at how she's treated in the press. That's the way it is with Hillary. It's everyone else's fault." Putting it more circumspectly, one senior adviser to the President said the First Lady "is not as realistic as some of the rest of us" about voters' unhappiness with Clinton's first two years.

In their postmortems on the elections, many pollsters and analysts tagged the First Lady's health-care plan as a major factor in turning voters against the President and his party. Stanley Greenberg, the White House pollster, found that health care, more than anything else, drove independent voters away. Just last Thursday a federal judge ruled that the health-care-reform task force, a sprawling, arcane and often secretive group led by the First Lady, was guilty of "misconduct" for withholding documents from the public. Last week Hillary conceded that "the perception" of the Clinton health plan "was one of Big Government."

But Hillary Clinton and the White House are drawing another lesson from the health-care debacle: it is not wise to link the First Lady's prestige so directly to controversial policy issues. It shouldn't happen again. As a senior White House official explains it, the First Lady "will stay engaged and remain an influence, but ((her role)) will be more informal. She won't be a point person on a given policy." The difference in her role, stresses the official, is one of "approach" and not intensity. "She's not going to start talking through a veil," says Planned Parenthood's Ann Lewis, a friend of Mrs. Clinton's.

Far from being an imposition, the change suits the First Lady. It will free her from being tied to one project, a fact that has led to "a lot of thought and discussion," says one of her aides, about how the new role will take shape. She is certain to spend more time on children's issues. One likely task: promotion of a children's health bill. Unlike broader health reform, advocating a children's bill "is a no-loser," says a White House official. "It would be pretty hard to attack her for that." Similarly, Mrs. Clinton has said privately that she wants to get involved in juvenile-crime issues.

She will now be the cheerleader -- not leader -- of the main health-care initiative. In October, Leon Panetta, the White House chief of staff, ordered that control of the reforms be turned over to Robert Rubin and Carol Rasco, the President's top in-house economic and domestic-policy advisers. White House officials, however, insist that the downgrading and reshuffling of the agenda does not reflect badly on Mrs. Clinton. As a senior official explained last week, Panetta's decision "was less about Hillary than Ira," as in Ira Magaziner, the aide who masterminded the Clinton plan and whose manner alienated potential allies on Capitol Hill. Today the First Lady acknowledges that any reform that might emerge from the new Congress must take an "incremental approach" -- the kind of change proposed by Republicans as a counter to the Clinton overhaul.

"She's far too pragmatic to be in denial" about the message voters sent Democrats, a supportive White House aide says of the First Lady. "She can be self-righteous, yes, but she is not a person to deny reality." Even Panetta, says a senior official, believes Mrs. Clinton "gets it. She knows what the basic problems were." The chief of staff makes a point of inviting her to strategy sessions because, as this official puts it, her presence "does help."

Indeed, say staff members, the First Lady can understand these times. Far from being the standard-bearer of liberalism in the White House, says an aide, "she's a lot more conservative than she's made out to be in the media." To stress the point, the First Lady reminded an audience last week that she was brought up in a staunch Republican family and was a "Goldwater girl" in 1964.

From the changing hairstyles that have become a source of self-deprecating humor to what little information about her that can be divulged, Hillary Rodham Clinton remains supremely in charge of her self-image. And officials in the White House know to be careful about what they say, even privately. "That's a touchy subject," sighed a top adviser to the President when asked about Mrs. Clinton. Another official joked that it was too risky discussing the First Lady over a White House phone. "You want me to talk about Hillary?" the official asked with mock incredulity. "This is not a secure line." And then he earnestly claimed he had nothing to say.

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Washington