While Steinberg's unbreachable devotion to her career is an attitude that will surely resonate with feminists and professional women, there is the faintest whiff of family values in her desire to stay at home rather than hit the campaign trail. It's that whiff that might make her appeal to the people Hank Sheinkopf calls the "Nascar men, this election's swing voters, who care about family."

"'I don't give advice,'" Goodman quotes Steinberg as saying. Goodman continues, "What she does is practice medicine and run a home." Clift described the family dynamic this way: "When [Dean]'s home from the campaign trail, they don't talk politics, they talk about their two kids."

"Judy hates politics! Hates it!" said Nelson. "She is just not interested."

Steinberg herself could have been reciting part of the 1953 Wellesley College "marriage lectures" featured in the upcoming "Mona Lisa Smile" when she told Clift, "We took a long walk and we discussed should he run. I thought my role was basically to say, 'Yes, the family could handle this. Go ahead if this is what you think you should do.' I certainly wasn't giving him advice about whether he should do that or not. He was asking, 'Would it be OK for the family?'"

It's clear that Steinberg's lack of interest in political life is more about having better things to worry about than it is about deferring to her man. But it might just play as the spoonful of traditionalist sugar that could make the idea of a Jewish scientist first lady who refuses to abandon her career go down a little easier in middle America.

Still, Steinberg's claim -- that should her husband win the election, she wouldn't stop practicing medicine, nor would she travel very much or play host to foreign dignitaries -- strikes some as pretty unrealistic, if not naive.

"All good intentions aside, I don't think she would really be able to continue working as a doctor if she became first lady," said presidential historian and first-lady biographer Carl Anthony, who said that he's in the midst of working on a dramatic television character who is a potential first lady who's made the same choices as Steinberg. "Can you imagine the Secret Service in a hospital, checking out every ambulance that pulled up, every person in the waiting room? It could be a little bit of a difficulty."

Anthony noted that the last first lady who actually abstained from traditional duties was the bright but tubercular Eliza Johnson, wife of Andrew Johnson.

Whether or not Steinberg's intentions could ever be converted into professional reality, the fact that she has voiced them has already gotten her noticed.

"I think we are at a place where we in this country understand that women work outside of the home. And that it would in fact make sense for a first lady to have a job of her own that was separate and apart from her husband's," said Wolfson, who added that "it may well be a selling point." But, he continued, "it is a separate question whether or not Ms. Steinberg -- Dr. Steinberg -- can go through a campaign without campaigning."

Sheinkopf agreed: "Keeping her medical practice is a good thing. Not participating in the campaign is not such a good thing," he said, in reference to the ways in which a voting public needs to warm to its candidates. He maintained that regardless of her desires, Steinberg cannot stay hidden forever. "After the Clintons, is the press corps going to let her get away with being a non-person? I wouldn't hock the house on that one."

Steinberg's spokesperson, Susan Allen, says that Steinberg will put down her tongue depressor and join her husband on the stump soon.

"She will do television. She understands she needs to do television," she said, confirming that there is a list of network journalists already lined up to sit down with Steinberg.

The Deans have said that they are invested in protecting their children's privacy, and that may be one of the reasons that Steinberg has shied away from doing a lot of press. Paul's brush with the law this summer -- he got caught driving the getaway car for four of his friends who were stealing alcohol from a local country club -- was one of the only incidents that has brought Steinberg into the public eye so far. She accompanied him to the Burlington police station, and later appeared with him and Dean in court. (Paul Dean was sentenced to a court diversion program along with his friends.)

Once Steinberg does become more visible, the question of her religion is sure to be raised, just as it was with Joe and Hadassah Lieberman in the 2000 election. But what impact it will have on voters -- if any -- is debatable. Though Howard Dean was born a Catholic, raised Episcopalian, and became a Congregationalist, he has said that his two children "consider themselves" Jewish and celebrate Jewish holidays. Asked whether a religiously divided family would have an impact on voters, Sheinkopf said, "I don't think it matters that much. He's not running for pope. In a post-Kennedy Catholicism era, voters tend to be pretty reasonable about religion."

Those voters who do take issue with an interfaith couple likely won't be voting for Howard Dean anyway. And in certain places, Steinberg's background is certain to be a draw. "As they get to New York, it makes a lot of sense to showcase her," Sheinkopf said. "She's not just Jewish but a professional woman, which will be helpful."

Carl Anthony says that this early in the election cycle a candidate's family usually doesn't play such an important role. "You're going to start seeing a lot of that [family reporting] when Newsweek and Time and People do their cover stories, like, 'Judy Dean: Is There a Doctor in the House?'" he said. "But you've got to remember that we didn't know that Chelsea Clinton even really existed until a week before the Democratic Convention in 1992. Once it seems like someone's definitely going to get the nomination, that's when you'll see Judy Dean's recipe for challah bread somewhere."

Nelson disagreed. "She is a private person dedicated to her patients and her practice and when Good Housekeeping calls for her Christmas cookie recipe I don't think she's going to play along. I mean, Hillary rose to the challenge. But I don't think Judy will."

The truth, though, is that with or without baking tips, the supposedly recalcitrant Deans are way ahead of the game. In September, Steinberg actually sent a campaign-fundraising letter on behalf of her husband, the first three paragraphs of which were devoted to explaining why she would not be campaigning with him.

"This letter is my first public campaign activity for my husband, Howard Dean," the letter began. "I am a doctor, not a politician, and Howard to his great credit has never expected me to campaign for him. As a doctor and a partner in a medical practice, I have a responsibility to my patients. That's why my time 'on the campaign trail' is limited."

This earnest expression of "No campaigning please, I'm helping sick people," was brilliant -- and subtle -- political posturing.

In many ways, Hillary Clinton, who was listed as one of the country's top 100 attorneys before her husband became president, is the most obvious corollary to Steinberg. But in fact, what the Steinberg-Deans may provide is an antidote to the um ... intimacy of the Clinton administration.

The Clinton marriage was a spectacle from Day 1, which could be traced to their joint appearance on "60 Minutes" in which they did damage control on the Gennifer Flowers situation and admitted to having had bumps in their marital road. Hillary gave up her law practice, instead fulfilling the couple's two-for-one campaign promise and attempting to reform healthcare. It didn't go very well.

"What Hillary Clinton has always said [of being first lady] is that this is a role not a job," said Wolfson. "Everybody remakes it in a certain way."

The one thing the Clintons always got right was the handling of their daughter Chelsea. Even a vast right-wing conspiracy could not assail the grace with which they kept their adolescent offspring's life private; and the press, which has gleefully ripped apart everyone from Patti Davis to Amy Carter to the Bush twins, kept a respectful distance.

It's as if the Deans have taken the protective bubble that was fitted for Chelsea and wrapped it around their entire New England home, sending only the patriarch out into the biting world of media and high-stakes campaigning.

"We may be at a place in this country where people feel like we've kind of gone too far in the boxers or briefs direction," said Wolfson. "The Dean campaign is obviously betting that we have."

Recent Stories