TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/050889/05088900.045

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 7.2 KB | 138 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 29

I'm Nobody, Who Are You?


Washington wives have one basic career path -- their husbands'

By Margaret Carlson


    A wife newly arrived in Washington knows life has changed
for the worse when she attends her first cocktail party and the
photographer asks her to step aside while he snaps a picture.
For Janis Berman, wife of California Congressman Howard Berman,
the initiation was even ruder. She called several weeks in
advance to tell the hostess of a party welcoming the Bermans to
the capital that she would be stuck in Los Angeles that day.
After ascertaining that the Congressman would be in town, the
hostess briskly told Berman, "That's O.K. We'll just go ahead
without you."

    Betty Wright has a different -- and more serious --
problem. Although the wife of Speaker Jim Wright says she has
a head for business, the House ethics committee could find
little evidence that she used it in her $18,000-a-year job with
Mallightco, the company founded by the Wrights and Fort Worth
businessman George Mallick. Lawyers like a paper trail; they
uncovered "no reports, no correspondence, no notes of telephone
conversations, no investment analyses" by Mrs. Wright. The
committee suspects Betty Wright's job of being a conduit for
$145,000 in cash and gifts to the Speaker.

    Marianne Gingrich, whose husband Newt is the House Minority
Whip who initiated the Wright inquiry, is herself being
scrutinized for her role in promoting Gingrich's book Window of
Opportunity. Part book (co-authored by a science fiction
writer), part polemic, part tax shelter, Window lost money for
its investors, but earned the Gingriches $12,018 in royalties
and Mrs. Gingrich $11,500 in salary. When asked about this at
a press conference last week, Marianne stomped out in tears.

    A congressional spouse should have a leg up socially and
professionally; instead it is like having one foot shot off.
"No one takes you seriously if they bother with you at all,"
says Jo Ann Emerson, wife of Missouri Congressman Bill Emerson
and deputy communications director of the National Republican
Congressional Committee. In Washington ignoring most of the
women at a cocktail party is considered an efficient use of
networking time. Let John Warner and Elizabeth Taylor walk into
a room, and all the suits head toward the Virginia Senator.
Taylor describes her three lonely years as a congressional wife
as a kind of hot fudge hell. Food -- lots of it -- substituted
for having a life. She blew up to 180 lbs.; Halston designed
caftans for her. "Not only is a Senator's wife not heard, she's
pretty much not seen," Taylor complained.

    If one of the most famous women in the world cannot make a
life for herself in the capital, it is not surprising that
others have a hard time. Says Berman: "You are typecast as
unimportant, and you have maybe 30 seconds in any encounter to
overcome that." Berman says she gave up her job as acting
director of the California Museum of Science and Industry to
move to Washington after her husband was elected in 1982. "At
an orientation for congressional spouses, there was a lecture
on how to live with a celebrity. I wanted to stand up and say,
`Wait a minute, I used to be a celebrity.'"

    Although many congressional wives work (there are no
husbands in the Senate, a handful in the House), finding a job
can be difficult. Says Emerson: "Unless an employer is looking
for special access through you, you just look like trouble --
someone who will want all congressional recesses off, will have
to travel back to the district to campaign on weekends, and
might not be here two years later if your husband loses."
Heather Foley, wife of Majority Leader Tom Foley, solved the
problem by taking a job -- gratis -- in her husband's office.

    That's one way to see your spouse. Emily Malino, wife of
New York Congressman James Scheuer, complains, "Staff members
want all of your husband. They'll schedule on weekends,
birthdays and anniversaries." One wife recommends working in the
office as marriage insurance. "With adoring staff all around,
your husband might not want to come home to reality."

    Like Betty Wright, most Washington wives are invisible
until their principal gets in trouble. Pat Nixon held the title
for most stoic wife until Maureen Dean gave an Oscar-winning
performance during her husband's Watergate testimony, sitting
primly behind him, blond hair pulled back, holding the Nancy
Reagan gaze before there was a Nancy Reagan gaze. Former
Attorney General John Mitchell's wife Martha took to telephoning
reporters and was forcibly sedated. Rita Jenrette, whose husband
John was convicted for taking bribes in Abscam, used her 15
minutes of celebrity to pose in Playboy, reveal that she and
John had known each other very well on the steps of the Capitol
and land a role in Hollywood's Zombie Island Massacre.

    Many Washington jobs raise conflict-of-interest questions.
When Barbara Morris Lent took a job as a lobbyist for NYNEX,
her husband, Congressman Norman Lent, sought approval of the
ethics committee to vote on telephone legislation. Lawyer Marc
Miller, author of Politicians and their Spouses' Careers, says,
"Full disclosure and making sure the spouse got the job for her
own talents help resolve the conflict." When Debbie Dingell, a
lobbyist for General Motors, married Energy and Commerce
Committee Chairman John Dingell in 1981, she switched to an
administrative job. "I'm sensitive to conflicts," says Dingell.
"Fortunately, GM is large enough that I could change jobs."

    Several spouses have got into Betty Wright-like trouble. In
1976 Marion Javits, wife of the late Senator Jacob Javits, had
to forgo a lucrative contract with Iran Air. In 1984 Oregon
Senator Mark Hatfield's wife Antoinette ran into trouble when
Greek businessman Basil Tsakos paid her $55,000 for decorating
his apartment, which seemed like a lot for choosing fabric
swatches and paint chips, while her husband was simultaneously
urging federal support for Tsakos' $12 billion oil pipeline.

    Some couples reduce potential conflicts by both working for
the government, an arrangement the checks and balances of the
Constitution did not contemplate. When Elizabeth Dole was
Transportation Secretary, the couple made intragovernmental
history when she testified before husband Robert Dole, then
Senate finance chairman, on "Alternatives to Tax on Use of Heavy
Trucks." The subject matter renders plausible his protestations
that there was no after-hours collusion between the executive
and legislative branches of the marriage. "When you get home at
8:30, the last thing you want to do is get into business." It
is equally unlikely that Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Chairman Wendy Gramm and her husband Senator Phil Gramm, famed
for the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit limits, ponder the
line-item veto during their off hours.

    Elizabeth Taylor coped with Washington by leaving the city
and the Senator. Berman has stuck it out and may eventually get
sweet revenge. Her tack is the mighty pen: working at home, she
has sold to CBS a tell-all television series titled Inside
Capitol Hill.