Rewriting History Part 2

On the first day I met her, she wore a nondescript tan suit, with a weird-looking, oversized pin on the lapel. And - always - she wore very thick, opaque black stockings, the kind a nun might wear. Despite her peculiar affect, though, she had a presence. She was extremely articulate, and though she was clearly serious-minded, she laughed easily.

Over the next few years, though, Hillary would change her appearance dramatically. When my wife, Eileen, and I met her and Bill and little Chelsea for lunch at Manhattan's Stanhope Hotel in the mid-1980s, I almost didn't recognize her. The thick dark gla.s.ses were gone and her brown, curly hair had gone blonde and straight.

This kind of makeover by a female public figure is unusual. Indeed, among the major women politicians of the world, Hillary is the only one who has so dramatically changed her personal appearance. Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher - none of these prominent female foreign leaders has troubled with her looks in this way. In America, consider Elizabeth Dole, Tipper Gore, Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Patty Murray, Barbara Mikulski, Nancy Pelosi, Condoleezza Rice, Donna Shalala, Janet Reno, Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Olympia Snowe: Every other prominent female political figure looks more or less the way she did when she first entered our consciousness. Hillary alone has found it necessary to undergo makeover after makeover.

But these alterations - and the many others that would follow during the Clinton presidency and after - were not just skin deep. They simply mirrored the equally dramatic changes in her public personality and image. Along with the cosmetic changes, there emerged a new persona, the transformation of Hillary into HILLARY, blending artifice, carefully studied conduct, concealed records, conveniently invented life experiences, and fabricated achievements, into one suspiciously coherent surface. It reached its apogee in Living History, where it graces almost every page, but the strategy precedes the book . . . and will long outlast it.

The HILLARY brand is based on the following tenets: - Use, recycle, remake everything you have - no matter how trivial - for maximum political advantage, regardless of its true meaning.

- But never appear political. Every practical, pragmatic move must be couched as idealistic.

- Align yourself with celebrities - that makes you, too, a celebrity.

- Use stories to make yourself seem relevant and interesting - regardless of whether they're true.

- Present yourself as normal, just like everyone else; emphasize the domestic.

- Toss out carefully conjured little domestic vignettes to suggest how intimate and cozy you are with your husband, the former president.

- Giggle and laugh, loudly and often, during interviews to suggest that you have a softer side.

- Repress any outward signs of interest in material things; emphasize your frugality.

- Deflect criticism by accusing your critics of attacking your archetype (women; working women; outspoken women) rather than yourself.

- Insulate your political ambition and raw political gamesmans.h.i.+p with a layer of chatty, domestic camouflage.

- Adapt, adapt, adapt!

This strategy proved an effective one. And it scarcely mattered that the image was almost entirely manufactured. Because with Hillary, all is malleable. Everything can be changed to conform to the HILLARY brand. In a letter to the House Committee on Un-American Activities, author Lillian h.e.l.lmann famously wrote, "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fas.h.i.+ons." But Hillary will cut, trim, dice, slice, sew, alter, or otherwise conform any aspect of her persona, record, personality, and rhetoric to fit this year's political imperatives. In the Darwinian world of electoral politics, where survival goes to the most adaptable, Hillary is a true survivor.

Nothing about HILLARY is spontaneous. Everything is calculated. Nothing is simply a reflection of who she really is. All her words and gestures, the accounts and anecdotes through which she offers us her past, the positions she takes and partisans.h.i.+p she shows (or conceals), even the flinty sparks of forced laughter, are part of the ongoing display. For HILLARY, even spontaneity is a contrivance.

To some extent, of course, Hillary has constructed this elaborate mask to cover up inappropriate conduct - her role in the Travel Office debacle, for example, or the disappearance of her billing records from the Rose Law Firm. But often its primary purpose is to present an acceptable pretense for petty and spiteful conduct - or merely to make herself look more attractive and talented. Many of her re-inventions are simply transparent attempts to make herself relevant, to bond with the viewers, to evoke sympathy or admiration.

