Warm and personable wins points with public

Insight on the News, Feb 5, 1996 by Chi Chi Sileo

First ladies, especially those who maintain high profiles, make themselves vulnerable to criticism. Rosalynn Carter was attacked for her attendance at Cabinet meetings, as was Eleanor Roosevelt for her contributions to her husband's administration. Even Barbara Bush, whose own low-profile, motherly image went a long way toward increasing her husband's popularity, did not escape unscathed; she later was portrayed as cold and rigid, and she herself revealed a longtime struggle with depression.

But none of these predecessors suffered the slings and arrows of public opinion quite the way Hillary Rodham Clinton has. Clinton's often-troubled image has gone through numerous ups and downs - primarily downs. Blasted during the presidential campaign for her remark that voters would get "two for the price of one" if they elected her husband, and for the infamous "I could have stayed home and baked cookies" quip, Hillary became a highly visible target. Scorned even by some feminists for having gained political prestige through her marriage, she nevertheless took over as head of the President's task force on health care reform - which turned into an unmitigated political disaster.

But if the first lady wants lessons in the art of public image, she need look no further than the person who occupies the spot behind her in the White House hierarchy: Tipper Gore, wife of Vice President Al Gore.

The contrasts between the two women are striking. Conservative columnist Suzanne Fields has called Hillary Clinton the President's "No. 1 liability." Tipper Gore, on the other hand, is routinely praised for her ability to juggle her public duties with her roles as wife and mother. As she told Redbook magazine in 1994, she realized early that she had to choose between her career and her marriage - and that she deliberately, and happily, chose her marriage. About feminism she said, "I still subscribe to it in terms of legalities - equal pay for equal work - but in terms of your life, I've dismissed a lot if it as unworkable."

Tipper, whose given name is Mary Elizabeth, seems to come right out of Central Casting: pretty, warm, personable - even more so in person than on television - and adept at navigating the treacherous currents of public opinion without seeming to pander to them. She first sprang into the media spotlight in a mix of approbation and opprobrium when she spearheaded the Parents Music Resource Center, or PMRC, in 1985; the center attacked racist, sexist and violent lyrics in rock music and urged recording companies to put warning labels on records that contained such lyrics.

Although Gore, an alumna of an all-girl rock band called the Wildcats, repeatedly declared that she opposed government censorship (the labeling was to be done by record companies themselves), many musicians attacked her vociferously. The Ramones immortalized their anger in the parody "Censorshi...," and her most outspoken opponent, the late Frank Zappa, called her a "cultural terrorist." (Still, Zappa had admitted to being "touched" when he received a letter from Gore after he announced that he had prostrate cancer.) Tipper left the organization in 1993, but her efforts predated those of social conservatives and presaged presidential hopeful Bob Dole's attacks on Hollywood.

Since then, the vice president's wife repeatedly has aligned herself with the people she calls "the most vulnerable." She traveled to Haiti and Rwanda to help with relief work and has spoken out on behalf of the homeless and battered women. Last year she received the Friends for Life Award from the Whitman-Walker Clinic, a nonprofit AIDS clinic and hospice in Washington, for her work on behalf of the clinic.

But her efforts to be, as she says, "a voice for the voiceless," have culminated most visibly in her advocacy for the mentally ill, a group she believes is a long-ignored minority. Gore, who has a master's degree in psychology and once wanted to be a psychotherapist, tells Insight that she has a great belief in mental-health treatment. "This is a time of great hope for the mentally ill, their families and their advocates," she says earnestly. "We know that treatment works - there are revolutionary advances in medicine, in physiology... The problem is complex, but there is so much hope." Discrimination against the mentally ill (some polls have found that even ex-convicts get more respect) "reflects a mistake in judgment and a poorly developed knowledge of human development," she says.

The Gores themselves received professional help - family counseling after their son was seriously hurt in a car accident in 1989. Tipper credits that "wonderful" experience with helping to shape her positive attitudes about family counseling. And she believes that it's her mission to bring that kind of family-healing treatment to a country wracked by divorce.

"There is evidence that marriage and family therapy is more effective than all individual therapy combined," says, echoing a long, if quietly held, consensus among mental-health professionals. "You are the people who really are family values in this country," she told a meeting of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy in 1995, after receiving that organization's Distinguished Service to Families Award.