great Boston Globe article about Dean's wife

Dean's wife would be a new kind of first lady

By Ellen Goodman
BOSTON GLOBE

…

The wife of Howard Dean, former governor and candidate for president, is here taking care of patients while her husband is on the road preparing for another debate. A dark-haired woman, dressed in a simple skirt and sweater, she is at first and second glance the least packaged of candidates' wives. And maybe the least political.

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Indeed, if you want to see this Princeton graduate and daughter of two doctors light up, get her talking about the values of a small, private practice: "If six patients call me with shortness of breath, I can tell which one needs to go to the emergency room and which one doesn't," she says. Dr. Steinberg even, I hesitate to tell you, makes house calls.

In some ways, the Deans are like millions of American families working out their own set of rules. Dean may be the college favorite, the hip candidate, but his wife laughs, "Hip is not the word our kids would use for him." He may be speaking on a national stage, but when he got home from his last trip, he did his own laundry - including some shirts that his wife says archly, should have gone to the cleaners.

At the same time, this couple presents something new to politics. We've been through a generation of changing roles and relationships, running through a Rolodex of candidate's wives and first ladies from a repressed Pat Nixon to a two-for-the-price-of-one Hillary Clinton. Now the Deans ask us to imagine a candidate's wife or a first lady who simply goes about her own, independent life. Not out of political pique, but out of professional commitment.

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http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/opinion/7060817.htm

Is America ready for a jewish first family?

I wonder.

I am sure some will and mostly that she is a working women in a good job. The people who like stay at home women will really not be for her. I got in trouble here about saying I do not think a Jew could get an awful lot of votes in the South but that is because I lived their years ago and who nows how things stand now. Plus she is not running, yet I have known many people who will not vote for a man if they do not like his wife.What a job for anyone to want.

there will be many women who will vote for her, even stay at home moms, because the healing profession is a good one to which women aspire. Her commitment to her patients will also help, as will the fact that she, like all doctors in private practice, are also small businesspeople. I can't see BushCo making points with her Jewishness, because so many of the right wingers are supporting Israel.

how does it feel when the tables are turned?