Whether hiding her misbehavior or feeding her vanity, though, the ultimate function of the HILLARY brand is twofold: to hide who she is, and to project what she isn't.

In this, as in so much else, she is very different from Bill. He's never spent much time worrying over his appearance or biography or personality or manner. He knows he doesn't need to. He relies on his natural ability to seem to be what people want or need. Whether real or contrived, he gives off such intensely empathetic vibes that he doesn't need to establish a false persona to connect with people. In a room or a crowd, his radar picks up the signals of anyone who doesn't like him, and instantly grasps why they don't and what he has to do to win them over. His manner, charm, affect, humor, seductiveness, intellect, and feel for people help him actually become all things to all people - his perpetual political goal. He doesn't need to change his body or personality or record. He just adapts what he has to the task at hand.

What Bill achieves through instinct, Hillary can do only by using great discipline to make whatever personal alterations are necessary to achieve her goals. He exists, she changes - over and over again.

That, in fact, is one reason for Hillary's constant rebranding. Hillary Clinton learned her politics from the master himself. For decades, she watched her husband do the things she didn't know how to do. She could follow his moves, but she never really heard the music, so her dancing was stiff and awkward. Through all the years he spent as a candidate, ironically, she gave off the distinct impression that she thought she could be doing a better job. She was always prepared, always on time, always under control.

It wasn't until she entered politics in her own right that she learned the truth: Being on time isn't enough.

To find another pair of politicians of such dissimilar natural talent who are joined in the history books, we must look back to the odd-couple rivalry of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Bill Clinton, of course, is like Kennedy, endlessly charming anyone he needs, effortlessly projecting a charisma he uses with devastating effectiveness. Hillary, on the other hand, is a latter-day Nixon. Instead of stepping forward with natural confidence, she works a.s.siduously to prepare her image. She decides what she must become, whom she must be, and then goes about it methodically and ploddingly. While Clinton projects his personality with a glance or a comment, Hillary must fabricate stories from her past, adopt myths about the present, and cloak her ambitions and insecurities behind a righteous facade in order to accomplish her political goals.

Hillary needs a crutch to do what Bill has no trouble doing. And the crutch includes distorting, fabricating, imagining, spinning, and re-inventing her life, her personality, and her past.

Take, for example, Hillary's attempt to empathize with victims of prejudice. At a 1997 race-relations forum for teenagers in Boston, Hillary recalled the "pain" of a "childhood encounter" that helped her to grasp the injury suffered by the victims of bigotry. "During a junior high school soccer game" on a cold day, Hillary claimed, "a goalie told her 'I wish people like you would freeze.' Stunned, the future first lady asked how she could feel that way when she did not even know her. 'I don't have to know you,' the goalie shot back, 'to know I hate you.'"

Nice story. But it probably never happened. t.i.tle IX of the Civil Rights Act, which mandated that girls' sports be treated equally with boys' in public education, did not pa.s.s until 1972. As a sport, girls' soccer did not exist when Hillary went to middle or high school. The athletic director for the South Main High School in Park Ridge - and a thirty-four-year veteran of the school system - confirmed that there were no girls' soccer teams in the 1960s. The first lady seems to have conjured up the tale to appear more relevant to her listeners and to establish a bond of empathy with them. (And, not surprisingly, the episode never made it into Living History.) Can Americans trust a president who so carefully concocts her image to suit the needs of the moment? As much as we like to say that spin or political pandering is part of the normal politician's skill set, the fact is that our presidents have been remarkably candid in the personas they projected to the American people - at least since the television age began.

