by Laura Bush
The museum is only minutes from the White House, tucked in between the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Yet behind its brick and granite walls is a testament to overwhelming evil, evil planned and perpetrated by some of the most advanced minds in human history. We walked past a cattle car that had carried Jews and others along rail lines to the death camps; we saw piles of unlaced shoes from Majdanek, reconstructed barracks from Auschwitz, the implements of the crematoriums, the crayon drawings of children who were gassed and burned to ash at Theresienstadt.
The next morning, George, Mother, and I were in the Capitol Rotunda for the ceremonies to mark the Day of Remembrance. We watched as flags from each American military unit that had liberated the Nazi death camps were carried in. Mother and I waited, side by side, trying to remember which flag and which unit was Daddy's. Then suddenly we saw it, the Timberwolf flag, with its signature wolf, head up, mouth open, as if in full howl. And we both burst into tears. All those years, we had kept his photographs tucked away in that box, but they were so small, and this horror was so large.
For that moment, as we stood watching that flag and remembering, Daddy was with us.
Then George spoke. "When we remember the Holocaust and to whom it happened," he said, "we must also remember where it happened. It didn't happen in some remote or unfamiliar place; it happened right in the middle of the Western world. Trains carrying men, women, and children in cattle cars departed from Paris and Vienna, Frankfurt and Warsaw. And the orders came not from crude and uneducated men, but from men who regarded themselves as cultured and well-schooled, modern and even forward-looking. They had all the outward traits of cultured men--except for conscience. Their crimes show the world that evil can slip in and blend in, amid the most civilized of surroundings. In the end, only conscience can stop it, and moral discernment and decency and tolerance. These can never be assured in any time or in any society. They must always be taught."
We felt such overwhelming sadness that day, yet we felt safe. On that morning, we never contemplated the face of other evils that might slip in.
One of the invitations that crossed my desk that spring was for the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition of Jacqueline Kennedy's dresses. I said yes. The invitation offered the option of bringing guests, so I asked Regan and her daughter, Lara, and Barbara to join me. We arrived at the museum and were met in the receiving line by Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, as well as the designer Oscar de la Renta and Caroline Kennedy. It was my first-ever New York designer affair. The last time I had seen Caroline Kennedy was at the opening of the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library in 1997. I remember that, amid the sea of Carters, Fords, Clintons, and Bushes, she was standing there alone. So I went over and introduced myself, and we began talking. She was just a few weeks shy of turning forty then, eight years older than her mother was when she assumed the title of First Lady of the United States. At thirty-one, Jackie Kennedy was such a young woman when her husband became president, yet she left a rich legacy in decorating and conserving the White House. For me, the most moving story was her last project: the Oval Office. While the president and first lady were on a pre-Thanksgiving trip, the White House staff had installed her newly chosen curtains and other furnishings. The trip that Jackie and John F. Kennedy made was to Dallas. Before she returned to the White House, as a widow, the staff removed the new decor, restoring the Oval Office to the way President Kennedy had left it, the one thing in the home that could still be returned to the way it had been.
After the receiving line, we had to ascend the museum's grand marble staircase to reach the exhibition. Someone had cleverly lined the staircase with violinists and, I believe, a few trumpeters. Orchestra members stretched the entire way up. But it was a bit too clever. There was no way to grab on to the handrail. So there I was, holding up my gown and climbing these stairs, hoping that I wouldn't step on my dress and thinking, Please don't trip and fall. And later I heard that women in their long gowns did tumble on the marble stairs. It was instructive to me, though. I never lined the marble White House stairs with anyone, so that all guests could easily grasp the handrail.
We were guided through the collection by Hamish Bowles, the impeccably groomed Vogue contributor. I gazed at the dark red boucle day dress that Jackie Kennedy had worn to give the television tour of the White House, which Americans saw only in black and white, as well as her crepe silk evening gowns and apricot silk dresses. When we came to her inaugural clothes, Hamish said, "This is what one should wear to inaugurations, pearl gray. It isn't turquoise blue or something like that."
