L.A. Trip Puts First Lady on Ideal Ground

Placing herself squarely alongside Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, a nun and a homeless teenager-made-good, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived Thursday in Los Angeles for a series of events that typified the sort of high-profile, but low-controversy, venues in which White House strategists have been seeking to put her during this election year.

At an afternoon address to the Muslim Women’s League and Muslim Public Affairs Council, for example, the first lady carefully struck universal themes, talking about the joys of parenting and the importance of fatherhood.

“The values that lie at the heart of your experience as Muslims--values of faith and of family and community and responsibility for the less fortunate--are values that are powerful,” she said. “And they are ones that you share in common with others of us, who also seek to honor and live by our values every day.”

Earlier, at the opening of a shelter for homeless and runaway adolescents in Hollywood, where she shared the stage with Mahony, Mrs. Clinton talked of the coalition of religious, community and philanthropic forces that helped to open the 72-bed facility. And she noted the effort came with limited help from the federal government--just a $1-million Housing and Urban Development Department grant toward the $12-million construction cost.

“We have to have a partnership among individuals and institutions like those who have contributed to this new facility,” she said. “It’s a partnership between the private not-for-profit sector, between our religious community and between our government.”

Those sorts of noncontroversial, values-centered themes are precisely what President Clinton’s strategists have been hoping to see the first lady espouse--in safe territory away from the hurly-burly politics of health care or the lingering Whitewater scandal.

Mrs. Clinton’s goal is to “triangulate” a new role somewhere between the single-minded professional woman and the traditional housewife: “something between Lady MacBeth and Betty Crocker,” said one administration official.

The approach appeared to be well-received in Los Angeles, where the first lady won warm and prolonged ovations. Many in both audiences toted--and even quoted from--her best-selling book, “It Takes a Village.”

Olfet Agrama, one of the 300 who attended the speech to the Muslim council at the Biltmore Hotel, said she did not resent the political nature of the first lady’s appeal. “Of course, as the first lady, everything she does is political. But I think she served herself and her husband very well,” Agrama said. “She is obviously trying to limit herself to issues that will unite rather than divide. That was the tone of everything--very general and middle of the road.”

Mrs. Clinton’s brief California visit came a week after her declaration in an interview with Time magazine that she and the president are considering adopting a second child. She has also increasingly tilted her agenda toward seemingly unassailable crusades such as children’s health care.

Despite efforts to keep her agenda on a highroad, Mrs. Clinton has sometimes continued to stray from the path, showing a more partisan and combative side that some advisors fear might work against her efforts to appeal to centrist voters.

In recent days, for instance, she took swipes at Whitewater special counsel Kenneth W. Starr, denounced the Republicans for unfair personal attacks on her husband and complained repeatedly of the treatment she and the president have received in Washington.

One top White House aide acknowledged that this combativeness did not follow the blueprint that the political team had sketched out for her.

Mrs. Clinton’s declaration last week that she and the president were considering adoption also raised some eyebrows in Washington, where many in the political community assumed the couple were trying some carefully timed image-softening.

But even if political calculation figured into the comments, people close to her say Mrs. Clinton has been sincerely considering the possibility of adoption.

She has not closed the door on taking on a top policy role if the president is reelected, similar to what she did in the first term, where she helped formulate the administration’s health care proposal. Yet in interviews, she leaves an impression that she will focus on projects that are smaller and far less controversial.

On Thursday, the first lady never ventured toward confrontation. Perhaps her only oblique reference to political conservatives came when she denounced those who she said have attacked teenagers as troublemakers.

Rainey reported from Los Angeles and Richter from Washington. Times staff writer Larry Stammer contributed to this story.

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