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MARRIANE MEANS: I'm sorry that it has taken us, men and women alike, nearly 200 years to face up to the double standard that has been applied to the sexes. Our troubles started back there in 1776, in that smoke-filled room in Philadelphia, where there were only four fathers and no four mothers.

It's been tough for women in politics and every other profession of power since. Millicent Fenwick who was elected to Congress from New Jersey last fall, recalls that she was the first woman ever elected to her state legislature, and she was not greeted with enthusiasm.

On her first day, a male legislator approached her on the floor and observed sarcastically that he always preferred women who were sweet and smelled good. She replied that she preferred her men the same way. Then she added, she hoped he wasn't as disappointed as she was.

[LAUGHTER]

Men are slowly adapting to our new status as humans, but even the liberals are wary. When I asked Senator Adlai Stevenson of Illinois how he viewed women's liberation, he replied, nervously. Men have dominated the public scene and the marketplace of ideas for so long that they are naturally reluctant to move over and make room for us.

Thomas Jefferson described women's proper place 185 years ago. "Our good ladies, I trust," he wrote, "have been too wise to wrinkle their foreheads with politics. They are contented to soothe and calm the minds of their husbands returning ruffled from political debate." Jefferson's position was entirely respectable for his time. He also kept slaves.

The current occupant of the White House has progressed somewhat on that subject from the thinking of the American Revolution. Gerald Ford officially supports the effort to win ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. He has appointed the first woman to the cabinet since the Eisenhower administration and the first woman to head the National Labor Relations Board.

Ironically, this is the same woman who was turned down previously for the post of its general counsel by President Nixon on the frank grounds that the job was too sensitive to be held by a woman. He did not veto a recent bill passed by Congress to make it illegal to discriminate against women in credit status, which with his record for vetoing everything in sight is something of a plus.

Ford has made, however, little effort to enforce the affirmative action programs, which under law, are supposed to be carried out in all the executive departments. Women hold only 4.5% of the federal jobs at grade 13 or above. Grade 13 is the level at which officials begin to acquire authority for policy-making decisions.

This lack of women at the top, where, of course, the salaries are the best, is not due to the fact that women are not working. Nearly one-third of all federal employees are women, according to the latest Civil Service Commission figures.

But they have not been given their proportionate share of promotions, nor has the president displayed any interest in improving the dismal record of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in getting colleges and universities to end job discrimination through affirmative action programs, as also required by law.

And he has firmly opposed congressional efforts to establish a program of government-financed child-care centers. He has named a few women to positions above that of secretarial inside the White House, but none has the full title of special assistant, and none has independent authority over her special field.

The president's worst performance, however, was his unnecessary reaction to Betty Ford's candid remarks about the changing relationships between men and women. He should have kept his mouth shut. Instead, he demeaned his wife and betrayed a nervousness about her candor on a sensitive subject, which I think says more about his own character than hers.

Whatever happened to that man who envisioned himself as a modern Harry Truman, unafraid to talk frankly about controversial matters and let the chips fall where they may? It appears that he would apply one standard to himself and another to his wife. The president predicted Riley that she had lost him 20 million votes. He told reporters that she was misunderstood and issued his own version of what she had said, which didn't resemble what she had said in the least.

The whole episode, in fact, is pretty much what the movement for equal rights is all about. It is about getting rid of the old hypocritical double standards. The double standard was applied to Betty Ford in a painful way. The male CBS correspondent who asked the first lady about such intimate aspects of her family life as her feelings about her husband's possible interest in other women and her opinion of her daughter's possible sex life has never dared to ask the president such embarrassing questions, yet he is the husband and father.

And the interviewer asked only how the first lady would react if her daughter, Susan, had an affair. He did not pry into the private sex lives of the Ford sons who are also unmarried. Yet, Susan, like the two sons, is over 18 and legally considered an adult capable of living alone and holding a job, and voting and drinking. But daughters are apparently in a different category than sons.

