ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, August 23, 1996 TAG: 9608230037
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BARBARA YOST
LIDDY DOES Hillary better than Hillary does. It's a mystery why.
When Hillary Clinton shows off her Yale education, her intelligence and her resume, she's derided as an uppity, cookie-bashing daughter of the b-word. She's a threat to homemakers and buster of the male anatomy. Rush Limbaugh chews her up and spits her out.
She endures having her hairdo scrutinized as if it were the next strategic-defense treaty. She is sartorially mocked on the Internet, called everything short of a fraud for some lucky investments (never mind that a few others went sour), dismissed for her maternal instincts despite having raised a fine young woman named Chelsea, and becomes the target of a cheap shot from Bob Dole during his acceptance speech as his party's presidential candidate.
If this man has so much character, why did he allow himself to be talked into sniping at Clinton's book, ``It Takes a Village'' (``It doesn't take a village. It takes a family!'')?
As we have heard ad nauseam, it took the entire village of Russell, Kan., to raise and then rejuvenate the war-wounded Bob Dole. But when Clinton says it, the right wing gives it socialist overtones.
She is the anti-Bush, minus the pearls and the willingness to defer to her husband that earned her predecessor an establishment seal of approval.
Enter Elizabeth Dole. Harvard educated. Twice a Cabinet secretary. A wise investor herself. Smart, savvy. No cookie-baker she. And lauded like Joan of Arc wearing Southern charm as her breastplate.
Does anyone see the irony here?
Dole solidified her reputation as her husband's ablest surrogate when she grabbed a microphone and waded into the GOP convention delegation like Moses body surfing the Red Sea.
Imagine handing Hillary Clinton a microphone and asking her to work the crowd. Would she be extolled as a political Oprah or vilified as another Geraldo?
While Clinton waits to see whether the Whitewater affair will engulf her and her husband, charges that Dole has used her position as president of the American Red Cross to pacify the religious right's positions on sex education and to butter her husband's campaign have gone largely ignored.
In its July 1 issue, The Nation detailed troubling conflicts of interest engendered by Bob Dole's candidacy - including the Red Cross' toning down of a pamphlet telling young people how to protect themselves from the AIDS virus (a nod to the Christian constituency supporting the Dole campaign), and legislation favored by Dole and fellow Kansas Sen. Nancy Kassebaum that would restrict the Food and Drug Administration's ability to regulate the Red Cross' blood supply.
Where is an Alphonse D'Amato snarling to investigate those charges?
Elizabeth Dole, it seems, is the Teflon wife.
Yet, the pitting of these two accomplished women against each other is disheartening. American women are taking sides again as they did during the Clarence Thomas hearings. We were for Anita Hill or we were against her. We believed her story of sexual harassment or we thought she was a conniving shrew.
Making a choice defined our loyalties and divided us into factions.
We don't need division. As we approach the next century, we don't exactly have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to high-profile women in government and politics, women who own their credentials.
We have two in this campaign. Certainly there is room in our sentiments for a pair of heroines - whatever their ideologies, whoever their spouses.
I want to like both Elizabeth Dole and Hillary Clinton. The words ``better half'' have never been so true.
Barbara Yost writes for The Phoenix Gazette.
- New York Times News Service
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB