As the vice president’s wife she joined the board of the child-oriented Reading Is Fundamental, and as First Lady she founded the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, to which she has donated all the profits from Millie’s Book. It gives away half a million dollars in grants every year to programs that address illiteracy as a self-perpetuating problem passed from parents to children.
But if her signature issue was chosen with calculation, there has been nothing artificial about her good works. Even before Bush’s political career began, she was a dedicated volunteer in hospitals; over the years, she has quietly worked at such places as the Washington Home for Incurables, and has served on boards ranging from that of the Ronald McDonald House to that of the predominantly black Morehouse School of Medicine.
Today you can easily see that she has a greater capacity than her husband has to look death and pain in the face. To cancer wards and AIDS clinics, she brings not only helpful publicity but a full self, a capacity to let in the suffering around her and give it its due, which is one of the few gifts any stranger can confer. The president, on the other hand, is famous for squirming through visits to hospitals. When he visited the bed of a Los Angeles firefighter shot during the riots, the only consolation he could think to offer was for himself: “I’m sorry Barbara’s not here,” he said miserably.
Every afternoon the First Lady has her staff send up to her office in the family quarters a clip file of stories related to poverty, education, literacy, child care—her issues. And sometimes she reacts quickly to what she reads. In 1989, for example, she was angered by reports that the Salvation Army had been barred from making Christmas collections at some of the snootier local shopping malls. She made a trip to a mall that did permit the solicitations and took along a press pool to capture her dropping some change into the bucket, which successfully shamed most of the Scrooge-ish merchants into line.
This is as good a use of celebrity as exists in America. It is, by the accounts of Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites, all of those who have fallen in love with the grandmotherly image of the First Lady, the very best of Barbara Bush.
But even in the uprightness of this image lies a certain moral complexity. For the past three and a half years, the First Lady had almost single-handedly symbolized her husband’s good intentions in the realm of domestic affairs. Extended to a society’s breadth, the Bush model implies a return to an era in which women relieved their powerful men—relieved government—of responsibility for the disadvantaged. It is the old Victorian contract, in which life was divided into two spheres, male and female; while men ran the world, their women ran the soup kitchens.
Bush advisers have worked hard over the years to suggest that Barbara’s compassion will one day rub off on her husband, to imply that she can (and should) be relied on to police his interest in social services. “Every time he says ‘Head Start,’ that’s Bar,” spokeswoman Sheila Tate told reporters at the dawn of his administration. And for some time the country seemed to accept the idea that Barbara was a facet of George—a reliable indicator of his goals. At the time of Bush’s inauguration, columnists raved about how Barbara would be “the conscience of the White House.”
But without Barbara, Americans might have noticed sooner that the self-styled “education president” had offered nothing meaningful in the way of education reform.
Without Barbara, voters might have noticed from the start how disengaged Bush seemed from domestic concerns.
Barbara Bush successfully silenced the logical question that called out for response: Isn’t the president supposed to be the conscience of the White House?
* * *
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As George Bush campaigns for a second term, a lot rides on Barbara Bush’s careful balancing act. She is the answer to a frightened campaign’s prayers, a surrogate campaigner who can command almost as much press and hoopla as the president can—while incurring comparatively little risk. As early as last winter one could trace the dawning importance of her role. She was sent to New Hampshire to file the papers for Bush’s candidacy, “because nobody would dare to boo Barbara,” in the words of a strategist. She spent more time campaigning in the state than the president did.
And when Bush officially announced his candidacy, it was Barbara Bush who introduced him. In a classic reversal of roles, the candidate quoted his wife, referring to “my favorite political philosopher, Barbara Bush.”
All through the spring, once the threat of Buchanan’s primary campaign had faded, she traveled far more than her husband did, headlining as many as thirty major fund-raisers around the country.
Republican strategists go as far as to say that they believe voters ambivalent about George Bush may think twice about voting his wife out of the White House. It’s an extraordinary exception to the normal wisdom, which suggests that the best most spouses can do is adhere to the Hippocratic oath of politics: Just do no harm.
Opinions differ about how badly Barbara Bush wants to stay in the White House. She is said to blame the presidency for the problems of her son Neil, implicated in the Silverado Banking, Savings and Loan Association debacle.
