Fine, then, there was only one other person to see before the legal technicians and the FBI “vetted” her. So Wood headed upstairs to an office on the second floor in the White House’s West Wing nerve center. There she spent 50 minutes talking to the person whose political network and personal views had helped her get in the door to begin with-Hillary Rodham Clinton. Mrs. Clinton, eager to see a woman chosen as attorney general, was impressed. No red flags were raised or seen. Soon word leaked out: Wood was very likely to get the job.

As the world now knows, Wood didn’t. A week after her White House interviews, she withdrew from consideration last Friday when it became known that, in 1986, she had hired an illegal alien from Trinidad to care for her child. Unlike Baird, Wood was never actually nominated. Clinton aides insisted that their “vetting” process-and their political antennae-had worked this time around. But the embarrassingly persistent failure to find an attorney general (the New York Daily News headlined the story ALIEN II) renewed questions about whether the young Clinton administration was yet ready for The Show. “This makes the White House look horrible,” said one Democratic senator. “Clinton has to have a smooth-running operation, and so far he clearly doesn’t.”

The other lesson of the week was more significant. The “operation” isn’t being run by a “he” alone. As Wood’s trip through the West Wing showed, the administration is something entirely new in American political life. It’s a Team Presidency whose own act has no script-and whose political consequences are unknown. In an exclusive interview with NEWSWEEK, her first as First Lady Plus, Mrs. Clinton spoke of her view of government’s role-and, implicitly, her own. “We are all in this together,” she declared, a comment that could apply as well to her and her husband.

On many important decisions, including the attorney-general choice, Mrs. Clinton is far more than a First Lady. She has her own network, which stretches across the country and deep into the new administration. She has more senior-grade aides assigned to her than Vice President Al Gore. In politics, as in private life, the Clintons employ team survival strategies that serve both and give Hillary unprecedented clout. As one White House aide put it last week, she isn’t just in the loop, she is the loop. The only question is when-if ever-Hillary’s unique role will raise the issue of who’s really in charge in the Oval Office.

It hasn’t so far; she knows the limits and has other roles to play. All of them were on display last week-and she juggled them with the aplomb that has made her a popular role model not only for “career women,” but for career men who choose to study her actions. As mom, she visited Chelsea’s new school to watch her daughter’s soccer team play (they won, 4-1). As ceremonial First Lady she attended funerals and fussed over the menu for her first White House dinner. As New Age First Lady, she banned smoking in the White House complex and put more fruits and vegetables on the mess menu. “She is representative of what a majority of women are doing today,” says Press Secretary Lisa Caputo. “And that is balancing career with family and entertaining.”

But the “career” is getting the ink. As chair of the administration’s task force on health care, she went to the Hill last week to pledge cooperation with the members. The visit produced some extraordinary scenes, among them an utterly comfortable woman sitting in a high-backed chair opposite the baron of congressional Republicans, Senate GOP leader Bob Dole. Aides to Dole (who is married to former Reagan and Bush cabinet member Liddy Dole) said that their boss was impressed by her cool and savvy-and her promise to work closely with the GOP.

At a more substantive meeting with Democrats, she felt no need for icebreaking or bows to traditional roles. In charge of the administration’s most important domestic initiative, reform of the nation’s $800 billion health-care system, she wasted no time on jokes or slaps on the back-let alone pecks on the cheek for friends. She acknowledged that sweeping reform would have powerful enemies; that Congress’s input was crucial; that she knew enough to ask questions but not enough to draw conclusions. She was adjudged a hit. “She walked in there and took command,” said Sen. Bob Kerrey, who ran for the Democratic nomination against her husband. “I was very impressed.”

This week she takes her show on the road. Accompanied by Tipper Gore, Hillary will attend a conference on health care in Harrisburg, Pa. The site is significant: Pennsylvania is the state in which Harris Wofford won a 1991 Senate race by stressing the need for a national health-care system. Hillary’s trip signals the start of what will amount to a new election campaign, this one to build support for health-care reform. The administration will soon name a “campaign manager” for the drive; a “war room” in the White House complex will oversee it, with money from the Democratic National Committee. “She’s running point,” says Kerrey.

She has practice. The Clintons have decided to duplicate the tag-team strategy they used in Arkansas in the early 1980s to develop and sell a controversial package of educational reform. Hillary traveled to each of the state’s 75 counties, holding hearings and selling change. She then helped lobby the legislature for successful passage of the final package. “They were a team, and Bill couldn’t have done it without her,” said Betsey Wright, Bill Clinton’s former chief of staff as governor of Arkansas.