Harry Truman made no secret of his earthy disregard for society manners, projecting instead the man he was: a human being without artifice or polish, who told it like it was. While Eisenhower hid his tough managerial side and salty army vocabulary behind a facade of grandfatherliness, his image - simple, direct, straightforward, and modest - accurately reflected his character. We knew nothing at the time of John Kennedy's promiscuity, but his fierce intellect, aggressive energy, and patrician bearing all were obvious to his adoring public. Lyndon Johnson, try as he might, was unable to hide his earthiness. The person who showed reporters his appendectomy scar and lifted his beagle up by the ears was both the inner man and his outer image. Gerald Ford was what he appeared to be: too plain-spoken and down to earth to be manipulative. Jimmy Carter's sincerity was apparent to everyone and Ronald Reagan's sunny disposition was no put-on. George H. W. Bush's geeky inarticulateness in public and his eastern preppy bearing were evident. While Bill Clinton hid his recklessness from our view and tried to be all things to all people, his essential personality never changed and accurately projected the kind of undisciplined, humble, anxious-to-please, restlessly intelligent person that he really is. Likewise, George W. Bush is the macho Texan he appears to be.

We are accustomed to presidents who really are very much as they seem. We are as unused to one who projects a made-up personality as we are to one who changes his hair color. Americans may well elect a President Hillary who projects a chatty, gregarious, light-hearted everyday image in public but hides a vicious streak in private, but history argues that such a presidency is a risky one for the nation. The only real model for a Hillary presidency is that of Richard Nixon. Like Nixon, Hillary hides a personality driven by paranoia, fear, and hatred for enemies, and a willingness to get even and do what it takes to prevail, behind a f.a.gade of sincerity and good nature.

The only real difference between them, in fact, is Hillary's self-perception. Where Nixon never pretended to any particular virtue or goodness, Hillary believes that her motives, aspirations, positions, and priorities are uniquely good, even holy. Nixon saw himself as a regular politician trying to get ahead, no better or worse than the rest of the breed. But Hillary finds herself distinctly above the rest and, as a result, sanctions conduct that is below that to which most regular politicians will stoop. Nixon defended his actions, from Oval Office taping to slush funds, by arguing that everyone else - not least JFK - did the same thing. Hillary's defense is actually more frightening; because she believes she is acting through genuinely pure motives and sincere beliefs in good causes, to her, the ends do, indeed, justify the means.

So we need to probe the HILLARY brand and consider its variations: friend of celebrities, unpretentious housewife, sacrifice on the altar of anti-feminism, independent professional, and (apologies to Billy Joel) a woman with a "New York State of Mind."

THE CELEBRITY GAME.

The HILLARY brand markets itself with celebrity endors.e.m.e.nts, just like a box of Wheaties. These testimonials, compiled and proudly displayed in Living History and elsewhere, give HILLARY a hip, glamorous, and charismatic image. If the celebrities and famous political figures like her, then she is like them!

- Why did she become a blonde? She once told me that she changed her hair color because she read that Margaret Thatcher had said that "at a certain age," every woman should.

- Why did she want to make sure that Chelsea would lead as normal a life as possible, would not be spoiled, and would respect the Secret Service agents? Not because of what she knew from her own practical midwestern upbringing and twelve years of parenting in the Governor's Mansion. No, in Living History, she says it was because Jacqueline Ona.s.sis suggested it to her.

- Why did she choose certain foods to serve at the White House? Because Julia Child wrote asking her to "showcase American culinary arts."

- Who boosted her spirits during the Monica scandal? No less than Walter Cronkite, whom she quotes in Living History as saying, "Why don't these people get a life? . . . None of us is perfect. Let's go sailing."

- How did she keep her emotional equilibrium amid the turmoil of possible impeachment and scandal after scandal? With the help of the Dalai Lama, who counseled her "to be strong and not give in to bitterness and anger in the face of pain and injustice."

- How did she decide what to wear to Bill's second inauguration? On Oscar de la Renta's "strong advice, I ditched the hat."

- What gave her strength to survive controversy in Was.h.i.+ngton? It was Nelson Mandela who inspired her.

