by Kitty Kelley
The beleaguered First Lady had not even left town before the press started building up her successor with breathless headlines: “Bye-Bye Glamour,” howled USA Today. “Goodbye, First Fashion Plate,” chortled the New York Post, “Hello, First Grandmother.” “Family, Laughter to Fill White House,” proclaimed The Washington Times. “At Last—a First Lady Who’s a Real Woman, Wrinkles and All,” crowed The Washington Post.
Barbara told The New York Times that she viewed herself as a role model for many American women. “My maid tells me a lot of fat, white-haired, wrinkled ladies are tickled pink,” she said.
Even David S. Broder, the premier political columnist of The Washington Post, joined the hallelujah chorus with a column titled “What Makes Barbara Bush So Special.” “It may seem exaggerated to suggest that she will be the conscience of this White House, but my guess is that she will be more an example to the country,” he wrote. “She comes from a tradition that says that those who are favored with wealth and power thereby acquire reciprocal obligations to those who lack any advantages . . . Her example will now inspire, not just those who have known her in the past, but millions of others who are just discovering what makes Barbara Bush so special.”
Within months The Wall Street Journal would praise her as “America’s Grandma” and report that she was more popular than her husband: “Barbara Bush Earns Even Higher Ratings Than the President.” At the end of four years Vanity Fair would gush: “Barbara Bush stands as close to universal popularity as any figure in America.”
Even Democrats were enthralled. “I like her forthright manner, and her no-nonsense ways,” said Pamela Peabody, the sister-in-law of the former Democratic governor of Massachusetts Endicott “Chub” Peabody.
“Early on Barbara looked like a great dame,” said Bobbie Greene, who later worked for Hillary Rodham Clinton. “I remember how surprised I was when I met her press secretary, Anna Perez, at the beginning of the Bush administration. I said how lucky she was to work for someone who seemed so nice. Anna looked at me, stretched out her arms, and said, ‘Yes, and I have all the claw marks to prove it.’ I never knew what she meant until many years later.”
In the early days, just by not being Nancy, Barbara Bush managed to bridge the gap of age, class, and politics to appeal to a broad segment of the population, particularly women, who had had a bellyful of her anorectic predecessor. Reporters relished the spontaneity of the new First Lady, her frankness, and her quotable humor. “It always helps to have an easy act to follow,” noted Calvin Trillin in The Nation.
Barbara understood her appeal. “I’m not a threat to anyone,” she said. “How could I be? Look at me . . . Nancy wore a size 4. That’s the size of one of my legs.” Posing for a photographer, she quipped, “Unfortunately, my winning smile makes me look as if I’m being electrocuted. My kids are always looking at pictures of me and saying: ‘Look at Mom, she’s plugged in again!’” When she was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, a thyroid disorder that required radioactive iodine and injections of prednisone, she experienced double vision. When she returned to the White House after a treatment, reporters shouted, “How are your eyes?” She sauntered over to the cameras and playfully crossed her eyes. “They’re fine,” she said.
Having mastered the art of self-deprecation, Barbara made fun of herself before others could, but she admitted once how much effort it took for her to laugh at the comments about looking so much older than her husband. “That hurt,” she said. “Really hurt.” When she showed a reporter a picture of George standing between his mother and his wife, she added pointedly, “His mother is the one on the right.” Insecure about her looks, Barbara told one photographer she wanted to have her official portrait painted with her wearing a hat. “I’ll do anything I can to take the picture off the face.”
“Barbara Bush came into the White House with a dexterity at manipulating her image,” said Donnie Radcliffe, who covered the Bush White House for The Washington Post, “and she wasn’t above playing off her own outspoken style against Nancy Reagan’s reluctance and often inability to express herself. Media-smart, a less popular political wife might have seemed calculating.”
