Love And Politics: Hard To Call

Dotty Lynch is the Senior Political Editor for CBS News. E-mail your questions and comments to Political Points

A decade ago many of the same pundits who predicted that Howard Dean would sweep to the Democratic nomination were confidently predicting that Hillary Clinton broke the mold of traditional political wives—and that we were not likely to see any Maime Eisenhowers or even Barbara Bushes again.

Well, this year we've seen Gert Clark, a quintessential military wife who moved the family 31 times in 30 years to support her ambitious husband. And Laura Bush, while very much not her mother-in law, is a far cry from Hillary Clinton.

The political marriages of 2004 come in many flavors. This week Maria Shriver quit her job at NBC News because it became impossible for her to continue while her husband Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California. She is now looking for a mansion in Sacramento instead of filing for Dateline.

In any list of the top ten reasons to explain the Democratic nomination fight of 2004, the name Teresa Heinz Kerry has to be in the top five. Her considerable financial assets and her willingness share them with her husband, enabled Kerry to take out a $6.4 million dollar loan on the couple's Boston townhouse and to self-finance a campaign virtually everyone had given up on. Kerry saturated the Iowa airwaves with his dynamite "Del" ad and was in position to fill the space opened by Howard Dean's demise.

Kerry admitted to CBS News 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley that he had been intimidated by Teresa Heinz' money when they first met. However, she shrugs it off. ""I gave him my brains, and my brains and my heart, of course. You can't pay enough money for those."

A funny thing happened to Howard Dean in January. After three years of campaigning alone, he changed from an Internet phenom to human being with a life..

"My name is Judy Dean," the earthy woman with a sweet voice said shyly in Iowa on the day before the vote. And the crowd roared. A woman who had been the subject of a New York Times front page story a week earlier, portrayed as an enigma, a feminist who wasn't trying to latch onto her husband's celebrity or power, came forward "because Howard asked." And because he asked again she went on national television to explain to a wide-eyed Diane Sawyer that she stayed home because, "I have a 17 year old son and patients."

"There was something very pure about them," a friend said to me. And very genuine. Howard Dean had gone through a nightmare of public ridicule for days, and suddenly he was nursing a cold with his doctor-wife by his side in a cozy home in Vermont. For the first time in months he looked comfortable and happy drinking hot tea listening to his wife tell the world that her favorite thing to do was spend Mothers Day riding a bike with her family and eating "squished cupcakes."

It was a stunt, a tactic used by the Dean campaign to try turn the campaign around after the "I have a scream" speech. It didn't work, but it was a moment that reminded that these candidates are real people and that all women and all political marriages aren't one-size-fits-all.

John and Elizabeth Edwards have been partners for years, first in a law practice and now on the campaign trail. Elizabeth Edwards probably comes closest to Hillary of any of the '04 wives, though her personality is not as shrill. She campaigns alone, jokes about looking her age (compared to her husband who "looks 35.") The Edwards family story is one of tragedy and recovery, The loss of son Wade is never used as a campaign ploy but it is very close to the surface. But the two blond moppets born to Elizabeth at age 48 and 51 are sometimes used to remind voters of another couple with two darling children. The Edwards are a team, but one gets the sense that while John Edwards is Pollyana, Elizabeth Anania may be a bit more Machiavelli..

Bill and Hillary Clinton may have broken the old mold but political marriages are taking on new shapes. We are finding in 2004 that political wives and marriages come in more than 57 varieties.

By Dotty Lynch