What About Hillary? As Scandals Mount, Hard-Charging First Lady Has To Tough It Out.

How can she stand it?

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s friends and supporters say she doesn’t believe former intern Monica Lewinsky’s allegations that she had an 18-month affair with the president. But more, the first lady loves her husband. She believes they are on a mission to put a humane face on politics.

And she can take it.

“Hillary has a very strong sense of identity,” said the Rev. Don Jones, an ethics professor, Methodist youth minister to Clinton and a longtime friend. “If she were an insecure person, if her life depended on what other people thought, then of course, she would be an alcoholic, commit suicide or do something crazy.”

Detractors take a more cynical tone, that her relationship with her husband is a complicated partnership and that she has stuck with him through allegations of a 12-year affair with Gennifer Flowers and allegations that he exposed himself to Paula Jones in Arkansas because her success rides on his.

But both friends and critics alike agree that in times of crisis, what Hillary does best is to take action.

“She certainly pays attention … because the country’s paying attention to it. She listens to what people are saying. And she talks to the president about how to handle it,” said Neel Lattimore, who was her press secretary from the presidential campaign until last fall. “But she does not become morose, does not stay in bed, does not go into hiding.”

Lattimore and others say that during a crisis, she firmly sticks to her schedule, goes about her duties and often becomes deeply involved behind the scenes in designing damage-control strategy.

“She doesn’t get in a beleaguered mode, she gets very pragmatic. She cuts straight to what the situation is and figures out how to deal with it,” said one former aide. “It’s not an emotional approach, but a very lawyerly approach.”

Indeed, the nation watched as an unflappable Hillary Rodham Clinton, in an elegant suit, presided over a formal dinner at the White House, graciously thanking all who contributed to the fund to renovate the White House, the very day Lewinsky’s allegations emerged.

“While I was in the White House, I don’t ever recall canceling an event because of some bad-weather storm,” Lattimore said. “When you wring your hands, you can’t hold others. That’s something she always said.”

This week, the first lady has kept a low profile. On Friday, Clinton met with an ambassador and held several staff meetings, said press secretary Marsha Barry.

But Roger Morris, author of the damning “Partners in Power,” said the her resoluteness and quick action in a crisis are part of a long pattern, forged early on in Arkansas.

“Her reaction has always been to stand fast, to support him entirely and unflinchingly in public and often to be furious, absolutely enraged, in private,” Morris said. “She sort of trades on her outrage, and it usually results in her taking over the direction of the defense. There’s a tendency for her to treat him like an errant child and take over.”

Still, it must be painful when your husband’s sex drive and your marriage have become the butt of late-night comedians. Jay Leno said the title of Hillary Clinton’s next book could be: “It Takes a Village to Keep an Eye on My Husband.”

The first lady acknowledged earlier this week that it was a difficult time. “I wouldn’t say that it’s not hard,” she said, “because it is difficult and painful anytime someone you care about, you love and you admire is attacked and subjected to such relentless accusations as my husband has been.”

A longtime friend, former Arkansas political science professor Diane Blair, said she had spoken with Clinton and that the first is “holding up just fine.”

“They have been living for five years now with unending allegations, investigations, and, of course, she wishes that life could be otherwise,” Blair said. “But she is not bent or broken. She is a very strong, grounded woman who will get through this as she had gotten through everything.”

The year has had other strains for the first lady. Their daughter, Chelsea, went off to college at Stanford University, across the country. In addition, she turned 50 in October. On a long, Air Force One flight, Clinton propped up her feet and reflected on living with constant scandal.

“She experiences pain and embarrassment,” Jones said. “The embarrassment part is the sexual innuendoes. But the real source of Hillary’s pain is the unrelenting attacks on her and her husband for the last six years. She said: ‘It is an issue of injustice. The problem is, we can’t strike back. My husband and I have adopted a strategy of just living with it. Just stoically absorbing it and doing our jobs the best we know how. We know we will not win if we strike back.”’

But critics like Morris say, ultimately, the private relationship between the president and the first lady, her feelings and the bond that keeps them together, remain elusive.

“The relationship is rooted in the capacity on her part to see what is best in him,” Morris said. “The good in him mixes with her own drive. And she has the discipline he so tragically lacks. But it’s hard to get inside her head. It’s a very complicated relationship that is going to fascinate historians and psycho-historians for decades.”