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                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 28

HILLARY CLINTON

All Eyes on Hillary


The G.O.P. hopes to gain votes by attacking her as a radical
feminist who prefers the boardroom to the kitchen. But the ploy
could backfire by alienating working women.

By MARGARET CARLSON -- With reporting by Priscilla Painton and
Walter Shapiro/Little Rock


    You might think Hillary Clinton was running for President.
Granted, she is a remarkable woman. The first student
commencement speaker at Wellesley, part of the first large wave
of women to go to law school, a prominent partner in a major law
firm, rated one of the top 100 lawyers in the country -- there
is no doubt that she is her husband's professional and
intellectual equal. But is this reason to turn her into "Willary
Horton" for the '92 campaign, making her an emblem of all that
is wrong with family values, working mothers and modern women
in general?

    The Republicans clearly think so. Hillary has been such a
constant target of G.O.P. campaign barbs that Bill Clinton
recently wondered aloud whether "George Bush was running for
First Lady." In making her a focus of their attack strategy, the
Republicans seem to have calculated that they can shave votes
off Governor Clinton's total by portraying his wife as a radical
feminist who prefers the boardroom to the kitchen. And they may
be right. In the latest TIME/CNN poll, 74% of the respondents
said their votes would not be affected by their views of
Hillary; but among the remainder, almost twice as many said they
would vote against Clinton (14%) as for him (9%) based on their
opinion of his wife. If the Hillary factor can mean the
difference of a couple of percentage points, it could provide
a critical margin in a close election.

    The foundations of the anti-Hillary campaign were
carefully poured and were part of a larger effort to solidify
Bush's conservative base. Republicans dug up -- and seriously
distorted -- some of her old academic articles on children's
rights. Rich Bond, the chairman of the Republican National
Committee, caricatured Hillary as a lawsuit-mongering feminist
who likened marriage to slavery and encouraged children to sue
their parents. (She did no such thing.) Richard Nixon warned
that her forceful intelligence was likely to make her husband
"look like a wimp." Patrick Buchanan blasted "Clinton & Clinton"
for what he claimed was their agenda of abortion on demand,
homosexual rights and putting women in combat.

    Rarely has the spouse of a presidential candidate been so
closely scrutinized and criticized by the political opposition.
To a large extent, the controversy swirling around Hillary
Clinton today reflects a profound ambivalence toward the
changing role of women in American society over the past few
decades. Hillary, who personifies many of the advances made by
a cutting-edge generation of women, finds herself held up
against what is probably the most tradition-bound and antiquated
model of American womanhood: the institution of the First Lady.

    The President's wife, as Eleanor Roosevelt once wrote, was
to be seen and not heard, a discreet adornment to her husband's
glory. Never mind that Mrs. Roosevelt broke most of her own
rules with her high-profile tours and a vocal interest in civil
rights. Most of those who followed in her footsteps remained
true to the traditional backseat role, and those who ventured
too close to the policymaking arena -- Rosalynn Carter sitting
at the Cabinet table, for instance -- were harshly criticized.
And there are some sound reasons for concern. The President's
spouse is potentially the second most powerful person in
government but is beyond accountability. Yet for reasons that
are both social and generational, Barbara Bush will almost
certainly be the last of the traditional First Ladies. Whoever
follows her is likely to shatter the mold -- particularly if it
is a woman with the professional achievements, the career
ambitions and the activist bent of Hillary Clinton.

    Still, Mrs. Clinton would have done well at the outset to
have conformed more to the traditional campaign rules for
aspiring First Ladies: gaze like Nancy Reagan, soothe like
Barbara Bush and look like Jacqueline Kennedy. By not doing
that, to some extent, Hillary played into the hands of her
critics. At first she seemed insufficiently aware that she was
not the candidate herself. Instead of standing by like a potted
palm, she enjoyed talking at length about problems and policies.
At one coffee in a living room in Manchester, New Hampshire,
people were chatting amiably about the cost of groceries when
she abruptly launched into a treatise on infant mortality. She
sometimes took longer to introduce her husband than he did to
deliver his speech. She, and he, should have known that quips
like "People call us two-for-one" would arouse the
traditionalists.

