In Iowa, hand firmly in hand

NASHUA, IOWA — Hillary Rodham Clinton looked enviously at her husband's malted milkshake at a roadside ice cream shop. Then, unable to resist, she dipped in a plastic spoon. Sitting side by side at the counter, cooing over the array of flavors, the Clintons seemed the picture of marital bliss, like any other husband and wife team that just happened to be running for president once again.

Elsewhere during nearly three days of campaigning across Iowa, the couple hugged, touched and whispered in each other's ears. He would pat her back. She would touch his arm. In the Fourth of July parade in Clear Lake, they marched along holding hands, fingers interlocked.

Trotting out the spouse is a set piece of presidential campaigning, but when Hillary and Bill Clinton made their first joint foray on the campaign trail last week, there was more at stake than a ritualistic joint appearance. Like no other presidential candidate in modern times, Hillary Clinton declared for the White House knowing that her marriage would pose a central challenge.

As she acknowledged in her autobiography, "Living History," she knows that people watch her every move and gesture when she is with her husband to gauge the state of their relationship.

After the fling with Gennifer Flowers and the affair with Monica S. Lewinsky, after impeachment and a special prosecutor's report that described Bill Clinton's sexual encounters with clinical precision, voters were bound to wonder whether returning the Clintons to the White House would mean another exhausting cycle of marital crises.

Moreover, the senator from New York recognized that her decision to remain married despite her husband's infidelities and deceit had created a problem among well-educated, relatively affluent women: Many disapproved of her decision.

The Iowa trip was a test run for dealing with both sets of problems.

By presenting herself and Bill as a close, mutually supportive couple, she offered reassurance to those who feared further scandal.

And there was a two-pronged answer for skeptical women: The picture of a marriage saved by love and forgiveness suggested she had made the right decision after all. Her display of loyalty also tacitly appealed to what some have called the Tammy Wynette "Stand by Your Man" vote.

Whether the strategy will succeed remains unclear, but it provoked strong reactions in Iowa.