Letting Ferraro Be Ferraro

By KURT ANDERSEN

The candidate's tricky balancing act seems to come naturally

For the first giddy days it almost did not matter who the Democrats' vice-presidential candidate was, just so long as she was a woman. The trail blazing was what counted most, not the trail blazer. Now, however, as the celebration dies down, Geraldine Ferraro is the subject, her every move and remark examined, reviewed, second-guessed. Along with the political etiquette any candidate is obliged to observe, Ferraro must maneuver past the catch-22 that confronts professional women: she cannot afford to seem strident or severe, nor can she seem weak or gushy. She has to appear strong but not hard, good-looking and well dressed but not frivolous or girlish.

As she hit the hustings last week in Boston and Washington, Ferraro seemed to be keeping to that middle road with natural grace. Says John Sasso, her new campaign manager: "Her greatest strengths are her obvious personal values, her warmth and straight talk." In Boston, Ferraro's speech to the National Conference of State Legislatures was deftly pitched. First she was funny about the extravagant, long-winded introduction she had been given ("I couldn't wait to meet me"). Then she turned properly serious, calling the Administration's budget cutbacks "ill-considered," a sober, measured epithet.

Ferraro was refreshingly straightforward as she answered President Reagan's claim, made the day before at a press conference, that "there is not one single fact or figure to substantiate" the charge "that our budget practices victimized the poor and needy." Among other evidence, she cited a new Congressional Research Service study asserting that the first year of Reagan cutbacks pushed 557,000 Americans below the poverty line,* and a recent General Accounting Office finding that 493,000 welfare families have been cut from the rolls completely. At the same time, she accomplished a sly, mid-air twist, showing that she has a sense of humor about the special decorum expected of her. "I want to make it perfectly clear: this is not an attack. I don't want to be called a demagogue. It's the facts."

On a brisk walk through Boston's Italian North End, Ferraro showed a knack for street campaigning. When a vender handed over a cup of Italian ice, she managed to slurp it delicately. As if to remind people she is a mother, she kissed a boy and a girl. That night, in a Washington speech, Ferraro got a good reception from a potentially problematic audience: 8,000 people at a dinner thrown by Alpha Kappa Alpha, a national black sorority. In one well-delivered line she managed to confront and then cross the racial chasm: "I am proud to say that the WHITE MALES ONLY NEED APPLY sign is no longer posted outside the White House."

Ferraro's yin-and-yang public image is not contrived, but it is cultivated. In 1978 when she ran for the House of Representatives from her conservative Ninth District in Queens, N.Y., she commissioned a poll. It showed that the right sort of woman, one who is tough on crime and "speaks out strongly on public issues" but is also well dressed and "ladylike," would face little negative prejudice.

Polls are being taken again, of course, and last week Ferraro got a new set of campaign advisers to interpret the results. Campaign Manager Sasso was an aide to Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis; Anne Wexler, a White House advisor to Jimmy Carter, will be Ferraro's senior political counselor. Along with Mondale's high command, Ferraro's staff will decide how she can campaign most effectively and keep the popular good will from fading. Ferraro also must get her positions in line with those of her running mate; already she has deferred to Mondale's opposition to tuition tax credits for parents of private-school students. She is from Mondale briefing books to prepare for the detailed policy questions that await her, and could rattle her. Congresswoman Ferraro," says Sasso, sounding somewhere between hopeful and confident, "is a quick learner." -- By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Sam Allis with Mondale and Richard Hornik with Ferraro

* The conclusions of the Congressional Research Service are not as precise as they seem. In fact, 557,000 is the difference between the actual number of poor people in 1982 and a computer estimate of how many poor people there would have been if social programs had not been cut.

With reporting by Sam Allis; Richard Hornik