ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 20, 1996 TAG: 9608200017
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELLEN GOODMAN
WELL, finally.
By the time Elizabeth Dole came into the spotlight to do her one-woman show Wednesday night, I was tempted to yell out, ``Free at Last.''
For months, as the Dole campaign foundered, she looked like Everywife trying to get a stubborn husband to go to the doctor. For his own good.
Sometimes, she sat beside him biting her lip. Other times, she trailed after him, softening and brightening his dour image. In a fitted suit and a smile, she walked a line between the politically savvy woman with good advice and a nagging wife trying to get him to do what she knew was best for his own political health.
Everyone in the campaign could - and sometimes would - tell you that Liddy did Bob's act better than he did. And the seams of frustration showed when they appeared together.
It was Liddy who tried unsuccessfully to keep Bob from biting off Katie Couric's head. It was Liddy who answered the questions that Larry King asked Bob. It was also Liddy who smiled through Bob's promise that his wife wouldn't be in charge of health care. ``Or anything else.''
In San Diego, this former Cabinet secretary, head of an operation as big as half the Fortune 500 companies, was expected to be both herself and the un-Hillary. She was scheduled into a series of ``bandage-rolling'' events: a school tree-planting, a trip to the hospital, a ``conversation'' with three San Diego "points of light." Her own press folks were champing at this bit of fluff.
Then out she came Wednesday night in a dazzling performance for ``the most compassionate, the most tender person I have ever known.'' Without missing a beat or stumbling over a technical difficulty, the candidate's wife, one-half of the original power couple, did the emotions. She offered up a revival meeting version of ``This Is Your Life'' that featured his nurse, his surgeon's widow - everyone along the road from Kansas except his first wife.
Telling and selling his story, she became the updated dream of a political wife. All that accomplishment. All that polish. All that intelligence. All that in the service of her husband's career.
I watched this show at a television station where 36 demographically picked voters - soft Democrats, soft Republicans and independents - were assembled by ABC to register their moment-by-moment reactions on an electronic graph. All but the most irascible independents were wowed by the Liddy show.
As the group talked about it off camera - ``She made people like him'' - Republican pollster Frank Luntz turned to ABC's Lynn Sherr and said, ``Now we get the convention bump.''
For a few moments, this group of voters aired attitudes about Hillary and Liddy as different as night and day. And Liddy was day. ``Hillary Clinton just seems like such a lawyer,'' said one. ``Elizabeth Dole is extremely supportive of her husband,'' said another.
I could only imagine the Democrats trying to reconfigure the right prime-time role for Mrs. Clinton in Chicago. Can you top this? Equal this? Ignore this? And are we in for another round of Hillary vs. Liddy comparisons?
All year, I've been appalled at the hype surrounding the First and Would-Be-First Ladies Popularity Contest. (See: Cat Fight.) We've had magazine cover stories asking which woman would do the better job as if it were a job and not a role. We've had polls asking which woman we like better. We've read endless analyses on their gender appeal.
In an era of personal politics, the attention on wives is understandable. In an era of changing roles, there is one juggling act that's harder than supporting a balanced budget and a tax cut. It's being an independent woman and supportive wife.
Liddy Dole proved herself a trooper of a wife Wednesday. But the recurring line, ``Maybe she should be running,'' that fueled all the old power-couple talk is just a line. Even when asked how she felt after show time, she said, ``I'm very very proud of him.''
In the late, late, late evening of the 20th century, nearly 76 years after women won the vote, the two highest-profile women in American politics are running mates. Yet as the hard-core independent in this group of voters said, dismissing the importance of the Hillary-Liddy controversy, ``We're voting for the men.'' He was right.
This week, Liddy Dole put on a stellar performance. Just don't call it progress.
- The Boston Globe
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines ILLUSTRATION: CARICATURE: KERRY WAGHORNby CNB