The Once and Future Hillary

Hillary Rodham Clinton has always enjoyed walk-in rights to almost any important meeting at the White House. So when her husband sat down with top aides in the Cabinet Room to discuss his embattled presidency, it was a given that the First Lady would have a seat at the table. But instead of offering the brand of crisp analysis and shrewd advice she is known and admired for, the First Lady was quiet, listening while others did most of the talking. Afterward, one participant couldn't remember whether Hillary had said anything at all. As a friend and colleague put it, she was still "coming to grips" with the Democratic washout at the polls.

That was two weeks ago. Rumors swirled that she was in prolonged post- electoral shock, that she didn't understand November's results, that she was in denial, that she was rethinking her role as First Lady. But there was no self-doubt in the Hillary Clinton who charged back onto the political radar screen in a four-day media blitz last week. Though there were subtle signs of an effort to retool her image, she came across as cheerful, confident and as proudly unapologetic about her role as ever. The Republicans? Let her at 'em. She told a sympathetic crowd after accepting an award from the National Women's Law Center, "In many ways, our best days are ahead of us because there's nothing like a good fight for advocates to get energized."

During a speech in New York City, she dismissed as "unbelievable and absurd" a Republican welfare-reform proposal that calls for sending poor ! children to orphanages if their mothers, after a limited stay on welfare, cannot support them. Whitewater questions did not faze her. The First Lady continued to portray her family as victims of an affair she described as a "sideshow." Later in the week, however, her friend Webster Hubbell, who quit last March as Associate Attorney General, tentatively agreed to plead guilty to charges brought by the Whitewater special prosecutor that he had committed mail fraud and tax evasion when he worked alongside Mrs. Clinton at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock.

She remains unrepentantly suspicious of the press. Asked why it was so difficult to get an interview with her, she impatiently told TIME editors at a private lunch that there were more pressing things to do, adding with some exasperation that "some days my role is just to explain my role." To students at George Washington University, she defended her decision to be active in policymaking. "I don't see how I could change who I am because of the position I'm in. I actually think that in the long run if people have some better idea about you, it may be controversial, but at least they know where you stand."

In public and in private, she is fully convinced of the rightness of the Clinton agenda. She made mistakes, yes, but they were largely superficial. Much of the public simply didn't understand the truth about initiatives like health care and the President's original economic plan. "She is really angry," says a high-powered Democrat who has known the Clintons for 25 years. "She's angry at the election results ((and)) angry at how she's treated in the press. That's the way it is with Hillary. It's everyone else's fault." Putting it more circumspectly, one senior adviser to the President said the First Lady "is not as realistic as some of the rest of us" about voters' unhappiness with Clinton's first two years.