    Her image as a tough career woman probably peaked in
March, when Democratic gadfly Jerry Brown charged that her law
firm benefited unfairly from her marriage to the Arkansas
Governor. After she shot back, "I suppose I could have stayed
home, baked cookies and had teas," many minds snapped shut on
the Hillary question faster than you can say sound bite. (Almost
no one reported the rest of what she said: "The work that I have
done as a professional, a public advocate, has been aimed . .
. to assure that women can make the choices . . . whether it's
full-time career, full-time motherhood or some combination.")

    Ironically, Hillary's natural desire to shield her
daughter from the glare of publicity only fed suspicions that
she valued the role of high-powered lawyer over that of wife and
mother. Instead of using Chelsea in photo ops in New Hampshire,
where a sweet family portrait might have helped counter the
Gennifer Flowers story, Hillary kept her daughter back in Little
Rock with her grandparents. To this day, Chelsea has never been
interviewed and is still only rarely photographed.

    All this made Hillary a perfect foil for Barbara Bush, the
composed matron for whom hard-edged feminism is as foreign as
an unmade bed. That she looks and acts as if she is above the
political fray only makes her a more potent force within that
very arena -- although her most conspicuous activities are
politically neutral, like hugging sick babies, promoting
literacy and ghostwriting best sellers for her dog. Twice as
popular as her husband, she can have it both ways when she wants
to. No one would think to label America's favorite grandmother
cynical when she lets it be known that she is pro-choice, while
her husband is doing everything possible to make abortion a
crime. Mrs. Bush has also worked hard to conceal her role in the
White House, which can be every bit as ferocious as was Nancy
Reagan's, especially when she believes the President is not
being well served. She can turn on a bulldog disposition when
warranted. "You people are just not as important as you think
you are," she once growled to a group of journalists she thought
were tormenting her husband.

    Although Mrs. Bush initially said Hillary bashing should
be off limits, she reversed herself later on the grounds that
Mrs. Clinton was playing such a prominent role and had spoken
out on public policy. The President agreed and got in a few
swipes of his own about Hillary's legal writings. Then Marilyn
Quayle chimed in, insisting in an interview that as a
representative of "the liberal, radical wing of the feminist
movement," Mrs. Clinton was absolutely fair game.

    Seated on the couch in the living room of the Arkansas
Governor's mansion last week, with Bill and Chelsea waiting to
have a rare family dinner, Hillary responded to the Republican
onslaught more in sadness than in anger. "I really don't know
what to make of it," she told TIME. "What recently has happened
has been part of a very sad and cynical political strategy.
It's not really about me. I find it hard to take a lot of that
personally, since the portrait is a distorted, inaccurate one."

    The unprecedented headlining of Barbara and Marilyn at the
Republican National Convention last month was above all an
attempt to score points on the family-values front by depicting
them as paragons of stay-at-home motherhood. The First Lady's
approach was typically gentle and low-key, invoking her years
of driving carpools, den mothering and going to Little League
games. Marilyn, however, took the white gloves off with a
strident critique of the choices and values Hillary Clinton
represents. "Not everyone [in our generation] believed that
the family was so oppressive that women could only thrive apart
from it," she said. "Most women do not wish to be liberated from
their essential natures as women."

    But there are signs that such tactics may backfire on the
Republicans. The latest TIME/CNN poll shows, for example, that
only 5% of likely voters consider family values the main
campaign issue and that Marilyn Quayle is the least popular of
the three women, with a 37% approval rating, compared with 40%
for Hillary and 76% for Barbara. Only 14% felt Hillary does not
pay enough attention to her family.

    Bush campaign strategists, in fact, have sought to tone
down the anti-Hillary rhetoric in recent weeks. In their own
postconvention surveys, the Republicans found that a hard core
of about 10% to 15% of voters strongly dislike the Arkansas
Governor's wife. But the internal surveys also indicated this
anti-Hillary sentiment is firm and needs no boosting, while the
great majority of the public finds the assaults on her
insulting, meanspirited and beside the point.

    The Clinton camp, meanwhile, came to the same conclusion.
A sampling taken by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg showed
that Hillary's favorability ratings shot up 8 or 9 points right
after the Republican Convention. All the Hillary bashing in the
Astrodome, says Clinton's top campaign strategist, James
Carville, "played to a decent advantage for us. The Republican
Party in Houston made a collective fool of itself in attacking
Hillary. People want to hear other things in an election
campaign than a distorted 1974 scholarly article."

