ELIZABETH DOLE FOR PRESIDENT?

Is she a liberal feminist in disguise?

By MATT ANDREWS

Her husband was on the national ticket three times and lost. But that hasn't stopped 62-year-old Elizabeth Hanford Dole -- with her husband, Bob's encouragement -- from flirting with the idea of making a Presidential bid. Despite the fact that voters have already thrice repudiated many of the stands on the issues that were embraced by the Doles when Bob ran on a national ticket -- including against Clinton in 1996 -- another bid for the White House seems to be their destiny.

One thing is certain: an Elizabeth Dole run for President would generate instant excitement. "You've got 18 nominees po-tentially and one of them wears a skirt," notes former aide Cindy Williams.

On the stump, Mrs. Dole offers plenty of red-meat conservatism to red-meat conservative audiences, and they gladly gobble it up. But a look at her history tells a different story.

She got her start working as a volunteer in the Kennedy-Johnson campaign in 1960 and then, after Harvard Law, joined lbj's Office of Consumer Affairs. She stayed there when President Nixon assumed office in 1969, and in 1973, was sent to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

In both positions, she pursued the policies of an activist liberal. She backed regulation and trust-busting at the FTC. She called for a Consumer Protection Agency, the mainstay of Ralph Nader's crusades. She has said that government programs were necessary "to replace the outmoded and socially irresponsible notion of caveat emptor." She insisted "no one in our society is more unjustly maligned than the bureaucrat."

A soft but pervasive feminism runs throughout her career. In the 1960s and '70s she used federal power to stop what she re-garded as scams against financially inexperienced women. In the 1980s she often cheered the "tidal wave" of women entering the work force.

At the start of the Reagan administration, she led efforts to promote "comparable worth," the feminist notion that government should set and enforce a "fair" wage for secretaries in relation to bosses.

She was proud to establish an on-site day-care center at the Department of Transportation. Mrs. Dole has also long shown a commitment to "diversity," including the use of preferential treatment based on race and sex.

Named by the Gallup Poll as one of the world's most admired women, Mrs. Dole has been an activist head of the Red Cross. She visited Kuwait following the Gulf War to assess Red Cross services provided to military personnel. In 1992, she visited Red Cross relief operations in famine-stricken Somalia and Mozambique, as well as in war-torn Croatia. She led a fund-raising effort that has generated more than $562 million to assist victims of disasters like hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes and storms.

The Doles, who once joked about their use of Viagra, now live in Monica Lewinsky's former apartment at the Watergate.

On the campaign trail, Elizabeth (she hates being called "Liddy") seems scripted, plastic, careful not to offend. Her impromptu strolls through the audience are carefully staged.

The last election Mrs. Dole won was in 1958 -- for May Queen at Duke.

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