THERE are times, like now, when some Democrats heartily wish that Hillary Rodham Clinton had stayed at home and baked cookies, to use her own words when under attack during the 1992 presidential election campaign.

The United States' most prominent professional woman is currently under damaging assault from Republicans, who sense that she is the Achilles' heel, of a presidency heading inexorably towards four more years.

The Whitewater investigation is now targeted at the First Lady. Her enemies believe they are untangling the web she wove when first she practised to deceive as a lawyer in Arkansas.

The pressure is unrelenting. During the Clintons' visit to Ireland last month she was unable to enjoy herself to the full as she was constantly checking the latest news from Washington.

The First Lady is also taking hits in the normally sympathetic US media for her role in shady business dealings back in Arkansas in the 1980s.

The hardest punch came this week. The conservative New York Times columnist William Safire, whom presidents take seriously, wrote on Monday, "Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realisation that our First Lady a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation is a congenital liar."

Safire alleged that Mrs Clinton lied about how she turned $1,000 into $100,000 by gambling on cattle futures, about her involvement with a failed savings and loan company in Arkansas, about the dismissal of the White House travel staff, about attempts to obstruct investigations after the death of her confidant, Vince Foster, and about concealing her Arkansas billing records until it was too late for a civil suit against her.

No wonder the President was fearful of holding a prime time press conference, Safire concluded. He might have to answer some of these questions.

The President, who has had to defend her honour many times before he told Governor Jerry Brown in the, 1992 Democratic primaries not to "jump on his wife" said through his spokesman that he would like to deliver his reply "on the bridge of Safire's nose" (just as President Truman told a critic once, "You'll need a new nose").

And he called a press conference on Thursday, his first since August, as if responding to Safire's dare (just as President Johnson appointed J. Edgar, Hoover FBI director for life the day after the New York Times said he was about to be sacked).

The columnist, astonishingly, reported the same day that he had been assured there were no hard feelings, and suggested snowballs at 40 paces instead of a punch up.

THE idea of Hillary as the helpless wife who needs her husband to protect her from bullies is at odds with reality.

If anything she is more likely to throw the punch.

Her mother, Dorothy Rodham, related how four year old Hillary complained to her father about being pushed around by a bully at school and was told to hit back. She "popped the bully" and ran home to exclaim "I can play with the boys now," according to Clinton biographer David Maraniss.

She has been challenging female stereotypes ever since. As a teenager Hillary Clinton wanted to be an astronaut and many believe she is the one with the right stuff in her marriage to the former Arkansas governor. Hillary Clinton can run a meeting where her husband cannot. She has poise and metallic self control.

There was much talk of a co presidency before the First Couple moved into the White House. Bill Clinton boasted to voters early on that they would get "two for the price of one".

But in response to the needs of the campaign, Mrs Clinton discarded the professional image for that of caring wife and mother which she undoubtedly is. She did it before in Arkansas, shedding her image as a feminist to win approval from the Little Rock set and promote her husband's comeback as governor.

After moving into the power corridors of the White House, Mrs Clinton failed in her first major executive task, the reform of the US health care system. Critics portrayed her at the time as too clever by half, and many of the President's aides clearly found her an intimidating figure.

One such was David Watkins, who observed in 1994 in a just released memo that there would have been "hell to pay" if we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the First Lady's wishes" to fire the travel staff.

Mrs Clinton positioned herself in the early White House days as her husband's protector, telling Mr Watkins on another occasion that unfriendly staff employed by Republicans for 12 years had to be removed.

In an interview with Newsweek this week she said she had simply remarked, "It looks like that's what should be done" when told of an investigation of the travel staff (which evidently sounded to the hapless Watkins like "Who will rid me of this troublesome travel staff?").

The affair of the travel office is probably doing more than anything else to shape the First Lady's current unfavourable image. It smacks of abuse of executive office and cronyism. A friend, Harry Thomason, had connections with a travel firm ready to contract for the business.

Perhaps most significant of all, it left the impression of a First Lady before whom subordinates tremble Hillary Clinton as Nancy Reagan, gracious in public but hard as nails.

Those close to her say that is grossly unfair. She is fiercely protective of her mostly female staff and they are intensely loyal in return to the boss they call the Big Girl in the Big House.

These aides have suffered huge legal expenses to testify stubbornly in her defence before the Senate Whitewater committee.

Mrs Clinton protects her husband not in the adoring manner of Nancy Reagan but as a means to empower herself. A key to her character is the fact that she has always been a social activist with a commitment to justice, especially for children.

First ladies usually adopt poses because it is expected of them. Hillary Clinton's social commitment and pragmatism set her apart in law school, and before she married Bill Clinton she was counsel for the US Children's Defence Fund. Her goal in reforming health care was often expressed in terms of saving the children.

THAT is why it would be misleading to assume that ink launching her pro children book this week, It Takes A Village, named after an African proverb Mrs Clinton is simply engaged in a political exercise designed once again to accommodate the needs of the campaign.

In the book she elaborates on the theme that it takes a village to raise a child properly, and that in the modern age an ideal village would be a partnership of government, churches and charities.

The values she expresses in the 318 page volume are conservative, such as tougher rules for divorce and abstaining from sex until 21, but the prescriptions are liberal in their endorsement of government programmes to help.

She finished the book just after the trip to Northern Ireland and in the last chapter writes about parents who lost children in the Troubles but who had "overcome their personal anguish to put aside ancient grudges, and work to rebuild a larger community."

Circumstances have dictated a role for Hillary Clinton which sharpens the ambivalence of a life which has vacillated between careerist and spouse. Fear of causing damaging controversy by speaking out on political issues big government liberalism is unpopular these days has condemned an outspoken woman who was one of the top 100 lawyers in the US to a circumspect life of largely meaningless small talk.

She sees herself as the victim of the Whitewater probe. So, too, do many activist women in similar situations who if Hillary is routed will feel they have lost a champion.

It is a safe bet that Hillary Rodham Clinton would today like to land a punch on the nose of the Republican chairman of the Whitewater Committee, Alfonse D'Amato. The New York senator may be the one she has in mind now when she recites the nursery rhyme she uses to illustrate the unfairness of it all

As I was standing in the street

As quiet as could be

A great big ugly man came up

And tied his horse to me,