Better to Be a Vice President Than to Be the Wife of One : Tipper Gore: She and Hillary Clinton are admirable and progressive women. But Boxer/Feinstein they’re not.

The selection of Al Gore as Bill Clinton’s vice-presidential running-mate sends a complex message to American women. The good news is that this decision makes it crystal clear that the vice president’s woman, like the President’s, is an important political commodity. In a presidential campaign that has totally shirked women’s issues, at least we can see that Barbara Bush may be the last professional traditional sex-role stereotype to adorn the White House. Moreover, Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore seem to represent the two equally admirable poles of the modern woman: the go-for-broke professional and the progressive stay-at-home mother.

But anyone concerned with the fate of America’s children, working parents and elderly still has a lot to despair about. In this presidential race, the candidates have discussed defense, “family values”--defined in the most traditional moralistic sense--economic competitiveness, job creation, taxes, government regulation and the fate of America’s businesses--and by extension the men who run them.

But, with the exception of abortion, women’s issues have been reduced to talk about which woman is acceptable as a presidential or vice presidential wife. There have been few headlines about legislation or policies to ease the many burdens that fall almost exclusively on women’s shoulders. We have heard, for example, next to nothing about the proposed family and medical leave act, which would provide unpaid time off from work for new parents or to care for a sick child, spouse or parent. The candidates have said hardly a word about the need to create more affordable, quality child care. And the issues of long-term care for the elderly and support for family care-givers have been almost absent in the health-care debate, itself minimal.

Instead of discussing substantial issues that could change the lives of the majority of American women, the campaign handlers will focus on the personalities and opinions of two well-to-do women--Hilary Clinton and Tipper Gore. Women will be asked to view the attention given to presidential and vice presidential wives as a sign of female progress and to rejoice because Clinton and associates may have settled on Gore not only for his own flawless environmental record, but because of his flawless wife. After all, who can name the wives of Sam Nunn, Bill Bradley, Mario Cuomo or Harris Wofford?

Tipper Gore and Hillary Clinton are certainly appealing to women--far more appealing, perhaps, than their men. Tipper Gore, with her campaign to protect young children from the sex and violence in much of popular music, can easily challenge Dan Quayle’s definition of family values. She also seems far more willing to stick up for herself and her beliefs than the main contender, Bill Clinton. After all, she admitted to smoking marijuana, and seems unembarrassed by her anti-Vietnam War credentials. Come November, the women of America will certainly be encouraged to race out to the polling booths and vote Democratic because of the dazzling prospect of a dynamic female duo--Clinton and Gore--willing to promote more progressive women’s and children’s issues on the Hill and in the media.

But lest we be swayed by the campaign hype, it’s important to remember that this Democratic slate is not about progress but about stasis. Bill Clinton and Al Gore represent the new old boys--and their mates are the new old boys’ wives. Hillary Clinton is a woman who could have run for office. Instead she is firmly upholding the woman-as-male-support tradition by fighting fiercely to promote and defend her man--even when he appears the most indefensible. And Tipper Gore, although perhaps more progressive and honest than most, is a classic politician’s wife.

Indeed, their quintessential helpmate status seems even more glaring in an election year when so many powerful women are running for office in their own right. One has only to think of the California Senate campaigns of Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer to realize what it means for a woman to make a serious commitment to politics. Or consider the stunning message of two surprise senatorial contenders, Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois and newcomer Lynn Yeakel of Pennsylvania. Moreover, consider that just two elections ago, a woman was an actual vice presidential mate, not the mate of a vice presidential candidate.

The hoopla around the choice of Al Gore and wife Tipper or that about Hillary Clinton reminds me of another famous campaign more than two decades ago--the launch of the “women’s” cigarette, Virginia Slims. With a leggy blond icon and the slogan “You’ve come long way, baby,” it only served to remind women of how easily their images and agendas could be co-opted and how very, very far they had, and still have, to go.