- Why did she decide, when she became first lady in 1993, against a complete makeover? In Living History, she writes that Jacqueline Ona.s.sis said, "You have to be you." (And yet it wasn't long before she did indeed begin changing her wardrobe and paying attention to her hair and appearance - in part because TV producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason convinced her to do so.) - The need to have quiet time at Camp David? Jackie O, again, "encouraged me to shelter my intimate family life in this protected retreat."

And the list goes on. Why did she change her name to Clinton after Bill was defeated for governor in 1980? Not, she pretends, to help her husband win the next election; not even because she knew that many Arkansans were appalled when she sent out Chelsea's birth announcement from "Governor Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham." No, in Living History, she claims she changed her name because Vernon Jordan told her she should.

Hillary has been playing this celebrity game for decades. In Living History she tells us how in 1974, Barbara Pryor, the incoming first lady of Arkansas, was under attack for her "newly permed short hairdo." So, Hillary describes how she permed her own hair "in a show of solidarity." How weird is that? She actually permed her hair as a political statement? I'm not sure which is nuttier - the idea that Hillary actually made the change "in solidarity" with Barbara Pryor, or that she expects us to believe that she did. After all, Hillary had only just moved to Arkansas in late August 1974. As a new and inexperienced law professor in Fayetteville, she was hardly a statewide public figure; no one was paying the least attention to what she did with her hair or why. So what was this supposed to be - a silent political act? I doubt it. The truth is, Hillary evidently won't acknowledge that she changed her hairstyle, like millions of other people, to look better. Why does she find concern about her appearance so hard to admit? For HILLARY, even the most trivial choice must have a political purpose - even a hairstyle. And no personal choice can ever be attributed to a moment of vanity. Everything must be in pursuit of a higher purpose.

Why this desperate reliance on guidance from celebrity role models - even so small-time a celebrity as a future first lady of Arkansas? Naturally the first lady of the United States has spent much of her public life rubbing shoulders with famous people. But her compulsion to tell us all about it speaks volumes about her insecurity, and about her need for props to help convince us of who she really is.

Is Hillary so unsure of herself on the public stage that she needs to embrace those who preceded her there and look to them for constant reinforcement? I don't believe so. On the contrary, in person it's clear that she knows exactly who she is: an aggressive, brainy, substantive, policy wonkish lawyer with a serious ideology and commitment to social causes and core Democratic Party ideals.

Her problem seems to be that, on some level, she believes we won't like who she is.

ACTING NORMAL.

Bill Clinton doesn't need sham or artifice to bond with people. He can eat hamburgers and swap sports stories all day at the local McDonald's if he wants to. It's a part of him, of who he is. Bill Clinton never has to make up stories to show that he's unpretentious. He is unpretentious. For all of his deceits and cover-ups, you'll never find him posing as a devotee of art or cla.s.sical music or haute cuisine. He golfs. He's a basketball fanatic. He loves pizza. When Clinton doesn't like something other people enjoy, he's not afraid to say so. He doesn't pretend. He is what he is.

Hillary, on the other hand, is not unpretentious. She is too elitist, feminist, substantive, serious, driven, focused, and careerist to relate easily to average people. It's not that she's always arrogant, or actually considers other people beneath her. It's that there is no part of her that's sufficiently "normal" to find common ground with others, to get in sync with those who genuinely are normal. Bill Clinton may be part everyman, but Hillary is by no means every woman.

But she's certainly trying. One goal of the new HILLARY brand was to offer a new image of the candidate as a normal housewife and mother. Living History is filled with folksy stories that are ridiculous coming from the first lady of Arkansas, let alone of the United States.

This Good Housekeeping makeover was a long time coming. From the very moment she stepped onto the national stage, Hillary had shown a tin ear for everyday life, outraging stay-at-home moms by saying "You know, I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was fulfill my profession, which I entered before my husband was in public life."

