The Best Days of Their Wives

By MICHAEL DUFFY WASHINGTON

The morning after the New York Post published charges that George Bush had an extramarital affair, Noelle Bush, 15, asked her grandmother what all the fuss was about. As the two sat by the White House pool Wednesday morning, Barbara Bush explained that the newspapers were reporting that Noelle's grandfather allegedly had a fling with a former staff member eight years earlier. "Come on, Ganny," said the girl. "That's what they're saying," Mrs. Bush replied. When Noelle broke into giggles, the First Lady upbraided her in mock horror. "That's sort of insulting to your grandfather." Replied Noelle: "That is so funny." Recounting the exchange a few hours later, the First Lady concluded, "Well, I guess he looks ancient to her."

Score one more for Barbara Bush, master of the self-deprecating gesture -- particularly in the midst of a crisis that might cause other political spouses to lose their sangfroid. In the course of two days, her husband faced accusations of adultery, backpedaled on abortion and overhauled his political team. Mrs. Bush leaped into the fray herself, staking out a position on abortion well to the President's left, criticizing a top Bush aide in public, and then getting in a lick or two of her own at Bill Clinton. "I'm feisty as the dickens," she said in an interview with newsmagazine correspondents.

In a year when both parties are trying to appeal to disenchanted voters, Republican officials are hoping that Barbara Bush -- who is roughly twice as popular as her husband -- can bring back many of the disaffected when she speaks in Houston this week. Convention planners say they are counting on Mrs. Bush's 10-minute remarks -- and a five-minute talk by Marilyn Quayle -- to be nearly as appealing to female voters as her husband's much longer make-or- break address. "We sometimes fantasize," said a campaign official, "what it would be like to have Barbara and Marilyn on the ticket."

Ever since the Clarence Thomas hearings last fall, the Republican Party has been struggling to overcome the perception that its regard for women is only a notch or two higher than that of the Navy's Tailhook Association. The hearings galvanized a long-struggling movement to put more women into the House and Senate, and Democrats have rushed to showcase a sizable ballot of women candidates. But the G.O.P. is woefully short on female office seekers, which is one reason why it is calling on Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Quayle to take high- profile convention roles for the first time. In addition, the two women can play the party's family-values card in a way their husbands cannot.

By an ironic quirk of timing, Mrs. Bush was preparing her speech when the latest round of adultery stories erupted. But she was bearing up proudly in an interview the next day. "You know, we're talking about people's lives," she said. "It's really not a very nice thing. I should quickly tell you that the fact this comes up every four years is not an enormous surprise to me, but it's a disappointing one . . . I know it's a lie, so it doesn't bother me. But it bothers me that we've come to this."

Asked to explain more fully her husband's relationship with Jennifer Fitzgerald, a former appointments assistant who now serves as deputy chief of protocol at the State Department, Mrs. Bush described it as "employer- employee." Says Mrs. Bush: "She's a good friend of mine. I mean, it's so ugly, the whole thing. And it's been very deceitful and harmful and ugly. I haven't seen Jennifer, but my heart goes out to her. This is just mean." She said the two had not spoken because Fitzgerald was out of the country.

Mrs. Bush then dropped a bombshell of her own. The decision to have an abortion, she said, is a "personal choice, personal thing." The day before, the President had said he would support a granddaughter who decided to terminate a pregnancy -- although his own party is trying to outlaw the procedure unless the mother's life is endangered. Mrs. Bush went well beyond that, saying all discussion of abortion should be removed from the political arena. "The personal things should be left out of, in my opinion, out of platforms at conventions . . . You can argue yourself blue in the face, and you're not going to change each other's minds. It's a waste of your time and my time."

Mrs. Bush had been suspected of harboring pro-choice views for years, but she never before said it publicly to avoid unnecessary skirmishes with the Republican Party's conservative wing. Coming the day after the Fitzgerald boomlet, the pronouncement's timing was curious and set off a round of political speculation. Some thought the abortion comment was an attempt to change the subject from the infidelity flap. Others believed that G.O.P. campaign officials were attempting to have it both ways by having Mrs. Bush woo independent and Republican women who find the party's pro-life platform unrealistic.

Whatever the motivation, Mrs. Bush's remarks put her at odds with Marilyn Quayle. The Vice President's wife last month contradicted her husband's public comments by insisting that if their 13-year-old daughter ever became pregnant out of wedlock, she would "carry the baby to term." Mrs. Bush had little use for this inflexible logic. Said she: "You can't pin a child down and say, 'You can't have an abortion; that's against the law.' " But the First Lady quickly added that any differences between the two women were a measure of the G.O.P.'s diversity. "((Marilyn)) does it differently. That's what's big about our party."

In fact, Mrs. Quayle differs from the President's wife in many ways. While the First Lady's image is cuddly and grandmotherly, Marilyn Quayle can seem hard, intolerant and combative. "I'm a great devil's advocate," she explained in an interview with TIME. "I can pierce holes through anything." Convention organizers will try to turn her tough-as-nails reputation into a political asset. Her midweek address on health care and education will mark the first time a Vice President's wife has ever given an actual convention speech. "The idea," said a planner, "is to show women voters that you can be a Republican and not just wear Talbots and pearls and join the Junior League."

Ever since a Washington Post series on her husband last winter depicted her as a power-mad spouse who once kicked to shreds a framed picture of her husband playing golf, Mrs. Quayle has been trying to soften her Cruella De Vil image. She is cooler in interviews and slower to anger. She proudly announces that she saves money by shopping monthly at the Price Club and that her kids come home and eat tuna "right out of the can." Normally careful to shield her children from public scrutiny, she now admits the abortion gaffe was unfortunate and "embarrassing" to her daughter Corinne. "We have reared our daughter so this would have to be a hypothetical situation," said Mrs. Quayle. But, she added, the girl "was not pleased."

But Corinne's mother has her independent streak as well. She takes issue, for example, with the President's wish that philandering charges have no part in a political campaign. "That's all part of the character issues," she insisted. "And anyone who is going to be President -- you do look at the character of the person. That's what makes a person whole." Such remarks led a party official to quip, "She's our answer to Hillary."

The our-wife-can-top-your-wife game can be carried too far. No sooner had Bush been accused of infidelity than G.O.P. chairman Rich Bond attacked Mrs. Clinton for likening marriage to slavery -- a gross distortion of an educational review article she wrote in 1973. But Mrs. Bush, as if she were waging a one-woman campaign to court the political middle, publicly chastised Bond for his remarks. "I didn't like it," she said. "She's not running for office." Mrs. Bush added, "I know a lot of wonderful men married to pills, and I know a lot of pills married to wonderful women. So one shouldn't judge that way."

But it is bound to happen. In an era of sound bites and short attention spans, when complex issues like deficit reduction and health care often seem too difficult to understand, many voters will simply choose the candidate who best fits their "values." And one way to judge a man's values is to look at the woman he married.

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Washington