We might elect as our next president a person who was a White House disaster.

That may not be as worrisome as it sounds. Smart people learn from mistakes. There's been a moderate, pragmatic, temperate and altogether competent six-year stint in the U.S. Senate since.

We probably can better judge by actions taken in one's own behalf rather than by actions resulting from a not always gratifying association with another.

In other words: Just because Hillary Clinton was one of Bill Clinton's biggest political problems is no reason to assume she would be one of her own biggest political problems.

She's been liberated. Her credentials aren't borrowed anymore. She's ventured from stage-side, where she was reduced all those years to giving advice not always good, and ventured out to perform for herself. Bill always said there are things about any job you can only learn by doing.

There was a time -- 1992 through 1994 -- when Hillary was Bill's biggest political problem. Invariably it had to do with her clumsy search to define and perform a supporting role in which she clearly was uncomfortable. She appeared presumptuous, over-reaching, out-of-sorts, unfulfilled.

On the campaign trail in 1992, she ridiculed standing by your man, though that was precisely what she found herself doing. She diminished stay-at-home moms by saying she could have baked cookies instead of doing something important like corporate law.

Upon her husband's becoming president in 1993, she promptly told his staff to get rid of the long-time personnel in the White House travel office.

She prevailed on Bill to nominate for surgeon general a fine and brave Arkansas woman committed to health care for children and the impoverished, and who would proceed to tell Americans to get over their love affair with the fetus and teach their kids self-gratification. They had to let her go -- the surgeon general, not Hillary.

In the fall of 1993, Hillary's husband was ready to compromise on incremental health care reform when she -- acting by authority he had given her as a kind of health czar -- decreed that he simply had to say in a speech to Congress that he'd veto anything less than universal health insurance. That killed any chance.

Throughout, she refused to accede to a special prosecutor or turn over perfectly defensible family records about the failed land development deal called Whitewater. Her mild Nixonian impersonation merely exacerbated her and her husband's problems.

That was then. This is now. She has grown and is now on her own -- and, it seems, happier and on her way back to the White House.

There is at least one constant from then to now: She is a plodder, disciplined, committed to staying on message. If she does not think it wise to say she's sorry for her Iraq vote, then rest assured she absolutely will not say it. Trust that she will run a smart campaign.

The New Republic carried an entertaining piece a couple of weeks ago about how a New York State Democratic Convention was regaled by an expertly produced video presentation featuring Hillary. The only problem was that her actual physical appearance at the end of the movie was a bit of an anti-climax.

Her virtual candidacy was better than her in-person candidacy, the article said.

Look, then, for more virtual and less real. Remember how she announced her presidential candidacy -- with a softly lit, tightly edited Internet chat.

Virtual, actual -- either kind of candidacy is better than a vicarious one, which was what gave her such fits back in the '90s.

John Brummett is an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock and author of "High Wire," a book about Bill Clinton's first year as president. His e-mail address is jbrummett@ arkansasnews.com.