PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICAL APPOINTMENTS : Equal Expectations Would Be Great : Women candidates campaigned on difference; sometimes, though, it backfires into a double standard.

With the second female nominee for attorney general having withdrawn from contention, we might ask whether there is a double standard for men and women in politics--one that women inadvertently helped to foster.

During the “Year of the Woman,” some female candidates ran on a platform that women were more compassionate, fairer, more honest, less warlike. Indeed, there’s evidence to back up some of these claims. A study of women legislators by the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University found that across the political spectrum from left to right, women were more likely to support measures that helped women, children and families than were men, and less likely to support the use to force to settle disputes.

So it wasn’t entirely bogus for women to claim they’d make a difference. But the experiences of Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood illustrate the danger of holding women to a higher standard than men.

Male appointees with problems sailed through the confirmation process. Nobody asked Commerce Secretary Ron Brown about his domestic help. It turns out that he never paid Social Security taxes for a part-time domestic worker. More important, his law firm represented Haiti’s vicious dictator Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier and had close ties with fat-cat lobbyists. Hey, a guy has to make a living.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher faced allegations that he lied to Congress about how much he knew of government surveillance of private citizens during the Vietnam war. Big Brother is no big deal, apparently. Robert Rubin, President Clinton’s chief economic adviser, urged his old clients to keep in touch while he was in the White House, and to keep dealing with the investment bank of which he was co-chairman. He’s not being asked to pack. Ed Meese, President Reagan’s attorney general, was up to his ears in allegations of corruption and scandal.

Baird hired an illegal alien for child care and didn’t pay taxes until she was up for A.G. A no-no, but is it on a par with knowing the government spied on citizens, or doing lucrative favors for friends? Wood did nothing illegal. She hired an undocumented worker to care for her child when it was perfectly legal to do so, and paid all the required taxes. The law that forbade the hiring of undocumented workers was passed in 1986, but it exempted those hired before its passage. The Clinton Administration, however, seemed unwilling to test the waters with Wood after the protest that welled up over Baird.

Why the outrage over how highly visible career women arrange child care, while nobody seems to raise an eyebrow when well-connected men play footsie with the rules? First, there’s that notion about women being better, so they have a lot further to fall. But also, women who are both high achievers and mothers seem to create some kind of national Angst. Most of us still have the image of Ozzie and Harriet as the ideal family. We know that average working couples can’t live up to that ideal, but privileged women ought to at least come close. There was a great deal of anger because Baird, with her $507,000 salary, had trouble finding child care. We seem to think that if women want to be on the fast track, they could at least have the decency to find the perfect nanny. Are we saying the women can’t be appointed to high positions unless they’ve hired Mary Poppins? Or are past their child-bearing years?

It’s a fair guess that many of the senators who grilled Baird and would have questioned Wood have used many illegals to clean house, chauffeur their cars and pour drinks at their parties. But they aren’t mommies, and they don’t have to be holier than thou.

News reports also said that Wood, when in graduate school, had once worked at a Playboy club. She said she did sign up as a lark, but quit after five days. How many of us would want the world to know about some of the dumb things we did when we were kids?

If we think it’s important for women to serve at the highest levels of government--and I do--then it’s time we stopped expecting women to be “better” than men. It’s certainly OK for women candidates to claim that they bring different perspectives to public office, and those are to be valued. But there are perils in overdoing the “difference” argument. If we insist than women officials be a combination of Mother Theresa and June Cleaver, we will find slim pickings indeed.