Barbara capitalized on her goodwill with good works. Within weeks of her husband’s inauguration, she was photographed cuddling an AIDS baby, an arresting picture in 1989, when many people were so afraid of the disease they avoided the afflicted. Encouraged by the White House physician, Burton Lee, Barbara lent her prestige to the problem in hopes that photographs of her with AIDS babies would help to dispel fears that the disease was transmitted by touching. She felt slighted when Diana, the Princess of Wales, visited New York’s Harlem Hospital and made news around the world by cradling a dying AIDS baby. Barbara wanted credit for being in the vanguard. “I visited that clinic a full year before she did,” she told reporters. “You just didn’t care.”
Barbara became a champion of the homeless, the hungry, and the handicapped. People saw her as a humanitarian who might soften her husband’s hard stances on abortion and gun control, but she was quick to disabuse them of the notion. “I do not want to dilute what influence I have by talking about things that I was not elected to do anything about,” she said. “Besides, I do not lobby my husband.” Instead, she spearheaded a drive for literacy, starting the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy with $500,000 in private contributions. She reached the apogee of her acclaim when she announced that her pedigreed English springer spaniel, Millie, was “getting married.” Named for Mildred Kerr, Barbara’s best friend in Texas, Millie delivered six puppies in the spring of 1989. Immediately the President’s polls shot up.
“Let me give you a little serious political inside advice,” he said at his next press conference. “One single word: puppies—worth ten points, believe me.”
Months later the First Lady wrote Millie’s Book, which she dedicated to “George Bush, whom we both love more than life.” The First Lady promoted her doggy book around the country and made it a number-one bestseller.
“Millie has made me legitimate,” Barbara said. “Who else do you know that wrote a book that made a million dollars for charity and gave it all away? I was feeling a tad guilty by the women’s movement until Millie did what she did. And it was all by myself, nobody helped . . . Every word was written by me and Millie.”
Again the President took notice. “You have read my tax returns,” he told reporters. “You can tell who the breadwinner is in the family. The dog made five times as much as the President of the United States.”
Millie followed the First Lady everywhere she went, even sharing the presidential bed. “She gets the middle,” Barbara quipped. George said that Millie got better press than anyone in the administration, including Secretary of State James Baker, which the President found amazing, “considering Millie doesn’t leak like Jimmy does.”
“That dog was a wonderful companion for Barbara,” recalled Heather Foley, the wife of the former Speaker of the House of Representatives. “Barbara told me, rather sadly, how essential Millie was to her life in the White House . . . After she said that, I remember thinking how lonely Barbara must have been, which is surprising when you consider that most first ladies see more of their husbands as President than at any other time in their marriage . . . But George Bush was so hyper . . . he was constantly filling their life with other people . . . constant, constant entertaining . . . I guess he never wanted to be alone . . . so while Barbara saw a lot of people all the time, she had no real companionship, except for that dog.”
Reporters recalled many occasions when Barbara became exasperated with her husband’s impromptu invitations. After a press conference in Paris, the President invited the traveling press corps into the Ambassador’s residence for a personal tour. “I don’t believe you’re doing this,” Barbara muttered. She told the reporters they could not come in unless they took off their shoes and washed their feet. (She slapped the same stipulation on Diane Sawyer and Sam Donaldson when they went to the White House to
interview the Bushes in the family quarters for Primetime Live. Barbara insisted that every member of the ABC-TV technical team—cameramen, light men, soundmen, the makeup artist, the hairdresser, and all the assistant directors—bring a brand-new pair of white sneakers so that they would not soil her new white carpeting.) Another time the President invited a media horde to join him for wine and cheese at Kennebunkport when Barbara would have preferred being alone with him. One journalist walked over to thank her for her hospitality. “Don’t thank me,” Barbara snapped. “Thank George. He’s the one who invited you.” She walked off accompanied only by her dog.
The portraitist Herbert E. Abrams realized how much Barbara’s dog meant when he sat down to discuss painting the First Lady for her official White House portrait.
“I want Millie to be in the picture with me,” Barbara said.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Bush, but I don’t think that will be possible.”
