Female voters gave Bill Clinton his victory margin last fall in the Year of the Woman. So it was appropriate that he begin his new administration with what amounted to a Week of the Woman. Unfortunately for Clinton, the woman was Baird. The first female nominated for attorney general, she was ruined by Nannygate, the first national scandal over child-care arrangements. Some women felt that Baird was being unfairly held to a double standard. But more women were angry at her for using motherhood as an excuse to cut legal corners. To millions of ordinary women around the country, the controversy underscored the difficulties all working parents face in finding affordable-and legal-child care (following stories).

In the end, Baird’s demise had more to do with class than gender. Clinton ran as the champion of “the forgotten middle class,” of “people who work hard and play by the rules.” Baird, it turned out, wasn’t one of them. Rather, she was a $500,000-a-year corporate lawyer with the Aetna Life and Casualty Co. She and her husband, Yale law professor Paul Gewirtz, owned a stately home in New Haven, Conn., and reported a net worth of $2.3 million. Consumer activist Ralph Nader bitterly observed that the couple had the means to hire Mary Poppins. Instead, they had hired an undocumented Peruvian couple for $500 a week, and had failed initially to file required forms or to pay social-security and unemployment-insurance taxes.

Washington insiders desperate for clues to the new administration combed through the Baird fiasco like detectives at an accident scene. Some of what they found was exculpatory. Famed for its “quick response” style in the campaign, Clinton’s team acted quickly to cut its losses without directly involving the boss or trapping him in a no-win battle to save her. Clinton himself shrewdly short-circuited criticism by accepting “full responsibility” for the mistaken selection and the process that produced it. His aides made a point of noting, correctly, that most of the rest of his cabinet had been confirmed in record time, thanks to close cooperation with Democratic leaders on the Hill.

Clinton also trumped the Baird story with other, cheery news of special interest to his female supporters. First Lady Hillary Clinton, it was announced, would play a leading role in developing his most complex and important domestic initiative, health-care reform. In a televised White House ceremony, the president signed a series of sweeping executive orders reversing 12 years of restrictive Reagan-Bush policies on abortion, abortion counseling, fetal-tissue research and the importation of RU-486, the French abortion pill. The orders were issued at the same time as one of the largest anti-abortion marches ever in Washington.

As adept as it is at image making and spin control, the Clinton team still had much to answer for. How could a group so alert to middle-class resentments during the campaign be so oblivious to Baird’s liabilities for office? Her sponsor-Secretary of State Warren Christopher, a wealthy Los Angeles corporate lawyer who ran the Clinton transition-and his posse of Yuppie lawyers clearly failed to anticipate the public outrage. “The transition was full of rich people who thought like rich people,” groused one top veteran of the Clinton campaign. “They’re not Bush preppies, but they have a new kind of insulating pedigree-fancy educations.”

The flip side of spin control is furtiveness. Baird volunteered information about her child-care situation early on, but transition insiders kept the full facts too closely held. Some aides, NEWSWEEK has learned, initially argued that the matter didn’t need to be made public-that senators on the Judiciary Committee could have learned of it in an eyes-only FBI report. Clinton himself was told that Baird hired illegal aliens-but that the problem had been taken care of by the proper authorities. The president insisted that he was never told about the unpaid taxes. Reporters trying to learn these facts were stymied by the new White House press office, which sealed off its corridor in the West Wing. Communications Director George Stephanopoulos defended the decision as a way to keep from being overrun by reporters. It seemed a trivial matter-except to a press corps eager to get a fix on the new administration.

Is the Clinton administration as ready for prime-time policymaking as it was for its slick and telegenic Inaugural festivities? To try to bring order to a drifting Justice Department, Clinton was forced to summon a close friend in the Little Rock legal community (and Hillary’s former law partner), Webster Hubbell. He showed up at the department, which is supposed to be insulated from political direction, and began delivering orders in the name of the White House.

The Clinton team hoped that the talkshow revolt that brought down Baird would fade quickly and become nothing more than a matter of nattering reflection inside the Beltway. “It was an important lesson,” conceded one administration insider. “If we learn from it, we’ll be fine.”

The lessons weren’t lost elsewhere. At the weekend, two Republican candidates for New Jersey governor had disclosed their own nanny troubles, and others are sure to follow. Zoe Baird and her husband left for home; she’ll return to her old job at Aetna. The biggest losers were the two Peruvians who worked for her. The Immigration and Naturalization Service announced it may deport them.

..MR5-

Should Zoe Baird have been confirmed as attorney general after she admitted that she hired illegal aliens, mainly for child care, and that she failed to pay the federal taxes required on their salaries until recently?

16% Yes 72% No

For this NEWSWEEK Poll, The Gallup Organization interviewed a national sample of 663 adults Jan 21-22. Margin of error +/- 4 percentage. “Don’t know” and other responses not shown. The NEWSWEEK Poll copyright 1993 by NEWSWEEK, Inc.

Clinton nominates Baird as nation’s first female attorney general. During screening interviews, she tells aides about her immigrant nanny; they pass word to Clinton.

During FBI checks, Baird says she hired two undocumented aliens and didn’t pay social-security taxes. This information is leaked to The New York Times.

She and husband pay back taxes and fine. She apologizes for her “mistake” before Senate Judiciary Committee. Chairman Joe Biden lambastes her.

With opposition mounting in the Senate and mail and phone calls running heavily against her, Baird withdraws her name. Clinton accepts “with sadness.”