I loved Jackie Kennedy's clothes because they were the clothes I had grown up seeing as a young woman. I remember a classic pink coat that I bought at Neiman Marcus when I was at SMU, which I kept tucked away in paper for years, hoping Barbara or Jenna might want it when they were grown. But there is something different about seeing another first lady's clothes on display. I knew my inaugural gown would be joining the gown collection at the Smithsonian, but there is more to it than that. There is the strange knowledge that how you look will be critiqued and that what you wear will likely end up on display. Nancy Reagan told me a few years ago that when the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library put together a showing of her clothes, it became the most visited exhibit in the entire library. She laughed when she said it, adding, "You know, those clothes that I was always criticized for?"
I was like all first ladies in that I wanted to look good. I knew how interested the public and the press are in what first ladies wear. Like the women before me, I wanted to look elegant, to appear my best at events here and abroad, and not to glance back later at White House photos and silently cringe. I really felt for Hillary Clinton, who spent years having the press write nasty things about her hairstyles. It unnerved me enough that I paid with our own money for someone to come to the White House and blow-dry my hair almost every morning, just so I could try to avoid a bad hair day. But while some first ladies are genuinely interested in fashion, I'm not one who follows each new season's trends; I have been wearing the same suits, sweaters, and slacks for years. Jackie Kennedy is always going to be more stylish. She was from a part of the country and a part of society that cultivated a certain style and manner. East Coast elegance was exotically enchanting but also out of reach to sweater-set girls in Midland.
The daily hair blow-dries were just one of the monetary costs of living in the White House. Most Americans may not realize that presidents and their families are responsible for their personal costs while they reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and that George and I paid for ours out of our own pockets. The presidential room, as it were, is covered, but not the board. The house we had to live in was spectacular. We had luxuries that we could not have afforded in our private life, such as an exquisite home and furnishings, a full staff, a chef, and a fully staffed weekend retreat at Camp David. Presidents and their families are fortunately not responsible for a White House mortgage or the White House utility bills, and it is more than fair that they pay for personal items like every American household.
George and I covered the costs for our own food each month--breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the White House and at Camp David--and if the girls came home or we had friends to dinner or guests who stayed overnight, we were billed for their food as well. We paid for our dry cleaning and outside laundry, and if we hosted a private party, as we did when George's parents celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary, we paid the expenses ourselves, including the hourly wages for the waiters and servers and the setup and cleanup crews, who needed to receive time and a half if the party was held after 5:00 p.m. We did ask the Republican National Committee to pay for the White House Christmas parties, including the holiday parties for the press, and outside nonprofits sometimes assumed the costs of other events. The Ford's Theatre Society generously used its own funds to help cover White House celebrations of Abraham Lincoln's birthday or the awarding of the Lincoln Prize. Ever
y month, though, we received an itemized bill for our living and personal expenses at the White House.
But there were some costs that I was not prepared for. I was amazed by the sheer number of designer clothes that I was expected to buy, like the women before me, to meet the fashion expectations for a first lady. After our first year in the White House, our accountant said to George, "It costs a lot to be president," and he was referring mainly to my clothes. Of course, I recycled most of my wardrobe, wearing the same dress to the White House correspondents' dinner in the spring and then again to the Congressional Ball in December, but heavily photographed occasions, like state dinners or the annual Kennedy Center honors, required new gowns each time.
There were times when the recycling went too far. One Sunday morning, I arrived at Fox News for an interview with Chris Wallace. Looking around at the photos in the greenroom, I saw that I had worn the exact same suit to my last interview with Chris. Quickly, I exchanged tops with my press secretary, so that it would seem as if I had a bit more wardrobe variety. To look my best abroad, I employed a hairdresser to accompany me on overseas trips, and if I needed professional makeup for a state event or a television interview, I paid for that as well. Today, I like to flip through home decorating magazines while I dry my own hair.
