The Merry Wives of Washington

CHICAGO. Wednesday, 6.30 p.m. A funky blues band roars into action with Chicago Welcome Home and the big, blue banner strung across the gallery of the Hilton's gilded Grand Ballroom says it all: "Welcome Home, Hillary". Yup. Another safe haven in Hillary's strange stealth campaign to reelect Bill - the safest, in fact, because it's Hillary's own hometown. Her advance team can even relax a little. One of them draws wistfully on memories of the Clinton's triumphant progress across Ireland; hardly surprising that, compared with this frantic, poll driven masquerade they call a presidential campaign.

It's not often they can let their guard down, criss crossing this enormous, staggeringly diverse country, jetting into trouble spots in response to daily tracking polls, often at less than 24 hours' notice. As strategies go, it could be dangerous. Just the mention of Hillary's name triggers white knuckle syndrome in a certain breed of white American male. Roughly half the electorate disapproves of her.

She has a fan club (yes, literally with 22,000 members, almost 100 per cent female, many of them working in education) and the serious devotion of the majority of educated, white American women. But for campaign purposes, she has been pronounced the political equivalent of nitroglycerine powerful in the right places but to be handled with extreme care everywhere else. So Hillary is in damage limitation mode, not out to make waves, no longer the formidable head of a government programme or her husband's political partner but a concerned Mom insisting that family issues should be above the crass considerations of politics.

But even for the most unpopular First Lady in modern history there are safe havens and the Hilton is her turf the audience an assembly of the faithful. At times like this, says one campaigner, it's like travelling with a medium level rock star in terms of the excitement she generates. So nope, no risks here, neither physical nor political.

The lantern jawed Secret Service men have already shooed us out of the room to conduct a routine "sweep" before the First Lady's appearance.

"You can leave your bag here if you want, Ma'am," drawls a tanned giant straight off a Mills & Boon cover, "We're kinda good at keeping an eye on things".

Well, that's the physical element taken care of. Politically, it's a clean sweep too. No malcontents or mavericks. The United Democrats of Illinois file in through one narrow entrance young, sober suited professional men and women who get two drinks vouchers apiece and exchange them mostly for mineral water. They're not here for a laugh. They have come to pay homage, to be re charged for the final weeks. Lapels sport tiny, gold saxophones; badges declare "I'm still for Bill". You can bet your lawyer's licence that the "C" word will pass no one's lips here tonight. (That's C for "character", stupid, as in Bill and Hillary's a big issue in this election and dragged a thousand times a day into America's living rooms by Bob Dole's terminally frustrated attack dogs).

She is introduced fulsomely by Mayor Daley Jnr and Dick Durbin, a Senate candidate, in words that summarise her latest incarnation: "A very, very beautiful and very, very compassionate woman . . . a woman nationally recognised as an advocate for children even before Bill Clinton was elected."

Durbin tells a story that neatly combines self aggrandisement with further scorching of Hillary's new image into our psyches. He conjures up the happy, homely scene on a recent flight with the First Family on Airforce One: "Bill was doing the crossword. Chelsea and a friend were working on a book report for school. And Hillary - well, Hillary and I were talking and she was agitating, not about health care or the economy or big policy issues, but over: that empty nest time when her daughter would go to college. Same as mothers all over except it was up front in Airforce One." (Translation: I'm a mighty big player in this town ... I get to fly on Airforce One. And don't worry about those damn Republicans' - "Ditch the Bitch in 96" T shirts, or the poll that rates Hillary as the second most vilified personality on talk radio, behind Bill but well ahead of Saddam Hussein . . . or that even scarier poll where 20 per cent say they're less likely to vote for Bill because of Hillary. See, we re fixing all that).

No sacks of balloons or confetti rain down as Hillary is beamed onstage to fervent applause. No frills for Hillary unless you count the single flag banging alongside and the band kicking raucously into Chicago Welcome Home. Her suit is black and a bit mumsy with the pearls. She notes that it's "one of those beautiful days that can only be produced on an October day in Chicago" before launching into a speech that envelops the economy, education, crime, health care, the environment and to the groans of the local media bridge building: "We must be bridge builders and storytellers in the next few weeks".

Chelsea gets several mentions. Bill and his advisers are referred to as if they lived 10 states away from her and she has never done more than organise the occasional cup of tea for them. It's all "they", "their view", "the president", "my husband". The "we" of the old two for the price of one days is stone dead. There is nothing original or warm or even remotely entertaining about the speech. When former presidential adviser Dick Morris (he of the year long "affair" with a prostitute though, "hey, that's what passes for romance in Washington", cracks one acerbic insider) finally relented and allowed Hillary to speak at the Chicago convention in September, Morris told her to make her speech straight policy; no personal anecdotes, no jokes. Still terrified of N nitroglycerine Woman.

Though he and his buddies only "allowed" her to speak because they were shamed into it by Elizabeth Dole's mould breaking ode to Bob in San Diego, they ended up using it to smash the myth of Hillary as Sister Frigidaire, ice blonde, assertive, hard edged - and, most heinous epithet of all - liberal. So she smiled a lot and within 30 minutes, made about 70 references to children, to mother and father, to family. The remould was complete.

Chicago in October is tailored to a more specialist audience, many of them what Americans call "policy wonks" - people like herself - but Morris's legacy remains. The jokes and anecdotes are still absent. She winds up by thanking everyone "for being a bridge builder" and is promptly beamed off to Albuquerque. No handshakes with the infantry, no touch feely moments for the faithful. No opportunity to lose the election for Bill by saying something life threatening like "we" or "partnership".

