Trip Is Kid Stuff for the First Lady

The Bill and Hillary jokes arrived here before she did. Example: The first couple is touring Switzerland. “Where’s the Matterhorn?” she asks.

“Where’s Heidi?” he wants to know.

After two tumultuous weeks in Washington, during which she came out swinging to defend her husband from--in her words--”a vast right-wing conspiracy,” Hillary Rodham Clinton journeyed to this placid lakeside city in the Alps on Saturday, beginning a four-day trip to Switzerland during which she will address the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Escaping hardball politics inside the Washington Beltway and the seamy allegations against the president, which range from sexual shenanigans to obstruction of justice, the first lady slipped effortlessly and joyfully into kid stuff: the Children’s Parliament of Lucerne, an assembly of local girls and boys from 8 to 14 years old.

Reporters and TV crews from the United States and from around Europe were not allowed to ask questions. But she told the children who gathered at her feet in the Lucerne Rathaus, or City Hall, to quiz her about “anything on your minds,” and one girl wanted to know what life was like as wife of the president of the United States.

There are good things--and things not so good--Clinton said.

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“It is difficult to live in the spotlight of public life, and I miss many things about my private life, like walking wherever you want to go and doing whatever you want to do with your friends or family,” the first lady acknowledged.

“But I think the years my husband has been president, and the years he has left to serve, which will total eight years altogether, are very exciting times,” she continued, pausing from time to time so her remarks could be translated into German. “And I get to do things, like come here and meet all of you. So I do enjoy it. But I will look forward to the time when I can be just an ordinary citizen.”

If there was a wistful note in her voice, it was quickly gone.

Asked by another child what her mottoes are, Clinton said, “I believe it’s important to be grateful for all the blessings in my life. To do the best I can, every single day. And to work as hard as I can on the things I believe in and care about.”

As the first lady, dressed in a black pantsuit, listened raptly, the junior legislators voted to spend the equivalent of $4,760 from their budget, underwritten by the adult politicians who govern Lucerne, to construct a maze in a municipal park. Before the first lady’s arrival, they also decided to preserve the customary snack during their proceedings, defeating a motion to replace croissants with jelly doughnuts.

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To keep the assembly from degenerating into a shouting match, only the person holding a stuffed ape is allowed to speak. Flying from child to child, the gray toy once almost hit the first lady in the face.

She said she loved the idea of the monkey, and added with a bright smile that the Congress in Washington, where outspoken defenders of her husband have been rare even in Democratic ranks, could learn from it.

“I’m going to Davos on Sunday, and the speaker of the House of the United States Congress will be there,” she told the children. “Maybe some of you are going to have to come to the United States and show them how to be so orderly and pass the ape around to talk.”

World-famous for their sense of propriety, the Swiss nevertheless draw a distinct line between public and private conduct in their elected officials.

An opinion survey to be published this week by a German-language newspaper found that if the Monica S. Lewinsky controversy had occurred in Switzerland, 79% of the respondents would reelect the politician involved if they believed that he was doing a good job.

So, not surprisingly, people in this town of 58,000, where German composer Richard Wagner once lived, gave the first lady an enthusiastic welcome as she shunned her Cadillac limousine to shake hands with the waiting crowds and stroll across a 14th century covered wooden bridge, restored after a disastrous 1993 fire.

Mathis Pfaffli, 14, chairman of the Children’s Parliament, became a fan.

“I expected her to be uppity. You know, like a film star or something,” he said. “But she was very nice, very down-to-earth.”

Aboard a paddle steamer nearly a century old, the first lady toured Lake Lucerne with a boatload of dignitaries, including U.S. Ambassador Madeleine May Kunin and Franziska Rochat, the Swiss woman who won the 1997 New York Marathon.

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The guests lunched on smoked lake trout and other Swiss delicacies and, through chilling fog, glimpsed the field at Rutli where, in 1291, representatives of three Alpine cantons met to conclude a permanent alliance that became the kernel of Swiss nationhood.

Later in the afternoon, Clinton drove to Zurich to address a joint meeting of the Swiss National Council of Women and the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce at the University of Zurich.

In her remarks, she thanked the Swiss for their contributions to humanitarian causes and said they had been “courageously” reexamining their country’s role during World War II, when the Swiss purchased tons of gold that had been stolen by the Nazis in occupied Europe.

For many in the audience, more accustomed these days to foreign accusations of Swiss wartime misdeeds, those were welcome words, and they gave the first lady a standing ovation. Some women called her an inspiration.

“She exudes strength and vitality; she is so strong,” said Rita Gygax-Schwarz of Berne, professor of political science at the University of Saint-Gall.

“For those of us who, on our more modest level, have responsibilities, she is a real model,” said Jacqueline Stalder-Meyer, a Lausanne lawyer and president of the Swiss women’s council.