Remember the Year of the Woman? Well, it's beginning to look as if 2000 will be the Year of the Wife. Elizabeth Dole is nearing a run for the Presidency, to the delight of many Republican strategists. And Hillary Clinton is -- famously, teasingly -- thinking about the Senate. The part of me that relishes a cinematic plot turn in real life loves the very idea. These are, after all, perfect big-screen story lines. In this President Dole story, Bob would be self-sacrificing husband, consigned to wistful observation of his wife's rising star -- because, hey, it's her turn now. In the Senator Clinton story, Hillary would be the girl scorned in high school who shows up at her reunion in splendor, humbling her old tormentors and winning a seat on the Appropriations Committee while "I Will Survive" crescendos on the soundtrack. You'd have to be a killjoy of the dourest hue not to see the fun in it.

And I'm not, really. But I was a teen-ager in the 70's. And it's in the spirit of that era's egalitarian feminism -- the very one in which Hillary Clinton, cosmetic-free Yale law student, came of intellectual age -- that I find this latest brand of political dynasticism lamentable. Sure, that period produced some risible cultural flotsam, but its emphasis on female autonomy and possibility was bracing. (Still, I drew the line at gynecological self-examination courses.) That sensibility is precisely what's missing from the new wifeocracy, in which a woman's own political career is an outgrowth of her husband's.

What does it say about American political culture that our two most promising female candidates derive much, if not all, of their star power through marriage? Yes, I know, the ultracompetent Dole was Secretary of Transportation during the Reagan Administration and Secretary of Labor during the Bush Administration. But Samuel Skinner and John R. Block and Terrel H. Bell and Lauro F. Cavazos were all Cabinet Secretaries in those Administrations, too, and nobody's talking about what formidable Presidential candidates they would make. As for Hillary, she probably should have run for office on her own strengths years ago. Now, though, both women are, in the old-fashioned sense, better halves.

We know them because they filled the role of political wife, which, like the image of Betty Crocker or Aunt Jemima, keeps getting updated but never really transformed. We like them for the ways they complete their husbands' images, often with traditionally feminine virtues. In the 1996 campaign, Elizabeth Dole was supposed to be the warm people-person, the one who waded into campaign audiences, Oprah-style, and reminded her husband to smile more, whereas Bob Dole was aloof and self-contained. (This was before he started chatting to the nation about erectile dysfunction.) Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has achieved her maximum popularity by appearing to compensate for all her husband's shortcomings: since Gennifer, and Paula, and Monica, and Juanita, she looks more upright, more like the embodiment of beleaguered wifely morality than ever.

And yet, to run successfully, both women will have to show sides of themselves we have not seen lately, and that may not fit our fantasy of who they are in relation to their husbands. Hillary Clinton won't be able to stand above politics and Bill, as an icon of dignity and forbearance. She'll have to run a tough campaign that may remind voters of the old sharp-elbowed Hillary they didn't like quite so well. And Elizabeth Dole's sugary, Southern charm will only carry her so far; who wants a magnolia, even a steel magnolia, for President?

I can't resist the the old feminist rhetorical trick of reversing the equation. Could a man launch a national political career primarily as the "husband of"? Would he want to? Not likely. For one thing, female politicians don't tend to marry men with ambitions to office. (They often seem to hook up with businessmen, who stay behind the scenes and raise money for their campaigns. Sometimes, of course, those business connections are trouble: think of Geraldine Ferraro, Enid Waldholtz, Carol Moseley-Braun.) More important, though, political husbands barely constitute a category unto themselves. They're not expected to affix themselves to their wifes' sides and wave that parade-float half-wave. We'd think it was slightly embarrassing if they did. And so, paradoxically, they cannot turn marital status into political capital quite as easily. If a woman were to be elected President, no First Gentleman could maintain a Dennis Thatcher-like low profile. But so far, display-quality political husbands are an untested entity.

In a way, the same double standard applies to all working couples. A husband who launches his career by drawing on his wife's connections (like men who earn less than their wives, or who stay at home) makes many people uneasy -- even people who would be surprised to hear themselves admit it. What's the deal with him, anyway, they wonder? Why can't he stand on his own two feet? Most of us are reluctant to ask such questions about Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Dole. Maybe, in the name of fairness, we shouldn't be.