ELLEN GOODMAN

Will Liddy and Hillary break through the glass ceiling?

By Ellen Goodman, Globe Staff, January 6, 1999

There she goes again. Elizabeth Hanford Dole, red suit and white pearls color-coordinated against a tableau of flags, is announcing that she's leaving her job.

Where have I seen this before? In 1988 when Peter Jennings led the evening news by announcing that "one of the most important women in government has given up her job for a man." In 1996 when she took family and medical leave because her husband had gotten a relapse of the political bug.

Elizabeth Dole, two-time Cabinet member and candidate's wife, half of the original Washington power couple, did her time as a political asset. On one memorable night at the Republican convention she put on a revival meeting version of "This is Your Life" for the man she described as "the most compassionate, the most tender person I have ever known."

While many in the hall whispered "she should be running," she was the updated dream of a political wife. All that accomplishment, all that intelligence, all that in service of her husband. But this time it's different. The buzz is that the 62-year-old leaving the Red Cross, an organization bigger than many Fortune 500 companies, is going to make the power couple jokes a reality. She'll run for president.

Meanwhile in New York, there are enough trial balloons being floated to lift Hillary Clinton in a basket across the Hudson River. The buzz is that Hillary will run for the Senate. The cry that greeted her everywhere during the slam-bang 1998 campaign trip -- "You go, girl!" -- may turn into a campaign slogan.

What is going on here? Just three years ago these women were locked in a battle, a.k.a. a cat fight, for most popular wife. They were pitched against each other in polls and conversation, two strong women judged as helpmates. Back then, Liddy Dole was cast as both the professional and the un-Hillary, a former secretary of labor and transportation who had to smile through her husband's promise that she wouldn't be in charge of health care "or anything else."

Last year, as Hillary's ratings rose along with the scandal, many supporters glumly assumed that Americans still like a wronged woman better than an uppity woman. It looked as if marriage was a lousy career move.

Now Marie Wilson of the White House Project, an effort to get a woman in the Oval Office, says that maybe something else is going on. Maybe people, especially women, are relating to two women who can accomplish a modern juggling act: standing by their man and standing on their own two feet.

Maybe, she says, they'll make the next transition. "Here are two women who paid their dues. It's possible that dues-paying can be turned into a source of power. A lot of people are glad to see that some power can come out of building and supporting relationships because that is so much of what women spend their lives doing."

It's even possible that for two ambitious lawyers, the unpaid labor of wifedom can be exchanged for the political coin of the realm.

Pat Schroeder, a classmate of Liddy's party mate of Hillary's, and former congresswoman who tested the waters of presidential politics herself, says: "It's pretty interesting if we end this century with two women who really tried to straddle the gulf between being a supportive spouse and being independent.

"How does being a supportive spouse translate when you stand up and say let me tell you who I really am. If you think I thought my husband was competent to be president, let me tell you how competent I am."

It's not an accident that the Dole announcement took place on the same day that Jesse Ventura became governor of Minnesota or the day that the Fab Five women took over the top quintet of jobs in conservative Arizona. Voters are looking for leaders with different credentials. Both women know how to walk into a room and dazzle it with more than stardust.

Dole's agenda is in many ways still a blank slate. We don't know what she stands for and whether the ultra-conservative Republicans who rule the primaries will stand for her. We don't know how Hillary would ultimately play in the tough New York that sent another star, Gerry Ferraro, packing.

But these women are not Mary Bono stepping into a late husband's shoes. These are pros in their own right and partners who put their ambitions on hold.

In the great unlamented contest of 1996, Mrs. Dole and Mrs. Clinton were compared, graded, tested as helpmates. Now, after all these years, after Eleanor and Nancy, after pillow talk and petticoat power, it may take a Hillabeth to break through the glass ceiling for wives as well as women.