Staten Island, New York - Americans love perkiness, and the media adore it, especially in an upbeat »New Yorker who also embodies that rare combination in politics: feminist and Republican......

In foreign affairs, Miss Molinari remains an outspoken critic of the world's cautious response to civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and she is seeking stronger U.S. resolve to prevent ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, the Albanian-dominated region controlled by Serbia. As chairman of the Republicans' tiny Balkans Crisis Task Force, she favors punitive air strikes against Serbian cease-fire violators and has called for the resignation of the United Nations secretary-general, Butros Butros Ghali, in part because she believes war crimes are not being effectiveIy prosecuted. "Our kids and our grandkids are going to wonder about this generation of Americans that allowed this atrocity to occur," she says.In New York and Washington circles, the Susan Molinari story is fast approaching legend. Both her grandfather and father served in the state legislature. She was 16 when her father was elected to Congress. After college, she went to work for the Republican National Committee in Washington. By age 26, she had be

en elected to the City Council. At age 31, she won a special election to Congress after her father left the seat to run for borough presidant. Her first marriage, to a limousine company operator, dissolved quickly. Now she is about to marry a man whom she boldly asked out a decade ago and who, earlier this year, proposed to her on the floor of the House of Representatives, where both serve.