Gore's Secret Guru

Many of the activists who applauded her first book, however, took issue with her second one, Fire with Fire, in which she urged women to give up "victim feminism" and take up "power feminism." She argued that women should turn away from women-vs.-men feminism, avoid fault lines like abortion and lesbian rights, and start looking for bipartisan women's issues like violence, pay discrimination and harassment. The 1997 book, Promiscuities, recounts her sexual coming of age and denounces masculine attempts to muffle female sexuality by ostracizing the sexually adventurous girl.

Wolf made her first foray into presidential politics in 1995, as an adviser to Clinton's own once secret consultant, Dick Morris. In his book about that campaign, Morris wrote that he met with Wolf--whose husband David Shipley was then a White House speechwriter--every few weeks for almost a year. Morris credited her for helping "persuade me to pursue school uniforms, tax breaks for adoption, simpler cross-racial adoption laws and more workplace flexibility. She often said that the candidate who best understood the fatigue of the American woman would win." Wolf also persuaded Morris that the country was looking for a "good father," a concept that drove everything from family-friendly policies to the more mature demeanor that Clinton put forward in public. By all accounts, Wolf received no pay for her help.

If there is any testament to Wolf's staying power inside the Gore campaign, it may be that she has survived every one of its shake-ups. That may be because she's indispensable--or perhaps it's just her deep cover. Not even newly appointed campaign manager Donna Brazile knew of Wolf's involvement until recently. In the leaner operation that Brazile is running out of Nashville, Tenn., everyone has to sacrifice. Brazile, no Beta herself, cut Wolf's pay to $5,000 a month.