The Clintons; Americans are still trying to figure them out and they're still learning basic lessons 

by Kenneth T. Walsh, Matthew Cooper, Gloria Borger

                           ______________________________________

    One year to the day after the Clinton era began, a top White House aide recalled one of the first dilemmas that confronted the new administration upon taking office. "We wondered what to call her," says the aide -- referring, of course, to the omnipresent Her in the White House, Hillary Rodham Clinton. "We thought `Mrs. Clinton' might sound sexist. `Ms. Clinton' didn't seem right. And anything with `Rodham Clinton' seemed way too clumsy." The solution is surprisingly informal: "We call her Hillary." 

    White House aides are not the only ones searching for the right words to describe this couple. At the dawn of the Clinton administration's second year, the rest of America is often baffled by the unique team in the White House. If anything, their bafflement may soon grow: The Clintons themselves have decided to change their public image. Heretofore, they've presented themselves as a team. "If you elect Bill," Mrs. Clinton bragged during the campaign, "you get me." But nowadays, it's clear they want the world to know that he is very much in charge; she handles specific assignments that he gives her. 

    One telling example of how eager she is to suppress the idea that she runs the ship of state: Last week, she agreed to consider an interview with U.S. News only on the condition that it be about health care and children's issues and only if this magazine agreed not to use her picture on the cover. U.S. News would not agree to those terms, and the interview was dropped. It was clear that her main purpose was to avoid being portrayed as copresident. 

    Well, is she? There is no Geiger counter that can measure her power, and it does not help, of course, that the quality of their marriage -- one in which he acknowledges causing pain -- is a topic that has become entangled in the world's examination of their work. That means there will always be an element of mystery about the state of their union. The president insists there is no copresidency. "I never said that," he told U.S. News. "Somebody else dreamed that up. There are big chunks of the presidency that she doesn't even comment on. And then when she does comment, I quite frankly like it. I like to discuss things with her, and even if sometimes we have good, healthy arguments, it's kind of a constructive thing." 

    What can be said after a year's worth of observation is that her unprecedented power is wielded both overtly in running the administration's massive health reform proposal and in less examined ways, from personnel decisions to crafting her husband's public image. The Clintons may not want to be judged as a team, but that probably is the standard they will have to live with. 

    Certainly, the public largely accepts the arrangement. A U.S. News poll finds that a majority of Americans approve of their work and a plurality say she has "the right amount" of power. Yet there are trouble signs. The Clintons have slipped measurably as role models in voters' minds. And the roller-coaster quality of the presidency dismays voters. Only last week, Bobby Ray Inman, citing conspiracies, withdrew his nomination as defense secretary (story, Page 48). 

    The uppermost question remains: How do they do things? Here are some answers: 

    Is she more liberal than he is? The perception of Washington insiders is that heis a moderate because he ran the centrist Democratic Leadership Council; she's a liberal who chaired the Children's Defense Fund. The president says this is nonsense. "It's just not accurate to portray her as somebody who is out there on the left wing of this administration," Clinton told U.S. News. Intimates agree that both are pragmatists. Bill Clinton is to the left of many of his DLC allies; his heart, for instance, is not in cutting the deficit, although political pressures have forced him to do so. Similarly, friends of Mrs. Clinton say that she was always a voice for pragmatism within the Children's Defense Fund. 

    When it comes to health reform, Mrs. Clinton has stood her ground against congressional liberals who want a Canadian-style single- payer system. "It won't work your way," she recently told a leading advocate of a single-payer plan. White House insiders say that she is ready to compromise on virtually all the elements of the Clinton health care plan that critics find too left leaning -- even on abortion funding. Still, partisan Republicans like Sen. Trent Lott figure she is a more hard-line ideologue than the president: "There's a feeling [on health care] that if it's Bill, we can cut a deal. If it's Hillary, we're not so sure." 

