Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: In search of the elusive Hillary Date: Thu, 29 Oct 92 14:38:17 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE \HD In search of the elusive Hillary \BY Judith Olney \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT ATLANTA ATLANTA - It's 11:45 a.m. at Spelman College's Sisters Chapel. The students, all female, are restless in their electric orange and fuschia jackets, their grommeted baseball caps; the press is poised at the back. The mighty organ, its copper and tin pipes soaring the height of the chancel, swells dramatically. And in stride - so reads the program - Johnnetta B. Cole, Spelman's president; Maya Angelou, writer and professor; and Hillary R. Clinton, author and lecturer. If you haven't seen Hillary Clinton up close or in the flesh lately (and mostly we haven't seen, haven't even heard from Bill Clinton's outspoken wife in the past few weeks), here is a chance to study, to watch her carefully as she sits in the big minister's chair, legs in thick black hose slanted to the side, hands neat and manicured in her lap. Well, she glitters more than she did. She's been accessorized. There are large, flashing, impossible-to-miss wedding bands, a bangle bracelet, disc earrings, a fourth-generation-removed Chanel-style suit, gold buttons everywhere, of purple and turquoise, and coordinating turquoise contacts in the big, bright eyes. With movie-star brows, powder-pink lips, slightly protuberant capped teeth that glint between the lips when the face is in repose, and an expensive frosting job, it would take only a bit of rearranging for 45-year-old Mrs. Clinton to have the bland blonde perfection of a local TV newscaster. But these are not the terms in which Hillary Clinton wishes to be viewed. This is the veneer of Hollywood, of a makeover by friend and "Designing Women" creator Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, of preparing a "face to meet the faces that you meet" - a necessary step in the move toward stature, on the road toward myth. * * * Spelman's glee club sings a spirited South African song of freedom, and on the podium, President Cole rocks side to side. Hillary Clinton bobs up and down, not quite in rhythm, but enthusiastic all the same. "Sisters," booms the handsome Mrs. Cole, "history keeps happening in this sacred chapel - or should we say 'her story' keeps happening. This is a historic convocation. . . . The First Sister of Arkansas, soon to be the First Sister of the United States, Hillary. Rodham. Clinton." "Sister President," begins Mrs. Clinton, and the place erupts in cheers. This is a choice crowd, like those she has preached to many times before in colleges around the country. Barbara Bush may have been stuck campaigning in photo-op grade schools promoting literacy, but Mrs. Clinton, ardent advocate for children's rights though she is, knows kids can't vote. Instead, she speaks to these college students of the greed of the '80s, of the summer of 1970 when she toiled in Washington on behalf of migrant workers, of service for others. She speaks of how service has come to be considered the province of losers, of living by the golden rule. College loans, she promises, can be paid back with two years of public service if her husband is elected. She is skillful, practiced, working with only a few notes and only an occasional regional circumlocution, such as, "I read as to how she . . ." * * * There is not a whit of humor in this no-nonsense talk, this serious, heartfelt speech sprung from her own days as an anti-war activist, a toiler for Eugene McCarthy, a committed child of the '60s. "There is a point," says Mrs. Clinton, "when doing right has to be the primary goal." It is a message from her youth delivered to the youth of a more jaded, less involved generation, and it falls on ears that may or may not believe it. The students, hungry for lunch, start sneaking out three-quarters through the talk, though Sister Cole glares fiercely at their backs. "She really wanted to visit Spelman," says Carolyn Aronovitz, spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of Georgia and one of a covey of black-stockinged young women who efficiently see to Mrs. Clinton's appearances. "Sometimes she's not so happy with what we schedule." After working the crowd - cuddles, hugs, embraces (the Secret Service even steps back in the face of all this female effusiveness) - Hillary Clinton confronts the press, eyes narrowed. She's learned her lesson after all. "I think my husband was terrific at the [first] debate," she says. "I thought my husband was the best candidate on the stage." She lobs back inquiries about the Bushes, lobs back whatever she wants as she squints into the blare of questions, the glare of lights. This is what she is reduced to, then: stealth before the adversary, this pre-election purdah, this anti-focus. * * * LITTLE ROCK, Ark. Meanwhile, here at the other end of the South, Webster L. Hubbell, a fellow lawyer, is fielding all calls concerning Mrs. Clinton at her Rose Law Firm. The handlers have her on a short, tight leash. There are stories that she loses her cool with the FBI, that she comes into a studio for 10 satellite linkup interviews booked ahead with stations around the country, then impatiently charges off, leaving five stations fuming when they don't get their live interviews at the last minute. "She's