EDITORIAL\Hillary's travels\For a president seeking redemption, she's a nightmare.

Pardon us for asking, but who elected Hillary Clinton?

We bring this up in light of last week's news concerning the once-fleeting and now-infamous White House Travelgate matter, in which the first lady apparently played more of a role than was earlier believed.

Let us summarize: In early 1993, administration honchos fired the entire White House Travel Office for various billing shenanigans - only to be caught flat-footed when it was discovered that the office would be taken over by a private company with ties to Clinton buddy Harry Thomason. When the embarrassing reality became clear - that the fired travel employees did little or nothing wrong - the White House had little choice but to apologize and get everybody new jobs.

OK, it was the sort of silliness you might expect from the cronies of a former Arkansas governor. But absent the whys and wherefores of how such a thing could happen - a leitmotif in the Clinton White House - Travelgate never got to be a big deal. Once the Clintons denied any hand in the patronage play, most everyone lost interest.

Which brings us to the news: a just released White House document suggesting that Mrs. Clinton not only knew in advance about the dismissals, but essentially authorized them, presumably as a favor to Thomason. As then-administrative aide David Watkins wrote in a memo to then-Chief of Staff Thomas McLarty: "We both know that there would be hell to pay if . . . we failed to take swift and decisive action in conformity with the first lady's wishes."

It should be noted that the Watkins memo was never delivered to McLarty - and that Watkins himself was no Boy Scout. (He was dismissed after using a government helicopter on a golf outing.) It's also worth remembering that there is a long history of first ladies poking their noses where they didn't belong.

The thing about Mrs. Clinton, however, is that her influence wasn't limited to the usual spousal comment. During those first years in office, President Clinton branded his wife as a pre-eminent policy whiz (to the point where she became the ill-fated health-care czarina). It was around this time when Mrs. Clinton had the most clout - and when the travel nonsense unfolded.

How much clout? In his memo to McLarty, Watkins wrote that, "(This) is my first attempt to be sure the record is straight, something I have not done in previous conversations with investigators, where I have been as protective and vague as possible."

It's obfuscation of the highest order, all right, but most of all, it's the clearest indication to date that Hillary Clinton has turned into one of Bill Clinton's biggest nightmares.