It Takes Two.

• Author: CLIFT, ELEANOR

Tipper and Laura aren't Hillary, and why that good for Al and W.

ONE OF THE LEAST TALKED ABOUT challenges facing the candidates for president and vice president in this election is getting the spousal relationship just right. America does not want to see a "Father Knows Best" marriage of the 1950s (think Ike and Marnie Eisenhower); nor is it fully prepared for a Me Jane, You Tarzan power-sharing duo like the Clintons. Happily for George W. Bush and Al Gore, they seem to have found mates who split the difference. Laura Bush and Tipper Gore are strong personalities, far from the demure damsels in the shadows of presidents past, yet they are simultaneously supportive, shoring up their husbands' weaknesses with their own strengths. If Laura and Tipper could change places with their husbands, Laura would inject a needed dose of seriousness into the GOP, and Tipper the likeability that is lamentably absent on the Democratic side.

Hillary's giant step toward expanding the possibilities for a first lady earned her equal portions of admiration and hostility from a public coming to grips with major social change against a backdrop of renewed longing for traditional roles. The women of the 2000 race will tread more carefully. But they are compelling personalities in their own right, and the legacy they leave will reflect the tugs and pulls of the baby boom generation. Boomer women's resumes reflect the advances women have made in the workplace. But the leavening effect of growing older has prompted some rethinking of spousal roles in a more traditional framework.

Nowhere is this more obvious than on the campaign trail. "The women seem more human, more approachable, more rounded, more like the rest of us than the men," says Barbara Whitehead, a co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. "But they are cast in very familiar roles, and they're staying far away from the big issues of the day. It's an interesting strategy."

And it's not only that. Mothers on the youthful side of boomerdom, who are just beginning to work through the nightmare juggling act that having kids and a career demands, are apt to resent the Hillary model for its insistence on having it all, when sometimes this just isn't possible. Even women who are more capable than their husbands find that they are the ones making the bulk of the career sacrifices when the kids arrive. It may be nature, it may be nurture, it may be right, it may be wrong--but it happens. We're not quite ready for Hillary: What we're ready for is the smart, independent, thoughtful Mom who has seen the virtue of sacrifice in the interest of a healthy family--and who has managed to do this without turning herself into a doormat.

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