On Friday, April 27, George and I were at our ranch after having spent most of the day in Austin for the dedication of the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. The next day, we would return to Washington for the White House Correspondents' Association dinner. It was early on Saturday morning when the phone rang. Jenna was on the line, in tears. She had been cited the night before for ordering drinks in a bar in Austin and being underage with a fake ID. By the time Jenna called us, nothing we could have said would have made her feel any worse, but we still gave her a stern talk. Her picture was splashed across the television and newspapers; she would be part of local news film footage and the slightly blurry image at the end of a photographer's long-range telephoto lens. When George had been sworn in, I had asked the press to keep the girls out of the public eye, much as they had done with Chelsea Clinton. But Jenna had put herself in the news. We told her that this would be a lesson, and one that she had learned the hard way. Her friends might do something wrong and not make headlines, but she did not have that luxury.
Almost immediately a warm note of encouragement arrived for Jenna and Barbara from Luci Johnson, who shared with them the advice that her own mother, Lady Bird, gave to her and Lynda: "Don't do anything that you wouldn't want to read about on the front page of The New York Times, because if you do, it will be." Cherie Blair also sent me a sympathetic note. The year before, her sixteen-year-old son, Euan, had had his own embarrassing run-in with the law, although enduring the British tabloids had proven to be a far worse punishment than a formal police caution.
That night in Austin was just dumb, in the way that so many nineteen-year-olds are dumb. I remember a line from The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, a series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, in which his main character, Precious Ramotswe, says, "Twenty-one-year-olds are so stupid. And there are so many of them."
To her credit, Jenna rose to the occasion. She quit going to clubs and other places in downtown Austin. And for years, I've talked to both Barbara and Jenna about the risks of alcohol. Their father quit drinking; my father overdrank; and I've warned both of them about the perils of alcohol, saying, "Nothing good ever happens when you are drunk."
But what bothered me long after the incident was over was the image left behind in the public mind, that Barbara and Jenna were party girls. We never considered using publicists to shape their image, as some prominent figures and celebrities do. We wanted them to live their lives as privately and as normally as possible. I tried to slip away to Austin to see Jenna's sorority show skits, which were put on by the girls for their moms. And I went to visit both girls at school during the year, coming in to do what all college moms do, help them clean their dorm rooms, make a quick run to Bed Bath & Beyond for a lamp or towels or a laundry bag. Most of the snippets that ended up on the news were nothing like our daughters. Many were just plain wrong. Otherwise, Jenna would not have chosen to work with AIDS sufferers in Central America or to teach, and Barbara would not be devoting herself to public health in Africa. But that is the baggage that comes with public life; there are no "private" mistakes. I accepted it and moved on, and they did the same.
In the way that ancient astronomical calendars measured time by the passage of the seasons, the movement of the moon, the seeding of the soil, the culling of the harvest, the presidential calendar is governed by summitry. There are the NATO summits, the Summits of the Americas; the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summits; the G8 meetings; and the United States-European Union summits, all of which rotate locations, usually abroad. Then there are the visits to call on allies, to build relationships with other leaders, to engage other corners of the world. We would pass in and out of a country in a day or even a single afternoon. The flights were invariably overnight, and the expectation was that we would arrive looking perfectly rested and impeccably groomed. Our luggage and the bags of our aides made their own convoy; our vehicles traveled with us in the bellies of cargo planes.
