Working on the ‘Zoe Baird Problem’

Kimba Wood thought that she didn’t have a “Zoe Baird problem,” but that didn’t really matter because Bill Clinton, who used to have a “Gennifer Flowers problem,” thought that she did, so therefore regardless of who really has the problem, what we’ve got going here is a syndrome.

Which is a problem.

If “getting it” has became the watchword for the politically hip, then let me say that right about now I’m beginning to think that I’ve had enough. This kind of double-standard politics stinks.

Mark down Judge Kimba Wood, who before becoming Clinton’s top choice (again) for attorney general was better known for sending Michael Milken to jail, as another woman who must pay for trying to “have it all.”

Oh, how I loath that phrase.

What is “it” anyway? How come men seem to have been born with it, whereas women keep figuring they’ll know it when they feel it someday?

Way back when, I used to think that it was merely the husband-kids-career thing, or at least that’s how those glowing magazine reports used to describe it, simply, one dimensionally, easy as Sara Lee.

Now that I’m in the thick of it myself, of course, I tend to think of my kind as jugglers, ones who keep dropping a lot of balls.

Yet the image from those old stories lingers. These accounts would invariably be accompanied by a photograph of the “lucky lady” making dinner for her family while, say, her briefcase loomed on the counter, a dark and hulking presence if there ever was.

This made for great symbolism, a dramatic rapprochement between two worlds. The husband-father would be quoted as saying that he was proud of his wife for handling it all. To me, the lucky ladies’ smiles always looked a little tight.

Sort of like the ones I’ve seen on Kimba Wood and Zoe Baird.

There is an important difference between these two accomplished lawyers, of course. Baird knew that by hiring an undocumented Peruvian couple she was breaking the law, never mind that millions of Americans break the same one everyday.

Even if you sympathized with her plight--which I did--it was hard to argue that an admitted lawbreaker should be put in charge of the department that’s supposed to ensure justice for everybody else.

When Wood hired her undocumented alien, however, it was legal to do so and all the requisite taxes were paid.

Still, Wood and Baird were felled by the same sword, one that’s becoming a weapon of choice. It’s the sword of Damocles that hangs over all women who, by golly, still keep trying to have it all.

This time it was illegal immigration that was the Trojan horse. Maybe next time it will be failure to pay Social Security taxes for the teen-age neighbor who mows the lawn, or the friend who comes in to water the plants while the homeowner’s away.

Maybe if Kimba Wood had admitted to smoking dope, it wouldn’t have been such a sin. It seems we’re over that one now; too many former pot smokers (and air guitar players) are now being driven around in government cars.

Child care, quaintly, still falls squarely in women’s realm. And it’s our fault when something goes wrong. (It will).

Of course, the White House doesn’t see all this in quite the same way. The Administration says it wouldn’t look good, now, to have an attorney general who employed an illegal alien, however lawfully, in her home in 1986.

While stressing that Wood hadn’t yet been officially nominated for the attorney general’s post, Clinton’s representatives said that the problem was that she did not come clean. When asked if she had a “Zoe Baird problem,” Wood said no, that she had broken no law.

In other words, she answered like a lawyer would before a court, say, like lawyer Clinton often did while courting votes.

And as far as anyone’s saying, the question of domestic help was never put to the men in Clinton’s cabinet who have already been confirmed.

Last time I looked, Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was still on the job even though thanks to the Zoe Baird problem, he just figured out that he should have been paying Social Security taxes on the woman who cleans his home.

“There has to be a comfort level,” said Vice President Al Gore, in defending Clinton’s move to drop Wood cold. “And in the circumstances, the kind of give and take that took place didn’t lead to that comfort level.”

Call me a bean counter, but this kind of excuse has been used before.