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The most influential facet of our next presidency has not been covered by the news media.
We read of candidates bashing the press for mentioning
cruises to Bimini, asking about the Iran-contra scandal, or
referring to a potential president as a former
television evangelist.
Sometimes we even read about the
issues.
But candidates and reporters bicker during every campaign. As for issues, the big issues at campaign time are not the issues that matter after Inauguration Day.
During Dwight Eisenhower's 1952 campaign, the islands of
Quemoy and Matsu were major issues. That's the last time
anybody heard of them. John F. Kennedy charged in 1960 that
the we were on the short end of a missile gap,
which
apparently vanished upon his inauguration. In 1980, the
federal deficit was a frequent target of Republican
orators. They have since decided that the deficit isn't
really a problem, perhaps because most of it accrued during
the Reagan regime.
It isn't issues, characters, records or position papers that we should consider. Instead, we should judge candidates by their wives. What sort of First Lady will we get? What's important to her?
The president may command the armed forces and appoint a cabinet, but it is the First Lady who exerts the continuing influence on day-to-day life.
This came to mind during Lady Bird Johnson's recent
visit to Denver. She still travels to beautify
America.
Lately she promotes wildflowers; when she was
First Lady, she declared war on billboards.
Every time you drive into the mountains, and are able to see the mountains, you can thank Lady Bird for the view. When you venture east onto the prairie and yearn for a series of Burma Shave signs to break the monotony, you can blame her for your boredom.
More than 20 years after Lady Bird started, people still think it's important to battle billboards -- witness the current struggles in Boulder and Colorado Springs. Did anything that Lyndon started last this long while involving so many people at the grassroots?
Recall Betty Ford. Forget that to be considered seriously as a celebrity in America, you have to check into her clinic and emerge six weeks later on the cover of People magazine. Remember instead the candor she took to the White House.
She spoke openly of sleeping arrangements, her mastectomy, the tribulations of a political marriage, whether her daughter might have an affair. That inspired everyone else. Today you can't meet a stranger and talk for more than 10 minutes without knowing the most intimate details. Whatever reserve Americans once possessed has vanished, and Betty Ford did it.
These days, you see even rock stars speaking against drugs. Businesses snoop on their employees, and schools encourage children to tattle on their parents.
For more than a century, drugs have generally been
denounced, to little effect. But First Lady Nancy Reagan
began her Just say no
drive. Now it's on the lips of
every schoolchild, and drugs have lost any social
acceptability they once enjoyed.
Like it or not, if America ever gets on the straight and narrow, it will be Nancy Reagan's doing.
The sensible way to run this year's campaign would be to end it right now. Let the men sit it out while their wives go on television and explain what matters to them -- the homeless, the handicapped, cancer, AIDS, wetlands, farmers, deserts, immigration, etc.
Once we knew that, we would know the enduring effect of her husband's presidency. I, for one, would find it much easier to make up my mind if I knew that.
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