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All this made Hillary a perfect foil for Barbara Bush, the composed matron for whom hard-edged feminism is as foreign as an unmade bed. That she looks and acts as if she is above the political fray only makes her a more potent force within that very arena -- although her most conspicuous activities are politically neutral, like hugging sick babies, promoting literacy and ghostwriting best sellers for her dog. Twice as popular as her husband, she can have it both ways when she wants to. No one would think to label America's favorite grandmother cynical when she lets it be known that she is pro-choice, while her husband is doing everything possible to make abortion a crime. Mrs. Bush has also worked hard to conceal her role in the White House, which can be every bit as ferocious as was Nancy Reagan's, especially when she believes the President is not being well served. She can turn on a bulldog disposition when warranted. "You people are just not as important as you think you are," she once growled to a group of journalists she thought were tormenting her husband.
Although Mrs. Bush initially said Hillary bashing should be off limits, she reversed herself later on the grounds that Mrs. Clinton was playing such a prominent role and had spoken out on public policy. The President agreed and got in a few swipes of his own about Hillary's legal writings. Then Marilyn Quayle chimed in, insisting in an interview that as a representative of "the liberal, radical wing of the feminist movement," Mrs. Clinton was absolutely fair game.
Seated on the couch in the living room of the Arkansas Governor's mansion last week, with Bill and Chelsea waiting to have a rare family dinner, Hillary responded to the Republican onslaught more in sadness than in anger. "I really don't know what to make of it," she told TIME. "What recently has happened has been part of a very sad and cynical political strategy. It's not really about me. I find it hard to take a lot of that personally, since the portrait is a distorted, inaccurate one."
The unprecedented headlining of Barbara and Marilyn at the Republican National Convention last month was above all an attempt to score points on the family-values front by depicting them as paragons of stay-at-home motherhood. The First Lady's approach was typically gentle and low-key, invoking her years of driving carpools, den mothering and going to Little League games. Marilyn, however, took the white gloves off with a strident critique of the choices and values Hillary Clinton represents. "Not everyone ((in our generation)) believed that the family was so oppressive that women could only thrive apart from it," she said. "Most women do not wish to be liberated from their essential natures as women."
But there are signs that such tactics may backfire on the Republicans. The latest TIME/CNN poll shows, for example, that only 5% of likely voters consider family values the main campaign issue and that Marilyn Quayle is the least popular of the three women, with a 37% approval rating, compared with 40% for Hillary and 76% for Barbara. Only 14% felt Hillary does not pay enough attention to her family.