    The main reason for the backlash is obvious: by taking
after Hillary the way they did, the Republicans unnecessarily
angered moderates, who saw the attack as one on women in
general. By going after women who work, they got at the elite
Murphy Browns -- a small contingent -- but also snagged the
middle- and working-class Roseannes, creating solidarity among
both groups, who aren't confident enough in their new roles to
take a presidential strike force with equanimity. Scratch the
surface of any mother and she wonders if she is doing it right,
whether she works full time, part time or not at all. A note
from the teacher saying Junior is having trouble with long
division can make a trial lawyer wonder if she should write
briefs from the kitchen table. Ask a stay-at-home mother at a
cocktail party what she does, and she looks at you as if you
just asked if you could have one of her fingers as an hors
d'oeuvre. She is wondering if she will ever be able to get back
into the job market again, and is worried that if her children
don't turn out a lot better than those of the woman doing
arbitrage deals down the block, she will have wasted her life.

    While the Republicans were busy painting Hillary as an
overly ambitious careerist, she seemed to be consciously
modifying her style. In the past few months, she has softened
her image (much to the dismay of some feminists), grinning and
gripping like a mayor's wife and baking cookies to show she is
not a harridan. She has even learned to stand at the back of the
stage and look at Bill with a convincing imitation of the Nancy
Reagan gaze.

    In person and off the podium, Hillary Clinton is neither
a killer lawyer nor the adoring spouse of the bus tours. Riding
in the back seat of a car during a New York campaign swing, she
wolfs down popcorn while worrying about whether Chelsea got her
booster shots. She jokes about only making the teams for sports
like volleyball and softball -- and laments that she didn't
have the foresight to concentrate on profession-enhancing
pastimes like tennis and golf. While Bill can go for long
stretches of time on the road, she says she has to head back
frequently to Little Rock to "make a cup of tea, hang out with
Chelsea, take an afternoon nap. If I don't get back there, I
don't feel grounded."

    Running parallel to this homing instinct is what friends
describe as a growing spirituality over the past few years.
Though the fact is not trumpeted -- even in the face of
Republican family-values attacks -- Hillary, a Methodist who
claims to have been "religiously committed since childhood,"
carries her favorite Scriptures (Proverbs, Psalms, Corinthians,
Beatitudes) wherever she goes. She and Bill regularly pray with
Chelsea at bedtime. "As I have grown older," says Hillary, "I
have tried to synthesize my personal beliefs with the way I act
in the world and to try to keep growing. It's a very important
part of who I am and what I think my life should mean."

    Friends describe Hillary as someone who tends toward the
earnest and serious but who nonetheless has a playful side. "She
laughs harder than anyone at the jokes, but she is always a
little surprised when she herself gets off a good line," says
Mack McLarty, who has known the Governor since they attended
Miss Mary's Kindergarten together in Hope, Arkansas, and is now
chairman of the board of Arkla Inc., a huge natural-gas
conglomerate. Prominent Washington lobbyist Liz Robbins, an old
friend of both Clintons, marvels at the fact that Hillary
manages to stay in touch while less busy people do not. "Hillary
is a very inclusive person, which you don't usually find in
successful women," says Robbins.

    While not the life of a party, Hillary tends to get into
the spirit of an evening. She's the one to "try the new meal --
hippopotamus stew -- or order the blue drink," says television
producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. Most socializing is done at
home, in the kitchen and breakfast room and around the piano.
(All three Clintons play the instrument, says Hillary, "but none
of us is what you'd call good.") They play Pictionary, Scrabble
and a cutthroat card game called Hungarian Rummy.

    Before the campaign switched into high gear, the Clintons
would eat dinner at least once a week with Bill's mother and
stepfather and Hillary's parents, who moved from Chicago to
Little Rock a few years ago. On such occasions, says Dorothy
Rodham, Hillary's mother, they all subscribe to the theory that
it is more important who is around the table than what's on it
-- which is fortunate for Hillary, who admits she served black
beans, chili and leftovers from an official dinner as last
year's Christmas meal.

