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The voters of California sensed, as her feminist dinner companions knew, that starchy appearances can be deceiving. Feinstein does not look like someone given to discussing hysterectomies and high-stakes political battle at the dinner table. She looks like a casting director's idea of a Bryn Mawr president who must be bodily restrained from adding gloves -- or perhaps even a pillbox hat -- to her already ultra-conservative banker-blue suits and fitted red blazers and pearls. One San Francisco columnist refers to her "vulcanized hairdo," worthy of Margaret Thatcher. Other traits, however -- her stature (5 ft. 10 in. in the half heels she favors) and a steady green- eyed gaze -- bespeak a sense of authority and a sociability that enabled her to be mayor of rambunctious San Francisco for nine turbulent years, from 1978 to the end of 1987. "People sometimes misjudge me. I am very much a street person," Feinstein claims. "I know, I don't look like it. And this is where I've been underestimated. People think I'm in some kind of shell. But I'm not."
The country-club appearance hardly does justice to a complex personality that is supremely confident, emotional and keenly attentive to the importance of politics as theater. Opinions vary along political lines. To her admirers she is bold and indefatigable. To her detractors, she can be over-bearing and righteous. She is sometimes compared not with Maggie Thatcher -- which would be too simple, and mistaken -- but with Ronald Reagan and Bobby Kennedy.
The Reagan comparison applies to Feinstein's daunting skill as a speechmaker, especially on TV, which dominates electoral politics in California. Van de Kamp himself grudgingly acknowledges that "she is telegenic, speaks extremely well and conveys warmth." Feinstein learned much of her technique -- especially cadence and syncopation -- from a number of preachers in the black churches she often visits. Concludes state assembly speaker Willie Brown, who has known her for 30 years: "Dianne is as good a communicator as Ronald Reagan -- without the Chamber of Commerce jokes." To Feinstein, in fact, public performance is not a sideshow but something that cuts close to the heart of politics. "Ninety percent of leadership is the ability to communicate something that people want."
The Bobby Kennedy comparison applies to her political credo. Recalls Feinstein, who served as R.F.K.'s Northern California women's chair in 1968: "I did feel he was strong when you have to be strong and compassionate when you have to be compassionate. I was much attracted to him for that. Problems don't fit into near ideological test bags. Some problems require 'right' solutions. Some require 'left' solutions. Some require common-sense solutions." Says Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, an ardent backer: "In San Francisco, she was more moderate than her city. But that will help in the Governor's race, because that's where the state is."
Other role models she has met and admired in the course of her travels include Corazon Aquino, Indira Gandhi and Thatcher. "It's been an interest for me to see how women handle power, authority, people, decisions. We are different in how we approach things. A man can sit around a bar and shake liar's dice and discuss problems. The woman doesn't do that. Decision making, I think, is a bit more formal for us."