Intelligence

Laura Bush now a heavyweight

TheStar.com - Laura Bush now a heavyweight

President's wife is his biggest asset

ROSIE DIMANNO

NEW YORK—Laura loves George.
And, to an immeasurable degree, that makes the president likeable, too, even among those who otherwise revile George W. Bush as an inept chief executive, war-mongering spawn of Satan, nincompoop.

J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/AP
First Lady Laura Bush stands at the podium last night during a sound check as twin daughters Barbara, left, and Jenna look on at the Republican National Convention.

It humanizes him, his wife's quiet steadfastness; the serenity with which she carries herself, her calm self-assurance, on display these past few months as never before, the First Lady — a title she loathes — embracing with apparent enthusiasm her job as cheerleader-in-chief on the campaign trail.

America needs her husband in the Oval Office for four more years, she told a luncheon in her honour here yesterday, portraying the president as a man of strength and conviction, admittedly to a wildly partisan audience of Republican women.

"How do I know? Because I know George W. Bush.''

Indeed, no one can know him more intimately. And this is the unassailable quality she brings to the re-election effort: the obvious bias of a spouse but a view legitimized by personal integrity.

Mrs. Bush was introduced by her 22-year-old twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, a nicely orchestrated role that the attractive young women, seeming to enjoy their Big Apple introduction to a public life as extensions of their father, repeated last night from the podium of the Republican convention.

"There are few women as graceful and gracious as my mom,'' said Jenna, at the earlier function, citing her mother as the inspiration behind her own choice to pursue a career in education.

Added Barbara, the shyer twin: "My mom knows all women desire the opportunity to live in freedom and be successful and she's been a powerful force for women around the world.''

Summoned to the stage, Mrs. Bush joked about how pleased she was that the girls' belated involvement in the campaign had provided an opportunity for them to "say how much they love me — and in public no less!''

On a day when compassion rather than war justification was the overarching theme, Mrs. Bush wasted no time focusing on the social issues that she has championed — in her reserved fashion — during her husband's first term: health, education and global women's rights.

These may be safe, home-and-hearth, non-disruptive matters, the kind that routinely fall to a First Lady. But Mrs. Bush, as a former teacher and librarian, does come to them honestly. She is intelligently informed on classroom crises. She was a passionate advocate on behalf of Afghan women, even before the war that routed the Taliban. And, displaying the new edge that has characterized her recent campaigning, she even took a none-too-subtle swipe at John Edwards, the lawyer turned Democratic vice-presidential candidate, in an observation about health care: "We don't want to be afraid that our doctor will lose her office because trial lawyers have made it too expensive to practise medicine.''

But mostly, it is Mrs. Bush's challenge here, and throughout the campaign, to resurrect the compassionate conservatism that characterized her husband's first presidential campaign, before he became Mr. Combat Macho.

It's a tricky assignment, given that the Republicans are so insistent on showcasing the president's wartime leadership and the centrality of the war on terrorism, contrasting their guy's toughness with John Kerry's waffling.

Outwardly, Mrs. Bush appears transformed on the hustings this time around, much more the political animal, quite comfortable in the spotlight, and not so averse to controversy; she's been far less disapproving than most of the notorious Swift Boat ads currently smearing Kerry's war record. And she's a money magnet in raising funds for the Republican coffers.

From retiring wife, preoccupied with raising her children and pursuing her own generally sedentary interest, she has turned into Bush's biggest asset, a campaign heavyweight despite all her surface daintiness.

"She's incredibly important to the campaign,'' Ken Mehlman, manager of the Bush re-election effort, told reporters recently. "She appeals across the board, she appeals across the country, she appeals to our base, she appeals to swing votes, she appeals to Democrats.''

Hillary Clinton has described Mrs. Bush as "adorable," and she wasn't being snide.

A recent Pew Research Center poll gave Mrs. Bush a 70 per cent approval rating.

It does not work to cast Laura Bush as the un-Teresa or the anti-Hillary. She is emphatically not a Stepford First Lady, not at all the traditionalist many perceive her to be, the only presidential spouse other than Clinton to have earned an advanced university degree. And she doesn't gaze at her husband with adoring eyes, in the ridiculed manner of Nancy Reagan. It was Laura, in fact, who pointedly chided George for his "Wanted Dead or Alive'' statement about Osama bin Laden, observing that it was a tad too Texan. On another occasion, years ago, Bush drove his car into the garage door after she criticized one of his speeches.

She is, however preternaturally calm, also something of a sly subversive, in her own fashion, with personal views that would probably shock the GOP, should she ever unleash them. As she did, memorably, on the day after her husband's inauguration, telling a TV interviewer she didn't think the Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion should be overturned.

Mrs. Bush is cerebral, but not radically so, a liberal Democrat until her marriage 27 years ago, at the age of 31, following a whirlwind courtship. But only after eliciting from her suitor a promise that she would never have to make a political speech on his behalf, a vow that barely lasted beyond the altar, as she spent her honeymoon helping her husband campaign for a congressional seat. He lost.

Her formidable mother-in-law, Barbara Bush, tells the story of George bringing home his fiancée to meet the extended, boisterous clan. The then-matriarch of the family, Barbara's own mother-in-law, demanded of the young woman: "And what do you do?'' To which the prospective daughter-in-law said: "I read, I smoke and I admire.''

Laura Bush insists she never said any such thing, beyond the reading part. But Barbara Bush remains adamant in her recollection.

In any event, she certainly doesn't smoke anymore, not even in the company of close friends, many of them Democratic holdovers from her small-town girlhood in Texas and collegiate days at Southern Methodist University.

She remains largely unquantifiable, fiercely protective of her privacy even as a hugely public persona. Reticent and self-contained as an only child, she became even more quieted and reflective as a teenager, following a traffic accident that she caused — ran a stop sign she never saw — resulting in the death of a fellow-student in another car. This early exposure to tragedy, her biographer theorizes, echoed with her future husband, who lost a younger sister to leukemia when he was seven.

Otherwise, they would seem to have had so little in common: He a hard-drinking carouser, she a popular but subdued career woman. It was in 1986 that Bush gave up booze, although not, his wife insists, after a "Me or Jim Beam'' ultimatum.

One thing is obvious, though. George Bush would never have become president without her, would likely never have matured beyond Bush Boy — as he was known when they met.

During a video presentation at yesterday's luncheon, the president repeated a statement he's made on more than one occasion. Talking about the various reasons why he should be re-elected, Bush said: "Perhaps the most important reason is so that she'll be the First Lady for four more years.''

Additional articles by Rosie DiManno

September 1, 2004 at 08:04 AM in US | Permalink | TrackBack (265) | Top of page | Blog Home