The Bitch Is Back
That does not mean I'm losing patience with polls. I was having dinner two weeks ago with a French journalist who, apropos of a Franco-American couple we know whose marriage is exploding, made a midway-through-the-Calvados pontification: "AhŠ," he sighed. "No one should ever marry a French man or an American woman." I signed off on part one, disagreed on part two.
If I'd read the revealing poll on first ladies done by Princeton Survey Research Associates last week, I would never have rushed to the defense of American womanhood. "What one word," PSRA asked, "best describes your impression of Laura Bush?"
Since PSRA had asked the same question of Hillary Clinton five years before, the poll allowed us to draw some interesting comparisons. The largest differences were on matters of decency: 72 people considered Laura "nice," versus only 13 for Hillary.
But let's leave aside adjectives like "nice," and "okay" and "good," along with matters of intelligence, on which both first ladies scored high, and get to the adjectives that give a deeper character comparison between the two. Laura's top adjectives were: ladylike, classy, quiet, conservative, loyal, motherly, dignified, elegant. Hillary's were: bitchy, bossy, aggressive and domineering. A followup question asks: "Thinking of the last four American first ladies, who comes closest to your idea of what a first lady should be?" And by this measure, Hillary (bitchy-bossy-domineering) beat Laura (motherly-dignified-elegant), by 31 percent to 6 percent.
That's enough to change one's opinion. Never marry a French man or an American woman.