    Political positions aside, the Clintons do have indisputably different temperaments. "I would call him less focused and disciplined. She is very task oriented," says longtime aide Betsey Wright. The president's appetite for mastering all kinds of policy issues is legendary. Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, has a short list of objectives -- health care reform, diversity in personnel appointments, children's issues -- that she wants done. When they deal with others, their approaches can sow confusion. The president, for example, thinks abstract arguments can convert his enemies, while the first lady is not above making blunt demands for support. And she goes ballistic about leaks. Last spring, she gathered aides from around the White House to warn them about discussing why the health plan had been delayed. White House officials say that Mrs. Clinton, far more than her husband, takes a quid pro quo approach to negotiation: "She won't give something up unless she gets something in return," says a senior adviser. The American people seem to understand this difference. Asked in the U.S. News poll which of the two is tougher, 55 percent said she was; only 25 percent named the president. 

    Mrs. Clinton rewards her friends and freezes out enemies. Last year, she asked aides to make sure the administration's allies in Congress were invited to private White House movie screenings and dinners on Friday nights. By contrast, according to one insider, the president had to be told repeatedly that he could not sweet- talk his way out of differences he had last year with conservative Sens. David Boren and Richard Shelby on budget issues. "He doesn't really acknowledge when somebody needs to be put in the enemy camp," the source says. 

    Sometimes the first lady's staff can go too far. When Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, the boss of the budget in the House, made a speech last year saying that the Clinton health plan would have to be trimmed, his staff got an earful from Mrs. Clinton's aides. One Rostenkowski staffer describes Mrs. Clinton's minions as "paranoids." 

    The Clintons' differences extend to personal habits, too. His meetings are dominated by aides "talking off the top of their heads"; hers are devoted to "solutions and proposals." It was her bias for crisp decisiveness that prompted one recent row with the staff. She was furious, one source reports, that top White House officials had not come up with a strategy for dealing with the first couple's growing problems with Whitewater. Eventually, both Clintons agreed to the appointment of an independent counsel, and last week, Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Robert Fiske, a former federal prosecutor, to the task. 

    What does she run? Definitely health care -- and on that issue, she weighs in on even the most minor details. When the National Health Care Campaign, the subsidiary of the Democratic National Committee that is promoting the White House's plan, produced a promotional videocassette, Mrs. Clinton dissected three versions of it before choosing the final one. She went line by line through the paperback book version of the health plan before signing off on it. And it was her idea -- spontaneously, aides say -- to go on the attack last November against the insurance industry. She got particularly steamed sitting in a car outside the hall where she was supposed to give a speech. "She just got so furious about the insurance industry's campaign that she let it out," an aide learned later. Late last year, when the budget-cutting amendment offered by Reps. Tim Penny, a Minnesota Democrat, and John Kasich, an Ohio Republican, threatened to suck the funding from Mrs. Clinton's health care plan, she personally lobbied the Hill for its defeat and marshaled strategy with adviser Stephanopoulos and economic adviser Gene Sperling. In the end, she beat back the amendment. 

    There is a rising sense in some capital quarters that she has aimed too high on health care and that no one at the White House, including the president, dares rein her in. That may be overstated, but even longtime friends and political associates say Mrs. Clinton has listened only to a small circle of advisers led by health care staff director Ira Magaziner, who favored a massive overhaul of the existing system. They express deep concern that her plan to expand government control is unworkable. One longtime friend warns that she's so "single-minded and self-confident" that she has made it much more difficult to win passage of the plan. 

    Whatever the outcome, Americans clearly see it as more her plan than his. Asked in the U.S. News poll who had the greatest input, 52 percent of voters said that she had more input; only 4 percent said he did. Thirty-eight percent saw their contributions as about equal. 

    Beyond health care, Mrs. Clinton is particularly attentive to personnel matters and often interviews candidates for the jobs that matter to her. She has had the last word on hires in the White House Counsel's Office -- and not just in the office's top jobs, but at the staff level. Sources say that she has intervened to stop the hiring or nomination of white men and insisted that women or minority candidates get certain positions. "She has a huge cadre of friends and knows where she wants them in the administration," says a Clinton aide. And she likes to keep up on issues. Domestic policy adviser Carol Rasco not long ago asked Mrs. Clinton to sit in on a briefing about where the administration's welfare reform was going.

