Can Their Kids Really Either Hurt or Help Bush and Kerry?

Mary Voboril, in Newsday (Oct. 18, 2004):

Ronald Reagan faced four alarming negatives in the 1984 presidential campaign, all but one named "Reagan."

Here he was, running for re-election, and his daughter Maureen was an in-your-face supporter of abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment, both anathema to Reagan and his conservative base.

Daughter No. 2, Patti Davis, backed the nuclear freeze movement, smoked marijuana, had flaunted a live-in relationship with a member of The Eagles rock band, married her yoga instructor and, in a mutinous break with her father, had adopted her mother's maiden name. By 1984, Ron Jr. had ditched Yale for the Joffrey Ballet, a move that provoked lingering whispers about his sexuality and is said to have embarrassed Reagan.

And Reagan's elder son, Michael, working as a salesman in aerospace defense, had sent letters to would-be clients that played up his White House ties, precipitating a father-son rift that endured until Reagan was re-elected.

And re-elected in a landslide.

So, did it all really matter?

In terms of presidential kids and the potential harm they pose, "that's about as disastrous as you can get - yet Reagan carried every state in the union except Minnesota," says Doug Wead, author of "All the President's Children" and a campaign staffer for George H.W. Bush in 1988. That year, Wead reported to yet another candidate's kid with a less- than-pristine past: George W. Bush, also working on the elder Bush's campaign.

In the 1984 race, "all four of them had an issue," Wead says of Reagan's kids. That Reagan annihilated Democrat Walter Mondale on Election Day, he adds, "is a good example of how little it matters, I suppose: If kids could hurt a campaign, you'd think that would be it."

That suggests there's not much to lose and possibly a great deal to gain by having John Kerry's daughters, two of Kerry's three stepsons and, despite some well-publicized foibles, the Bush twins on the campaign trail this election cycle....