CASUAL
FERGUSON, ANDREW
CASUAL CAN THIS MARRIAGE BE SAVED? The personal may not be the political, as the feminists used to say, but it's still true that the political is often purely personal. I once made the mistake of...
...My own view—to use a favorite Bob phrase—is that he intended much worse...
...ANDREW FERGUSON...
...This is a man with an agenda...
...This was certainly true of the Bush White House, where nothing would happen for months at a time...
...Without them, there would have been no Monica Lewinsky, and hence no impeachment...
...His wife, however, might not be among them...
...It is increasingly clear that Bob has been sending subliminal signals for months, long before he spoke to the Times, in his Viagra ad about "erectile dysfunction...
...It's a little embarrassing to talk about E.D.," he says in the ad...
...But doesn't Bob think she'd make a formidable opponent for Al Gore...
...No, it wasn't...
...If I were Mrs...
...And how about the bedroom...
...This would be a final irony to the Clintons' ultramodern partnership, which they explicitly had hoped would cause America to rethink traditional gender roles...
...Without them, for example, Mrs...
...Clinton might have felt no need to act out her commissar-like ambitions...
...Her smile never left her...
...will get proper treatment...
...But it's so important to millions of men and their partners that I decided to talk about it publicly...
...A slight in the hallway, a remark in the men's room, an anecdote repeated at the wrong dinner party—these might have the effect of ruining a friendship, thereby upending a policy, and thereby (for example) raising the EPA's de-oxygenated hydrologen emissions standard from 3.4 ppm to 3.45...
...I've thought about ways to help McCain in particular," he said...
...I once made the mistake of working for the federal government, and the only insight I took away from the year's unpleasantness was an understanding, small but indelible, of how public events are shaped...
...hence no bombing of the Sudan...
...The usually laconic Bob gave a chatty interview last week to the New York Times...
...Last week, the Washington Post reported the "virtual certainty" that Hillary Clinton will run for the Senate from New York...
...He noted that his candidate-wife Elizabeth is having trouble raising money...
...But I came away with an axiom of my own, about what is called, too grandly, "the policy-making process...
...If she can't raise the money," said Bob, "obviously, it's pretty hard to be a candidate...
...There would have been no absurd health-care reform plan, and hence no Republican takeover of Congress...
...He cheats on her, and she's the one who has to move out...
...Dole, I'd pull out right now...
...But obviously the interpretation was not what he intended...
...The Doles haven't been seen in public together since Bob's interview, but there's nothing unusual in that: They're rarely seen in public together...
...Note, please: Bob Dole is not warning American men about J. McC., or G.W.B., or even A.G...
...It takes courage to discuss it, he adds, but discuss it he must, "in hopes that men with E.D...
...All marriages, as we know, are endlessly complicated, but the weird complications of the First Coupling have altered our culture to an unprecedented degree...
...I worked for the Bush administration, but regardless of the era, personality is the great unspoken determinant in most governmental transactions...
...He looked pretty good there...
...If it looks impossible, this is not her whole life...
...Bush used to say, "is much less important than what happens in your house...
...It's too early to tell," he said...
...Bob added that he himself was thinking of giving mon-ey—to the presidential campaign of John McCain...
...What happens in the White House," Mrs...
...Bob had a little visit to the Dole woodshed," she said, conjuring a horrifying word picture of riding crops and thigh boots...
...Clinton would live as she cam-paigned—whether, in other words, she'd officially decamp from her husband's luxurious house and establish residency in New York, renting accommodations suitable for a refugee from a failed marriage...
...For political observers these days it's an unavoidable question...
...Of the many currents and trends that might influence a government policy, the most important was the personal relationship of the policy-makers involved...
...What happens in the Cabinet Room is much less important than what happens in the men's room...
...The Post story avoided the most interesting wrinkle, which is where Mrs...
...We have to wait and see how things turn out with the Doles...
...It promises to get weirder still...
...It's E.D...
...maybe no Kosovo...
...that must be eradicated...
...I think we need to keep good people in the race...
...Whether the Clinton marriage is the strangest in contemporary politics, however, must remain an open question, at least for the time being...
...Elizabeth did give a solo interview to CBS News, however...
...and no Barbra Streisand sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom...
Vol. 4 • May 1999 • No. 35