    The first lady also plays a strong and largely unreported role in shaping the administration's overall message. Several months ago, she told her husband and his aides that the president must avoid being seen as "mechanic in chief," obsessed with policy details, and that he needed to explain his vision for the future. Since then, he has blocked out time in his daily schedule for long-range rumination. 

    More recently, Mrs. Clinton has participated in top-level meetings on the State of the Union address, trying to fashion the "story line" for 1994. It was her idea for the president to give a pre- State of the Union address last week devoted to touting his achievements. (The speech was canceled because of subfreezing weather.) She strongly argued that to establish his political credibility, the president needs to underscore his successes in 1993 -- ranging from his deficit-reduction package to approval of the Brady gun control bill, family leave and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Other presidential aides gently suggested that perhaps there was no room for retrospective in the State of the Union address, but Mrs. Clinton insisted that it would be unwise to simply "argue about the future."Few in the White House doubt thatMrs. Clinton will prevail. 

    President Clinton says his wife often sensitizes him to trends around the country. After visiting many emergency wards, Mrs. Clinton began calling his attention to the issues of crime, violence and family breakdown. "I know you've got to deal with the economy and health care and foreign policy," he recalls her telling him, "but you've just got to do something about this. People's lives are being shattered out there." 

    Not surprisingly, Mrs. Clinton, like Nancy Reagan and other first ladies before her, is increasingly involved in protecting her husband from overzealous staffers. She regularly reviews his schedule, says an aide, and suggests jettisoning events when they seem to be "weighing him down." Her advice is rarely rejected. She also works with Chief of Staff Mack McLarty to make sure the presidentgets home each evening by 7:30. 

    One area in which Mrs. Clinton surrenders the field to her husband is foreign policy. "I don't know if she talks to him in private, but I have no sense that she is a player in those areas," says a key White House official. Other aides say she recognizes that she has no expertise in foreign policy, so she largely ignores it. 

    What's Washington done to them? In reviewing the past year with friends and advisers, the Clintons have expressed keen disappointment that the capital has been so resistant to change. Aides say the president and first lady tend to think of Washington "in an anthropological way" and are stung by two things. One is the city's obsession with "who is in and who is out" -- a line Clinton wrote into his inaugural speech. They are also hurt by the city's partisanship. As rough as Little Rock's politics can be, there are very few Republicans. And the president's other formative experience with the GOP was in the confines of the National Governors' Association, where Democrats and Republicans regularly work together. "He feels like Washington's priorities are misplaced," says Diane Blair, a longtime family friend. The Clintons have complained bitterly that critics always exaggerate their gaffes, such as the president's $200 haircut aboard Air Force One last May, while glossing over the administration's successes. 

    They might take comfort, though, from the palpable yearning that still exists in the country for them to succeed. Nearly 6 in 10 voters said in the U.S. News survey they think Clinton will be a better president in his second year. And a plurality think he's doing a good job on the economy -- 48 percent like his stewardship on that front, compared with 39 percent who don't. 

    Friends think those favorable signs help them persevere. "Anything and everything involving them has a way of being magnified," says Rex Horne, President Clinton's longtime pastor at Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, who talks to the president frequently. "And it weighs them down from time to time. But they seem to be the same people today as they were a year ago, except maybe for an added sense of sobriety at how important this year will be for what they are trying to do." 

    The Clintons shared just such a reflective moment on their recent visit to Moscow. Unable to sleep in the glittering guest quarters of the Kremlin, Bill Clinton awakened his wife and told her that they needed to talk. He hadn't seen Hillary for a week and wanted to catch up on some things. 

