Posted on 05/18/2002 10:27:32 AM PDT by Dallas
PRAGUE, Czech Republic --
First lady Laura Bush has come a long way -- 4,895 miles -- from the political-wallflower image she carried into the White House 16 months ago.
In her overseas debut, Mrs. Bush lashed out at Palestinians who incite teen-age suicide bombers, rose to defend her embattled husband and let it slip that she greased a pet project through the executive bureaucracy with a single phone call.
"Right now, while my husband is president, I have the responsibility to talk about issues that I think I can make a difference on," Mrs. Bush said before leaving Hungary for Prague on Saturday.
It has been a familiar line for American first ladies since Eleanor Roosevelt set the standard for championing a cause. But playing it safe was how Mrs. Bush acted, sticking to speeches about childhood learning and literacy.
Just last week, Paris' Le Figaro newspaper welcomed Mrs. Bush to France with an article observing, "Laura listens more than she speaks."
Until now.
In Paris, she condemned Palestinians who deploy young "martyrs" strapped with explosives to Israeli markets and bowling alleys. In Budapest, Hungary, she scolded her husband's critics and accused them of using the Sept. 11 victims' families as political pawns.
There is not much political risk in condemning terrorists or defending one's husband. But this is a woman who busied herself with two weeks worth of household chores at the Bushes' remote Texas ranch just 10 days after they moved into the White House. "Nice" and "ladylike" were the two words most people came up with when asked about Mrs. Bush in a Pew Research Center poll last July.
In that same survey, 61 percent of respondents said that, compared with previous first ladies, Mrs. Bush had less influence with the president on matters of policy and politics.
So who could have foreseen her diving into the Mideast crisis and political furor over the president's pre-Sept. 11 briefings?
Jeanne Phillips, for one.
"I think she has surprised people. But I've known her for 20 years and I think she's remarkably the same. Her friends, we all know she's very smart, very direct," said Phillips, the U.S. representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.
Pew director Andrew Kohut expected Americans will now see more and more of Hillary Clinton in Mrs. Bush.
"They've seen Laura Bush as someone distinctly different from Mrs. Clinton and not being involved in decisions or her husband's presidency in a policy or politics sense," he said.
"Mrs. Bush may now be in the process of redefining herself. Given the high esteem she has in the public eye, I don't think it will undermine her popularity."
No doubt cognizant of the sharply divided public opinion that Mrs. Clinton courted as first lady, Mrs. Bush appears ambivalent about revealing too much of the influence she herself wields in the West Wing.
Telling reporters about a U.S. grant to produce school uniforms for Afghan girls, Mrs. Bush volunteered that she called Labor Secretary Elaine Chao for the money. The first lady then hesitated on a follow-up question on whether she made up Chao's mind for her. "I think so," Mrs. Bush replied, softly.
During a visit to a cancer hospital in Budapest, Mrs. Bush insisted that women worldwide be given "access to important health information and resources."
But she gave an ambiguous answer when asked to square that with the Bush administration's refusal to release a scheduled $34 million U.S. contribution to the U.N. Population Fund, which conducts family planning, HIV prevention and maternal health programs internationally. The president has said the organization may be involved in forced abortions in China -- a contention its supporters reject.
At first, she suggested some knowledge of the issue by interjecting that only some of the U.S. contribution was blocked. "I understand the administration's position on it," she said. But when pressed to say if she believes the U.N. group is involved in abortion, she professed: "I really don't know that much about that issue."
In another discussion last week with the White House press contingent of her traveling entourage, Mrs. Bush laughed at an invitation to contradict the president's opposition to putting U.S. peacekeepers in Afghanistan.
"I think I'll defer to the president, and to the secretary of state, and to the secretary of defense, and to the national security adviser, and all of those other people, first, before I make any recommendations," Mrs. Bush said.
Hungary's Nepszabadsag newspaper asked about the political advice she gives the president.
"Obviously, I'm not his adviser. I'm his wife," she said.
Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press
This could never happen, Mrs. Bush is too much of a lady!
Something the power mad Mrs. Clinton could never say and mean it. Comparing this gentle lady to Mrs. Clinton is not only ridiculous, it is abusive, a press pipe dream and wrong! You can start with Laura Bush is a lady with class something the callous, unyielding, winsome-as-an iron-foundry Mrs. Clinton could never achieve, the one thing she would really like to have other than power is class. It ain't a'gonna happen!
I hate journalists...
BTW, I like Laura a lot, but why do we taxpayers have to cough up big bucks for first ladies and their entourages to travel all over the world? They're not doing anything useful - just sightseeing at our expense.
What utter nonsense. Hillary Clinton was and remains an abomination. The 8 miserable years she disgraced the White House and the country has nothing, absolutely NOTHING to do with setting a standard by which current and future First Ladies are viewed. Correction: Hillary's time will no doubt head the short list of Worst First Ladies in our history.
Photos of our decidely non-wallflower First Lady in Europe this week:
I think not. Mr. Kohut obviously is delusional. Laura Bush is the polar opposite of her pushy, shrill, power hungry predecessor.
I must disagree, the main thing she would really like to have and of course never will is a tallywacker.
First of all, she's NOT just sightseeing, she's going to be met by the President to go to the Putin's in Russia. As long as she needed to travel anyway, she went a little early to get in the speech.
Most First Ladies travel as US good will ambassadors. Face it, many europeans don't like America very much. Can you think of anyone who could meet Laura Bush and not like her?
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