The avalanche of negative publicity that followed taught her a lesson: In order to succeed in public life, she realized that she would have to identify with the stay-at-home mom, rather than scorn her. She never made the same mistake again. Ever since, she has constantly invoked homey and folksy expressions, in an effort to paint herself as just another housewife, facing the same juggling act - husband, home, career, and children - that bedevils so many modern women. No mention of the chauffeurs, government-paid nannies, servants, and administrative help that have been available to her since the 1970s. Indeed, the happy-homemaker pose soon provided a kind of helpful camouflage: Whenever her ambition or financial avarice reared their ugly heads, she took cover by disguising herself as a typical, even normal, housewife.

Early in the first Clinton administration, when Hillary's efforts to reform health care created such intense controversy and strong reactions, she found that she needed to tone down the harshness and soften her image. So she scheduled an interview with House Beautiful magazine; in the resulting article, which appeared under the headline "Home in the White House," she painted an irresistible picture of her domestic life with Bill.

I wanted a kitchen [in the Residence] because I knew we needed a private place to have our meals. Even though the [White House] dining room is lovely, it's a big, formal s.p.a.ce. We use the kitchen for breakfast every day and for lots of dinners when we are not entertaining. We heat up lots of leftovers. My husband might come home from a golf game and I throw something together for him . . .

"Throw something together for him?" With a White House staff of hundreds guarding the kitchen like their fortress? That's not exactly how it was. I remember one occasion, when my niece and I were visiting the White House Residence. Hillary sent her off to play with Chelsea, who was two years older. They had both gotten bread machines for Christmas. But when Chelsea wanted to make bread, the White House usher showed up with a gigantic silver tray, loaded with neat little piles of each ingredient.

"Cooking" in the White House is different, as Hillary herself hinted in Living History. "Chelsea was not feeling well and I wanted to make her soft scrambled eggs and applesauce," she writes. "I looked in the small kitchen for utensils and then called downstairs and asked the chef if he could provide me with what I needed. He and the kitchen staff were completely undone at the thought of a first lady wielding a frying pan with no supervision! They even called my staff to ask if I was cooking myself because I was unhappy with their food."

No one expects any first lady to cook and prepare meals. With a staff of hundreds in the Residence and a schedule packed with events, it is neither feasible nor necessary. So why does Hillary insist on portraying herself as a genuinely domestic animal, as anxious as any other housewife to make a good home fir her husband and daughter? Because it's part of the HILLARY brand.

The truth, of course, is quite different. Since the age of thirty-two - with only a brief interregnum in the early 1980s - Hillary has lived in either the Governor's Mansion in Little Rock or the White House, surrounded by a ma.s.sive staff of domestics, cooks, cleaning people, waiters, babysitters, and personal a.s.sistants. Only the richest and most privileged women in the nation can boast of having had less exposure to the daily realities of homemaking than she.

During her twelve years in the Governor's Mansion, a few seasoned experts handled all aspects of the governor's limited social schedule; Hillary let herself be guided by their knowledge and cared little about developing her own independent tastes or judgment.

In the Governor's Mansion, social life was run by the staff, as it had always been. Downstairs, in public, the Clintons lived a civilized life as the state's chief officer and first lady. Dinner was served on blue and white china, left over from Winthrop Rockefeller's years as governor. The first couple and their guests were waited on by uniformed butlers (many of them felons serving long sentences, who were eager to impress the governor in hopes of securing early release). There was no need for Hillary to pretend to any serious involvement in cooking or decorating.

Her lack of interest in domestic skills was painfully apparent in the only private house the Clintons have ever lived in before Chap-paqua - the yellow house they had for two years after Clinton lost the governors.h.i.+p. After Bill's defeat, he and Hillary were forced to leave the Governor's Mansion and set up housekeeping on their own.

The results were really something. The living room was overwhelmed by a set of red velvet Victorian furniture with dark wood carving; it looked like the lobby of a hotel in an old western movie. Hillary herself might have been aware of how bizarre it looked; at the time, she explained to me that Bill had gone out and bought the pieces on his own.

Nothing in the house was either warm or comfortable. Though the furniture was big and ungainly, it was also austere. There was no warmth, no texture.

