Gatekeepers of Hillaryland

Not so, says Solis Doyle. "Loyalty does not equal unanimity," she cautions. "We disagree with each other and with her."

Still, veteran operatives were bewildered by the ferocity with which the campaign attacked opponent Barack Obama and David Geffen after the Hollywood mogul publicly criticized Clinton and threw his support to Obama. The tactic kept the story unhelpfully alive for days. Campaign sources concede today that the situation could have been better handled, but they also acknowledge that no one on the team really objected to the counterattack.

"You have to understand," says one, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely about the misstep. "We were always the underdog before, always under seige. It was reflexive. But we learned something."

The Ties That Bind

Indeed, there is a well-fixed impression in political circles that Hillary Clinton, 59, long has had a bunker mentality, following the raucous 1992 presidential campaign that exposed her husband's infidelity. Inside the Clinton White House, she was the one most reluctant to release information -- and the one to advocate the quick punch back at critics.

But among her own staff, she has cultivated a nurturing culture of collegiality and loyalty, a leadership style based in teamwork, and often favored by women, that values consensus over hierarchy.

"She never lets anyone criticize her staff," says Neel Lattimore, who was a spokesman for her in the White House. "The loyalty is a two-way street."

The Clinton women say they are bound together by the issues they believe in, the combat they have endured, and a passion to elect their boss as the first woman president in U.S. history. They have a personal connection virtually nonexistent among professional male colleagues. Even rarer: the weekly yoga class at the campaign's Arlington headquarters, open to all staffers.

Hillary, as they call her, has thrown them wedding showers, burped their babies, intervened in their medical care, and spent many an evening gossiping with them around the kitchen in stocking feet. Since polling has suggested voters perceive the senator as cool and aloof, her closest aides are eager to share such stories, as the campaign strives to humanize the candidate.

There are men who have become naturalized citizens in Hillaryland, of course, most prominent among them Penn, who runs the campaign's polling and crafts the message, as he did for President Bill Clinton; communications director Howard Wolfson (a Hillaryland member since 1999); and the ubiquitous but unofficial adviser Harold Ickes, a longtime liberal activist, Clinton loyalist and expert on New York politics.

Hillaryland began with Solis Doyle, who was hired as Clinton's scheduler in 1991, a few years out of college. Fresh from Richard M. Daley's successful Chicago mayoral campaign, she showed up in Little Rock looking to join Bill Clinton's presidential campaign. Solis Doyle landed a powerful perch after the campaign coordinating the first lady's schedule.

At the White House, Clinton insisted her staff be given the same lofty titles as her husband's aides -- as well as offices in the West Wing nerve center near those they called "the white boys." It was an unprecedented arrangement. First ladies had been historically relegated to the East Wing to deal with safe issues and social rituals, like decorating the Christmas tree.

"We were fully immersed in the daily operation of the West Wing," Clinton wrote in her memoir, "Living History," "but we were also our own little subculture." And a quite independent one at times.