Paging Doctor Steinberg
By Ruth Marcus
washingtonpost.com
Is there a Third Way to be First Lady? The existing models seem anachronistic and unsatisfying. There is the traditional "stand by your man" example -- innocuous pet cause, fixed smile, perhaps a bit of behind-the-scenes astrologizing. And there is the Hillary Clinton "buy one, get one free" approach -- First Lady as First Policymaker. But for a job that serves as something of a national Rorschach test about the proper role of women in society, neither seems particularly well-suited to an age of working wives with independent careers.
Into this feminist muddle comes -- or perhaps more accurately, is dragged -- Judith Steinberg Dean, the wife of the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. The 50-year-old Dean -- she uses Steinberg in the medical practice she once shared with her husband, Dean in private life -- presents the possibility of a different, more up-to-date model. She's not signed up for baking cookies or making policy.
Since her husband's unexpected detour from medicine to politics (his political inclinations weren't evident when they married) and his unanticipated ascension to the governorship, Judith Dean has stayed determinedly outside the political arena. She stopped coming to inaugural events after the first two. She's so not into the first lady thing that when her husband was head of the National Governors Association, he drafted a fellow governor's wife to help with those duties.
Other than a cameo appearance in a newly purchased red suit when her husband announced his candidacy, she's been invisible on the campaign trail and, by both their accounts, rather uninterested in the race that's consumed him for the better part of two years. "I don't talk politics with people who aren't interested in politics," Howard Dean explains. When Al Gore decided to endorse him, Howard Dean didn't tell his wife for three days, reports Jodi Wilgoren of the New York Times. If her husband is elected president, she vows to continue practicing medicine. "Ike runs the country, I turn the lamb chops," Mamie Eisenhower liked to say. Judith Dean's version would have her husband running the country while she sees her patients.
In many ways, for women my age (45) and younger, Judith Dean seems like the first potential first lady who would be more like us -- juggling work and family, straining to accommodate two careers, expecting more of our husbands than our mothers did of theirs. To read about Judith Dean racing through the supermarket at 10 p.m. to pick up groceries is to recognize our own overstuffed lives. That Howard Dean does his own laundry during breaks from campaigning earns him -- and his wife -- points in my book.
And so, my chief reaction to Judith Dean is, "You go, Doc." After all, where is it decreed that the political spouse's career has to be given over to politics? Why can't the model be: "Buy one, let the other do what she wants?" To have a first lady for whom the role would be merely a descriptive, if rather musty, title, not a full-time job, would represent a logical move into the modern age. Maybe, even, a step toward imagining the prospect of a First Man.
But I must also confess to being somewhat put off by the notion of a First Couple who seem to inhabit such separate spheres, and a wife who seems so disengaged from her husband's life and passions. If my husband were running for president, I wouldn't miss out on watching a debate so I could get the wash done. Busy as I might be, I'd like to see, even once, what his life was like on the trail. I'd want to see more of him -- maybe spend New Year's together, even if it had to be at that pretentious Renaissance Weekend (he went, she didn't.)
And I suspect that if this is my response, other voters will have similarly conflicted reactions. We may have come a long way, but if Teresa Heinz felt the need to tack on the Kerry name in preparation for her husband's campaign, I wonder whether the country is quite ready for Judith Steinberg, with or without the Dean.
Indeed, the Dean campaign seems to be recognizing the need to begin introducing her to voters. Witness People magazine's new "Meet the Deans" spread, which provides such details as their pet names -- she calls him "Howie," he calls her "Sweetie" -- and his most recent birthday gift to her, a rhododendron bush. (Note to candidate: If you're looking for the women's vote, you might want to ramp up that gift-giving.)
Howard Dean's ascendance, if he indeed becomes the Democratic nominee, and even more if he defeats George W. Bush, will probe the parameters of Americans' comfort -- with feminism, with working women, with the varying structures of modern marriage. It will be a test, perhaps more of the electorate than of the candidate and his accidentally political spouse.
The writer is a member of the editorial page staff. Her e-mail address is marcusr@washpost.com. |
