You have to wonder these days how Hillary Clinton bears up, but she does very impressively. At least in her public appearances, as we have no way of knowing what she really thinks these days about the awful predicament facing her husband.
Her fierce loyalty to him is well known and her readiness to take on his enemies. From the start of the Monica Lewinsky saga, Hillary has been first into the breach.
A former official was quoted this week as recalling that when the allegations last January of a sexual affair "hit like a bombshell and the whole staff had to be picked up off the floor," Hillary Clinton "was a big morale booster - `come on folks, get it together, we've been down this road before'."
Indeed she has. Who does not remember her sitting beside her husband in a nationwide TV interview in 1992 while he admitted to causing "pain in my marriage" as Gennifer Flowers claimed she was his lover over 12 years?
Hillary, with eyes flashing, told viewers: "I'm not sitting here because I'm some little woman standing by her man like Tammy Wynette. I'm sitting here because I love him and I respect him and I honour what he's been through and what we've been through together, and you know, if that's not enough for the people, then heck, don't vote for him."
They did vote for him and he and Hillary went to the White House. But now she's back to a 1992 situation, only it's Monica and not Gennifer.
Actually in the 1992 interview Clinton categorically denied he had an affair with Gennifer Flowers. Last January 17th, he admitted under oath that he had had an affair with Ms Flowers but that they had sex only once. That was the day he denied under oath he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.
Hillary is still sticking by him but this time round it is much tougher. As Gloria Borger writes in US News and World Report: "So when you wonder how the first lady can bear to stroll hand in hand with her hubby as the FBI lab looks for his DNA on a young woman's dress, think of it this way: It's not really about her faith in his denials; it's those enemies that keep her going."
For Hillary, it is not bimbos who are trying to bring her husband down but political foes. She sees the Lewinsky affair as part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" which is trying to destroy the Clinton presidency.
This week she hit out at the anti-Arkansas bias of the Washington establishment which has never really accepted the Clintons. "I think a lot of this is prejudice against our state," she told the Ar- kansas-Democrat Gazette. "They wouldn't be doing this if we were from some other state."
Mr Clinton's former White House press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, says that the feeling that "the Washington elite are lining up against us because we're not one of them" is something that Hillary has "felt from the day they arrived in Washington".
If she has her way, these enemies will never force her husband, and herself, from the White House. Outside of Washington the Clintons find affection and support. On a recent bus trip in upstate New York, Hillary saw a woman holding up a sign: "You go, girl". Her courage and refusal to give up without a fight has boosted her approval ratings to the highest since going to the White House.
Two years ago she was seen as almost a disadvantage to her husband as he sought re-election while whiffs of Whitewater scandals and the failure of her health insurance plan still clung to her.
A Republican opponent from Arkansas, Ed Goeas, said: "She's the best person they can put out there. She's kind of standing by her man and is determined to do exactly that. Some people feel sorry for her. Some respect her. It's probably a combination of both."
This week she drew large crowds to the Democratic fundraiser in Milwaukee which the President was unable to attend. She was warmly welcomed as she visited flood victims in the area. Reporters who tried to raise her husband's troubles were shouted down.
One of those present, Orlandus Jackson, told another reporter: "She's always around doing something excellent for the communities. I guess she's got good public relations. If it is affecting her, we don't see it . . . She goes right on."
At present she is going right on preparing her address to the "Vital Voices" conference about women in Belfast early next month and will holiday with the President and daughter Chelsea over the next few weeks on Martha's Vineyard.
But she must worry a lot about how he performs when giving testimony on Monday. When the Lewinsky allegations broke, Hillary was pressed by a TV interviewer about what would happen if the President were proved to have had an adulterous affair in the White House. She replied that the American people "should certainly be concerned about it . . . if all that were proven true, I think that would be a very serious offence. That is not going to be proven true. I think we're going to find some other things."
Next week we may learn about "some other things".