January 13, 2004

NO DOG IN THIS FIGHT?:

Up Close, Impersonal (Ruth Marcus, January 8, 2004, Washington Post)

[T]here is something strangely impersonal, even antiseptic about the Dean campaign. His family -- his wife is a doctor with a palpable lack of interest in politics, his son is in high school and his daughter is following in her father's footsteps at Yale -- has been absent from the campaign trail, rhetorically and physically. Indeed, Dean seems almost to recoil from the personal, even when the opportunity presents itself.

When a voter at a campaign event here praises Dean's wife -- "I'm glad your wife is your wife and I'm glad she does what she does and we don't all need Laura Bush and Mommy in the White House" -- Dean barely responds, calling quickly on the next questioner. Perhaps he saw in the comment a dangerous diversion into gender politics. But what did the wives in the audience make of a man who didn't even offer up a few kind words about his own spouse?


It's quite mod to insist that Mrs. Dean is entitled to her career and her privacy, but she's also a citizen of the United States--is it really a matter of indifference to her whether Howard Dean becomes president? And, if the people closest to him don't much care that he win, why should anyone? If someone you were close to had a chance to lead the Free World and you thought they'd be good at it, what wouldn't you do to help?

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 13, 2004 03:32 PM
Comments

Early on in his campaign, I read that Dean's wife attitude was that it was "something he needed to get out of his system." It sounded like she didn't approve of it, and didn't think he would get very far. So her true feelings may be negative, and she's keeping her head down to avoid saying as much.

Posted by: PapayaSF at January 13, 2004 04:20 PM

Big article in the NYT about Dr. Steinberg (Mrs. Dean) also:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/13/politics/campaigns/13JUDY.html

Everybody's marriage is different. Somehow I get the idea that she thinks Howard is a nut and she is going to let him run around the country and make a damn fool out of him self, but she is going to preserve her dignity and her identity by staying as far away from it as possible.

She is not interested in divorce. He is on the other side of the country and not bothering her. Besides, he has been a good father and she does not want to upset the children.

They have separate lives, but so what, so do lots of middle aged middle class americans.

One thing she doesn't have to worry about is moving to Washington in 2005.

Posted by: Robert Schwartz at January 13, 2004 04:26 PM

Can these lefty's say a kind word for Mrs. Dean
without trashing Mrs. Bush? Cripes!

Posted by: J.H. at January 13, 2004 07:24 PM

Generally speaking, it's never been an easy thing to be the wife of a doctor....

Posted by: Barry Meislin at January 14, 2004 10:35 AM

It's pretty clear that Laura Bush has been passively-aggressively hitting back at her husband by encouraging their twin daughters to be decadent slobs. As the new biography of Mrs. Bush points out, she has always told them that they don't have any special obligations to behave well just because their father is governor/president. They have responded by deeply resenting their father being president of the U.S. You have to be somewhat sympathetic to Mrs. Bush's evident distaste for her husband's career path: after all, when she married him, nobody in his right mind would have suggested that the hard-drinking fun lover George W. would ever be entrusted with a stressful job, much less be president some day.

Posted by: Steve Sailer at January 14, 2004 11:11 PM
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