“Mrs. Coolidge had her White House portrait painted with her dog.”
“If I put Millie in the picture, she’d be on the floor, and that would reduce the size of you; either that or I’d have to enlarge the painting, which the White House would not accept.”
“Well, I can hold Millie on my lap,” said Barbara.
“No, Mrs. Bush. That dog is too big to be on your lap.”
Barbara looked down at the sad-eyed spaniel sitting at her feet. “I’m sorry, Millie,” she said. “I tried.”
The First Lady sat for her first session without Millie, but the artist later discussed the problem with his wife, Lois, who had accompanied him to select Mrs. Bush’s clothes.
“I had recommended that she wear Bush blue for the sitting,” said Lois Abrams, “and Herb decided to paint her seated next to a table with books, because of her interest in literacy, and, of course, the yellow roses of Texas. Then he said there was no reason why he couldn’t put a photograph of Millie in the painting . . . He was also doing the President’s official portrait, so at their next sitting he had President Bush hold Millie and Herb photographed her. When he painted the First Lady’s portrait, he also painted a small portrait of Millie from the photo he had taken, which he then painted into a frame on the table. This was a total surprise to Mrs. Bush, and when she saw it, she was thrilled . . . When Millie died in 1997, Herb sent a sympathy note to Barbara Bush, and she wrote back, thanking him for giving Millie a permanent place in the White House.”
Throughout Bush’s presidency, the First Lady’s polls were so high that reporters dared not show all her feistiness, although she made little effort to hold her tongue with family or friends. Interestingly, for a woman who wrapped her large frame in horizontal stripes and wore more polka dots than Clarabelle the Clown, Barbara considered herself a fashion arbiter and frequently upbraided others for the way they looked and the clothes they wore. She maintained a rigid set of standards, which she expected others to adopt.
“You’re too fat,” she told her younger brother, Scott Pierce, whenever he gained weight.
“Don’t you dare wear that mink coat in public,” she instructed her daughter-in-law Sharon Bush. “People will think we’re rich.”
When she saw C. Boyden Gray’s young wife walk into a party wearing a pair of diamond-and-emerald earrings, Barbara demanded to know: “What are you doing with jewels like that?”
She nearly threw the talk-show host Larry King out of the White House when he arrived to interview the President. “I can’t believe you would walk into this house without a jacket,” she said. In his uniform of pants, shirt, tie, and suspenders, King shrugged and laughed, but Barbara did not smile. “She was seriously offended,” recalled a CNN producer.
She railed at her husband’s Secretary of Labor, Lynn Martin, for wearing short skirts. “Why do you do that? It looks just awful, awful, awful.”
“Because I’ve got great legs,” replied the cabinet member.
When French Wallop arrived for lunch with her hair pulled back in a chic bow, Barbara jumped on her. “When are you going to get rid of that terrible-looking ponytail?”
“Not anytime soon, I hope,” said Senator Wallop’s wife.
Not even a world-class athlete like Andre Agassi was spared Barbara’s snipes. She chastised him for wearing “awful clothes” to play tennis on the White House court, and then hectored him about his ponytail and his earring.
Sometimes Barbara let politics get in the way of good manners. When Jane Fonda visited the White House with her husband, Ted Turner, the First Lady rudely ignored the famous movie star, known to be a liberal Democrat.
“Yes,” said Jane Fonda many years later. “Mrs. Bush did refuse to shake my hand. Her husband, however, did. It was not anything dramatic. But I saw that she didn’t want to and I didn’t push it. Why, after all? It’s her right. No big deal far as I’m concerned.”
Another time Barbara refused to have her picture taken with Democratic Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts and his former domestic partner Herb Moses. “I didn’t know if it was because I was gay or a Democrat,” joked Frank.
“The President posed with us,” said Herb Moses, “but then he asked us not to publicize the picture. He didn’t say that to any of the heterosexual couples, but we said we would not release the photo because politics is politics and this was a White House Christmas party . . . Barney and I went to the White House every year for the Bushes’ parties until I got sick of being the political wife.”
