Back In Spotlight First Lady Says She Has Trouble Recognizing The Public Hillary Clinton
One of the most scrutinized women in America made her debut in a new role Sunday, musing lightly as a weekly syndicated columnist in more than 100 newspapers and magazines worldwide about the pleasures of driving her own car or of being mistaken for a mere look-alike of her well-known self.
But even as Hillary Rodham Clinton embarked on her latest effort to explain herself as something other than someone else’s cardboard conception, she found herself back in another spotlight as well: in frontpage headlines as the uncalled witness and unspoken target of the latest round of congressional investigations into the lingering soap opera of Whitewater.
For Mrs. Clinton, who has resisted efforts to pigeonhole her personality as steadfastly as she once resisted efforts by reporters and investigators to pierce the privacy of her personal finances, it could hardly be otherwise. If her husband is the president as kaleidoscope, she remains the first lady as Rorschach test.
She acknowledged as much in the first edition of “Talking it Over,” a 750-word collection of personal philosophizing and genteel politicking that will appear weekly in newspapers as diverse as The Los Angeles Times and The Daily News in New York. Mrs. Clinton follows the tradition of one of her idols, Eleanor Roosevelt, whose “My Day” ran for more than two decades.
In her first column, Mrs. Clinton wryly recalls a recent effort to blend into the crowd at a Washington art museum.
“Suddenly a woman came up to me,” Mrs. Clinton writes. ” ‘You sure look like Hillary Clinton,’ she said. ‘So I’m told,’ I answered. The truth is that sometimes it is hard even for me to recognize the Hillary Clinton that other people see. Like millions of women across our country, I find that my life consists of different, sometimes paradoxical parts.”
For the first lady, who declined to be interviewed for this article, that has never been truer. Her friends say she is eager for the opportunity, however limited, to address the public directly.
“She realized she overstepped on health care, and because she can’t have a direct policy role, she wants to make sure she has an advocacy one,” one White House aide explained, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It’s also a pure political tool, a wonderful free reach into women voters.”
Even as Mrs. Clinton remains a complex and polarizing figure in public opinion, she is also one of the president’s best campaign assets as he gears up for re-election, especially among women and minority voters whose support the president needs.
“I do think what you’re seeing is a feeling that there are opportunities here for making sure she says her piece,” said her old friend, Diane Blair, a political science professor at the University of Arkansas. “It isn’t defensive; it isn’t ‘Making sure I am understood,’ but it’s talking. I think she’s very excited.”
Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose portrait of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s wartime partnership in the White House, “No Ordinary Time,” was avidly read by both Clintons on its publication last fall, said she had discussed with Mrs. Clinton how Mrs. Roosevelt used “My Day” to stake out her views on issues, sometimes ahead of her husband.
“I think all of those things will be possible for Hillary,” Goodwin said. “It has to be somewhat soothing to know that, little by little, if you believe you’re many-sided, complex, warmer than people know, then you can at least show some of that. It doesn’t make any sense to complain about it. Otherwise it’s like fighting against the umpire at home when the only real option is to hit the next one out of the park.”
Mrs. Clinton first received the invitation to write the column from Creators Syndicate of Los Angeles shortly after Clinton took office, but her aides said she declined because she was too busy with health care and other matters. She accepted last month, and will take no money, though the syndicate, which represents writers as diverse as Ann Landers and Dan Quayle, will donate an unspecified portion of its proceeds to children’s charities.
Her aides said Mrs. Clinton works up ideas herself, then drafts the column with help from Alison Muscatine, a White House speechwriter who often works with her. They said they expected future columns to range from discussions of personal issues like motherhood and breast-feeding to graver public-policy concerns.
That is consistent with the serious but soft-edged approach the first lady has taken in recent months. Though she is repeatedly described as keeping a low profile, she remains a one-woman flying fortress, jetting around the country beneath the radar to scores of appearances in local media markets, popping up here on “Oprah” and there on CNN.
“This is our season to reclaim our hopes,” she told the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Minneapolis in a spirited revival-style speech 10 days ago. “It is often when night looks darkest, it is often before the fever breaks that one senses the gathering momentum for change, when one feels that resurrection of hope in the midst of despair and apathy.”