Despite the progress of the women's movement, females are still primarily sex objects in a society in which men control the marketplace of ideas. They are therefore, fair game. Men, on the other hand, are entitled to their privacy. My own profession, as the Betty Ford example, illustrates has been among the worst in the great female put-down.

Television, radio, newspapers, and magazines continually distort the image of women and project the idea that women are invisible in society, that their influence is limited to their own inner circles, and that their sexuality is still the only interesting thing about them. The media, as a whole, has a horrible attitude toward hiring women for a high-level professional tasks.

The equal rights laws of the past decade have pressured newspapers and television into making token appointments of women in the past years, but discrimination is still widespread in the industry. One of my favorite stories about the days before the Equal Rights Movement involves an old friend, a highly-intelligent and competent writer for a national magazine, who was assigned several years ago to cover the visit to America of Balazar.

You remember Balazar. He's the Indian camel driver that Vice-President Lyndon Johnson befriended on a world tour. There were some 15 reporters assigned to the story, all of them male, but my friend. After the first day, the camel driver turned to the Vice-President and suggested he would like to see the reporter woman in his room after dinner.

The Vice-President said he didn't think that would be possible. Why not? Is she married? the camel driver asks. No, she isn't married, the Vice-President replied. Well, the camel driver declared, in India, there are two kinds of women, married women and, er, ladies of the evening.

And so the Vice-President of the United States had to explain that in America, there are three kinds of women, wives, ladies of the evening, and members of the press.

[LAUGHTER]

Television is even worse than the newspapers in treating women as chattels. It was only a couple of years ago that the revered and distinguished Eric Sevareid was asked in an interview show what he thought about the women's desire for equal rights. He shrugged and replied, who understands women?

The only way the pattern of discrimination is going to change is if women force it. It is now against the law to discriminate on the basis of sex in every aspect of life. And the courts will force compliance, but it is a slow and tedious business. And each case has to be fought individually.

The Equal Rights Amendment, when it is passed-- and I hope it will, will speed up that process. The law is our only hope. I have personally benefited from the changing laws in a very special way. In 1972, the Higher Education Act forbade federal funds to any school which discriminated in either enrollment or in the hiring and promotion of teachers.

Not much progress has been made in the hiring and promoting end, frankly. But there has been a revolution in the enrollments in professional schools, which previously required women to be twice as good as men to enter. Since the new law, each year, more than twice as many women as in any previous year have been admitted to the nation's law schools.

Before that law, George Washington University Law School in Washington never had a class in which more than 6% were women. Under those conditions, I doubt that I could ever have gotten into that school. But since then, at least one-fourth of each entering class has been women. And so I am now in my third year in night law school, cutting class today, of course.

It is, of course, one thing for me to rattle on about discrimination and quite another thing for women to cope with it as individuals and change it. Just talking about ERA to some men, for instance, makes one realize that half of them think you are talking about Earned Run Average. [LAUGHTER]

It's something like the professor who went to President Roosevelt during World War II and said that he knew how to solve the problem of the Nazi U-boats attacking Allied ships. Good, said the President, what's your plan? The plan, the professor said, is to pour lots of hot, scalding water into the ocean, and fry all the subs to a crisp.

Wonderful idea, said the President. How do we do that? That's your problem. I'm just the idea person, said the professor. And none of this, do I mean to suggest, that I think if women ran the country, they would be more politically pure and wiser and more moral than men. Indira Gandhi stands as a dramatic counter to that theory. And now we have the country's first female attempted assassin.

But the Women's Rights Movement, for all its weaknesses, is the great social revolution of the 1970s. As the emergence of Black Power was a revolution of the 1960s, it does not necessarily mean that life in general will be any better for most people, or that government will be run more efficiently, or that programs will be more humane. It just means that more women will have a chance to make the same mistakes men have been making all by themselves for centuries.

There are two practical avenues to political power that women are successfully pursuing. One is expanded participation in the structure of the Democratic and Republican parties, at the policy-making, rather than the coffee-making levels. The other is the election of more women to statewide offices.

The United Nations has proclaimed this to be International Women's Year. The fact that it was deemed necessary to set aside a special year is ample evidence of our lack of important participation in all other years. As a practical matter, it has really meant nothing. An international women's conference in Mexico deteriorated into squabbles and silliness, and as far as I can see, accomplished no more than it had been an all-male conference.

President Ford didn't even get around to naming his official delegates for Women's Year until the year was half-over. But International Women's Year doesn't really matter any more than National Pickle Day sells more pickles. What matters is that the movement, once started, cannot be stopped.

I have to add that in Washington, not everyone has been thinking only about women's rights. It has been a fantastic year, which followed, of course, an even more fantastic year. It seems incredible to look back and realize that President Nixon resigned only a little more than one year ago. When President Ford took over, he faced a massive crisis of confidence, a pervasive disbelief in the processes and the people of Washington.

The President has gone a long way toward quieting that crisis, but I don't believe it's really totally over. Worries about energy and inflation have replaced the disgust that most of us felt when we discovered we had elected a crook to the highest office in the land. There is a feeling of confidence now, I think, in President Ford's honesty and earnestness and decency. But I sense no real confidence yet that he can run the country.

The President is a dedicated, fiscal conservative, a man devoted to retreat and retrenchment in these times of economic chaos. It is not entirely clear that is the right course. Congress and the Democrats, however, can't seem to get it all together to provide a viable alternative.

I asked Senator Edmund Muskie the other day, after he had spent much of the month campaigning in Maine, what the people were saying. Do they blame Congress, or the President for the economic mess? I asked. Both, he said. At the moment, the President and the Democratic Congress are just as deadlocked over an energy policy as they have been all year.

Price controls on domestic oil have expired because Congress was unable to overturn the President's veto of a bill that would have extended controls on at least some domestic oil for six months. Congress is now trying to muster up enough votes to pass a 45-day or a 60-day extension of controls. But Ford has said he will only go for 45-day controls.

It appears that the Democrats will have to go along with the President's insistence on allowing fuel prices to rise in hopes that high prices will reduce consumption. But with controls removed, the oil industry is at least temporarily in charge of price setting. And that gives a lot of people a nervous twitch. Whatever happens, it is bound to affect the presidential election next year.

Currently, it is common political wisdom in Washington that President Ford is a cinch to win re-election, but I am not so sure. The election this week of a Democrat in New Hampshire means that there, at least, Ford has not gotten his message across. And there are too many imponderables, like the possible shortage of oil and gas this winter.

This fall, the headlines are making it appear that Ford is wildly popular. The smiling president is here, there, everywhere, making speeches and vetoing bills, conferring with important foreign leaders. In the meantime, the Democrats have too many presidential candidates who are too little known. But the election is more than a year away, and in politics, that is an eternity.

The president's popularity over the last 12 months has bobbed up and down and will continue to do so. But for all the bobbing, he has slipped steadily lower. He was welcomed last year with the approval of 67% of the voters. But last month, Louis Harris reported that only 38% of the public now gives him a positive job rating.

But for a while longer, Gerry Ford will look good because you can't beat someone with no one. But when there is a Democratic nominee, that will change, and it will become a real contest. I certainly would not dare to predict whom that nominee will be. It would be far too premature. But I do believe that the primaries will produce the candidate, and that there will be no necessity for a brokered convention.

That, of course, lets out Hubert Humphrey as a presidential possibility. He has assured me and others that he will not run in the primaries. And so his only prospect would be to emerge as a compromise in a deadlocked convention. But the conditions simply do not exist for a prolonged deadlock, like the one at Madison Square Garden in 1924, which went beyond 100 ballots.

At the last five Democratic conventions, a candidate has been chosen on the first ballot. What is most likely to happen is that the two or three leading candidates will barter it out among themselves and settle it on the second or third ballot. A brokered convention in which some person like Humphrey who has no delegates could emerge, presupposes that there would be third-party brokers who are so powerful as to impose on the party a candidate who has not sought the election.

Where are these people today? Outside of Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, there is no longer a boss worthy of the name. And the repeal of the unit rule has curbed the power of favorite sons to deliver state delegations in return for suitable favors. The brokers will be the remaining candidates themselves, and they will pick one of themselves.

Therefore, it will not be Humphrey or Muskie or Ted Kennedy. It might amuse you to know, by the way, if you do not already, that George McGovern is going around saying that his idea of the ideal ticket next year is Humphrey McGovern, in that order. You see how politics can change in such a brief time.

I spoke with Senator Humphrey last week, and he says he would quite frankly like to be president, as I guess everybody knows. But he also does not believe that a convention deadlock which would lead to his choice is likely. He is, however, very much enjoying all the speculation about him and the flattering words being written about him, even though he said he knows it is just a temporary phenomenon.

He said he believes that the pundits have turned to him because they like to play guessing games until the primaries give them real candidates to talk about. There are those, of course, who believe that Humphrey will not be able to resist the temptation of running again. But I am inclined to take the Senator at his word and count him out.

The issues next year will be complicated. Few of us, including the candidates and those in Congress, really understand the intricacies of international finance behind the oil price policy. There is a great disagreement between the president and the Democrats on the best way to get people back to work and stop inflation at the same time. Each side is supported by solid principle, eloquently articulated, and a collection of economists who claim to know it all.

Mr. Ford says, spending is inflationary, yet the largest single increase in the federal budget this year is for unemployment insurance, which is now running more than $20 billion annually. The recent tax cut cost another $22 billion. That's $42 billion or enough to create five million jobs through public works.

The president wants to cut out much of federal government regulations. He wants to kill or reduce and indeed, has done some already, many of the social programs that Congress has passed in the past two decades. He wants tax breaks for big business to stimulate industry. The Democrats want to sock it to business and spend federal money to provide jobs and better social programs.

Does it sound familiar? It ought to. Most of it, so far, is warmed over new deal rhetoric with phrases like energy tossed in to make it sound modernized. You will have to listen carefully in the coming year to weed out the baloney, and there will be a good deal of it. I am reminded of a story about a senate candidate who made a speech shortly before the election to a group of Cherokee Indians gathered in a cow pasture.

He promised them better job opportunities. "Hoya hoya," they shouted. He promised them better education. Hoya hoya," they shouted again. The candidate didn't know what that meant, but they seemed friendly, so he supposed he must be doing all right. When he finished, he left the small outdoor platform and began to cross the field to the spot where he had left his car.

A local Indian official rushed up to him and warned solicitously, watch out for the hoya.

[LAUGHTER]

Let us hope it will not be another year of the hoya. We have had so many. And on that note, I will conclude. Thank you very much.

[APPLAUSE]

SPEAKER: In a question and answer session, following her prepared remarks, syndicated columnist Marianne Means responded to one listener's portrayal of some women's leaders as shrill.

MARRIANE MEANS: For instance, the Democratic convention, the women were so shrill in 1972 that I think they really turned a lot of people off. But I do think that the women's movement has grown up, and that, often, when you're starting something, you have to be shrill to get attention.

And for instance, the chairman of the Democratic convention next time will be Congressman Boggs from Louisiana, who is the widow of the former House Majority leader. And she is a lady and not shrill. And she has never been in the forefront-- I mean, she's for equal rights, and she votes that way, and she's always done things herself and run things.

But I mean, she is a dignified personification of an intelligent political person. And that will be quite a contrast, I think, with the appearance of these two shrill women that you're talking about in the 1972 convention.

SPEAKER: Means was asked to speculate on which Democratic presidential candidates are viable.

MARRIANE MEANS: Well, you see, there are now 10 candidates who have either announced or have set up committees. They can't raise a penny without setting up a finance committee. So some of them clearly are not going to go anywhere. I think we can say, Milton Shapp, the governor of Pennsylvania is one. I mean. I don't think he'll have the majority of delegates in Pennsylvania, myself.

But Terry Sanford has been unable to-- even though he's been a candidate for a year, he's been unable to raise sufficient funds to get the matching federal funds. He has to do that, really, by January or February, or he might as well forget the whole thing. And it doesn't look good. He's already in debt. I really don't think he's going to make it.

Jimmy Carter, we will know about very early because his big tests will be in Iowa, where he has done an awful lot of work. He's been to Iowa, I'm told, seven or eight times. It's a convention state, as you know, so he's working on the caucus so he doesn't have to do a statewide popularity thing.

If he does well there, and then his big test will be in Florida against Wallace. If he can knock off Wallace in Florida, or even, I guess, run, even he will be a viable candidate. If he does not do either of those two things early, he's finished.

Lloyd Bentsen is a very intelligent man and really, presence-wise, would make a good presidential candidate. He was born in South Dakota, by the way, although he grew up in Texas. And everybody thinks of him as a Texan. But the other day, he spent so much money and apparently gotten little reward for it.

The other day, he, in effect, conceded publicly that he was going to not run a national campaign, not go into the northern primaries, and instead, just sort of be-- try to be a regional favorite son, try to get the majority of the delegates in Texas where he has a problem with Wallace and some of the other border and some of the southern and southwestern states, and come in with a block.

And so, in fact, what he was conceding by saying, he was just going to do a regional race, is that what he's really after is the vice-presidency and not the presidency. I don't think that any man who has not proven that he has a proven national base by running and being-- doing well in primaries in all the regions, can conceivably win the nomination, so I guess he's out.

So let's see. I pretty well eliminated-- oh, Fred Harris. Fred Harris is-- Fred Harris also has not raised his minimum for the matching funds, which indicates-- I mean, it's been so easy for so many of them that it really does indicate a lack of national support. And he's staking everything on New Hampshire. He's moved to New Hampshire.

And he's gambling that if he wins in New Hampshire, it'll be such a marvelous thing. Everything will go on in neon lights, and he will become a hot candidate. I don't know. I can't-- I don't know how New Hampshire will do in that sense. But he's taking everything on that one state, and that's very risky. And I wouldn't say the odds are that good.

So who am I left with now? Process of elimination, I'm left with Scoop Jackson, who does have a national base, who has money, who has a good organization, is the best known of the crowd, is an experienced, qualified fellow. He doesn't make a good public appearance. He talks-- he doesn't have any life on TV. He's not terrific that way, so that may be a handicap, I don't know. But on paper, he's far and away ahead.

And Birch Bayh and Sargent Shriver-- Sargent Shriver is going to announce on Saturday, and Birch Bayh will announce sometime next month. I don't know. Both of those are unknown quantities. Both of them have raised their matching funds already, I'm told, and they haven't even announced formally.

They're both very personable, intelligent people with some national exposure. Bayh has a lot of labor support. So I would think that-- I guess I come down to Jackson, Bayh, and Shriver as the strongest as I see it today.

SPEAKER: Someone asked Means if she sees Jackson, Shriver, and Bayh as being more attractive to women.

MARRIANE MEANS: See, I won't go for that. I don't think-- women don't look at politicians any differently than men. I mean, some women will look at them this way, and some women won't. I mean, we don't-- I don't think women look at politicians-- I mean, women view things as-- from a monolithic point of view, so-called women's point of view.

I think that liberal women will go for one of the two guys. And maybe those a little more conservative might go for Jackson. I don't know.

SPEAKER: Means was asked if she thought President Ford's remarks about Betty Ford's interview hurt his public image.

