When the Clintons took office, one aide said, the staff assumed the family's ''problem child'' would be Roger, who had already served time in federal prison after being convicted of conspiracy to distribute cocaine in a sting operation authorized by Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas.

Just last weekend, Roger, who now lives in Torrance, Calif., near Los Angeles, was arrested on drunken driving charges in nearby Hermosa Beach after a police officer saw him driving erratically.

But in fact, this aide recalled, it proved to be the Rodham brothers who caused the most headaches, almost from the outset.

Hugh, a lawyer who turned 50 last year, and Tony, a political consultant who is 46, have bounced around from Chicago to Arkansas, from Florida to Washington, always in the shadow of their big sister -- who was featured in an article in Life magazine by the time she graduated from college. Their father, Hugh, who died in 1993, was a tough taskmaster to all his children, and their mother, Dorothy, has made a practice of looking out for her sons.

''They're like mama's boys,'' another former Clinton aide said. ''It's a very odd family dynamic. They seem to feel, 'We've been out there, we've been in this fishbowl, we're not getting anything.' Mrs. Rodham is always telling Hillary, 'You're not doing enough for your brothers.' ''

In a news conference in a Senate office building yesterday, Mrs. Clinton said she had known nothing of Hugh Rodham's lobbying efforts, and added: ''I love my brother; I'm just extremely disappointed in this terrible misjudgment that he made.''

Tony Rodham, especially, was seen as belligerent and difficult by White House aides, while Hugh, a former public defender, was seen as genial but plodding. His 1994 Democratic Senate campaign in Florida was all but a disaster. He hired a political consultant whose résumé turned out to be fabricated, and who turned around and helped Mr. Rodham's rival for the Democratic nomination file a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission. In it, Mr. Rodham was accused of a range of improprieties, including failing to report both a $17,000 contribution and the cost of a survey conducted by President Clinton's personal pollster.