One of Senator Clinton’s biggest struggles in the Democratic presidential campaign has been overcoming her vote in 2002 to authorize the Iraq war, but among certain liberal elites some of the biggest ghosts she is battling date back to 1996.

Facing re-election that year, President Clinton signed a series of bills getting tough on crime, immigration, and gay marriage. The tack to the right may have helped guarantee Mr. Clinton another term in the White House, but the tactics outraged some liberals.

One hot topic then and now is immigration. The Republican Congress was eager to take action on the issue and passed a series of measures, some of which Mr. Clinton resisted.

One he signed in 1996 was the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which called for automatic deportation of legal immigrants convicted of certain crimes. The measure has a common-sense appeal, but eliminating judicial review of individual cases also has had some bizarre results. Longterm residents of America have been automatically deported after being convicted of crimes like urinating in public or writing a bad check for $19. Dozens of troubled youths, known as the Lost Boys of Cambodia, have been sent back to that troubled country even though they spent most or all their entire lives in America and often speak not a word of Khmer.

The immigration-law changes Mr. Clinton signed in 1996 were denounced at the time by immigrant-rights lawyers, who launched a campaign titled “Fix ’96.” “There are few immigration advocates who would not consider the last three years to be disastrous,” one legal newsletter wrote in 1998.

In an interview with a Spanish-language radio show last week, Mr. Clinton had a more charitable view of his immigration record. He said no legalization was possible in that era because of “a very conservative, right-wing Republican Congress.” However, the only setback he acknowledged was the welfare overhaul bill, which blocked certain benefits for legal immigrants. Mr. Clinton noted that the bill passed with a veto-proof majority.

Now, immigration advocates, still smarting from the 1990s, are prickly about Mrs. Clinton’s rhetoric on immigration. They also note that, after wavering, she rejected the idea of driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, while her opponent, Senator Obama, has embraced the concept.

Another 1996 law that may be sapping Mrs. Clinton’s support in some quarters is the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. Originally billed as a response to the Oklahoma City bombing, the legislation branched out in various directions as candidates sought to crack down on crime in the lead-up to that fall’s elections. One provision that outraged liberals limited prisoners to filing one habeas corpus petition in federal court within one year of their state court convictions. Republicans said the measure would streamline the death penalty process, but some, including Anthony Lewis of the New York Times, denounced it as a “betrayal” of the tradition of the great writ. In 1997, Mr. Lewis upped the ante further, writing, “Bill Clinton has the worst civil liberties record of any president in at least 60 years.”

Fast forward to 2008, when a group calling itself Habeas Lawyers for Obama falls in behind the Illinois senator’s presidential bid. An organizer said the more than 80 attorneys made the endorsement because of Mr. Obama’s support for allowing Guantanamo prisoners to challenge their detention in American courts. However, Mrs. Clinton also favors restoring that right, making one wonder if some of the “habeas lawyers” are still carrying a grudge from 1996.

That fateful year also brought the Defense of Marriage Act, or Doma, passed with Mr. Clinton’s signature. That legislation, which denied federal recognition of same-sex unions, is still the subject of scorn from gay activists. Many also remember that in 1996, the former president declined to appear at events touting support in the gay community.

Of course, Mrs. Clinton didn’t sign any of these bills — which raises the question: Should the perceived sins of the husband be visited on the wife a decade later? On gay rights, Mrs. Clinton has distanced herself from her husband’s position. Last year, she said she favors repealing a part of Doma that prevents the federal government from giving benefits to domestic partners. However, she stands by the rest of the law. On the 1996 laws about immigration and habeas corpus, Mrs. Clinton has, to my knowledge, been silent. However, Mr. Clinton has moved away a bit from his 1996 tough-on-crime tack.

After the impeachment, he developed an interest in people who argued they were treated over harshly by the legal system. While he caught flack for the Marc Rich pardon, it is less known that Mr. Clinton also commuted the lengthy prison terms of dozens of people convicted for bit roles in drug crimes, including women drawn in by boyfriends and husbands. Campaigning at black churches in the Los Angeles area yesterday, he didn’t sound much like the candidate who ran for office twice promising to get tough on criminals. “We should be a country of second chances,” he said. “We’ve got to stop giving up on people because they’ve been in trouble once.”

The electoral cost to Mrs. Clinton of her husband’s 1996 positions is probably limited to a relatively small bunch of immigrant-rights activists, defense lawyers and die-hard civil libertarians. The lack of any vast reserves of sympathy for Mrs. Clinton there probably gives those groups an added push toward Mr. Obama. Of course, it is only in a Democratic primary that these conservative tacks could cost Mrs. Clinton votes. In a general election, limiting appeals by death row inmates, getting tough with criminal aliens, and rejecting gay marriage would likely win votes for the former first lady. If unsure, one could always ask the chief strategist for her presidential bid, Mark Penn, who just happens to have been Mr. Clinton’s top pollster as he triangulated through the 1996 race.

Of course, triangulation is part policy and part politics. In many areas, Mr. Clinton embraced and publicly advocated a “third way” because he believed middle-of-the-road solutions to issues like welfare were preferable to the liberal orthodoxy. In others, choosing a middle-of-the-road approach looks to have been largely an electoral tactic.

If some of the setbacks liberals endured in 1996 were driven merely by political strategy, they were probably unnecessary. Mr. Clinton carried 31 states to Senator Dole’s 19 and defeated the former Senate majority leader by more than 8 million votes.

On the campaign trail for his wife these days, Mr. Clinton bats away questions about vice presidential picks and similar issues with this aphorism: “One of my rules is never look past the next election, or you may not get past the next election.”

That’s certainly the approach he took when he tilted right in 1996. Whether his wife will pay the price for it in 2008, we are about to find out.

Mr. Gerstein is the Sun’s national reporter and covered the White House for ABC News between 1997 and 2001.