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Under the Sun Cynthia Oi |
Political wives either
baggage or accessoriesLAURA Bush looks like a pushover. Those rosy cheeks and wide, easy smile suggest a yielding gentleness. Her neat hairstyle and inclination toward conservative neutral suits convey pure American wholesomeness. She's reminiscent of ladies who lunch, those "respectable" women of a bygone time whose social status confined them to days built around charity teas and brunches.
Of course, she's not like that and a recent interview showed that the woman who's married to the leader of the free world has got some serious stuff.
When a New York Times reporter raised the notion that she's seen as "a 1950s-era first lady," Laura Bush call her on it. "Have you actually ever read that?" she countered. "Who wrote it? Some really good friend of mine? Somebody I'd interview with?"
Good for her. It was exactly the right way to parry the vague, "some say" assertions people in public life get tagged with. Even though the interview was calculated as part of the president's re-election crusade, Laura Bush wasn't about to let the ambiguous description slide.
I don't know if she weighed her words before reacting. As "first lady" -- a nonsense label, by the way -- she's got to know that whatever she says or does will rub off on her husband.
Like it or not, spouses of political candidates are appraised as assets or liabilities not only by us caterwauling media cynics, but by voters, too. Who you hang with can say a lot about who you are. But nowhere in American life is this judging-of-character-through-a-partner prism more overly intense than in politics.
Why it should be, I don't know. What someone does for a living or for fun, whether she dines on penne with spinach pesto upon tasteful linen or wolfs cold Spaghetti O's out of a can over the kitchen sink, whether she rigs up in Manolos or K-Mart close-outs, or practices yoga or Pilates, really doesn't tell much about the person other than the obvious. Transferring such preferences and habits to the candidates themselves makes no sense. Even sillier would be to choose one because of them. When a South Carolina man was asked about his take on John Kerry, he brought up Kerry's wife as a handicap because she was too "Northeastern," whatever that means.
Birds of a feather certainly do flock together, but the dynamics of a couple's relationship aren't generally displayed among people who are out of the public eye, less so among those who are. Hillary Clinton -- ridiculously vilified for her independence -- had her rejection of the stand-by-your-man sentiment thrown back in her face when she chose not to unload her roving husband. But we weren't privy to her reasons and we should not be. It's none of our beeswax.
How active a role a wife (let's get real; no woman has survived the grueling competition for the presidency beyond preliminary bouts, so "wife" is the operative word here) plays in her husband's candidacy ought to be her decision. So when Dr. Judith Steinberg chose to continue her medical practice and take care of her family while her husband when off to campaign, I gave her credit for bowing out of the circus. But when he began to founder, she stepped up to help him -- and got a whole lot of grief for it. One national magazine speculated that had she jumped in sooner, husband Howard Dean would not have been losing support, then went on to criticize her as meek and dowdy.
Well, heck. Political wives can't win. If they don't adopt their husband's last name, they are denounced. If they do, they are faulted. If they are sweet or blunt, attractive or frumpish, a home cook or an order-in customer, somebody somewhere just won't like her.
Sooner or later -- and I hope sooner -- a woman will lead the pack in a race for president. She'll need remarkable survival skills to overcome gender biases. A woman like Senator Clinton would make an interesting candidate and we'd already know as much about her husband as we want.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin since 1976. She can be reached at: coi@starbulletin.com.