    There is no mistaking that Hillary is a strong and
determined woman, used to dominating whatever situation she is
in by force of mind. Although the campaign plays down her role,
she is the talent that test-drives the Governor's ideas, punches
holes in his theories, comments on his speeches and often
identifies the weak spots in his campaign operation and helps
get them corrected. She is one of the people who can convince
him it's better to make three points in a speech than six, and
the only one who can make sure he gets to bed on time rather
than shooting the breeze with staff members into the wee hours,
as he likes to do. Hillary herself ensures that Clinton's
Arkansas supporters are properly used in his presidential quest.
Says campaign aide Betsy Wright: "She has the analytic ability
to make certain that the decisions he is leaning toward are
ironclad." Mrs. Clinton is certain to be one of the key players
in the room when her husband finally sits down to prepare for
his crucial -- though still unscheduled -- debates with
President Bush.

    The gravest error the Republicans may have made was not
resting their case with Barbara Bush. Instead they also
spotlighted Marilyn Quayle as the symbol of their baby-boomer
professional woman who gave it all up for the man she loves.
Those worried about Hillary Clinton being a co-President
(although in 11 years as First Lady in Arkansas, no one accused
her of being co-Governor) should take a look at Mrs. Quayle's
activities. She was her husband's campaign manager and has an
office near his in the Old Executive Office Building, where she
spends much of her time. In joint interviews, she doesn't
hesitate to correct her husband.

    An intelligent and capable manager who can rightly claim
much of the credit for Dan's success, Marilyn Quayle has a
vindictive streak that often undercuts her strengths. While
aides go out of their way to point out what a nice guy her
husband is, one Republican handler admits that "Marilyn doesn't
have a lovable side."

    Mrs. Quayle's personality and career choices should no
more be a campaign issue than those of Mrs. Clinton. But the
Vice President's wife has gone out of her way to criticize
Hillary on points where she has labeled criticism of herself as
unfair. When stories surfaced in 1988 about her parents'
adherence to the teachings of Fundamentalist preacher "Colonel"
Robert B. Thieme Jr., known for attacking homosexuals, liberals
and the United Nations, she fumed that religion was a private
matter. But recently she told a friend she considered it "very
significant" that the Governor and his wife attended different
churches.

    While Mrs. Quayle is urging women who care about their
children not to work, she is constantly buzzing around the world
and the country helping her husband campaign to keep his job.
Having adopted disaster relief as her personal crusade, she has
visited numerous disaster sites in the U.S. and abroad during
the past four years. Just last week she was off to Florida, as
a highly visible member of the board of the Federal Emergency
Management Agency. She has also traveled to all 50 states on
behalf of the party, raising more than $1 million for the
campaign. Almost any paying job, short of flight attendant,
would give her more time at home with her kids.

    And she has found time to co-author a potboiler novel
called Embrace the Serpent and to take a nine-state book tour.
Some critics point out, however, that she would never have
landed a sweetheart book deal -- Crown Publishers churned out
75,000 copies instead of the usual 6,000 for a first novel --
if she had not been married to the Vice President. Marilyn
Quayle's activities demonstrate nothing more than the fact that
in the modern age, talented, ambitious women need not hide their
skills nor divert their energies. Although politically
unthinkable for a Republican at the moment, what would be wrong
with a qualified lawyer like Marilyn Quayle -- or Hillary
Clinton -- holding an important government job, if earned by
merit? Robert Kennedy was his brother's Attorney General, and
both the President and the country were well served.

    Last week Hillary Clinton sought to reclaim a bit of her
policy role by saying she intended to take a more
"comprehensive" role in the White House, meaning she would be
an active "voice for children" and an advocate of programs to
promote their interests. "I have recollections of extraordinary
policy roles taken by Eleanor Roosevelt and very strong
positions on the environment by Lady Bird Johnson," she told
TIME.

    First Spouses have always had some influence on the
President, no matter how much that influence was hidden or
downplayed. Woodrow Wilson's wife Edith was the virtual
President during her husband's long illness. And it is
impossible to imagine Presidents from George Washington to
George Bush not listening to the counsel of the one person in
the world upon whom they can count to have their joint interests
at heart. Bush is a better President for having Barbara Bush at
his side. So why shouldn't Dan Quayle get the benefit of Marilyn
Quayle's intellect and instincts? And why shouldn't Bill Clinton
have the benefit of Hillary Clinton's? And why then shouldn't
the country get the same benefit? Perhaps it is time to admit
that "two for one" is a good deal.