Start real, stay real; the wives who may be the Democrats’ greatest asset

NOT only was she a tubby unknown, but, just before the official photograph, she managed to spill coffee all over her good jacket.

To replace it, she wandered into the local equivalent of an OxFam shop and bought something second-hand.

The result was that the following day, when the pictures designed to suggest a Fab Foursome appeared, in the middle was one who was dumpy and just a notch away from frumpy.

That wouldn’t seem to be the best place to start if you wanted to become the sweetheart of a nation, but that’s what she became, within days. Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of John Edwards, John Kerry’s running-mate in the presidential election, has taken America by storm. The pundits are describing her as Edwards’ greatest political asset.

Theresa Heinz Kerry, the billionaire wife of John Kerry, had already carved out a take-no-prisoners public persona for herself. The combination of the two women has injected the excitement that was missing from Kerry’s campaign. Polls indicate a higher level of interest and involvement in the presidential election personalities and issues than would normally be the case at this point in the campaign - and the women behind the candidates are contributing to that interest. Or rather: the women beside the candidates.

Both are big brains first, worshipful consorts second. In fact, scrub that. Neither of them does the worshipful consort performance at all. Neither would even consider it for a minute. They both represent girl-power at its middle-aged best: witty, decisive and very clearly not based either on looks (personal) or looks (adoring, at husband). Elizabeth Edwards’ key weapon isn’t glamour or passion or driven ambition, but self-deprecating humour. She gives great quote, confessing, in the early days of the campaign, that she dyes her hair to prevent people from assuming she’s her husband’s mother.

This took the rug from under the waspish gossips who were whispering that she looks older than he does. Yep, she agreed. Fifteen years older. Hence the hair dye. Plus, she told media, she’s a stone-and-a-half overweight and would probably get fatter because of the junk food on the campaign trail.

Media responded to this in two interesting ways. They decided - and said - that Elizabeth Edwards is a breath of fresh air and a real person. And they compared her directly with Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife. Who? Precisely, sniffed the journalists. Dick Cheney’s wife is slim, but in four years as a Vice Presidential wife, has made no impact whatever.

When Elizabeth Anania met John Edwards, back in the 1970s, the pair were matched in good looks and lack of money. Dirt-poor when he proposed to her, all he could afford was an $11 wedding ring which she has never swapped for something more costly. They celebrated their first anniversary in a Wendy’s hamburger joint, and have gone back there for every subsequent anniversary.

The two of them might have been cash-poor, but they had enough education between them to fill a library and ambitions to match. For 19 years of their married life, she was a high-powered bankruptcy lawyer. She talks matter-of-factly about herself and Edwards being each other’s intellectual equal.

In the ’90s, tragedy struck when their teenage son was killed in a car crash. They endowed worthy ways of remembering him and crouched, crushed by the loss, for more than a year. After that, when many expected Edwards to resume and concentrate on her legal career, she underwent a series of steroid injections to boost her fertility and in short order gave birth to another daughter (sister to Cate, now in her 20s) and, two years later, to a son. At 52, she swapped legal briefs for full-time mothering. At 55, she took to the roads of the US with her children, campaigning for John Kerry and her husband.

Theresa Heinz Kerry and Elizabeth Edwards serve as useful correctives to their husbands. When John Kerry is not working from a script, he tends to be at best diffuse, at worst dire. He is incoherent, albeit at a higher level and in a classier way than George W Bush.

His wife, in contrast, wastes no words. When a speaker at a campaign meeting observed, in a somewhat barbed compliment, that Kerry’s wife, (whose first husband had left her, his widow, rich beyond the dreams of avarice) had been lucky at husband-picking, Heinz Kerry’s response was crisp.

“Yeah,” she said. “Both times.”

When the Easter Island long face of John Kerry was joined by the improbably handsome visage of John Edwards, Republicans were quick to liken the vice-presidential candidate to a model in a shampoo ad. Elizabeth Edwards, in person and personality, helped to undermine the “all style, no substance” implication of that crack.

THE contrast between either of these two women and Laura Bush could not be more pronounced, and turns the First Lady into the Stepford Wife of the White House, all quiet loyalty and sweet accepting smiles. Up to now, because of her saintly supportive subservience, Laura Bush has got a free pass from critics. It’s difficult to beat up a guardian angel, and that’s how she’s been positioned.

The incumbent First Lady is assumed to be put-upon, supportive (it took a long time for him to give up the booze and at least one of their daughters has been filmed falling-down drunk), gentle and dignified. Ergo, a good influence on him.

Except that her influence didn’t stop him, as governor of Texas, sending an assembly-line procession of prisoners to the electric chair. Her influence was nowhere to be seen the day he publicly mimicked the pleas for mercy of a female murderer. The Pope had asked for mercy on behalf of this murderer, who had (like many others) found religion on Death Row. Surrounded by microphones, Bush put on a high whiny voice to mock her appeals for clemency - and had her executed. The influence of his guardian angel wife was not immediately apparent.

You don’t get the sense, watching the two Democrat wives, that they would interpret their wifely roles so passively. The Democrats have been careful to avoid making any direct comparison between the women on either side. Their restraint has been easy for them, because media and public have made the comparisons spontaneously.

The two women present as potent a contrast with Laura Bush as was made between Jacqueline Kennedy and Pat Nixon. Perhaps more potent. Jackie Kennedy’s little-girl voice and personality managed to convey presence, but not power. She exuded glamour and had an eye for composition, but being an OK photographer and dickying up the White House a bit didn’t amount to a statement of gender equality.

Theresa Heinz Kerry, by contrast, demonstrably regards herself as her husband’s equal and scares his advisers by refusing to pretend to be a bland admirer without personal opinion.

Elizabeth Edwards goes one step further, serving as her husband’s main image adviser. She has already banned photo-opportunities showing him doing things (like making pancakes) he doesn’t do in real life.

Her approach seems to be Start Real, Stay Real.

Now, there’s a unique selling proposition.