Elizabeth Hanford Dole, smile fixed on her face and her charm at the ready, picked her way around the tangle of lumber and oozing mud, searching for flood victims.
Although the flood waters had receded here, the need had not. But the Red Cross van bearing coffee and sandwiches was drawing few takers that day, so Dole, trim in a Red Cross T-shirt, khakis and smudgeless pink sneakers, marched gamely door-to-door.
“Red Cross here,” she called. “Are you all hungry?” A 97-year-old woman, Bethel C. Anker, appeared at the screen door, telling her how grateful she was for all the help. Dole said, “That warms my heart.”
Anker launched into a spirited description of her trials during the flood, and could have clearly gone on for some time, but Dole eased herself away after some sympathetic murmurs and tongue-clucking. “Here we are, three bags for you,” she said. “You take care. ‘Bye now.”
That was Dole at her public best: effusive yet efficient, a woman who threads her way around obstacles with the same care, meticulous preparation and determination that have won and sustained her in visible jobs. She has been president of the Red Cross since 1991. Before that she was U.S. secretary of transportation (1983-87) and secretary of labor (1989-90).
Watching her, it’s easy to see why she won raves on the stump in 1988 during the brief presidential bid of her husband, Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who is now Senate minority leader. She has an ability to connect, to make people feel heard even as she moves on to shake the next hand. But watching her is to sense that she is also a woman of great control and caution, one who never loosens the tight rein on her spontaneity, never says the wrong thing, never reveals too much.
At 57, she has won praise for her stewardship of the Red Cross: fundraising, cost-cutting, instituting more stringent screening of blood donors and responding to such natural disasters as Hurricane Andrew and the Midwest floods.
Her life with her husband has striking parallels to another Washington power couple, President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Like Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Dole has a career and is respected for her intelligence and drive. She is also said to be a more appealing campaigner than her husband.
The senator acknowledges his wife’s drawing power. “Everywhere I go-and I’ve been in four states this weekend-people talk about Elizabeth,” he said recently.
On the public stage, Elizabeth Dole and Hillary Clinton have played out their struggles to reconcile their careers with their husbands’ political ambitions. Dole left her job as secretary of transportation in 1987 to campaign for her husband; Clinton emerged from the campaign caricatures, which depicted her as a strident co-president or a subdued cookie-baker, to become a ground-breaking first lady.
Clinton’s ability to be a substantive, rather than ornamental, first lady suggests Dole could have done the same thing. But when Dole resigned her post in 1987, many women decried her choice. At the time, her public comments suggested a trace of resentment about leaving her job. Today, she defends her decision in almost exactly the words she used then.
“To me, that’s what we’ve been fighting for, for women to have opportunities to do what works best for themselves and their families,” she said, sitting in a Red Cross regional office. “We don’t have to fit into a mold. It would have been almost unthinkable not to be a part of the high point to date in my husband’s career.”
“People who are exposed to the media constantly tend to have tapes in their head,” said an old friend and supporter of Dole who asked to remain unidentified. “Her nature is to be prepared and in control of the message she is sending.”
She is most animated talking about how she and her husband have forged a partnership that combines freedom with intense loyalty. The couple were married in 1975 and have no children. The senator has a daughter by a previous marriage.
“When we first met and married, he felt, definitely, go on with your career,” she said, describing her husband as an instinctive supporter of women who needed no training from her.
Her husband calls her a “sensible feminist,” meaning that “she doesn’t threaten anybody.”
Sometimes their jobs put the couple at public loggerheads, but that does not appear to bother either of them a bit. This year, her husband opposed Clinton’s bill on national service. Dole, as the president of an organization dedicated to volunteerism, backed it. They didn’t consult each other about their stances in advance, she said, and didn’t talk about them afterward.
Years ago, such public differences between spouses were more novel. When Dole was a member of the Federal Trade Commission, she read that her husband was opposing the creation of a consumer protection agency.
“I remember calling him up and saying, `What are you doing?’ ” she said. ” `You didn’t tell me about this.’ ” She was about to give a speech and asked him whether he would join her and debate the pros and cons. They were asked to repeat the performance on “Good Morning America,” and she recounted the reaction:
“We got an awful lot of mail. Someone wrote Bob, `If you want to get anywhere in politics, you better get her to shut up.’ And one man wrote in and said, `I do hope you’ll be able to resolve your marital difficulties.’ ” With that, she broke into a loud laugh.
It is evidently the only kind of marriage she can envision, because she bucked the conventions of her Southern childhood and even the expectations of her mother, who wanted her to major in home economics, marry and stay in North Carolina. But she chose to study political science at Duke University and declined a marriage proposal from her college boyfriend.
After Harvard Law School, she embarked on a career in government, eventually serving on the Federal Trade Commission and as head of President Reagan’s office of public liaison before joining the Cabinet. Originally a Democrat, she became an independent and then, about the time of her marriage, a Republican.
“She’s always been a woman of a lot of power and force,” said Mari Maseng Will, the principal of Maseng Communications, a Washington public relations firm, who served under her as an assistant secretary of transportation. “And she has retained some of the grace and charm of the world she was brought up in. I’ve often thought of her as a role model-how she carved out a role as a strong and effective woman, how she did not threaten people and could still be a leader.”
This quality is apparent in her interchanges with the Red Cross staff in Des Moines. People light up when they see her. The camaraderie built in the worst days of the flood is evident as she hugs the workers. But she also presses her management agenda, asking nearly everyone she meets what they think of a new disaster services plan and an ambitious effort to raise standards for all local Red Cross affiliates.
Dole demurs at suggestions that the presidency of the Red Cross, with its highly visible opportunities to help people in distress, is a perfect launching pad for a future first lady or even for a run for public office.
“I don’t have plans to run for office right now,” she said. “I enjoy people, I’m an extrovert. If the option presents itself someday to run for office, it’s a possibility. It’s not something I must do or I will not feel fulfilled in life.”
Yet Dole understands that being a player means not just having ideas, but having power.
“Some people really have almost a distaste for that word,” she said. “They feel it is alien to conscience. Power for power’s sake, no. But the positive use of power for positive purposes is very important. You have to understand that. You’ve got to have a seat at the policy table if you want to make a difference.”
