The ‘Wifely’ Popularity Contest

Just about 15 minutes after first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had left the podium, I came up with Reason No. 339 Why I’m Glad my Husband Isn’t Running for President.

It was when CBS began interviewing her date for the high-school senior prom. Spare me! There was this guy, this blast from the past, offering up serious thoughts on Hillary and how good it has been to get to know her better than he had in school. At least he hadn’t taken Elizabeth Dole to the junior prom or we would have endless comparisons of their dancing styles.

It’s been that kind of a week. Up to and including the long-awaited speech-of-a-lifetime, we have been subjected to endless speculations on “Hillabeth.” (Or is it “Elizary”?) This is yet another reminder of the bad old high-school days when girls were pitted against one another for the title of “Most Popular.”

In one of the television debates on Hillabeth, I made the mistake of saying that this whole spectator sport, this longing for a first ladies debate or a mud-wrestling event, makes me want to throw up on my shoes. (Sorry, mom.)

But it was everywhere: in the polls that gave out first lady “approval ratings,” on the magazine cover that had them jousting, even in the Illinois delegation that had a sign saying “Anything Elizabeth can do, … Hillary can do better.”

Well, in fact, Hillary Clinton’s star-turn was not better than Elizabeth Dole’s. Nor was it worse. It was different.

Elizabeth Dole narrated the TV show, “This Is Your Life, Bob Dole.” Hillary Clinton gave a serious speech, making the connections between private life and public issues, between the family and the village.

The lasting image of Elizabeth Dole’s night was the Republican candidate’s wife walking the convention floor. The lasting image of Hillary Clinton’s night was of a beaming 16-year-old Chelsea watching her mother. And it was the rousing, the unrelenting cheers of a crowd out to deafen the jeers of the Hillary-haters.

I was on the convention floor in 1984, the night Geraldine Ferraro was nominated for vice president. The hall erupted with cheers and goose bumps. The applause that greeted Hillary Clinton this week was equally deafening, but this time, the mood was defiant.

This is nothing if not a Hillary support group. The best applause line in Chicago this week, the one sure-fire cheer-getter at every event and in half a dozen speeches, is a defense of Hillary Rodham Clinton and her “village.” The Democratic faithful are more than indignant about four years of attacks on the first lady for everything from Whitewater to “seances” with Eleanor Roosevelt.

Remember Hillary’s reference to the child-saving gorilla? If Hillary were Binti and had carried that child carefully to the door, 35 percent of the population would have wondered what she was up to. Trying to start a government rescue program?

For many, Dole’s gibe at Hillary and the deliberate mis-description of her village as “collective” was the last straw. Women who wake up in the morning with a deadline at work, a husband out of town and a child with the measles don’t think of the village as a Commie plot.

But in the end, even the most fervent Hillary Clinton fans acknowledge there is no winner in the competition between the two Mrs.-es.

At the heart of the Hillabeth debate are two remarkable women being judged and compared as wives - First Wives, to be sure, but wives. Each one matters in this presidential race because of what she does “for” or “to” her husband’s chances of success, what she “says” about her husband.

It’s one thing to be “graded” for yourself; it’s another to be “graded” as his wife. It’s one thing to rise or fall on your own, to speak for yourself; it’s quite another when everything you do reflects or backfires on your husband. In one way or another, both these women carefully are performing a juggling act.

This is an era when a whole lot of American couples are trying to figure out how to have separate roles and be partners, how to be individuals and a couple. It’s women who are most conscious of the lingering contradictions between being independent and “wifely.”

For now, Hillabeth has hit the glass ceiling for independent wives. It’s located in the East Wing of the White House.

Come to think of it, that’s Reason No. 340 Why I’m Glad my Husband Isn’t Running for President.