But there's an authenticity of respect and affection between Laura and George W. and it shows. There's a gender gap this year, too, and this time it favors the Republican candidate. Even when she campaigns by herself, Laura doesn't call attention to herself. She doesn't suggest that she has something to prove. She came to speech-making reluctantly and proved herself a natural, drawing on her experiences as wife, mother and a librarian who loves books.
The conventional wisdom is that John Kerry lost female support when he didn't respond quickly to the attacks on the medals won in Vietnam. Women, it seems to me, were turned off more by the replays of his slurs against the soldiers he left behind in Vietnam. It was one thing to attack the war, but quite another to attack the men fighting it.
When he described the American soldiers he left behind as guilty of raping, beheading and burning villages, the tales of his own heroism became suspect. Would he similarly mock the service and sacrifice of soldiers fighting in Iraq in what he calls "the wrong war"? Ask any wife, mother or daughter of a fighting man if that influences the way she weighs the candidates this fall.
Trustworthiness is crucial. Women find no greater sign of weakness in a man than a propensity to constantly change his mind. Single or married, a woman wants to know exactly where the man in her life stands. Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, admonished the senator for weakness on women's issues and told him that he must apply more "muscle" to the pursuit of the women's vote. Women instinctively mistrust nuancy boys.
Laura Bush struck the right note when she characterized her husband with definite views about his responsibility as protector, and linked family values with the war against terror so that "all children can grow up in a more peaceful world."
A man marries a woman, not a prospective first lady, but how a first lady projects her husband's message tells us as much about him as it does about her.