The personal may not be the political, as the feminists used to say, but it’s still true that the political is often purely personal. I once made the mistake of working for the federal government, and the only insight I took away from the year’s unpleasantness was an understanding, small but indelible, of how public events are shaped. Of the many currents and trends that might influence a government policy, the most important was the personal relationship of the policy-makers involved. A slight in the hallway, a remark in the men’s room, an anecdote repeated at the wrong dinner party — these might have the effect of ruining a friendship, thereby upending a policy, and thereby (for example) raising the EPA’s de-oxy-genated hydrologen emissions standard from 3.4 ppm to 3.45.
I worked for the Bush administration, but regardless of the era, personality is the great unspoken determinant in most governmental transactions. “What happens in the White House,” Mrs. Bush used to say, “is much less important than what happens in your house.” This was certainly true of the Bush White House, where nothing would happen for months at a time. But I came away with an axiom of my own, about what is called, too grandly, “the policy-making process.” “What happens in the Cabinet Room is much less important than what happens in the men’s room.”
And how about the bedroom? For political observers these days it’s an unavoidable question. All marriages, as we know, are endlessly complicated, but the weird complications of the First Coupling have altered our culture to an unprecedented degree. Without them, for example, Mrs. Clinton might have felt no need to act out her commissar-like ambitions. There would have been no absurd health-care reform plan, and hence no Republican takeover of Congress. Without them, there would have been no Monica Lewinsky, and hence no impeachment; hence no bombing of the Sudan; maybe no Kosovo; and no Barbra Streisand sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom.
It promises to get weirder still. Last week, the Washington Post reported the “virtual certainty” that Hillary Clinton will run for the Senate from New York. The Post story avoided the most interesting wrinkle, which is where Mrs. Clinton would live as she campaigned — whether, in other words, she’d officially decamp from her husband’s luxurious house and establish residency in New York, renting accommodations suitable for a refugee from a failed marriage. This would be a final irony to the Clintons’ ultramodern partnership, which they explicitly had hoped would cause America to rethink traditional gender roles. He cheats on her, and she’s the one who has to move out.
Whether the Clinton marriage is the strangest in contemporary politics, however, must remain an open question, at least for the time being. We have to wait and see how things turn out with the Doles. The usually laconic Bob gave a chatty interview last week to the New York Times. He noted that his candidate-wife Elizabeth is having trouble raising money. “If she can’t raise the money,” said Bob, “obviously, it’s pretty hard to be a candidate.” Bob added that he himself was thinking of giving money — to the presidential campaign of John McCain. “I’ve thought about ways to help McCain in particular,” he said. “I think we need to keep good people in the race.” His wife, however, might not be among them. “If it looks impossible, this is not her whole life.” But doesn’t Bob think she’d make a formidable opponent for Al Gore? “It’s too early to tell,” he said.
The Doles haven’t been seen in public together since Bob’s interview, but there’s nothing unusual in that: They’re rarely seen in public together. Elizabeth did give a solo interview to CBS News, however. “Bob had a little visit to the Dole woodshed,” she said, conjuring a horrifying word picture of riding crops and thigh boots. “He looked pretty good there.” Her smile never left her. “But obviously the interpretation was not what he intended.”
No, it wasn’t. My own view — to use a favorite Bob phrase — is that he intended much worse. It is increasingly clear that Bob has been sending subliminal signals for months, long before he spoke to the Times, in his Viagra ad about “erectile dysfunction.” “It’s a little embarrassing to talk about E.D.,” he says in the ad. “But it’s so important to millions of men and their partners that I decided to talk about it publicly.” It takes courage to discuss it, he adds, but discuss it he must, “in hopes that men with E.D. will get proper treatment.” Note, please: Bob Dole is not warning American men about J. McC., or G.W.B., or even A.G. It’s E.D. that must be eradicated. This is a man with an agenda. If I were Mrs. Dole, I’d pull out right now.
ANDREW FERGUSON
