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Barbara Walters couldn't crack Sen. Clinton's icy demeanor during her excellent interview last night. (Virginia Sherwood -- Abc Via Reuters)

By Tom Shales
Monday, June 9, 2003; Page C01

Two first ladies got together for a chat on national network television last night, one of them the former first lady of the land and the other the reigning first lady of network news. It was by no means a contest, but Barbara Walters came away from it looking better than Hillary Rodham Clinton, the celebrated interviewee.

By "better," I think what I mean is "more recognizably human."

Walters asked the questions we wanted asked, but Clinton didn't always answer them, not satisfactorily anyway, in the course of "Hillary Clinton's Journey: Public, Private, Personal," an hour-long book plug masquerading as a news special on ABC. As most politicians would, Sen. Clinton went into this interview with a clear idea of how much she wanted to reveal -- and how much she needed to reveal in order to titillate the public into buying her book.

Clinton had something to sell, and she was all business about selling it.

Walters, who has wrestled with the most reticent and tight-lipped subjects on the planet over the course of her fabulous career, seemed now and then to get Clinton to spill a bean or three more than she wanted to, or at least to be more intimately revealing than she maybe planned on being. It was by no means an hour chock-full of surprises, but neither was it ever a bore.

Despite obvious attempts to do otherwise -- and Walters giving her the benefit of the doubt -- Clinton still comes across as almost chillingly chilly. She may have emotions like normal people, but she doesn't like to admit it and she's scarily proficient at suppressing them. Even during a sequence in which Walters covered the suicide of Vince Foster, friend to both Hillary and Bill Clinton, the interviewee appeared unfazed. She brushed the topic of Foster aside and, noting that she and her husband both lost their mothers the same year, lumped all three deaths together as just another difficult installment in the Trials and Tribulations of the Embattled H.R.C.

Along with the various personal crises, there were, of course, political ordeals. Walters generously characterized the "health care fiasco" of President Clinton's first term as something Mrs. Clinton "had to cope with," rather than a mess she helped perpetrate. Clinton chuckled and, attempting a just-folks demeanor, told Walters, "Oh, my goodness, what I got myself into I never could have predicted!" Lordy, Lordy!

Obviously the juiciest parts of the interview were those dealing with bad-boy Bill's fabled, flagrant infidelities. Walters brought forth once-familiar names from the bimbonic history of the United States: Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones and the grand dame of supermarket sleaze, Monica Lewinsky. Clinton was more forthcoming on Lewinsky and her husband's other philandering and betrayals than she has previously been; she had to be or viewers would have felt cheated and gypped and not in a book-buying mood.

"I could have wrung his neck for a million reasons," Clinton said of Bill during the Lewinsky discussion. Divorcing Bill "certainly crossed my mind," she said in response to a Walters question. Each revelation of cheating was viewed by Clinton, she said looking back, as another challenge to her fortitude and stamina and all that.

Walters fed her a soft question about her "faith" and the role it played, and naturally Clinton said that "ultimately I had to get on my knees" and pray. And yet there was conceivably worse to come, right around the corner, in this real-life edition of "Dynasty": the impeachment of her husband and all the public humiliation that went with it. Walters said these must have been "the most difficult days" of Clinton's life -- but wait, hadn't that also been said of the Lewinsky incident? And the Paula Jones mess? And l'affaire Flowers? And the health care fiasco?

On bare-knuckle political issues, Clinton was effective. What broke her heart, she said, was not her husband's infidelity or even his virtuoso lying, or any personal tragedy. What's "broken my heart" is the mess George W. Bush has made of the very same economy that the Clinton administration "turned around" and got back on track. Clinton didn't really back down from her notorious allegation about a "vast right-wing conspiracy" out to get her husband's administration, either; she conceded that "conspiracy" might have been too strong a word but stuck to her guns about wealthy conservatives financing a fanatical get-Bill vendetta.

If only Bill hadn't made it quite so easy for them. Richard Nixon thought he was the victim of an establishment conspiracy, too, and used the phrase "I gave them a sword" in reference to arming his enemies. If Nixon gave "them" a mere sword, what did Bill Clinton give 'em? Good grief, it boggles the mind.

Once or twice Clinton hid behind a "zone of privacy" and ducked a Walters question; her high principles, for instance, prevent her from repeating any conversations she's had with her daughter, Clinton said. Possible translation: She's saving those for another book. And maybe another interview. She's not likely ever to get a tougher and yet more understanding interviewer. Walters did a great job, ably aided at three interview locations by longtime producer Martin Clancy and director George Paul.

Does the public still care about Clinton and her adversaries, or even about her political ambitions (she scoffed at the notion of seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004)? Sales of the book, and ratings for last night's special, will both be trenchant indicators. For all of Walters's perseverance and expertise, Sen. Clinton's stories had a kind of faded, dated mustiness about them. Perhaps it would all seem less irrelevant if not for Sept. 11, 2001, and what has followed in its wake.

Whatever the reason, one could easily have watched last night's session with keen interest, and devoted one's full attention to it for an hour, and yet still be happy to see it end -- even to the point of thinking, "Okay, Hillary, we heard you. Now do us a favor and make like MacArthur's 'old soldiers' and just fade away." She won't, of course. This was the beginning of the book tour, not the end.

And in spite of what Clinton said, it may very well have marked the beginning of her 2004 presidential campaign as well.