Henrietta Hay's Column

The conventions are over, all three of them if you count PeeRow's, and now we have two months of fun and games to listen to.

Most of my friends roll their eyes when I get excited about elections. I have always thought that politics are more fun than Bronco games, but this year I'm not so sure.

Both conventions were remarkable TV infomercials, and we had eight days of intense, meticulously scripted campaigning. The problem was, it was hard to hear the speakers because the commentators were so busy telling us what the speakers were saying. One thing I did wonder: who blew up all those balloons? We know where they got the hot air, but what did they do with the latex when it was all over?

The conventions had their moments, though. Where but at a Democratic Convention would you have hundreds of delegates of all ages, colors and sizes, led by a dead-pan vice-president, standing up doing the Macarena?

Between them, the conventions set the women's movement back twenty years. In recent years women have added new dimensions to their lives. In addition to home and family we have let our other talents expand, and have become involved in the affairs of community, state and nation. We are members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, Cabinet officers, Governors. Our issues are everyone's issues: taxes, war and peace, environment, the deficit.

But this year to appease the far right and to lure the women's vote (so they thought) we were pushed back down into the "little woman" role. As both parties rush to the "Family Values" center we find that once again that if you are a woman - any woman, regardless of brains, status, achievement or position in life - in politics you are still a symbol.

The Republicans filled the platform with more than 40 women speakers. Not to be outdone, the Democrats won with 50. I suppose that's progress, since not too many years ago women weren't allowed on the podium at all except to hold hands with the candidates and wave. But the women who spoke this year were very carefully programmed and family and child oriented. They were weapons in the power game and this year the game was seeing who could push the "Family Values" button harder.

Susan Molinari is a modern, smart, attractive pro-choice Republican woman. She has been, so far as I know, a good Congresswoman, but her role as keynoter was not as a member of Congress, but as the far right's symbol of motherhood. They even brought her tiny three-month-old baby to be held tenderly by her father and to receive almost as much TV time as her mother. I like Susan and her baby is beautiful, but they both deserved better at San Diego.

Elizabeth Dole is a Harvard educated attorney, the president-on-leave of the American Red Cross and a former Cabinet officer. Her convention role was to put on an emotional performance from the floor, hugging delegates and telling us all how much she loves her husband. Oh, please.

Hillary's muted, dignified, "family values" speech was obviously programmed, but she did defend her book. Of course it takes a village to raise a child. No parents can do it alone. Mine didn't in the twenties when I was growing up. Young parents can't do it alone today, when the pressures are so much greater.

What I really heard both parties saying was, "It's OK for women to be in politics, but they'd better know their place," -- which is June Cleaver in a power suit.

Come on now, guys. You're after the "women's vote." OK, respect our achievements and treat us like human beings and not like symbols. It wouldn't even hurt to listen to us as we try to balance our own needs with our responsibility to care for others. I would hate to think that we can be bought with platitudes and gooey sentiment.

At least we got one thing out of the conventions. We all know how to do the Macarena.