REINVENTING HILLARY

By ERIC POOLEY

Professional women in Australia have a term for what can happen to talented, outspoken female executives who rise quickly in their field. They call it the "tall-poppy syndrome," because a flower that grows higher than the rest very often gets its head lopped off.

Hillary Rodham Clinton knows all about sharp pruning shears and long knives. Last week, while the President and First Lady were enjoying a holiday of golf, snorkeling, shopping and koala cuddling that masqueraded as a state visit to Australia, the spirit of this straight-talking country moved the First Lady to a new level of candor--the most searching comments she has made about the controversies bedeviling her at home. In her first speech and first interview since the election, Hillary Clinton demonstrated that the wallflower role she played on the campaign trail is a thing of the past. In her husband's second term, she told TIME, she will seek a "formal role" in the Administration's welfare-reform policy, touring the country to track the progress of welfare experiments in the states and reporting her findings in memorandums to the President. "I want to travel around and talk to people about what is happening on the ground," she said. "I intend to speak out about it and write about it."

When Bill Clinton raised the possibility of such a role during a television interview in September, his aides blanched. A policymaking First Lady was not part of the campaign strategy, and Hillary immediately said her husband's remark was "quite a surprising comment." But that was then, and now they've won--so Hillary is once more willing to speak her mind, revealing a proud woman who is bitter about the low blows she believes she has received but has a plan to fight her way back into the arena.

"Will we stop pigeonholing women and invoking stereotypes that limit their potential?" she asked a group of 400 prominent Australian women who had come to hear her speak at the Sydney Opera House. During a question-and-answer session with the audience, she was asked whether her problems are the result of being pigeonholed and stereotyped. "There is some of that," she said, adding that "there are many factors at work--I couldn't even begin to unpack them all."

Then she unpacked them. "This position is such an odd one," the First Lady said. "In our country we expect so much from the woman who is married to the President--but we don't really know what it is we expect." The only way for a First Lady to "escape the politics of one's time," Hillary said, is "to totally withdraw and perhaps put a bag over your head, or somehow make it clear that you have no opinions and no ideas about anything--and never express them, publicly or privately." The audience cheered, egging her on, and Hillary became even more combative and self-revelatory. "There is something about the position itself which raises in Americans' minds concerns about hidden power, about influence behind the scenes, about unaccountability. Yet if you try to be public about your concerns and your interests, then that is equally criticized. I think the answer is to just be who you are and do what you can do and get through it--and wait for a First Man to hold the position."

That line brought down the house. But in truth, this First Lady is still trying to figure out who she can be and what she can do. She does not want to repeat the mistakes she made during her husband's first two years in office, when she alienated many Americans not because she was a powerful woman but because she seemed not to realize that the citizenry expects its powerful leaders, male and female, to show the humility befitting those whose authority is merely on loan from the people.

Since then, of course, she has been at pains to downplay her role in the Administration, retrenching into a more traditional First Lady persona. But as Bill Clinton was successfully learning to inhabit the role of President, Hillary's role-playing was less consistent. Very often in public she is smiling but remote, her eyes concealed by dark sunglasses. Even when she is having fun, as she clearly was last week, there is an unmistakable sadness to her, a pensive, fragile air that reflects four bruising years in Washington and the bone-deep weariness that campaigning brings. She speaks of seeking a new balance in her life. "That's what I try to do every single day," she said, settling back into the leather seat of a limousine idling on the tarmac at the Sydney airport. "I hold my hands out and try to put one foot in front of the other. I'm big on balance."

The message is as much personal as professional. On Oct. 26, Hillary turned 49, a vulnerable age for many women: elderly parents falter, the nest empties, the encroachments of passing time become harder to ignore. In the past four years the Clintons have lost two parents--his mother, her father. The couple dread the day when Chelsea, now 16, will head off to college. On the Asia trip, Hillary was often a solitary figure. She spent the first weekend in Hawaii by herself or alone with her husband, swimming and walking Oahu's rainswept beaches. While Clinton draped his golf cart in plastic sheeting and hit the rainy links, Hillary lost herself in books: she brought along eight, including John Le Carre's new novel, The Tailor of Panama.

While waiting in her Sydney limo for the President to arrive from his golf game with Australian star Greg Norman, Hillary described the job she sees for herself in welfare reform. "There's a lot of good information we have now because of the [welfare] waivers that have been granted [to the states] in the last several years," she said. "There has to be a transfer of knowledge across state boundaries. There are going to be some really steep learning curves." She went on contentedly for a while, until she was asked about the first term and the hard lessons learned. "I'm sure there are lots and lots of lessons, things we did that could have been done better," Hillary said, but she didn't come up with any. "It's hard to look back, because I know so much more now than I did on Jan. 20, 1993." An aide opened the car door to say the President had arrived. The First Lady barely noticed. "There is nothing to prepare you for walking into the White House. I've learned so much I can't even begin to digest it all."

How does she deal with the endless rumors that she may be indicted for perjury or obstruction of justice? "Apparently that will always be with us," she said matter-of-factly. "So my attitude is that I can't be very concerned about it or distracted by it, so I really spend very little time thinking about any of it."

Instead, she seeks her pleasures and sustenance where she can. In Canberra, Hillary was winding up a tour of the Australian National Gallery when a gemologist brought out a collection of opals, the fiery, kaleidoscopic stones for which Australia is famous. "I'm interested in opals because they're my birthstone," Hillary told her. While the woman held one glittering stone up to the light, she replied, "They're the hardest of all to grade." Which makes them the perfect birthstone for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

--With reporting by Ann Blackman with Hillary Clinton

With reporting by ANN BLACKMAN WITH HILLARY CLINTON