The Candidates' Love Match

By MARGARET CARLSON

American politics has come a long way since the days when Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower were seldom seen on the campaign trail. Romance is becoming the major nonissue of this campaign: palpable, on display and in prime time. It's the Phil Donahue of elections: the candidate who can best put his relationship on display scores points. Consider the CBS interview in which Barbara Bush playfully slapped the Veep's hand as he confused how many years they had been married (43) with how many houses they had lived in (28). As she was about to leave the room, he pulled her back for a kiss.

Bush warned reporters he would be moving to close the romance gap, which widened when a reporter glimpsed Michael and Kitty Dukakis dancing without music at the Boston airport. The Bushes' suspicion that this waltz was too mediagenic to be true had been reinforced when Barbara questioned Dan Rather about the couch provided for the Dukakises' joint interview. She was told it was a special request by the Dukakis campaign. The Bushes did not invoke the Equal Furniture Doctrine, and their show went on with straight-backed chairs.

In his first scheduled appearance after he was nominated, Senator Dan Quayle told a group of Republicans at breakfast, "I am just getting used to how we're supposed to conduct ourselves on the campaign, and boy, listening to the affection we're supposed to do, I can't wait." He paused to leer at his wife. "I think it's going to be exciting."

Is that any way for a candidate to talk before coffee? Flaunting one's marriage went a step lower when Bush's staff arranged for a plane with a banner asking WHERE WAS TEDDY? to fly over a rally so that Bush could say, "I was at home with Barbara," a self-righteous claim that could revive rumors of dalliances that hounded the Vice President last year.

It used to be that the candidates had a mutual nonaggression pact toward each other's marriages. Jackie Kennedy hardly ever deigned to campaign; Pat Nixon occasionally napped during her husband's stump speech. The Fords did not become a celebrity, let-it-all-hang-out duo until they moved to California, where it is required.

Bush suggests Dukakis is to blame for the I-love-my-wife-more competition. In fact, the Reagans upped the public-intimacy quotient to saccharine levels. The President's farewell film at the Republican National Convention featured not a review of statecraft but a valentine to Nancy. There were Nancy and Ron holding hands at the ranch, holding hands at Camp David. During the airing of the film inside the Superdome, cameras panned to Nancy gazing at Ronnie gazing at her gazing at him in the film, political gazemanship that only a Silver Screen Couple could pull off. Earlier in the day, the President dropped by a luncheon in honor of the First Lady, at which he made a show of throwing away his prepared remarks so that he could speak from his heart, all misty-eyed. He was actually reading from notes already on the lectern.

No non-Hollywood adults could hope to duplicate the Reagans' portrayal of adolescent infatuation. In any event, polls indicate that it is a sense of family that voters are seeking, not romance. But enduring love, the kind that survives the unpaid orthodontist bill and the lawn grown weedy, cannot be shown on the nightly news. So the candidates will continue to confuse the Dynasty-type desire with devotion, as in this recent swipe by Dukakis: "Democrats tend to sleep in double beds. Republicans prefer twins." The body politic can live without a response to that one.