First Door on the Left

Judith Steinberg Dean is her own person, thank you very much.

She manages a bustling medical practice in Burlington, Vt., that she simply can’t abandon to play the waving wife while her husband, Howard Dean, runs for president. Interviews, likewise, are rare, and brief — tortured almost.

Steinberg Dean, admittedly, enjoys getting prodded by reporters as much as the average person enjoys getting prodded by doctors. As she said a couple of months back, “I’m just too busy.”

Still. There are ways for busy, shy doctor spouses of presidential candidates to help out now and again. The other day, Steinberg Dean, in one of her first public actions of the campaign, pitched in her way: She wrote a letter.

Specifically, she wrote a two-page fundraising pitch to “target donors” in which she explains her absence from the campaign trail and gives her take on why her husband became such a great governor of Vermont. The letter was first reported by ABC News.

Both explanations are about being doctors. “As a doctor and a partner in a medical practice,” she writes in her pitch, “I have a responsibility to my patients. That’s why my time ‘on the campaign trail’ is limited; when people are sick they want and need to see a physician.”

As for why her husband makes such a good politician?

Why, he is a doctor, and thus has the empathy and compassion and ability to make important decisions. “Howard is an excellent physician,” she wrote, “and we make a great team. I think Howard was a better governor because of his experiences as a doctor.”

The Dean campaign said the target donors in question are past donors large and small.

A spokesman, Sue Allen, said Steinberg Dean will continue to contribute to the campaign “in her own way.”