They are calling it Hillary's Resurrection. Within the last few weeks, Hillary Rodham Clinton has sought and received more publicity than in the past three years. Suddenly, reporters are being invited to travel on her plane and listen to her thoughts - last year, during the presidential election campaign, the media were lucky to discover where she was addressing meetings of Democratic supporters.
Time magazine's recent a cover story depicts her "confronting a birthday and a newly empty nest" while she "embodies the challenge facing Baby Boom women". The empty nest is a reference to the departure of the Clintons' only daughter, Chelsea, for university at Stanford in faraway California. Her mother is now learning how to use e-mail to keep in touch.
Chelsea's departure seems to have been the signal for Hillary Clinton to emerge from the deliberately self-effacing role she has played since her ambitious health reform plan was rejected three years ago, and she was simultaneously pushed into the unwelcome limelight of the Whitewater investigation.
The results of the investigation by a special prosecutor have still to be announced: it is not impossible that she may be indicted for her role in the failed property development in Arkansas before the Clintons came to Washington. But with just three years remaining in the White House, she has moved to "emerge from her cocoon" as one observer put it. Child welfare is her priority and she will criss-cross continents to carry her message - this week she organised a major conference on the subject in the White House.
Her feminist agenda in favour of women's rights is not being forgotten either. In her recent trip to South America she had audiences cheering and applauding as she argued passionately for the empowerment of women and free access to family planning. Some saw this as a coded reference to abortion availability - a daring message in Catholic Latin American countries such as Brazil.
Her style is different from 199394, when she barnstormed across the US urging support for her ambitious health reform plan and argued her case before Congressional committees. Now she believes in a less aggressive approach and also a more toned-down wardrobe - according again to Time which notes "the powerful teals and reds of her health-care days have been replaced by Oscar de la Renta pastels, with pumps to match".
In Panama recently, the pumps were replaced by mud-caked boots as she climbed into the hills to support a "micro-enterprise" run by women, for reafforestation in the jungle. "This is exactly the kind of project I've seen all over the world that works," she told accompanying reporters.
She brushes aside questions about what it will mean to be 50. "People are making a lot more out of it than I wish they would . . . It's not being 50 so much, it's being half a century that really gets to you.".
But people are not going to let her forget. Her native Chicago is planning a firework display when she goes there tomorrow to celebrate.
Her own, highly-protective staff began to celebrate 50 days ago when they gathered 50 friends for a surprise White House ceremony. Some believe Mrs Clinton is being influenced by the way Princess Diana promoted her causes by high level media exposure, as in the campaign to ban landmines. Now Mrs Clinton has a weekly newspaper column in which she plugs her favourite causes: she recently took Julia Roberts to task for glamorising smoking in her role in My Best Friend's Wedding.
Although Mrs Clinton also favours the international ban on landmines, she was unable to persuade President Clinton that the US should sign the treaty. When he was recently reminded of the arguments for the treaty he said wearily: "I hear it every night".
She is also said to have favoured an out-of-court settlement with Paula Jones, who is suing the president for sexual harassment. While Mrs Clinton believes he did nothing wrong, she was prepared to endure whatever embarrassment might come from a settlement in order to close a case which is now bringing horrendous publicity about his "distinguishing characteristics". But he has decided to seek full exoneration by letting the case go to court next May.
Areas in which her behind-the-scenes influence has brought results are said to include measures to help veterans affected by Gulf War syndrome and to improve the run-down parts of Washington. One historian, Michael Beschloss, sees her as "easily the most influential First Lady in history" for the way she fights for her causes such as aid for Africa, immunisation of inner city children and financial credit for women.
And Americans like the new Hillary. Instead of the dark days of being interrogated by a Grand Jury about Whitewater and plunging ratings, she now has 67 per cent of Americans approving of how she does her job - more than her husband has managed. Internal White House polls are said to show that those who hate her "viscerally" (mostly conservatives and older men) has fallen from 35 to 25 per cent.
She has visibly gained confidence since the beginning of her husband's second term, when her staff were scared to speculate to the media about how she saw her role for the next four years. Last January, she told an interviewer her role was "a struggle".
"On the one hand, people want a wife of a president to be concerned and caring about the issues confronting the country and to work on something of public interest," she said. "On the other hand, they don't want her to do it in a public way on a policy level."
At this point the late-night TV comedian, David Letterman, joked that one aim of the designer of Mrs Clinton's dress for the inaugural ceremonies was to make the sleeves long enough to hide her handcuffs.
Now, as one magazine said last week, "She's back. While no one was looking, the controversial First Lady became popular again."
Hillary Clinton will be in Dublin on Thursday on her way to Northern Ireland. She will stay with the US ambassador, Jean Kennedy Smith, and there may be a "Government-sponsored event" in her honour.
The next day she will deliver an inaugural lecture in the University of Ulster in honour of the late Joyce McCartan, whom she met on her visit to Belfast in 1995.
In Britain, Mrs Clinton will stay with Tony and Cherie Blair in Chequers and attend a private seminar in which "New Labour" will exchange political ideas with the "New Democrats".