under a lot of pressure these days," says a worker at Clinton campaign headquarters here. "She's in a really bad mood." Well, it's hard being muzzled like a snappish dog without a mouth, all those growls roiling around inside the head, between the ears, headaches. "I'm surprised they've been able to muzzle her at all," says Toni Phillips, a longtime Clinton watcher who teaches political science at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and chairs the state's Federation of Republican Women. "She's been so vocal these past years. She's the one who pushed into Tom McRae's news conference at the capital when he was running against Billy in 1990 for governor and scandalized everyone with her rudeness. "In this state you either like her or you don't," Mrs. Phillips adds. "I never found anybody that was in between. I have a great deal of conflict with her ideologically. I think a lot of times she speaks out where her husband should have spoken. "She always had an awful lot of input into his administration, and I doubt there would be a difference in his presidential administration. We don't need a co-presidency. I'd be happy to get rid of both Clintons, but we'll make the sacrifice and keep them another two years in Arkansas if that's what it takes to keep them out of the White House." * * * A swirl of myth and anti-myth surrounds Hillary Rodham Clinton, sharpening and focusing as Nov. 3 nears. She is, after all, a brute, blunt Illinois Yankee in a land of practiced Southern wiles, in a land where meritocracy doesn't always count. "She's not charmin', " say the ladies, "too pushy, too outspoken, too radical." There's the name business. It's still "Rodham" on the tax returns, and that bothers some folks. In the mucky depths of the swirl are the unprintable Hillary Clinton jokes, the rumors of lovers, the bile that attends any fertile woman in the ascendant, on her way to power. And there is a difference between the power of charming beauty and the power of forbidding intellect that affects how women of varying ages judge Mrs. Clinton - just as surely as Bill Clinton's relative youth affects male generational assessment. Get any 45-year-old man into his cups and he will shake his head in dismay: "Clinton's my age, and he could be president; I never will be. Waitress, another double scotch, quick." Get many older women to speak their minds, and Hillary Rodham Clinton brings into focus the pivotal issues of cookies vs. career, of aggression vs. ladylike submission, of bluestocking/blackstocking concerns vs. busywork pastimes, of feminist vs. traditional leanings. * * * "Left behind? Muzzled? I hardly think so," says Lottie Shackelford, former mayor of Little Rock, current vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a frequent traveler on Mrs. Clinton's campaign jaunts. "We were hopping in and out of cities, giving speeches, dragging in late; she's been talking all this time, the press just hasn't been following." But mostly Mrs. Clinton has been delivering the same speech, the same noninflammatory remarks. Gone are the more strident theories of children's rights (kids should be able to sue parents), the more radical feminist concerns (wives are still treated like property). If you ask for specifics about Mrs. Clinton's work for children, you are handed the official Clinton-Gore proposals for education. "She helped found the Arkansas Advocates for Children program, which wants government to get family-friendly, child-friendly," says Mrs. Shackelford, "and the HIPPY program [Home Instructional Program for Pre-school Youngsters] is hers." That, too, the Clinton-Gore agenda claims as its own. * * * "He's never had an original idea," says columnist John Robert Starr of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. "It's all come from Hillary. When she worked for Bill from 1983 to 1987, things got done. When she left to return to her own law practice, he fell apart. He's hopeless without her." That pattern continues. "He won't make any decisions until he consults Hillary, and that makes it difficult when they are on two different routes," says a campaign aide traveling with Mr. Clinton. "We get frustrated when we have to clear everything with her and decisions are delayed." And all indications are that the pattern will prevail after next Tuesday if Mr. Clinton is elected, for transitional office space already has been rented on Vermont Avenue NW in downtown Washington for Bill Clinton, Al Gore - and Hillary Clinton. Whether she is a cutthroat careerist, a wife willing to overlook her husband's peccadillos for her own political agenda, a devout feminist or just a friendly, smart, working woman (as recent appearances on "The Home Show" and in Metropolitan Home magazine have painted her), only Nov. 4 and beyond may tell. But right now, on the campaign trail with her husband, Mrs. Clinton mostly just stands there working on gravitas, her hands folded in front, still, concentrating, performing her ceremonial function. Maybe it's just a matter of learning the role, of learning to "be charmin' " as a good consort should. That's what the old gals hope. Or maybe Hillary Rodham Clinton is conserving power, storing it up against the time, the day she would be more than consort or queen, be king. That's what the old guys fear, as the days, the clock, wind down. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM