The news that Elizabeth Dole is considering running for the US presidency is producing euphoria in the Republican Party, excitement in the media, and a general cheeriness in the shopping mall.
The rapture is understandable. Elizabeth Dole has all the right stuff, sporting a CV that rivals Vice-President Al Gore's, the Democratic Party's presumed nominee. She was Cabinet secretary twice, a former high-level White House aide, one of the first women to graduate from Harvard Law School (one of 24 in a cohort of 550) after picking up a master's in education from Harvard.
As the wife of former Kansas senator Bob Dole, who ran for president in 1996, Mrs Dole sometimes even turned in performances that were as inanimate as Mr Gore's legendary self-deprecating woodenness.
Other times, on the campaign trail for her husband, she became an Oprah Winfrey, taking the microphone and moving through an audience, chatting and preaching the Republican Party gospel.
So the announcement that she had heard the call made by Republican organiser Earl Cox in an old railroad depot in her home town of Salisbury, North Carolina, has led to the kind of "she could be unbeatable" buzz that attaches to certain characters. (Gen Colin Powell had it, as did former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, both of whom flirted, dithered, and didn't run.)
Mrs Dole is perceived as a moderate, someone more liberal in her views on affirmative action and abortion than her conservative husband. But she is also a heroine to the Christian Coalition.
Her profile as a professional working woman, a woman who has no children, few hobbies, and a disdain for traditional entertaining at home, has obscured her close ties to the religious right, ties that are far deeper than her husband's.
One observer years ago noted Bob Dole seemed to think of God as a junior senator from an unimportant state. Not Elizabeth.
Some 17 years ago, Mrs Dole underwent a period of inner turmoil and self-assessment. She tells the religious groups to whom she often speaks that "my life was threatened with spiritual starvation" and that she had to choose between career ambition and spiritual devotion. "There came a time when I had to confront what commitment to God is all about," Mrs Dole tells audiences.
She now travels with a turquoise leather Bible. In 1996, campaigning for her husband, she turned to a reporter who was accompanying her and asked: "Is God important in your life?"
But Mrs Dole's halo will come under tough scrutiny in a bruising national campaign. And she will have some serious explaining to do about her tenure, since 1991, as the $200,000 president of the American Red Cross, a position she announced she was leaving this week to consider her future.
The American Red Cross is a huge organisation, with an annual budget of $2.2 billion and 31,000 paid staff.
In the 1980s, Red Cross blood banks came under much criticism for failing to administer tests to detect HIV in blood. A number of people were infected with tainted blood during blood transfusions during routine surgeries, and many died. Lawsuits were filed, and most settlements were made with confidentiality agreements that prevented the details from being made public.
In one such lawsuit filed in Los Angeles a well-known television producer, whose mother had died from a tainted transfusion during surgery, produced evidence the Red Cross had made an administrative decision not to test all blood because it was too expensive. (The cost would have been about $33 per test at the time.)
The controversy proved too much, and the Red Cross eventually promised to ensure the safety of the nation's blood supply. It has done so, but imperfectly.
In June 1991, the Red Cross closed a laboratory in Portland, Oregon, for allegedly supplying HIV-tainted blood to local hospitals. The Red Cross took the action only a day after a man who had been infected sued for $10 million.
Earlier, the Red Cross had refused to shut the facility, even after the Food and Drug Administration threatened to close it, citing lax record-keeping as one of the ways infective blood could find its way to hospitals.
There will be other minefields that will bring into question Mrs Dole's commitments to public health. Both Elizabeth and Bob Dole are closely aligned with the tobacco industry. Mr Dole's former chief of staff, Roderick DeArment, is a senior partner in the law firm representing the major tobacco companies in their fight against regulation.
In 1996, Mr Dole received more than $330,000 in campaign donations from those companies.
But what about Elizabeth? In 1987, while serving as Transportation Secretary in the Cabinet, Mrs Dole refused to ban smoking on airplanes, ignoring recommendations from the US Surgeon General and the national Academy of Sciences.
Moreover, the tobacco companies have escalated their contributions to the Red Cross during her tenure. From 1990 to 1995, the three leading tobacco companies donated $231,427 to the Red Cross. In 1995 alone, as anti-tobacco sentiment was growing and calls for regulation were increasing in Congress, they donated $265,530 to the Red Cross.
In contrast to the polished image of the Red Cross, there is the reality of how efficient its delivery of services really is. In Honduras in the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch, there was minimal Red Cross presence on the streets and in rural communities. Many asked: "Where is the Red Cross?"
Late last year, the Minnesota Attorney General issued a scathing report accusing the organisation of failing to deliver relief to flood victims in the 1997 Red River valley floods.
Mrs Dole, who has never been elected to public office, will find a presidential campaign unlike any other appointment. She will face these and other uncomfortable questions if she decides to run.