    For the next hour, an aide says, they chatted about what they had seen in Russia, about the death of Virginia Kelley, about health reform and the State of the Union address. At that point, the first lady went back to sleep. But the president did not. He got dressed and took a predawn stroll with a handful of Secret Service agents along the ice-draped Kremlin walls, pointing out sights like any other tourist. "She paces herself," says a senior White House official. "He still gets excited about everything." It may not be a copresidency. But, like it or not, they are being judged as a team.

    BEGTAB APPROVAL RATINGS FOR THE FIRST COUPLE
 PRESIDENT CLINTON:      53 pct.
 THE FIRST LADY:              57 pct.

    THE PRESIDENT AND FIRST LADY AS ROLE MODELS
 Those who say they are good role models:
 NOW                60 pct.
 LAST APRIL      74 pct.

    Those who say they are not very good:
 NOW                34 pct.
 LAST APRIL      20 pct.

    AMERICANS WHO FEEL THE FIRST LADY HAS Helped her husband as president:
 NOW                64 pct.
 LAST APRIL      72 pct.

    Hurt her husband as president:
 NOW                22 pct.
 LAST APRIL      16 pct.

    THE NOT-SO-GREAT NEWS FOR CLINTON
 Asked their feelings about these statements, Americans showed concern about Clinton's work style and the negative stories about him. But they're not happy with GOP behavior, either.                                                
                         AGREE       DISAGREE
 President Clinton does not focus enough and tries to do too much.
                          59 pct.       35 pct.

Every time I start to feel good about the president, something negative comes up.
                          52 pct.        39 pct.

Republicans are just trying to bring President Clinton down with rumors and innuendoes.
                          49 pct.        44 pct. 

    THE HOPEFUL NEWS FOR CLINTON.  Asked their feelings about these statements, Americans said they think he will grow in the job and isn't a traditional Democrat. They didn't show much concern about Mrs. Clinton's role.

                       AGREE       DISAGREE
 President Clinton will be a better president his second year in office. 
                        63 pct.        28 pct.

President Clinton is a different brand of Democrat.        
                         64 pct.     27 pct.

President Clinton depends too much on his wife, Hillary, when it comes to policy decisions.
                         36 pct.     55 pct. 

    U.S. News poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted by Celinda Lake of Mellman-Lazarus-Lake and Ed Goeas of the Tarrance Group January 17-18. Margin of error: Plus or minus 3.1 percent. Percentages may not add up to 100 because some respondents answered "Don't know."

    THE PARTISANSHIP LESSON. In Arkansas, Clinton never faced GOP opposition like the kind led by Sen. Bob Dole. Clinton's still learning how to cope.

    THE CLOSURE LESSON. Clinton's dallying compounded the Lani Guinier fiasco. He know decisions shouldn't languish. But a year later, Clinton's civil rights job is unfilled.

    THE MEDIA LESSON. The Clintons saw the press pry into their family life and were dismayed at stories after their friend Vince Foster, above, committed suicide.

    THE GET-TOUGH LESSON. Al Gore's pummeling of Ross Perot in a trade debate was a reminder that presidents sometimes have to stomp opponents, then woo them.

    THE PAY-ATTENTION LESSON. The worst foreign-policy crises came in places such as Haiti (top) and Somalia, where Clinton and key aides promised more than they could deliver, then let their policies drift away as they turned their attention to other matters. He's still struggling after Bobby Ray Inman's decision not to become defense secretary.

    THE INTERVENTION LESSON. Clinton's vain attempt to mount an aggressive international response to butchery in the former Yugoslavia (left) was foiled by European reluctance and by the administration's own waffling response to ethnic cleansing. It was his first lesson in the need for decisive U.S. leadership.

    THE RUSSIA-MATTERS-MOST LESSON. Clinton concentrated on cementing his personal relationship with Russian President Boris Yeltsin but ignored the conservative tide in Russian politics. Both the nationalists' victory in elections last month and the collapse of Yeltsin's economic reform effort last week surprised Clinton and left him scrambling.