In Living History, Hillary speaks fondly of an old red Victorian "courting couch" that Bill's mother gave them, and describes shopping together for antiques to fill their new home.

That's not how I remember their house. Whenever I went into the kitchen, I was amazed by the college-dorm feeling. The gla.s.ses and plates looked like they came from a gas station or supermarket - mismatched, in clas.h.i.+ng sizes and designs. I'm no expert on tableware, but it all reminded me of the kitchen supplies I'd had in my days as a student at Columbia. I still remember wondering why such a prominent couple - a former governor and a prominent lawyer - would choose to live that way.

Years later, when they lived in the White House, the Clintons had one room redone in a style not unlike their old Little Rock living room, although much gaudier and grander, filled with gold velvet furniture and oversized crystal lamps festooning all the tables. This room, which was right next to the Lincoln Bedroom, stood in sharp contrast to the elegance of the rest of the White House. Apparently, everything in the room - the furniture, fabrics, wallpaper, lamps, pillows - had been used in a room in an Arkansas show house designed by Kaki Hockersmith, the Clintons' decorator. The room was rea.s.sembled in the White House, right down to the wallpapered ceiling, patterned carpet, and garish lighting. As Yogi Berra would say, it was deja vu all over again.

Hillary says she was surprised by charges that she might not be able to handle the social aspect of the job of first lady. In Living History, she writes of her amazement "that people could perceive me only as one thing or the other - either a hardworking professional woman or a conscientious and caring hostess." In her defense, she cites the conclusions of Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annen-berg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania that "gender stereotypes . . . trap women by categorizing them in ways that don't reflect the true complexities of their lives." That wasn't the problem. The difficulty was that anybody acquainted with Hillary understood that she knew little about anything having to do with domesticity, and cared even less. Of course, in and of itself that's hardly a problem. Plenty of women - and most men - are in the same category. The problem was that her feelings went beyond a lack of interest to true contempt - as her 1992 jibe about baking cookies made painfully apparent. As usual, such public missteps - rare as they may be - tell us more about her real att.i.tudes than her carefully scripted interviews and memoirs.

When she became first lady, though, Hillary realized that there was, indeed, a use for domesticity - to provide political cover as she pursued her real interest: becoming a policy-oriented, politically savvy, activist first lady. If she were seen to be doing a good job at the tasks she had never valued, she realized, she would be far less likely to attract criticism for doing what she really wanted to do. Seeking the tacit immunity from political criticism traditionally enjoyed by First Ladies, she began to emphasize the social side of the job - hoping, no doubt, that Republicans who laced into her would look like bullies attacking a woman. She was hiding behind her own ap.r.o.n strings.

I know this firsthand: Indeed, I bear some responsibility for Hillary's choice of tactics.

As she points out proudly in Living History, Hillary was unique among first ladies in having offices on each side of the White House. In the East Wing, where the first family lives and conducts its social schedule, her staff handled her social duties as chief hostess. But she also had an office in the West Wing, where the substantive work of the presidency is done - and she had a full staff there as well. Together with a second group in the Old Executive Office Building next door, Hillary's West Wing team dealt with public policy, including her work on health care reform.

In a memo I sent her early in her husband's first term, I compared the East and West Wings of the White House to two barbells she could use to steady herself as she walked the tightrope of public life. "The East Wing (social) barbell is what gives you protection in the West Wing political life," I wrote. "By going in and out of your traditional role as first lady, you insulate yourself against criticism for your public role and acquire political traction that you'll need for your West Wing activities."

I alluded to the president's ceremonial role as his equivalent of the East Wing/West Wing barbells. "When Bill pins a medal on a boy scout, he's buying political credibility to use in pa.s.sing his legislative agenda. He derives authority and aura from his ceremonial functions. It's the same with a first lady, only your activities are not just ceremonial but social as well."

