FIRST LADY PRESENTS TRADITIONAL IMAGE.

Byline: Bob Hohler The Boston Globe

In the inaugural spirit of renewal, Hillary Rodham Clinton embarked Monday on a fresh start with a simple style choice. She left her hat at home.

Four years after Hillary Clinton donned an unflattering bowler for her husband's 1993 inauguration - stirring a torrent of criticism that widened as she became one of the most controversial first ladies in history - she began her final term in peace with the fashion police.

Her supporters hoped the calm was a sign of a broader peace to come.

Stung by criticism of her failed campaign for universal health care, scorned by foes for her policy-making clout and saddled with the possibility that she could be indicted by a grand jury investigating Whitewater-related matters, the first lady on Monday strayed nowhere near controversy.

No hats. No politics. Nary a public utterance.

In a long day of prayer, pomp, parade viewing, parties and the official inauguration, Hillary Clinton stood in her husband's shadow or by his side, the portrait of a traditional president's wife.

Indeed, Hillary Clinton rarely was mentioned, though the Rev. Gardner Taylor, in his benediction after the president's swearing-in, referred to her as ``the gallant lady at his side.''

Yet the first lady appeared to relish the full inaugural experience. Dressed in a coral pink coat and dress designed by Oscar de la Renta, she swayed gently to gospel refrains in a morning prayer service at a predominantly African-American church in Washington before she locked her arm around the Rev. Jesse Jackson's during the benediction.

At the inauguration, she held the family Bible and watched proudly while her husband took the oath of office. When Clinton completed the oath and kissed their daughter, Chelsea, on the forehead, Hillary Clinton offered him her cheek, which he kissed.

``Maybe it's a relief for her just to enjoy a day like this without all the political pressures,'' said Monica Stevens of Brooklyn, N.Y., as she watched the inaugural parade approach the presidential reviewing stand in front of the White House.

``I'm not sure the last four years have been all that much fun for her,'' Stevens said.

Hillary Clinton indicated as much in a series of interviews before the inauguration. She described her role as first lady as ``a struggle,'' during an interview with C-SPAN, and suggested on CBS' ``Sunday Morning'' that she had been shunted out of public favor because she tried to pursue issues that concerned her before she entered the White House.

``To find myself in this no-person's land, if you will, where what I have done all my life was somehow considered illegitimate because my husband had moved jobs and moved into a different house was very surprising to me,'' she said.

She said she found it ``very sad'' that political foes ``engage in character assassination and personal destruction.''

But that did not prevent her from sitting next to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, one of her husband's chief rivals, over lunch in the Capitol after the inauguration. The two spoke privately over a meal of seafood pie, beef a la mode, macaroni and cheese, cornbread and bread pudding before the Clintons led the inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.

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Photo

Photo: With the president behind her, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton toasts House Speaker Newt Gingrich at a Capitol Hill luncheon.

Associated Press