Unsurprisingly, it fails to fire the media. Next day, the First Lady's return to her native city rates not a single mention in the local papers. Instead, there's a big, colour picture of Elizabeth Hanford Dole (Liddy to her very best friends) stumping way out west, grinning mischievously and holding aloft a banner supporting her husband's proposed tax cuts: "It's my paypacket, stupid".

CATCH up on Liddy and you can see why. Hillary presides over campaign seminars; Elizabeth Dole runs campaign rallies. Like it or not, Liddy gives you value for your $5 lunch (for the record, turkey in foccacia bread, a little pasta salad, a cookie, some fruit, tastefully arranged in a preshaped plastic box). Here (in yet another Grand Ballroom) there are balloons, there are flags (several), lots of little banners, and an even bigger banner than Hillary's proclaiming a welcome for Elizabeth "Our Next First Lady".

She's not here yet, but we rise, anyway, right hand on heart, for the pledge of allegiance. We rise again for a prayer.

"Keep her strong as she daily stands by her man, let us rejoice in Bob Dole". And we have an older audience here, bigger hair, too, and higher heels, but what the heck we rise yet again for the Star Spangled Banner, stirringly rendered by every last one of the 700 women (and a few men) in the room.

Dang, with these Republicans, you feel you're on a big day out even before the star turn appears. First time around, Liddy is a breathtaking act. She always wears hot colours, yellow this time, and always high heels (even when she's walking the dog). Never mind that Washington photographers swear she's had a face lift, she looks terrific for her 60 years. Here she repeats the same routine as at the convention in San Diego, an outing that triggered rave reviews from startled network anchors along the lines of "unquestionably original ... unique and captivating" and left the less impressionable with the feeling they were drowning in treacle.

The whole performance begins with the introduction to the Dole Stroll: "Ah'm goin' to be speaking to friends," (mostly total strangers actually) "and ah'm going to be speaking about the may an ah love, so it's just a lot more comfortable for me to be down here with yew." And down she comes, with her body microphone and no notes, wandering apparently at random through the rapt faces, being charming, funny and never once in 45 minutes resorting to Washington jargon. Then there are the props always a cute, small child; a victims' rights activist; a homemaker; an entrepreneur. Each represents a plank in Bob Dole's manifesto (basically 15 per cent tax cuts and kill the IRS) and Liddy's great trick is not only to remember exactly where they're sitting and their names but to reach that chair at the appropriate point in her speech.

The prop rises smartly on cue (except for the cute child who is merely a living representation of a $500 child tax credit carrot) and speaks from the heart. Liddy gazes earnestly into her face, pats her down, then sashays on, picking up the story seamlessly, breaking off frequently to shake a hand, squeeze a shoulder, give a hug, say a sweet as molasses southern "Hi!" to particularly adoring faces:

"Only one in 100 violent criminals are picked up - Hi! How're you doin'?

and they get only 12 and a half years on average. They serve six years and they're out. In cases of violent rape - Good to see you! - they're out in five".

And that's before she gets to the bit about "the may an ah leuve", which weaves through his impoverished childhood, and winds up awarding him the accolade of "workhorse, not show horse" (unlike that glitterbug back in the White House, we should infer).

THE problem arises if you see it more than once. That's when disillusionment sets in and you discover that old Sugar Lips (as Lyndon Johnson dubbed her for her ability to sweet talk members of Congress) trots out exactly the same speech, same words, same inflections, three or four times a day as she jets, willy nilly, between battleground states. Only the props' faces change.

Then again, nothing about Liddy Dole is unrehearsed. She was trying out her talk show host style stroll on the rural stumps for at least six months before San Diego. This is a woman who, while serving as Reagan's secretary of transportation, demanded that an aide walk the route she took into every auditorium and count the steps she would have to take in high heels.

Hillary, when she connects, does so at a deeper level. Her recent beat has taken her into Michigan classrooms, to college students in Wisconsin, to a panel discussion in Connecticut where she listened to and shared hugs with three "witnesses" who explained how the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act had made their family and work lives better. "She speaks to women about why this election matters," says a Clinton campaign manager, "she makes the connections between policy decisions and family lives. That is her great strength."

If so, her partner, his campaign managers and US citizens generally have an odd way of acknowledging it. For more than half her life, she has been involved every year in elections of some kind but in 1996, she is less of a partner than she has ever been. In the White House, she is perceived as a liability - but also, cynically, as a useful lightning rod that deflects a lot of the bile from Bill. Half the nation sees her as a saint, the other as a malevolent witch.

Elizabeth Dole, who has attained higher government position than any woman and retained it for longer than most men, gets away with it by dipping her words in sugar and allowing herself to be painted as the "anti Hillary", come election time.

As we move towards a new century, a major preoccupation of two of the world's most powerful men is to remove any "threat" of power that might overtly attach to their wives. Bill Clinton publicly suggests a job in welfare for his wife in the next administration; he withdraws it within minutes. Bob Dole assures his audiences that in his presidency, his wife "won't be in charge of health care reform" (as Hillary was in 1994) and if you're too dense to get the message, adds for good measure: "She won't be in charge of anything, don't worry about it."

There's a feeling that a second Clinton administration might see a reborn Hillary, a Hillary with nothing to lose, Bill having fought his last election campaign. (That is, of course, if she's not indicted.) A female public defender from Denver has no doubts. "Let it rip, Hillary," she says, "your time has come .