Maureen Dowd Is Back!

Maureen Dowd is back from exile. The NYTimes suspended her (with or without pay?) for manipulating a quote to make W look even worse than ever. There was no official announcement from the NYTimes; all of the earlier bad press about ethics problems was more than the NYTimes ever wanted or needed. Dowd did not invent an unflattering quote, but she elliptically altered a phrase so that W seemed unconcerned about the terrorist threat to the U. S. However, the NYTimes columnist—dubbed The Cobra by W—takes on Howard Dean's relationship with his MD-wife, Judith Steinberg. Howard Dean and his spouse make the Clintons look like a '50s sitcom couple. Hillary said that she wasn't a Stand By Your Man kind of woman and did stand by her man. Judith Steinberg goes way beyond Hillary. Of course, Howard Dean is not Bill Clinton when it comes to bimbo-eruptions. Welcome back, Maureen Dowd. If this be (fair & balanced) herpetology, so be it.

[x NYTimes]
The Doctor Is Out
By MAUREEN DOWD

DES MOINES — Not satisfied with colonizing the Moon, scouting for Martians and civilizing Iraq, President Bush is lavishing more gazillions on another audaciously quixotic plan.

He wants to become the national yenta.

As Robert Pear and David Kirkpatrick wrote in The Times, administration officials are planning an extensive election-year initiative to please conservatives in a swivet over gay marriage; their social engineering scheme will try to shore up traditional marriage, offering training to couples in the interpersonal skills needed to achieve and sustain "healthy marriages."

Before Mr. Bush ventures into the inner cities to practice his conjugal noblesse oblige, perhaps he should beeline to a more rural spot — a split-level ranch house with green shag carpeting and Grateful Dead albums in Burlington, Vt.

The doctors Dean seem to be in need of some tips on togetherness and building a healthy political marriage, if that's not an oxymoron.

Even by the transcendentally wacky standard for political unions set by Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Deans have an unusual relationship.

She is a ghost in his political career. She has never even been to Iowa, and most reporters who have covered Howard Dean's quest here the last two years would not recognize her if she walked in the door, which she is not likely to do, since she prefers examining patients to being cross-examined by voters and reporters.

The first hard evidence most people had that Howard Dean was actually married came with a startling picture of his wife on the front page of Tuesday's Times, accompanying a Jodi Wilgoren profile.

In worn jeans and old sneakers, the shy and retiring Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean looked like a crunchy Vermont hippie, blithely uncoiffed, unadorned, unstyled and unconcerned about not being at her husband's side — the anti-Laura. You could easily imagine the din of Rush Limbaugh and Co. demonizing her as a counterculture fem-lib role model for the blue states.

While Elizabeth Edwards gazes up at John from the front row of his events here, while Jane Gephardt cheerfully endures her husband's "Dick and Jane" jokes, while Teresa Heinz Kerry jets around for "conversations" with caucusgoers — yesterday she was at the Moo Moo Cafe in Keokuk at the southernmost tip of the state — Judith Steinberg has shunned the role of helpmeet.

Many women cheered Judy Steinberg as a relief and a breakthrough. Why should she have to feign subservience in 2003, or compromise as Hillary Rodham and Teresa Heinz did when they took their husbands' names? But many political analysts said that just as the remote technocrat Michael Dukakis needed Kitty around to warm him up, the emotionally chilly Howard Dean could benefit from the presence of someone who could illuminate his softer side. So far he has generated a lot of heat but little warmth.

And at a moment when he's under attack by Democratic rivals for reinventing his political persona and shifting positions, he could use a character witness on the road to vouch for his core values.

The couple did pose for a spread in the new People magazine, where they revealed that he gave her a flowering shrub for her 50th birthday. "Being practical," he said, "I wanted something to plant in the back lawn."

Even some who admired Dr. Steinberg's desire to stay focused on her own life, healing the sick, still thought it odd that she would be so thoroughly disengaged from her husband's wild political ride, missing the thrilling moments and the poignant ones, like the repatriation ceremony of his brother's remains in Hawaii.

Since the frugal, no-frills couple does not subscribe to cable TV, she has not even seen much of the virtual campaign, and has to go into his Vermont campaign headquarters if she wants to watch a debate.

"What will she tell their grandkids?" wondered one political reporter here. "Yeah, Grandpa was once a front-runner for president with crowds all over America cheering him but I was too busy to go see it?"

It will be interesting to see, if her husband falters, whether the exigencies of politics will require her to make a house call on his campaign.

Physician, heal thy spouse.

Copyright © 2004 The New York Times Company