The woman known now as a senator and potential presidential candidate spent some time yesterday reflecting on her experience as first lady, pointing to public “projections” as the source of Americans’ dissatisfaction with their presidents’ wives.

Senator Clinton delivered the keynote address at a society luncheon marking the opening of two exhibits on first ladies. One is a traveling Smithsonian exhibit titled “First Ladies: Political Role and Public Image”; the other is a smaller exhibit prepared by the New-York Historical Society on “First Ladies of New York and the Nation,” dedicated primarily to Eleanor Roosevelt and Jacqueline Kennedy.

First ladies are a Rorschach test for the American public, Mrs. Clinton said. “People project their public image of what a first lady should be onto a particular person.”

“It’s very hard to fit anyone’s preconceived notion of what a first lady should be,” the senator said. “You don’t get a training manual … you don’t get any guidance whatsoever.”

“Each woman really starts from scratch; you have to feel your way through trial and error,” she added.

Mrs. Clinton praised both Roosevelt and Kennedy extensively during her remarks, citing her close connections to both women. She recounted meetings in 1992 with Kennedy, who, when it appeared likely that Mrs. Clinton would become first lady, offered her counsel to the then-Arkansan. The senator made no mention of her reported attempts as a beleaguered first lady to reach Roosevelt’s spirit.

Both Kennedy and Roosevelt inspired Mrs. Clinton’s approach to being first lady, the senator said. Kennedy told her: “You have to be you, you cannot be anyone else.” In this, Mrs. Clinton said, she found justification for caring little about hair, wardrobe, and other elements of her public image. “I had to concentrate instead on what was important to me,” public policy, she said.

“I had to be true to myself,” the senator said, such that she could be satisfied she’d “done what I could to make a difference.”

The significance attached to Mrs. Clinton’s actions and priorities as first lady, she suggested, was largely not of her own making. “When a first lady makes a choice about how to spend her time,” Mrs. Clinton said, it’s perceived as “a statement with a capital ‘S.’ “

The senator said yesterday that “no one runs for first lady.” Women marry young, she said, usually in their 20s, and then “you’re swept along in the current of your husband’s political fortunes.”

She expressed admiration for those first ladies who had made the most of that understanding, praising Dolley Madison for being a “hostess with a political ear” who “understood that using the White House to advance the policy of her husband was the key to the political future she shared with him.” When it came time for her to decide whether to fulfill the traditional role of first lady, Mrs. Clinton said, “I didn’t think being a gracious hostess and being concerned about policy were mutually exclusive.”

In discussing recent first ladies, Mrs. Clinton bestowed her most enthusiastic praise on those who, like her, were associated with particular policy positions or advocacy causes. Mrs. Clinton lionized Roosevelt for her “courageous” work on civil rights, the United Nations, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “Lady Bird” Johnson was praised for her work on Head Start, and for her trips to the South after her husband’s passage of the Civil Rights Bill, which, Mrs. Clinton said, President Johnson had viewed as “the death warrant for the Democratic Party in she South.” Mrs. Clinton extolled Betty Ford for her work to increase awareness of substance abuse and breast cancer, and Rosalynn Carter was lauded for being a “quiet champion of all kinds of issues” and a “strong presence asking hard questions” about taboo subjects like mental illness.

When it came to recent Republican first ladies, however, Mrs. Clinton talked about more aesthetic contributions, discussing Pat Nixon’s “quiet dignity” and saying Nancy Reagan had “brought glamour, fashion, and excitement back into the White House, and tried hard to support her husband.” Barbara Bush, she added, was “a calming, reassuring presence in the White House.”

As for her own contributions, Mrs. Clinton said: “In 1992, the Smithsonian changed the entire definition of a first lady just for me.” The senator was referring to earlier comments in which she talked of the museum’s decision to expand its first ladies exhibit to include more than inaugural gowns, focusing on the lives and accomplishments of first ladies beyond their wardrobes.

Regarding her successor, Mrs. Clinton said: “Laura Bush has been a very strong, effective presence, particularly after September 11. Now she is looking for ways she, too, can leave a policy mark in areas important to her.”