I'M Nobody, Who Are You?

By MARGARET CARLSON

A wife newly arrived in Washington knows life has changed for the worse when she attends her first cocktail party and the photographer asks her to step aside while he snaps a picture. For Janis Berman, wife of California Congressman Howard Berman, the initiation was even ruder. She called several weeks in advance to tell the hostess of a party welcoming the Bermans to the capital that she would be stuck in Los Angeles that day. After ascertaining that the Congressman would be in town, the hostess briskly told Berman, "That's O.K. We'll just go ahead without you."

Betty Wright has a different -- and more serious -- problem. Although the wife of Speaker Jim Wright says she has a head for business, the House ethics committee could find little evidence that she used it in her $18,000-a-year job with Mallightco, the company founded by the Wrights and Fort Worth businessman George Mallick. Lawyers like a paper trail; they uncovered "no reports, no correspondence, no notes of telephone conversations, no investment ! analyses" by Mrs. Wright. The committee suspects Betty Wright's job of being a conduit for $145,000 in cash and gifts to the Speaker.

Marianne Gingrich, whose husband Newt is the House Minority Whip who initiated the Wright inquiry, is herself being scrutinized for her role in promoting Gingrich's book Window of Opportunity. Part book (co-authored by a science fiction writer), part polemic, part tax shelter, Window lost money for its investors, but earned the Gingriches $12,018 in royalties and Mrs. Gingrich $11,500 in salary. When asked about this at a press conference last week, Marianne stomped out in tears.

A congressional spouse should have a leg up socially and professionally; instead it is like having one foot shot off. "No one takes you seriously if they bother with you at all," says Jo Ann Emerson, wife of Missouri Congressman Bill Emerson and deputy communications director of the National Republican Congressional Committee. In Washington ignoring most of the women at a cocktail party is considered an efficient use of networking time. Let John Warner and Elizabeth Taylor walk into a room, and all the suits head toward the Virginia Senator. Taylor describes her three lonely years as a congressional wife as a kind of hot fudge hell. Food -- lots of it -- substituted for having a life. She blew up to 180 lbs.; Halston designed caftans for her. "Not only is a Senator's wife not heard, she's pretty much not seen," Taylor complained.

If one of the most famous women in the world cannot make a life for herself in the capital, it is not surprising that others have a hard time. Says Berman: "You are typecast as unimportant, and you have maybe 30 seconds in any encounter to overcome that." Berman says she gave up her job as acting director of the California Museum of Science and Industry to move to Washington after her husband was elected in 1982. "At an orientation for congressional spouses, there was a lecture on how to live with a celebrity. I wanted to stand up and say, 'Wait a minute, I used to be a celebrity.' "

Although many congressional wives work (there are no husbands in the Senate, a handful in the House), finding a job can be difficult. Says Emerson: "Unless an employer is looking for special access through you, you just look like trouble -- someone who will want all congressional recesses off, will have to travel back to the district to campaign on weekends, and might not be here two years later if your husband loses." Heather Foley, wife of Majority Leader Tom Foley, solved the problem by taking a job -- gratis -- in her husband's office.

That's one way to see your spouse. Emily Malino, wife of New York Congressman James Scheuer, complains, "Staff members want all of your husband. They'll schedule on weekends, birthdays and anniversaries." One wife recommends working in the office as marriage insurance. "With adoring staff all around, your husband might not want to come home to reality."

Like Betty Wright, most Washington wives are invisible until their principal gets in trouble. Pat Nixon held the title for most stoic wife until Maureen Dean gave an Oscar-winning performance during her husband's Watergate testimony, sitting primly behind him, blond hair pulled back, holding the Nancy Reagan gaze before there was a Nancy Reagan gaze. Former Attorney General John Mitchell's wife Martha took to telephoning reporters and was forcibly sedated. Rita Jenrette, whose husband John was convicted for taking bribes in Abscam, used her 15 minutes of celebrity to pose in Playboy, reveal that she and John had known each other very well on the steps of the Capitol and land a role in Hollywood's Zombie Island Massacre.

Many Washington jobs raise conflict-of-interest questions. When Barbara Morris Lent took a job as a lobbyist for NYNEX, her husband, Congressman Norman Lent, sought approval of the ethics committee to vote on telephone legislation. Lawyer Marc Miller, author of Politicians and their Spouses' Careers, says, "Full disclosure and making sure the spouse got the job for her own talents help resolve the conflict." When Debbie Dingell, a lobbyist for General Motors, married Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell in 1981, she switched to an administrative job. "I'm sensitive to conflicts," says Dingell. "Fortunately, GM is large enough that I could change jobs."

Several spouses have got into Betty Wright-like trouble. In 1976 Marion Javits, wife of the late Senator Jacob Javits, had to forgo a lucrative contract with Iran Air. In 1984 Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield's wife Antoinette ran into trouble when Greek businessman Basil Tsakos paid her $55,000 for decorating his apartment, which seemed like a lot for choosing fabric swatches and paint chips, while her husband was simultaneously urging federal support for Tsakos' $12 billion oil pipeline.

Some couples reduce potential conflicts by both working for the government, an arrangement the checks and balances of the Constitution did not contemplate. When Elizabeth Dole was Transportation Secretary, the couple made intragovernmental history when she testified before husband Robert Dole, then Senate finance chairman, on "Alternatives to Tax on Use of Heavy Trucks." The subject matter renders plausible his protestations that there was no after-hours collusion between the executive and legislative branches of the marriage. "When you get home at 8:30, the last thing you want to do is get into business." It is equally unlikely that Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Wendy Gramm and her husband Senator Phil Gramm, famed for the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit limits, ponder the line-item veto during their off hours.

Elizabeth Taylor coped with Washington by leaving the city and the Senator. Berman has stuck it out and may eventually get sweet revenge. Her tack is the mighty pen: working at home, she has sold to CBS a tell-all television series titled Inside Capitol Hill.