MARRIANE MEANS: Well, I wrote a column saying some-- sort of the same thing that I said here and supporting her and criticizing CBS for asking a question in the first place, and so forth. And I really got a fantastic male response on both sides. People got very exercised about it on both sides. And the writers were neither all-female or all-male or anything.

So I don't know. I would guess that it would-- it'd split. It's one of those little furores, and everybody's interested in it, and it passes. I mean, people are going to vote for Gerald Ford on whether they think he's running the country well or not. They're not going to vote on him because his wife says things that maybe she should not have said. I don't know.

SPEAKER: One listener wondered whether Means took Senator Mondale's statement about withdrawing from the presidential race at face value.

MARRIANE MEANS: Well, you don't hear much about him because he said he wasn't going to be a candidate. And you know us, we just write about our candidates. That's what Humphrey was saying. He realizes that he's getting all this-- everybody's writing about how he'd be perfect and what a marvelous man he is, and all this flattering stuff, even by people who hated him three years ago.

It's because there are no real candidates yet. And so people have fiddled around with Teddy, and Teddy has finally convinced people he really isn't going to go. He's going to run for re-election. And Humphrey is convincing people that he's not going to go. And so the attention will turn to real, live candidates.

It's really interesting how fickle we are, though. I mean, everything was Mondale. Everything-- and every time Mondale sneezed, he was in the papers. And then he announces, I'm not a presidential candidate, nobody goes near him.

SPEAKER: Means was asked if she thinks the new TV programs, such as Maude and Fay, helped the women's movement.

MARRIANE MEANS: Oh, yes, I think so because they're showing women in other roles other than just a supplemental one, like a housewife or something. But Kate McShane is a lawyer. And they're showing them in a variety of roles, just like we see men in a variety of roles, which is the answer.

SPEAKER: The next question, do you sense that some of the president's vetoes are in repayment for support that Republicans have gotten from corporate America, particularly oil?

MARRIANE MEANS: As far as the vetoes goes, he genuinely believes that the government is the evil force, and it should not spend so much money, particularly on these social programs that he has been vetoing. So that's just-- I mean, that has been his philosophy all of his political career.

So he believes it now. Whether that's taking us in the right course or not to solve this country's problems is an answer that we have to face in the election, so I think that's sincere.

SPEAKER: Means was asked to elaborate on her remarks about a Humphrey McGovern ticket.

MARRIANE MEANS: Say, take X gets the presidential nomination, what he wants to do is name a vice-president who will help him get votes, right? I don't see McGovern helping anybody get any votes. So therefore, I would think he would turn to somebody, conceivably like Lloyd Bentsen or whoever runs second or something like that, who would have some strength in the country.

And I'll remind everybody about 1972 again. Things happen, and we go in political cycles and so forth. And it's conceivable that a few-- some elections from now, we could have a Kennedy-McGovern ticket or something, but not next year.

SPEAKER: Someone asked Means to comment on Nelson Rockefeller's subordinate vice-presidential role.

MARRIANE MEANS: All vice-presidents, from what I've been able to observe, have a terrible time with the job. Humphrey had an awful time with it. Johnson, in his turn, he had an awful time with it. Agnew didn't seem to mind so much because he just played golf and didn't really care, I gather, and took money in white envelopes.

But-- the thing about Rockefeller is that he has come in at a time when there is so much political things to do. And Rockefeller is a good politician. And he will spend all next year campaigning, so there will be something for him to do.

And the difficulty comes when you have-- you're in the middle of an administration, and the roles given to vice-presidents or so, amorphous and unimportant, and he's subject to-- and every president says, I'm going to give my vice-president real things to do. And then they give them titles and things, and then they don't let them have any authority.

So if Rockefeller is on the ticket, and if the Ford-Rockefeller ticket wins, then his problems begin. But for the moment, he says he's going to campaign practically every day of his life for the next year.