TERESA HEINZ KERRY -- A REAL WOMAN FOR A REAL MAN

Teresa Heinz Kerry, on the record

On her spouse: ''I don't think John could be married to somebody who didn't interest him mindwise, intellectually. He'd maybe play around but not marry them.''

On why she doesn't stare adoringly at her husband when he speaks: ''I have a serious face when I'm thinking. I mean I frown. I have a very expressive face. I hear everything he's saying, if that makes any difference.''

On being first lady: ''People are so funny, they're so strange. They say, 'Oh, you're just like Hillary.' I say, 'No, I'm not at all like Hillary. I'm totally different from Hillary.' They say, 'Oh then, thank God you're not Laura Bush.' I say, 'Why you say that? Laura Bush is a nice lady. You don't know Laura Bush. I don't know Laura Bush. Leave her alone.' People come in with these preconceived notions of what you have to be to be accepted.''

On adding Kerry to her name: ''My legal name is still Teresa Heinz. Teresa Heinz Kerry is my name . . . for politics. Just so people don't ask me questions about so and so is so and so's wife or this and that. Teresa Heinz is what I've been all my growing-up life, adult life, more than any other name. And it's the name of my boys, you know? . . . So that's my legal name and that's my office name, my Pittsburgh name.''

Does everyone just love Teresa the way I do? Contrast this warm, independent, thinking-and-speaking-her-own-mind woman with Stepford Wife Laura Bush. Okay, I'm sure Laura is a perfectly nice woman (Teresa is more charitable than I). But her notions of child-rearing (she didn't want her 18-year-old twin daughters to miss anything other teens experience--such as underage drinking) seem a little off, and watching her on Jay Leno reminded me of nothing so much as my own regrettable youthful beauty-pageant training. Her head turned oh, so carefully so as not to disturb her coiffure, turning first to the audience and then to Jay, her smile and posture never altering one iota, her scripted quips delivered in a properly sweet but puppetlike manner. Teresa, on the other hand, is just as wonderfully feminine, but she is most definitely her own woman and does her own thinking and talking. I can just imagine her response should any PR maven try to tell HER how to behave.

Teresa makes me like and trust John Kerry just that much more. Any man who can be so obviously proud of his wife the way she is and not try to stifle her for politics' sake is a man whose confidence comes from within and is not determined by the opinions of others. I felt that same way about Howard and Judy Dean. In both cases, the couples are obviously true partners. George and Laura (the lump in bed) strike me as a couple where the man is so unsure of his own masculinity the wife is required to subordinate her intelligence and personality (which is a shame since Laura, by many accounts, is much better-read and intellectually curious). That's not a man I could ever believe in, even if I didn't "know what I know."