Much of Hillary’s clout comes from the working relationship she and her husband have developed in politics. They perfected the team game in the 1992 campaign. Unlike most past First Ladies, Mrs. Clinton didn’t-and doesn’t-operate by indirection. She is not a gatekeeper or silent adviser. In 1992, she made key decisions. It was Hillary, not Bill, who insisted that he quickly declare “victory” as the “Comeback Kid” in the New Hampshire primary, though he had finished second to Paul Tsongas. It was Hillary, not Bill, who moved to turn control of a floundering campaign over to consultant James Carville before the Democratic convention. During the convention, she gave Carville the go-ahead to set up the famous war room that controlled day-to-day operations in the fall. When her husband was distracted or tired, it often was Hillary who forced him to focus on a speech he needed to write.

Like Bill, Hillary has her own network to tap; FOHs (Friend of Hillary) are almost as numerous as FOBs (Friend of Bill). Central to all of Hillary’s political endeavors is Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund. Despite her respect for Edelman, Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t quite the big-government liberal she is sometimes depicted as being by her enemies (page 22). Though she sided with Edelman on the need for a federally sponsored day-care system, she parts company with her on welfare policy, arguing for more emphasis on personal responsibility rather than direct federal aid.

But there’s no doubt that Wood-and Baird-were propelled forward by Hillary’s network. Edelman’s husband, attorney Peter Edelman, has been a key outside consultant in the search for an attorney general. So has New York attorney Susan Thomases, who attended college with Wood and supported her nomination. The details of Wood’s child-care situation were examined by White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum, another FOH. Mrs. Clinton, insiders say, has made it clear that she still favors the nomination of a woman in one of the “Big Four” cabinet jobs; the other three (State, Defense and Treasury) are occupied by white males. Women’s groups are relying on her to deliver. “She’s someone we can talk to and count on,” said Harriett Woods, chair of the National Women’s Political Caucus.

So far, the team concept seems to be working-especially for Hillary. She’s box office: she now outpulls Princess Di as a newsstand draw for People magazine. Most Americans, polls show, view her as a positive role model. Nervous Clinton aides profess to be pleased with her prominence. The White House’s internal polls show her with a higher approval rating than her husband’s; aides say that there’s also widespread approval-more than public polls show-for her taking on the specific assignment her husband has given her, health-care reform. Her image is a needed antidote, one aide sourly observed, to the image of amateurism and drift in the administration. “Right now, she’s the best thing we’ve got going for us,” he said.

But there are risks, for Hillary-and for her husband. For one, there’s the chance that health-care reform will flounder. “If the issue gets too controversial, she may be out there all alone,” says Kerrey. She risks being accused of using her marriage as a route to advancement. And if Bill Clinton doesn’t like the results, what does he say to Hillary-in public? “If it’s just some politician heading a task force, you get rid of him and repudiate his report,” says Democratic polltaker Geoffrey Garin. “But if you don’t like your wife’s work, it’s kind of hard to distance yourself from it.”

Republican strategists are glad to discuss what they see as a bigger risk: that Hillary’s prominence will somehow undermine her husband’s political authority. The risk to Clinton has nothing to do with gender or marital status, says GOP polltaker Bill McInturff. It’s purely a question of ensuring that the American people see no unaccountable power hovering outside the Oval Office. “People take the power of the presidency seriously,” says McInturff, “and Clinton has to show that he’s in charge.”

He did so late last week once he turned his attention, again, to Kimba Wood. She had done nothing illegal. In early 1986, when she hired her nanny, employing an undocumented alien was not against the law. Judge Wood-unlike Baird-complied with tax and registration requirements. A source close to Wood insisted that she had fully apprised officials of the details, and suggested the administration became skittish about how her situation would play politically. But White House sources insisted that she never directly stated one fundamental fact: that she had hired an illegal alien.

Clinton got the picture, in the nick of time. Even as word was leaking last Thursday evening that Wood was the choice, Nussbaum and White House personnel director Bruce Lindsey were meeting with Clinton. Nussbaum finally had gotten to see documents Wood had provided that day. While she seemed to be on firm legal ground, her story was too reminiscent of Baird’s to be defended in the age of Talk Show Democracy. The dreaded name of Rush Limbaugh was invoked. Bill Clinton made the call: Wood would not be nominated. And Hillary wasn’t in the room.

Hillary’s clout comes from her marriage to Bill, but also from a vast political network of her own that reaches across the country and deep into the Clinton administration.

CABINET SECRETARY

A liberal Children’s Defense Fund alum, Shalala says Health and Human Services will lead the Clinton domestic agenda

CHILDREN’S ADVOCATE

Hillary’s mentor and friend for 20 years, she has a prime seat in the First Lady’s kitchen cabinet on children’s issues

PROGRAM DIRECTOR

A friend and campaign aide, Shearer will run a White House internship program for young political talent

INFORMAL ADVISER

Though tough-talking and often brash, Thomases’s influence on the First Lady cannot be underestimated

TELEVISION PRODUCER

Brought Hollywood to Hillary’s image–new clothes, blond hair–and the Inagural

TRADE REPRESENTATIVE

Once believed to be out of favor, Kantor regained FOH status with successful staging of Little Rock economic summit