Summer 2001 began with what would become the familiar whirlwind of travel, five countries in five days in June, first to Spain, where we called on the king and queen, and where I visited the Prado Museum with Ana Botella de Aznar, the wife of Spain's prime minister. Afterward, we went to the National Library, where the curators displayed drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, original editions of the classic novel Don Quixote, and early Spanish maps of Texas. From there, it was a stop in Belgium for the NATO Summit, and a tour of a market, a church, and a university library, then a NATO spouses' lunch, an interview for the CBS Early Show, then on to a meeting at the Brussels American School, as well as a visit with Belgium's King Albert II and Queen Paola at the Laeken Palace. The following morning, we were on our way to Sweden, where George joined the US-EU Summit while I toured a children's center and then a botanical garden. Late in the afternoon, we met with His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf and Her Majesty Queen Silvia, as well as Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Victoria. The Swedish monarchy is one of the oldest in the world; Sweden has crowned kings for over one thousand years. We were introduced surrounded by the tapestry-covered walls of the six-hundred-room Royal Palace; I learned that the king and queen had nine other royal residences scattered around Stockholm. Meanwhile, on the streets, poster-wielding and face-painted anti-globalization protesters were out in force, condemning international corporations and international financial institutions, and a few protesting George. The protests did not die down after we left. Three demonstrators throwing cobblestones and other objects were shot by Swedish riot police, but the protesters never got close to any of the continent's leaders, and by the time they had turned violent, we were long gone.
From the gilded chairs and high-ceilinged palaces of European royalty, I flew to Warsaw, Poland. I met First Lady Jolanta Kwasniewska, and together we toured a children's hospital. Then, after lunch, I went to the Lauder Kindergarten, opened by the American cosmetics magnate and philanthropist Ronald Lauder to educate children of the few Jewish families who had survived the Holocaust and had returned to or somehow remained in Warsaw. All the children were blond, and Ron Lauder quietly said to me, "This is why their families escaped. They were the ones who were able to blend in." As I left, the children gathered and sang "Deep in the Heart of Texas," with a sweet overlay of Polish accents. My next stop was the Noz.yk Synagogue. The only one in Warsaw to survive World War II, it stood within the walls of another property, almost hidden. Unlike the four hundred other synagogues in the city, Noz.yk was left because the Nazis stabled their horses inside it and piled its floors and corners with feed. After the synagogue came an orphanage. I met with a group of eighteen- to twenty-year-olds who were about to leave their dormitory-style rooms and begin life on their own, with no family to call or
come home to. The children were thin and sad, and they barely spoke as we sat inside the old building and its spartan rooms. I told them about how nervous I had been when I started my first teaching job, in the hope that they might find some small comfort in that.
As the afternoon drew to a close, I joined George at a ceremony for the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial, where some 400,000 Jews were fenced in like cattle behind barbed wire and then were deported to death camps or finally slaughtered by Nazi guns and flamethrowers that were shot into basements and sewers until entire blocks became infernos. At day's end, George delivered an address with the president; then it was a quick change into black-tie evening clothes for cocktails, a receiving line, and a formal state dinner.
After those few days, the crush of images was almost too much to absorb, from glittering fairy-tale palaces to the depths of human despair.
And we still had a meeting with U.S. Embassy staff the next morning, as well as a wreath-laying ceremony to commemorate the Warsaw Uprising before flying on to Slovenia. While George had his first face-to-face meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin and invited him to our ranch, I was whisked off for lunch at the Grand Hotel Toplice, a favorite of the staff of Yugoslavia's old dictator, Marshal Tito, and then a boat ride over to a small island that houses the Assumption of Mary Pilgrimage Church, overlooking Bled's deep, blue lake, which had been carved out by the last of the thick Ice Age glaciers as they retreated from the lower reaches of Europe. I walked up the famous ninety-nine steps rising from the base of the island. Tradition is that, on their wedding day, grooms carry their brides up the steps to the church for the ceremony. When I arrived, there was a wedding in progress, and the bride rushed forward to embrace me, saying this was the best day of her life. I watched costumed folk-life dancers and rang the bell of wishes. Three more brides and grooms were waiting for us as we entered the church. As we left, people lined the sides of the road to wave. In central Europe, where the nations lived under decades of harsh Soviet domination during the Cold War, many of the citizens are deeply pro-American. Like that bride, they always welcomed me with open arms.