In May of 1990, Bill Clinton was running for his fifth term as governor of Arkansas. While he was conveniently out of town, a challenger in the Democratic primary, Tom McCrae, called a press conference in the echo chamber of the capitol rotunda. He was in the middle of telling everyone who would listen that Bill Clinton was a chicken—“and since the governor will not debate . . .”—when all at once another voice chewed into his sound bite. “Tom, who was the one person who didn’t show up in Springdale? Give me a break! I mean, I think that we oughta get the record straight . . .”

The camera swung around to a small, yellow-haired woman in a houndstooth-check suit—literally in his face. Having crashed McCrae’s photo op, she planted herself directly opposite him, just spoiling for a fight. She looked quite pale without studio makeup, but her eyes flashed in the lights of the television camera. “Many of the reports you issued,” she charged, “not only praised the governor on his environmental record, but his education record and his economic record!”

The camera spun again to reveal the hapless man’s grit-eating smile, his eyes bobbling around in his head as if he’d just been zapped by a stun gun. His stammering response was trampled by the woman ticking off her points, reading embarrassing passages from the candidate’s own earlier handouts. “You now turn around and as a candidate have a very short memory,” she finished. As they say in Arkansas, she ate his lunch.

The Eyewitness News man wound up his thrilled coverage with the tag line “Hillary Clinton showed again that she may be the best debater in the family.”

It is the Year of the Political Woman. Paul Tsongas, whose least appealing quality was his mopey personality, said with a grateful nod to his attorney wife, Niki, “If you don’t have charisma, you marry it.” Ruth Harkin, a former prosecutor, assumed the role of her husband’s unofficial political adviser for his six-month run. Marilyn Quayle, who told The Washington Post through clenched teeth that politicians in the past never acknowledged that “your little wifey . . . helps you,” commands entry into the Office of the Vice President from a six-office suite across the hall, passing judgment on lobbyists and other supplicants. (Marilyn says she raises a subject with the vice president “if I think it’s important enough.” Otherwise, staffers “let me make the decision instead.”) President Bush, who often leans on his vastly more popular wife at public appearances, has recently brought on board his rudderless re-election team wordsmith Peggy Noonan. Her job description: “Message development.” Even bullyboy Pat Buchanan, Beltway pundits say, wouldn’t have run if it hadn’t been for his sister—who is also his campaign chairwoman.

And it is Hillary Rodham Clinton, lawyer–activist–teacher–author–corporate boardwoman–mother and wife of Billsomething, who is the diesel engine powering the front-running Democratic campaign. In the space of one week in late January, Hillary fast-forwarded from being introduced as “wife of” (60 Minutes) to the victim of “the other woman” (PrimeTime Live) to “Trapped in a Spotlight, Hillary Clinton Uses It” (The New York Times), the last illustrated by a picture which said it all: Hillary with her arm thrust in the air and wearing a big campaign smile, out in front of her husband.

The forty-four-year-old wife and mother still shows flashes of the sweet ingenue smile of her college years, and has maintained her size 8 by touching little more than a lettuce leaf and water during campaign fund-raisers (her less disciplined husband has put on twenty-five pounds). When the cameras dolly in, however, one can detect the calculation in the f-stop click of Hillary’s eyes. Lips pulled back over her slightly jutting teeth, the public smile is practiced; the small frown establishes an air of superiority; her hair looks lifelessly doll-like.