THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 27, 1996 TAG: 9608270274
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: 70 lines
Age, Bob Dole said, has its edge.
Yes, life is lurid.
Before my arrival at this hotel, someone placed a life-size image of a Bill Clinton at the registration desk. As I neared the desk, carrying two bags, unable to check my eyeglasses that had slid to half-mast on my nose, through my fuzzied vision it seemed that President Clinton, in his insatiable quest for votes, was registering guests.
He is coming here by train, talking all the way, offering incentives to voters. It's like the Christmas train that chugs through Southwest Virginia while Santa Claus throws candy to children by the tracks.
Hillary Clinton will close tonight's show. On the flight to Chicago, I read her book, ``It Takes a Village.'' Bob Dole drove me to it.
Accepting the GOP nomination in San Diego, Dole said that ``after the virtual devastation of the family . . . we are told that it takes a village - that is, the collective, and thus, the state - to raise a child.''
As the state becomes more involved in the raising of children, he said, they are ``now more neglected, abused, and mistreated . . . with all due respect, I'm here to tell you it does not take a village to raise a child. It takes a family.''
It seemed a cheap shot. She is vulnerable on Whitewater and Travelgate. Is this charge against her book a just one? Asked about it, Sen. John McCain said it was ``just one line.'' But it twice drew roars of derision from the crowd. So I read it.
At times Dole and Hillary Clinton are on the same theme. He lauds family values of the 1920s and 1930s. She found the 1950s tranquil and discovers ``a critical mass of mothers'' in the 1990s.
My generation moved through the day under the eyes of a mass of critical mothers. In the 1950s, when a 10-year-old ``ran away,'' it was only a block to the home of his pal, whose mother fed him supper and notified his folks he'd be home soon. And today's carpooling moms are busier than ever.
But Hillary writes that drugs, broken homes, and a technological revolution, especially on TV, put more children at risk. One in five is in poverty. More than ever, it takes a village to rear a child.
She examines a network of groups nurturing children at the grass roots: churches, civic clubs, PTAs, schools, police, legislators, hospitals. She cites a host of studies by foundations and universities offering advice on helping children.
All along there has been bad with the good.
Hillary Clinton writes that as a child she didn't have a single friend whose parents were divorced, ``but I knew someone very well who was the child of divorce - my mother.''
Her mother's parents, too young for the task, broke up, and the husband sent Hillary's mother, then only 8, and her sister, barely 3, on a train from Chicago to grandparents in Los Angeles.
``When my mother first told me how she cared for her sister during the three-day journey I was incredulous,'' she writes. ``After I became a mother myself, I was furious that any child, even in the safe 1920s, would be treated like that.''
The 8-year-old, ridiculed by her grandmother, ignored by her grandfather, forgotten by her parents, was not without a ``village'' to support her. A great-aunt intervened now and then. A kind teacher gave her an ``extra'' carton of milk every day. When she was 14 she began caring for a family's children in exchange for room and board.
The family encouraged her to finish high school. The mother gave her books to read and and became a role model in what a wife, mother and homemaker should be.
Maybe the usually fair-minded Dole didn't read the book. Some things shouldn't be left to overeager aides.
KEYWORDS: DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION 1996 by CNB