Hillary's memoir is replete with tales of just this kind of barbell balancing. Since social activities consumed a large and vital part of her life in the White House, she now pretends that she was interested in them for their own sake. "In my own mind, I was traditional in some ways and not in others. I cared about the food I served our guests, and I also wanted to improve the delivery of health care for all Americans. To me, there was nothing incongruous about my interests and activities."

Not incongruous, just politically motivated. Hillary really didn't care about making sure that everything on the social side of the White House was elegantly presented or particularly sophisticated. She involved herself largely so that she could beef up the East Wing barbell to offset her West Wing activities. And eventually, later in the administration, she came to recognize the power of patronage that could be wielded through invitations to the White House.

In Living History, Hillary alludes briefly - if unpersuasively - to how she used the media to help burnish her image as first lady. In the first days of the administration, she notes, she "granted an exclusive interview to a reporter whose beat was not White House politics. . . . Some critics suggested that the story was contrived to 'soften' my image and portray me as a traditional woman in a traditional role."

Such coy denials notwithstanding, the interview was contrived for exactly that purpose. As Hillary's media consultant, Mandy Grunwald, told Bob Woodward, "The photos were intended to soften her image." It was the barbell theory in action: Like nearly every one of Hillary's interviews during her tenure as first lady, this was carefully arranged and orchestrated; in most cases, guidelines were established as to what questions reporters could or could not ask.

Since Hillary was actually a substantive policy advisor to the president, she was, in effect, conducting West Wing business by East Wing rules. She used the traditional guidelines for interviewing First Ladies as protection against questions that honed in on her various functions and scandals.

A first lady can limit her media interviews to a select few. So can a senator. A president cannot. Only a president has to endure the 360-degree media coverage that surrounds the office. A president's staff must have daily interactions with the national press corps. A president must stand in front of the national media, and the American people, for each new press conference, and face questions with no holds barred.

For all her time in the public eye, though, Hillary Clinton is not used to that level of scrutiny. In the White House, she hid behind the pink s.h.i.+eld of those traditional first lady press ground rules, warding off unwanted media attention. Only certain reporters from certain publications could ask certain questions on certain topics.

In the Senate, despite Hillary's high profile, media interest in her day-to-day activities is nowhere near what it would be if she were president. She doesn't have that many opportunities to make news in any given week, and what attention she does attract is almost always at her own behest, and therefore under her control. Once that control lapses - as it inevitably will should she occupy the Oval Office - the real Hillary is likely to seep out from behind the facade. Then the contrast between the reality and the mask - between Hillary and HILLARY - will become dangerously stark. Again, the lesson of the second Nixon administration is instructive: Once we learned of the break-ins, wiretaps, payoffs, and skullduggery of Richard Nixon's presidency, no one believed that the Nixon we were watching on television was the real man telling the real truth. If she isn't careful, HILLARY could suffer a similar fate.

In the late 1990s, as the Clinton administration descended more deeply into scandal and the spears and arrows grew sharper, Hillary depended on the protective camouflage of domesticity more than ever. She never required it as much as she did on the weekend of January 16-18, 1998, a three-day period that must rank as one of the worst in Hillary Clinton's life. Sat.u.r.day, January 17, was the day her husband had to testify at a deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit and answer questions posed by Jones's attorneys. It was there that he lied about his relations.h.i.+p with Monica Lewinsky, which led directly to his impeachment one year later. And it was there that he finally admitted he had had an affair with Gennifer Flowers, after six years of disparagement and denial. Despite weeks of preparation by the best lawyers in the capital, the deposition went badly. Very badly.

Gail Sheehy, author of the penetrating and insightful book Hillary's Choice, writes that after the deposition "the first couple had planned to take [Chief of Staff] Erskine Bowles and his wife out for a celebratory dinner ... to counter-act any impression that the President's forced deposition had shaken their lives." But the Clintons canceled. "Except for a visit to church on Sunday, they remained in seclusion until Monday. The wind had been knocked out of Bill Clinton."

