Can’t Have It Both Ways : If you take the high profile, you can’t expect to duck the tough questions

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton holds no constitutional or appointed office, but she has vastly expanded the traditional role of a President’s wife. The scope of her public duties no doubt has heightened the furor surrounding the questions about her role and judgment years ago in a real estate deal called Whitewater. Mrs. Clinton has begun to selectively address media inquiries about Whitewater. She needs to do more.

There’s no question that Mrs. Clinton is a professional of high standing and credentials. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a graduate of one of the nation’s top law schools and a deeply knowledgeable student of public policy, is in many ways an enigma to America. She both dazzles and puzzles. Her sterling command of health care issues and the President’s health care plan before Congress last year was truly impressive; that image clashes so with last December’s photo spread in Vogue magazine featuring Mrs. Clinton in movie-star-like poses. Similarly, her quest for privacy, including her original foot-dragging on the Whitewater matter, has clashed with her high-profile activism.

Her assignment to such big policy issues as health care reform has placed her in a gray area of government, with ill-defined duties, responsibilities and accountability to the public. That fuzzy role, extending far beyond the past conventions of a First Lady, makes her an easy target for political critics and rough questioning by the media. Having said that, it must also be said that she can’t have it both ways: the big issues and the big influence on the one hand and immunity from scrutiny on the other.

If Mrs. Clinton is going to play the Washington game, she has to step up and take the fastballs from the people and the press. She has to do more of what she has started to do this week: answer the questions, even hostile ones. Otherwise Hillary Clinton may, by ducking the hard questions, lose her credibility in staking out the tough issues.