Life of a campaign wife

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32879, 30 March 1972, Page 5

Life of a campaign wife

(By

RICHARD T. STOUT)

NEW YORK. Among all the wives of campaigning Presidential hopefuls, Jane Muskie is the only one who has become a campaign issue. The attractive 45-. year-old wife of the Maine Senator, Mr Edmund Muskie, did not want it that way. “I learned a long time ago,” she says, “I don’t want to put my foot in Ed’s mouth.”

But something like that occurred when Jane Muskie was campaigning for her husband in New Hampshire. At the end of a gruelling day, she was bantering with reporters and, according to Women’s Wear Daily, said: “Let’s tell dirty jokes.” She called her husband “Big Daddy,” and confessed .a fondness for two drinks before dinner. It all seemed out of character for a mother of five who grew up as a smalltown Baptist girl and later was converted to her husband’s Roman Catholicism. When a newspaper publisher made political capital of-the quotes, Senator Muskie wept in public as he denounced him.

“I was sorry,” Mrs Muskie says. "I was sorry he had to spend his time defending me. I want to help” him. My husband isn’t my hobby. He s my life.” UNEXPECTED TURNS

The Muskie campaign has taken some unexpected turns since then. But lane Muskie is still campaigning beside her husband, as she as for almost a quarter of a century. And her lively, forthright personality remains intact despite the rigours, and pitfalls, of politicking.

They met while she was a sales clerk in a dress shop in Waterville, Maine, and he was an ambitious young legislator. He was 13 years older and, in her customarily frank way, she says she worried that the age difference might be a “barrier.” It was not. “The nice part of our relationship over the 24 years,” Mrs Muskie says, “is that I really respect him as well as love him.”

She was 26 when her husband won the governorship and she became the First Lady of Maine. Mrs Muskie had two young children and a 32-room mansion to care for. The strain told, and she developed ulcers. Later, a painful varicose-vein condition began which still troubles her, especially at the end of a vigorous campaign day.

But her large brown eyes remain bright with good humour and her skin is as flawless as a movie queen’s. At sft 4in, Mrs Muskie is plumpish despite daily drills in yoga which find her balancing on-her shoulders in hotel rooms along the campaign trail. NO SPELLBINDER On her feet and speechmaking, Mrs Muskie is no spellbinder. But her wifely belief in her husband comes through when she tells listeners they should vote for Senator Muskie “because when you look into his face you know he’s honest and stands for truth in government .. .... he has a great sensitivity about him, a rapport with people.” She greatly admires Eleanor Roosevelt and the role she played in the White House. It is through her public statements on Mrs Roosevelt that Mrs Muskie reveals most about her beliefs. ’ , ” -•- “Nearly 40 years ago,

Eleanor Roosevelt set her priorities for America,” she says. "And they could almost be mine today—peace, the abolition of poverty, a concern for youth, women’s rights, and the rights of minorities generally.”

. Her concern for women’s rights has not made her an outspoken women’s liberationist. “I consider myself a liberated woman,” she says. “My husband’s career has given me a career,” Her only public disagreement with Senator Muskie is about legalised abortion, which he opposes as a birthcontrol method. “I think its a matter of personal choice,” she explains. "My husband sees its in a, more legal way —the foetus and the child to exercise them for them. 1 have some rights but no-one think it should be between a woman, her conscience, her doctor, and the father.” AS FIRST LADY?

The Muskies’ eldest son, Steve, aged 23, left his photographer’s job on a Maine newspaper to become a fulltime campaign worker. Another son and three daughters occasionally join them on the hustings. And if it leads to the White House, how does Jane Muskie view herself in the role of First Lady? “I’d like to be my husband’s pulse,” she says. “When a men is put in the White House, he gets cut off from the people who sent him there. I would take time to go out and meet young citizens, senior citizens, people who feel they are not in touch with leadership.” But she quickly adds: “Ed does not need anybody speaking for him or representing him. What I would see as my function is that he would not be isolated, because if he were he would be a different man. And I don’t want a different man.”—Newsweek Feature Service.