Just As Clinton Gains Some Steam, His Wife Finds She’s No Teflon Lady Criticism And Allegations Beginning To Stick To Hillary

Suddenly, they are America’s political odd couple, Bill and Hillary Clinton.

He’s on a roll. She’s on the hot seat.

He made Republicans squirm with a strong State of the Union address well received by the public. His poll numbers are up, the Republicans’ are down. His string of vetoes on welfare, tax cuts and a balanced budget the last few months threw the GOP agenda into a skid. Republicans, taking heat for two government shutdowns, backed down and hastily approved a temporary spending bill last week.

She, on the other hand, was ordered under subpoena before a grand jury - an embarrassing first for a first lady. Her credibility is in doubt, her poll ratings are plunging and her high-visibility role as White House policy maker is history.

For the first time, he is more popular than she is. Significantly so.

This isn’t how it usually works.

First ladies traditionally float near the top of America’s most-admired lists while their husbands soar and sink in the public’s eye.

The Clintons have never fit the traditional mold of first couples, of course, but their political turnabouts have been dramatic by any standard.

“There are a lot of allegations about Hillary Clinton, and a majority of Americans think it’s politically driven, but nevertheless it’s affected their attitudes,” said pollster Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center. “Some of this is sticking. In fact, a fair amount of it is sticking, at least for now.”

An activist, Hillary Clinton often has been a lightning rod for criticism. Many people think the president made a mistake by giving her such a big role, thus exposing her to attacks. After getting knocked around in the bruising fight over health care, she retreated to a more traditional first lady role following the Republican election sweep in 1994. It helped her, temporarily.

“Her high point in public approval was at her low point in public visibility in late October of last year, when she was quietly writing her book,” Kohut said. At the time, 58 percent of Americans approved of what she was doing.

Since then, with questions swirling about her role in the White House travel office firings and the Whitewater controversy, Hillary Clinton’s approval rating has dropped precipitously to 42 percent.

In Newsweek’s latest national poll, conducted Thursday and Friday, 56 percent of those surveyed said Hillary Clinton has hurt her husband’s presidency. An April 1994 Newsweek poll showed just the opposite - 51 percent said she had helped.

Campaigning last week in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton spoke of her life as first lady. “Some days it feels good and other days it is kind of hard,” she said. “The political climate in our country today is kind of difficult.”

Vanderbilt University political scientist Erwin Hargrove mused about the uncertainties facing the first lady. “If she were indicted by a grand jury, that would be incredible. It would be bizarre, extraordinary. I don’t know how the political system would cope with that.”

Ann Lewis, Clinton’s campaign spokeswoman, charged that Hillary Clinton is a victim of Republican attacks designed to hurt the president. “They will try to run a personally negative campaign against them - against her - as a way of getting at him,” Lewis said.

If that is true, it doesn’t appear to be working. There is no sign that Clinton has been hurt by the controversy over his wife, pollster Kohut said. In fact, the president is on a winning streak, with an approval rating of 50 percent or more.

Moreover, after a roller-coaster series of victories and defeats throughout his presidency, Clinton raised $26 million last year for his re-election campaign and scared off any Democratic challenge.

Now, with the start of the presidential election year, the president holds a double-digit lead over the front-runner for the GOP nomination, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole.

After back-to-back speeches by Clinton and Dole on State of the Union night Tuesday, Republican strategists fretted that Dole looked old and weak in comparison.

Over the last year, Clinton has undergone a huge political transformation, retreating under Republican pressure time and time again.

Starting with a budget that proposed $200-billion deficits as far as the eye could see, Clinton signed on to the Republican idea of a balanced budget and eventually agreed to a seven-year timetable, with the savings measured by the GOP-preferred Congressional Budget Office.

At the same time, Clinton scored points against Republicans by painting them as threats to Medicare and Medicaid, education and the environment.

“It seems to be working,” political scientist Hargrove said of Clinton’s strategy.

“Strong liberals may feel that he’s caved too much,” Hargrove said. “That would be a misperception of the task, which is that he’s got to appeal to the center if he’s going to outflank the Republicans. A winner has to hit the middle. I think he’s doing it.”