According to Joyce Milton, the deposition "proved to be a lot tougher than the President had expected. . . . The Clintons did not dine out on Sat.u.r.day evening. And by the time they retired for the night, there was more bad news. The Drudge Report, the Internet gossip sheet loathed but avidly followed at the Clinton White House, was reporting that Newsweek had the intern story but had decided to spike it just minutes before its deadline. Drudge did not disclose Lewinsky's name, but he mentioned the existence of tapes of 'intimate phone conversations.' This can only have sent a shudder through Bill Clinton," who knew only too well the content of his late night phone calls with Lewinsky.

Hillary must have wanted to hide under the bed after this beastly weekend. Instead, though, she wrapped herself in a politically savvy image of domesticity. When reporter Peter Mayer asked her "how difficult a day Sat.u.r.day was for you and your family?" Hillary shrugged the question off. "It 'wasn't difficult for me,' she said. T just kind of hunkered down and went through my household tasks. Then my husband came home and we watched a movie and we had a' - a pregnant pause ensued while she seemed to grope for the words 'good time that evening.'"

"And Sunday?" Mayer followed up.

"Oh, we just stayed home and cleaned closets."

Gail Sheehy adds: "Another folksy image: Hillary as the dutiful I homemaker whose husband comes home on a Sat.u.r.day night wanting nothing more than a good video. In fact, that was the Sat.u.r.day night Hillary Clinton cleaned his closets."

How could Hillary have expected the press to believe such a quaint little domestic portrait? Especially on a weekend when she must have wanted to kill Bill? Not only was he betraying her, he was endangering the positions both of them had worked their entire lives to achieve.

The answer was simple: self-preservation. As mad as Hillary must have been, HILLARY still realized it was vital to convey certain impressions: First, she had to make it seem that all was at peace in the Clinton household that weekend. To indicate otherwise would have been to admit that there was reason for Bill to be troubled about the Jones deposition - that there was some real basis for their questions about his affairs with Flowers and Lewinsky.

Second, Hillary also had to leave the impression that Bill told her nothing to make her angry. She had to show the world that she was calm, even as she was seething inside. Revealing her anger would mean revealing that she knew about his affairs - and it was crucial to maintain the impression that she didn't know, if she were going to stand by Bill during the battle that was likely to ensue. If she knew and stood by him, it would mean she valued power over her marriage. But if she did not know, she could defend her power by standing up for her marriage.

Third, she needed, at that moment, to seem like any wife confronted by a wild and unbelievable charge of her husband's adultery. To conceal the political calculation that was undoubtedly going on beneath her real pain and sense of betrayal, she grasped at these pseudo-domesticity straws to bolster the impression that she was just like any other wife. To act like a politician now would be a disaster. She needed to pretend to be unpretentious - to be "normal" - so that her unflappability would indicate her husband's innocence. The reality was, of course, quite different.

Finally, she seems to have thought it a good idea to hint at intimacy with her husband, even as they were entering the most difficult period of their relations.h.i.+p. After all, if she was still intimate with him, how bad could his offense have been?

Her choices, of course, were limited. Other women could kick their husbands out of the house. She couldn't. Other women could walk away from such a situation. She couldn't. Leaving Bill would not only expand the scandal exponentially - it would also mean leaving the office of first lady. And there's no power in being a president's ex-wife.

Hillary had been mounting this domestic-bliss campaign for some time. Weeks earlier, to reinforce further the notion that they were a close-knit couple, the Clintons had made sure they were photographed dancing on the beach in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands during their 1997 Christmas vacation, two weeks before the Paula Jones deposition.

In Living History, Hillary scoffs at "speculation by some journalists that we had 'posed' for the photo in hopes that our embrace would be captured on film."

And here comes the non denial denial: "h.e.l.lo? As I told a radio interviewer a few weeks later, 'Just name me any fifty-year-old woman who would knowingly pose in her bathing suit - with her back pointed toward the camera.' Well, maybe people who look good from any angle, like Cher or Jane Fonda or Tina Turner. But not me."