Posted on 02/06/2004 8:26:25 PM PST by Pokey78
WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 — For three years, Laura Bush has been a decorous first lady who promoted causes like reading and women's health. But if anything makes her bristle, it is the idea that she's viewed as a 1950's-era first lady.
"Have you actually ever read that?" Mrs. Bush said sharply in an interview this week in her East Wing office. "Who wrote it? Some really good friend of mine? Somebody I'd interviewed with?"
The fact is Mrs. Bush is moving into a new role as a prominent surrogate for her husband in his re-election campaign. As the political pressures on the White House intensify, a popular first lady who creates almost no controversy has quietly raised $5 million for her husband's race, vigorously defended him against Democratic attacks — and showed herself to be more complicated and more immersed in White House policy than her public image suggests.
In a nearly hourlong interview with The New York Times on Thursday, Mrs. Bush called Democratic accusations that her husband was AWOL from the National Guard "obviously political," said Bill Clinton believed the same intelligence about Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons that her husband did and characterized Karl Rove, her husband's chief political adviser, as not as powerful as "the chattering class" believes.
"I would say his role is definitely overstated, but he probably loves it," she said, smiling. "He's very happy to have his role overstated."
Mrs. Bush said that she admired L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American civilian administrator in Iraq, for "risking his life to help a country rebuild" and that although she hoped "for the best" when the United States transfers authority to the Iraqis on June 30, Americans should not expect Iraq and Afghanistan to become democracies overnight.
"To think in a few months they're going to be able to get it together," she said, "it's just, you know, unrealistic."
As forcefully as Mrs. Bush defended the president and his policies, she also disclosed there might be distance between husband and wife on some issues. Most notably, she declined to say whether she supported a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, as conservative groups say they expect the president to do.
"I think I'll let him say if he would do that," Mrs. Bush responded. When pressed for her view, Mrs. Bush said, "I might have my own opinion, but I'm not going to tell you."
Mrs. Bush also contradicted her husband on his statement that he does not read newspapers and leaves it to his staff to provide him with what he calls unbiased news.
"He does read the papers, of course," Mrs. Bush said, adding that she and her husband make their way through five national newspapers over coffee in bed and then at the breakfast table each day. "I mean we've read the newspapers for years. It's our morning ritual, since the day we married."
What the president meant, she said, was that he does not read the opinion columnists with whom he disagrees or every part of every newspaper.
"But he reads a lot of them," she said. "And I read the parts he doesn't read — except the columnists."
Mrs. Bush was mostly pleasant throughout the interview in her little-used East Wing office. She said she worked mostly from a desk in the private quarters of the White House.
But she was testy about what her aides describe as her view of an Eastern establishment press that is antagonistic to her husband. When she was told that the campaign was looking tough already, she instantly disagreed.
"Well, I don't know if I would say that," Mrs. Bush said. "I think it's looking tough to people who are interviewing each other. That's the press."
Mrs. Bush's aides say one of her frustrations is that she feels she has been miscast as a throwback first lady who has devoted most of her life to her husband's career and raising twin daughters and that her earlier work as a teacher and librarian have been marginalized by an East Coast elite who view those professions, according to Mrs. Bush, as traditional women's work.
Mrs. Bush, her staff adds, dislikes the phrase "traditional first lady," one that is often applied to her, because its meaning in 2004 is unclear.
In the interview, Mrs. Bush said she enthusiastically supported the decision of Judith Steinberg, Howard Dean's wife, to forgo campaigning so that she could devote herself to her medical practice.
"I think it was great," Mrs. Bush said. "I mean I think she made the decision that was right for her."
Later, Mrs. Bush said she could not imagine why anyone would criticize Mrs. Dean.
"I mean it seems like people would admire that," she said.
Mrs. Bush has not only taken the opposite approach, but also gives a stump speech on the fund-raising circuit that closely mirrors the remarks her husband uses at his money-raising events. At a women's lunch that raised $230,000 for the Bush-Cheney campaign on Wednesday at a plantation house outside Savannah, Ga., Mrs. Bush first told the crowd gathered in a tent under the Spanish moss how she had spent the morning at a nearby hospital talking to women about preventing heart disease.
Then she got down to business.
"The reason I'm really here at this event is because there's something else I hope you'll talk with your friends and your neighbors about this election year, and that's the critical importance of re-electing our great president, George W. Bush," the first lady said, to applause.
Reporters traveling with Mrs. Bush were kept outside the tent, because the White House closes the first lady's fund-raising events to the press. The White House later released a transcript of her remarks.
In her speech, Mrs. Bush went through what she said were her husband's accomplishments — his response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; his drug plan for the elderly; and the No Child Left Behind law that aims to overhaul the education system. She concluded on what the White House sees as Mr. Bush's greatest electoral strength, his national security record.
"Perhaps most important, the president's leadership is making America safer," Mrs. Bush said.
She then flew to Florida, the scene of the election recount in 2000, for an event at a hospital to promote her campaign to make women aware of the risk of heart disease. At a brief news conference afterward, Mrs. Bush was asked why her exercise schedule did not include running with her husband.
"I can't do it, I'm too old," Mrs. Bush, 57, she said laughing.
But she added, "All those years when I would still be asleep in the morning and I'd wake up and roll over and he was running, you know, gone and running, I would feel very guilty, and it would force me to get up and go do an aerobics class or something."
Mrs. Bush lifts weights and works out with a personal trainer at the White House twice a week.
She returned to Washington that same evening by 8:30, when her seven-car motorcade pulled up to the South Portico and a White House bustling like a small village. Joe Hagin, the White House deputy chief of staff, could be seen working through a window in a West Wing still ablaze with light, while six staff members and Secret Service agents crowded around Mrs. Bush as she entered the door of her home.
"It literally is like living above the shop," Mrs. Bush said. "The people I see the most, or the people the president sees, are our staff people. I mean, they're our best friends."
She said she was able to shut out all the activity in what she called the first couple's "private apartment" on the upstairs floors of the White House. Nonetheless, she said, "you are always aware that this is the workplace, as well as the home."
The president was waiting for her upstairs on Wednesday night, Mrs. Bush said, and the two talked about their days.
"We're just like any other married couple," she said. "We talk about everything. We talk about our kids. We talk about our pets. We talk about what we're going to do this weekend. And then, of course, we talk about the campaign, to some extent."
The first lady also said she and the president had many conversations about David A. Kay, the arms inspector, and his testimony that the prewar intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs in Iraq was wrong. Her husband, she said, "had the same intelligence President Clinton had, the same intelligence that Congress had."
"I mean it's the intelligence that everyone in the United States in any role of authority has had," Mrs. Bush added.
Mrs. Bush said the commission to investigate the intelligence failures was "a really good idea." But she bristled again when she was asked whether she had advised Mr. Bush to try to pre-empt the criticism and publicly address Americans' concerns.
"No," she said. "I haven't given him any marching orders. Is that what you mean?"
Laura Bush has my utmost respect. I also have always admired her mother in law. Too of the best first ladies we have had in ages.
It absolutely is, and the rats and the media know this! There is no journalistic integrity in this country.
Fabulous article about a fantastic First Lady, who is indeed, a Lady.
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