There wasn't a decision of any importance made during Bill Clinton's campaign without someone asking: what does Hillary think? They're asking the same question at the White House these days. The problem is, more often than not, no one knows. Early fears that Hillary Rodham Clinton would run the show have evaporated, replaced by a wish among many staffers that she would assert herself more in the day-to-day managing of the White House. They blame Clinton's inability to make up his mind on any number of issues-from Bosnia to the BTU tax-on Hillary's distance from the Oval Office.
Clinton's decision to delegate health-care reform to his wife disrupted the delicate balance between the couple. Because Hillary has a real job, she cannot devote the time she once did to her husband's problems. And he has suffered as a result. Many Clinton supporters believe the early miscues could have been avoided if Hillary had been more watchful. People who know them both say she has the sharper political instincts and a better understanding of symbolism. But it's difficult to find Hillary's fingerprints on anything around the West Wing, not even the current staff shake-up or the dumping of her friend Lani Guinier as the Justice Department civil-rights chief.
Hillary's above-the-fray pose was best captured-some would say slyly mocked-in a recent New York Times Sunday Magazine cover story. The article featured an ethereal-looking Hillary, swathed in white organdy and pearls, rambling on at great length about "the politics of meaning." Exactly what she was trying to say is a mystery even to her aides. Some say Mrs. Clinton is simply trying to preempt the values issue from the right by talking about spiritual matters and the need for community. Others fret that her jumbled comments and the hint of a government-led morality crusade will only increase the disconnect with ordinary people, who may see Hillary's cosmic musings-and fancy haircuts-as signs that she is out of touch with their concerns. Her latest do, which is simple and sensible enough for a school principal, may be in response to these qualms.
Why has Hillary become a Stealth Wife? Attacks on her during the campaign sensitized the Clintons to any appearance of overreaching. Naming her head of the health-care task force was a very modern solution to the public's angst. It had logic and dignity, and there would be no secret about her role. Giving her an office in the West Wing symbolized her new kind of power. But a heavy travel schedule and all those policy tomes churned out by the task force kept her very much out of the mix. Her father's illness and death in April required her to spend weeks back in Little Rock. During one low moment one adviser mockingly lamented, "Where is Nancy Reagan when we need her?" Mrs. Reagan, like Mrs. Bush and many other traditional First Ladies, had a willingness that their husbands lacked to deep-six staffers. The irony is that Hillary, for all her feminist assertions, has held back.
Now that the myth of Hillary as Lady Macbeth has been pierced, perhaps she will emerge as a more visible, voter-friendly symbol of the new, overhauled Clinton White House. There are signs that is beginning to happen. In her first national television interview last week with NBC's Katie Couric, viewers saw a more humorous, friendlier and less tightly controlled Hillary than before. Her aides wish Hillary could relax enough to be as straightforward with her own husband day to day. Health-care reform has plenty of experts, but nobody knows better than Hillary how to run Bill.
