It was not surprising, then, to see Hillary Clinton try to reframe her image last week in a much-anticipated commencement address at Wellesley College. She stressed family values and her commitment to children, including her 12-year-old daughter, Chelsea. Mindful of her own controversial image, she also talked about the backlash a woman faces whichever path she takes. Unmarried women are considered “abnormal”; a married woman without children is “a selfish Yuppie”; working women are “bad” mothers; mothers who stay home have “wasted” their education. Two years ago Barbara Bush was criticized by Wellesley students for living in her husband’s shadow. Now Hillary, a Wellesley graduate, is being criticized for overshadowing her husband.
It’s hard to imagine anyone voting on the basis of who will be First Lady. But the candidates’ wives stand as important exemplars at a time when “a woman’s role” is once again the subject of hot debate. Barbara Bush represents the Hallmark ideal of womanhood and is easily the most popular with voters. Her homey figure and trademark white hair offer a safe harbor. Barbara Whitehead, a researcher with the Institute for American Values, says Barbara “reminds me of my mom. For many people, there’s that tug.” If the GOP has its way and the election turns on traditional values, Barbara will be the logo. Even Democrats wince at any matchup of Hillary with Barbara.
In real life, Barbara and Hillary are not all that different. Barbara is tougher than her public image; Hillary is softer. But the GOP message machine is working to enhance the contrast. The wife of a top Bush campaign official recently trashed Hillary as “cold … unappealing … another Rosalynn Carter.” Fifteen years ago Rosalynn’s presence at cabinet meetings elicited protests from voters who wondered, “Who elected her?” Bush campaign operatives portray Hillary’s long years of service with the Children’s Defense Fund as an attempt to subvert parents’ rights and allow children to sue parents, a distortion reminiscent of the GOP’s attack on the ACLU in the 1988 campaign. Republican spinmeisters whisper that Hillary is a woman scorned who clung to her marriage because she wants to be First Lady. But the background noise on marital infidelity can cut more than one way. Barbara Bush chided an interviewer last week for being “very sexist” in asking questions about her husband’s private life. " Why doesn’t anyone ask if I’ve had an affair?" Barbara complained.
Then there’s Margot Perot. She confounds the calculus about First Ladies in the same way her husband does the conventional wisdom about presidential candidates. She told Barbara Walters last week that she is pro-choice, reads and thinks and has her own opinions, but says she never gives her husband advice (“he doesn’t need [it]”) and “can’t imagine” sitting in on a cabinet meeting. A former schoolteacher, Margot is the mother of five who’s rooted in the tradition of volunteerism. “I see myself as having a supporting role. I say that because my first priority is the family. And creating a happy home life for Ross,” she told Walters. Perot has said he will not use his wife as some “Barbie doll” prop during the campaign. If the Perots eventually grate on voters, it may be over values that make many voters roll their eyes. Perot jokes that with a wife and four daughters, “it gets expensive, all that shopping.”
Voters want change, but they also yearn for things to be the way they were. When Hillary remarked that she could have stayed home and baked cookies, it was taken as a slap at the nation’s homemakers and working women who struggle to do both. At 44, Hillary is a generation younger than Barbara Bush and Margot Perot, who are both grandmothers. As the pioneer, Hillary must help ease the culture shock. Her Wellesley speech indicates she’s begun to do that by talking in a more personal way about her life, not her causes, and her daughter. “Chelsea will be the woman of the year,” quips a Democratic strategist. The emphasis on hearth and home makes some women activists nervous. “They couch it in values, but there’s something underlying it that’s anti-woman,” says Jane Danowitz, head of the Women’s Campaign Fund. In a year when scores of women are running for office on their own, maybe voters need reassurance that there is one area of political life where the old rules still apply: First Ladies must remember they are extensions of their husbands.