Scenes showing Mrs. Bush as less than gracious rarely made the newspapers during her husband’s presidency. “Many reporters assumed, without any prompting by her, that her most acid comments [and actions] were off the record,” said Paul Bedard, formerly of The Washington Times. “Some of us even went out of our way to protect her from herself . . .
“Because I covered Bush, I spent a lot of time at Kennebunkport, and Mrs. Bush always felt more comfortable talking to our reporters than anyone else because we were known as a conservative paper . . . Every summer the President invited the White House press corps to a party at his estate, where he served up hot dogs, beer, and ice cream; rides on his cigarette boat, Fidelity; and games of horseshoes. I remember Barbara crapping all over the press for trashing her gardens and stepping on her flowers. Then she started talking to me about D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, who was on crack cocaine, and she crapped all over him, saying how horrible it was for the nation’s capital to have such a disgusting lowlife as mayor . . .
“I knew this would be a great story—the President’s wife blasting the black mayor of Washington, D.C.—but I didn’t use it because I just had a feeling of deference. Part of it was being protective of the First Lady, and part of it was a feeling that there was a trust . . . I doubt she would’ve talked like that to a reporter from The Washington Post . . . I just didn’t want to burn her.”
For most of her husband’s presidency, the First Lady received a deservedly good press. She navigated some rough waters in 1990, when 150 of 600 seniors at Wellesley College protested her invitation to be the commencement speaker. They said her only qualification for the honor was her husband’s political success. Barbara agreed, but Mike Barnicle in The Boston Globe called them “a pack of whining, unshaven feminists.” Even the President was angered by the protest, but the First Lady remained sanguine.
“I chose to live the life I’ve lived and I think it has been a fabulously exciting, interesting, involved life,” she said. “I hope some of them will choose the same . . . In my day, they probably would have been considered different. In their day, I’m considered different. Vive la différence!”
Barbara made her way to Wellesley accompanied by Raisa Gorbachev, wife of the Soviet President, and won over the protesters, even when she told them, “If you have children, they must come first.” She received a standing ovation when she ended: “Who knows? Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps and preside over the White House as the president’s spouse, and I wish him well.”
Through interviews with friends and employees, the Bushes’ marriage emerged as a relationship that was adoring on Barbara’s part, but so incidental to her faithless husband that he occasionally forgot she was around. His mother frequently had to remind him to “act” more attentive by letting Barbara exit planes before him. When the Bushes visited the Queen in London, the President left the First Lady in the car until the Queen noticed her absence and sent a footman to open the door. Williams documented Barbara’s struggle “to remain as important a part of her husband’s life as he has been of hers.” The writer described the prickly banter between them as hostile and jabbing. Barbara came across tough as a boot, in contrast to George, who emerged as an absentee father and an inattentive husband. With no display of physical affection, the Bushes acted like two towel-snapping pals who had bonded over their children and their shared investment in George’s political ascent. During the 1988 campaign Barbara had made sour comments about the openly affectionate relationship between Michael and Kitty Dukakis as “phony” and “fake.” Williams perceptively noted, “Bush often seems to treat Barbara more like a buddy than a wife. In public they present their relationship as a partnership that has transcended sex.”
Barbara was irate when she read the profile, which had exposed her greatest vulnerability—her marriage. Instead of taking the high road and ignoring the piece, she railed for weeks. “Granted I was mad as the dickens when I read the article ’cause it was so hurtful,” she told the writer Barbara Grizzuti Harrison. “But then I thought: this is so silly, I never met this woman, I don’t know her, she’s repeating myths. They were just trying to get George. They attack our children, they attack me, but that’s not us—that’s him. It’s too bad; it’s so ugly. She didn’t even know me to begin with. Anna [the First Lady’s press secretary], have I ever met her? No. Never met her. As far as I know, she is just a magazine, not a person . . . just a magazine.”