The safe wife or the warrior queen: little else in politics for us women

Bob Dole is too old to run for President in the year 2000, but his wife is not, Elizabeth Dole has just stepped down as president of the American Red Cross, encouraging speculation that she intends to declare herself as a contender for the White House. Mrs Dole, who was transport secretary in the Reagan administration and labour secretary under George Bush, is famous for two things.

She is an old style Southern belle, to whom the language of self-sacrifice and service is second nature. 'At this important time in our national life I believe there may be another way for me to serve our country,' she said on Monday, carefully avoiding the impression that she was motivated by anything as unfeminine as ambition.

Most Americans also remember how, at the Republican convention in San Diego in 1996 which adopted her husband as Presidential candidate, she unblushingly told delegates why she loved her man. A few days later, Hillary Clinton allowed herself to be photographed at the Democratic convention in Chicago, throwing adoring glances at her own husband.

At the time, it looked as if she and Mrs Dole were locked in a struggle over who would make the most supportive First Lady. Nearly three years on, Mrs Dole's broad hints about her intentions open up the intriguing possibility of the two women going head to head in another arena, this time for the peerless prize of becoming the first woman president of the United States. Admirers of Mrs Clinton, of whom there are many these days, have taken to describing her demeanour as 'presidential'. They have also suggested she would make a more electrifying Democratic candidate - not a difficult task, admittedly - than the front-runner, Vice-President Al Gore.

Some people even seem to regard the Presidency as a fitting consolation prize for a woman who has stoically endured revelations about her husband's masturbatory exploits in the Oval Office. (He is barred from running again after two terms in office.)

Mrs Clinton has said nothing about her plans, marital or political, confining herself instead to inane projects like editing a book of letters from children to the Presidential cat and dog.

This may be a shrewd tactic on her part; when she was Hillary Rodham, with a hair band, thick glasses and radical politics, no one liked her much. It is only since she stood by her man and got on the cover of American Vogue that her popularity has soared, especially among blue-collar woman voters. The novelist Erica Jong has described Mrs Clinton, in her silent-woman incarnation, as someone who appears 'to be holding herself together with hair spray', an image which speaks volumes about the brittle femininity which is her present style. Mrs Dole, meanwhile, has been reduced to talking in code, observing that 'the Red Cross is a glorious mission field but I believe there may be other duties yet to fulfil'. She is not talking about re-decorating the Doles' living-room, but the abiding impression is that both these intelligent, capable women feel they have to travel in disguise.

This says a great deal about the continuing distrust of the American public towards female politicians of either party. But the warmth currently being shown towards Mrs Clinton and Mrs Dole is worrying for another reason, confirming a tribal impulse in political circles in Washington. In spite of her extensive experience in government, Mrs Dole did not consider running for president until her husband's age ruled him out. This makes her not so much a candidate in her own right as his surrogate, while Mrs Clinton is Bill without the wayward penis: a safe, feminine version of a President whose popularity appears more durable than the assaults of his enemies.

There is an unexpected parallel here with the Indian sub-continent, where the only women politicians who manage to achieve national success are the wives, daughters and widows of prominent men. In India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, it has long been apparent that family links are one of the few routes to overcoming massive prejudice against women in politics.

No-one has claimed that a similar situation might exist in the United States and the suggestion seems, on the face of it, bizarre. Yet the enthusiasm for Mrs Dole's not-quite-declared Presidential candidacy, and the speculation about Mrs Clinton, is evidence to the contrary. In Britain, two female Cabinet Ministers fall into a similar category. Lady Jay, Leader of the House of Lords, is the daughter of a former Labour Prime Minister, Lord Callaghan, while Clare Short is the widow of a Labour Home Office Minister, Alex Lyon.

The great counter-arguments, on both sides of the Atlantic, are Lady Thatcher and Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State. Lady Thatcher rose to become Britain's first woman Prime Minister from unspectacular origins as a grocer's daughter in Grantham, with only a wealthy but obscure husband to encourage her ambitions. Yet Lady Thatcher's politics, if not her background, can certainly be characterised as tribal. Her assertion that 'there is no such thing as society' grants unique privileges to the family and denies existence of common interests with people outside the tribe, however that is defined. Lady Thatcher's distrust of foreigners, and her enthusiastic adventures in the Falklands, are evidence of an embattled world-view and a tendency aggressively to look after her own.

Much the same can be said of Madeleine Albright's hawkish pursuit of American interests in the Middle East.

What this suggests is that women politicians are allowed to be bellicose, overturning assumptions about female passivity, but only if they behave like warrior-queens, routing the tribe's enemies.

Or they can follow the example of Elizabeth Dole, playing down personal ambition and managing to suggest that, whatever power they achieve, voters can rely on the steadying influence of a husband or father.

Even with shining exceptions like the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam, the odds still seem to be stacked against women politicians who have neither famous relatives nor an urge to jump into a chariot.

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