THE SECOND WIVES CLUB

By MARGARET CARLSON

There are some matters we can all agree on: motherhood and apple pie--good; deadbeat dads--bad. That's why, in this time of fbi files and Little Rock, Arkansas, trials, the President decided last week to announce some new measures to collect child support, which include screening new employees who may owe money and penalizing welfare mothers who refuse to identify the fathers of their children.

But it seems there is an opposition group on every issue, and one has emerged in California that might be called the Second Wives and the Deadbeat Dads Who Love Them Club. The day after Clinton announced the new crackdown, Dianna Thompson, spokeswoman for the 5,000-member Coalition of Parent Support--and a second wife herself--appeared on the Today show to criticize child-support orders that put "a real financial burden on the second family...[and] really don't reflect the cost of raising a child...It's more like a life-style support." Now here's a group that Republican leaders, many of whom are on their second wives, might cultivate to close their massive gender gap. It's a group that appears to draw considerable energy from the thought that every dollar going to a first wife is a dollar taken from them. Already, in California, the coalition has helped pass a bill that excludes a second wife's income in calculating a man's ability to pay child support, and defeat legislation that would extend support beyond age 21. Why should children of divorce go to grad school?

Certainly, second wives, bent on protecting their own brood, have more moral authority than the men who have already left one brood behind. But even they may not be any match for market forces. New York City is considering a proposal from investment bankers at Morgan Stanley to get immediate payments to first families by selling high-interest bonds based on the assets of deadbeat parents. The Mommy-munis would be backed by the full force of the child-support-collection apparatus.

Bob Dole is having trouble snuffing out the controversy engendered by his suggestion that smoking is not addictive and his perhaps subconscious plagiarism of Phillip Morris' ad campaign in Europe, which argues that passive smoke is less harmful than a glass of whole milk a day. This went over O.K. in Kentucky tobacco country but hovered over him like a cloud of stale smoke last week as he campaigned in California, which has some of the most draconian antismoking laws in the nation. At each stop, starting in Walnut Creek, Dole was trailed by a person dressed as a cigarette, dubbed Buttman, who handed out large dollar bills picturing "Smokin' Bob" with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. At a Woodland Hills event, Buttman placed himself on the balcony opposite the podium, directly in Dole's line of sight. Yet the candidate did not acknowledge him, mindful, no doubt, that George Bush was ridiculed for talking back to the giant chicken that followed him around during the '92 campaign carrying a sign saying CHICKEN GEORGE WON'T DEBATE.

A staff member from the state Democratic committee, which launched Buttman, says Dole adviser Ken Khachigian was overheard asking whether the prankster was in the vicinity. The answer was yes; in fact, Buttman is following Dole to New York. This cigarette, at least, appears to be habit forming.