Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 7, 1993 TAG: 9302070141
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JILL LAWRENCE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
`NANNY PROBLEM' COULD BE TOKEN OF NEW GENERATION GETTING POWER
From the start, the spotlight on Bill Clinton has illuminated not just a man but a generation. His hapless search for a female attorney general is providing an awkward case in point.The "nanny problem" has now sunk two potential attorneys general and given the first baby-boom president a dramatic, unwelcome tutorial in one of the new pitfalls of this new era.
Zoe Baird might have been dismissed as a fluke but for Kimba Wood. Both women hired illegal immigrants as baby-sitters, reflecting what turns out to be a relatively common practice among professional mothers around Clinton's age.
"Obviously we have here a social structure, a social routine," said Todd Gitlin, a sociologist at the University of California-Berkeley. "Professional women want competent help that they can hire cheaply. Those people tend to be recent arrivals . . . and a considerable number of them will be undocumented."
Clinton took responsibility for Baird's downfall but is blaming the second half of the double stumble on Wood, whom aides said denied three times she had this type of problem.
It's hardly the way a president wants his term to start, as potential rivals and foes assess his strength. But some observers say these are the inevitable consequences of moving beyond the conventional pool of older male candidates for top government jobs.
"Clinton is trying to break a pattern," said Ann Lewis, former political director of the Democratic Party. "These nominees are breaking new ground."
Not that earlier contestants didn't have problems. But they were different.
Lewis recalls trying to deep-six William French Smith's nomination as attorney general because he belonged to a club being sued for refusing to hire women. "I sent pages of testimony around the Hill trying to suggest there was a problem with an attorney general who knowingly belonged to a club that knowingly discriminated against women," Lewis said.
Smith got his job. So did Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, despite allegations of sexual harassment. But Douglas Ginsberg lost a Supreme Court seat over his marijuana use. Clinton himself weathered severe controversy over his Vietnam-era draft history. The so-called Zoe Baird problem is the latest offense emblematic of the boomer era.
Clinton advisers are now posing the household-help question to male job contenders, and another attorney-general candidate has said he failed to pay Social Security to a domestic worker. Still, most expect women will be far more affected.
"Two-career families are vulnerable and, disproportionately, women professionals are vulnerable," said Karen S. Kienbaum, president of the Detroit Bar Association. "Many professional men have spouses who stay at home . . . It's not going to happen to men."
Gitlin said child-care is now "a category of sin" for female public figures similar to the draft issue for men. "These women are going to be presumed to have a generational habit," he said, and expected to prove their baby-sitting arrangements were proper.
Child-care professionals acknowledge the pool of domestic workers is largely immigrants, many of them illegal.
Like many parents, Wood and Baird solved the problem by hiring illegal help. While Baird broke a 1986 law in doing so, Wood hired her sitter shortly before that law was passed and technically has done nothing wrong.
But Clinton advisers decided the distinction would be lost on the millions of people who were outraged by the idea of Baird as the nation's top cop. Fairly or not, many are viewing Wood through the same prism.
"The moment you decide you're going to be a public person you have to bare your soul. It's poor judgment to get involved in a situation like that and not be up front," said Hector Richard Jr., a lawyer from San Juan, Puerto Rico.