Friends also surmise she has had a more difficult time than she lets on dealing with Graves’ disease, the thyroid condition that has tired her and painfully distended her eyes.
But by most accounts she has reveled in her time as First Lady. Even as the president floundered through the spring and early summer, his polls in free-fall, Barbara Bush lived in a charmed circle within her control. She has reached the apotheosis of the life she read about in her daddy’s magazines, a victory she presents as grand affirmation of the ultra-traditional plan she has lived by.
“My mail tells me that a lot of fat, white-haired, wrinkled ladies are tickled pink,” she said on the eve of Bush’s inauguration. “I mean, look at me—if I can be a success, so can they.”
But only one person gets to be married to the president of the United States. It is a rare full-time homemaker and college dropout who receives an honorary degree from Smith, who is asked to speak to the graduating class at Wellesley, who appears on the covers of Time and Life.
George Bush’s political ascent allowed her to enact her role of helpmate on a vast, symbolic scale—one that offered more ego gratification than the same role performed as an anonymous daily sacrament.
This was how she staved off the fated collision between her cramped idea of women’s role and her great strength of personality. It is also how she tamed the most turbulent themes of her own life.
* * *
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Toward the end of the Republicans’ May dinner in Miami Beach, two videos about Barbara Bush were shown on the giant screen that hung above the diners. Together they suggested just how far she has traveled.
The first was a brief, condescending biography prepared by the state party. It showed more events from George Bush’s life than from his wife’s and included all the same photos that appear in standard Bush biographies—showing handsome young politician George Bush surrounded by his happy brood of children and, standing at the back of the picture, his stocky, weathered wife with her oddly dyed hair and uncertain smile.
But then, with the second videotape, a spectral George Bush appeared on the screen to salute his popular spouse.
“Remember her Wellesley commencement speech?” he asked rhetorically. “Some students protested, saying she’s just a woman who followed her husband. Well, they got it wrong. In countless ways, I’ve followed Barbara.
“I think it’s appropriate,” he continued, “that Barbara would be honored at the Statesman’s Dinner. Someone once said that a politician thinks of the next election, but a statesman thinks of the next generation. Well, that’s Barbara Bush, in so many ways.”
It seemed an unconsciously honest moment, alluding not only to the reasons America loves her but also to the reasons America now scorns him. Suddenly, it
was strangely poignant to watch his video-blurred face, to hear his canned voice, as he talked about the famous, widely loved woman being celebrated in the flesh.
The moment seemed to summarize the ironic reversal being played out before the nation: Now he is the burdened one, she is the butterfly. He can no longer maintain the buoyancy that has been the hallmark of his life, while for her, public goodwill remains at flood tide, affirming her life’s choices.
How impossibly sweet it must feel to her. Today she helps her husband most by embodying the levity that was always, until this hour, his to claim.
(George and Barbara Bush would depart the White House in 1993 when Bill Clinton assumed the presidency. Their son George W. Bush would succeed Clinton eight years later. Barbara Bush died in April 2018; her husband, seven months later.)
HILLARY CLINTON
WHAT HILLARY WANTS
By Gail Sheehy | May 1992
In May of 1990, Bill Clinton was running for his fifth term as governor of Arkansas. While he was conveniently out of town, a challenger in the Democratic primary, Tom McCrae, called a press conference in the echo chamber of the Capitol rotunda. He was in the middle of telling everyone who would listen that Bill Clinton was a chicken—“and since the governor will not debate . . .”—when all at once another voice chewed into his sound bite. “Tom, who was the one person who didn’t show up in Springdale? Give me a break! I mean, I think that we oughta get the record straight . . .”
The camera swung around to a small, yellow-haired woman in a houndstooth-check suit—literally in his face. Having crashed McCrae’s photo op, she planted herself directly opposite him, just spoiling for a fight. She looked quite pale without studio makeup, but her eyes flashed in the lights of the television camera. “Many of the reports you issued,” she charged, “not only praised the governor on his environmental record, but his education record and his economic record!”
The camera spun again to reveal the hapless man’s grit-eating smile, his eyes bobbling around in his head as if he’d just been zapped by a stun gun. His stammering response was trampled by the woman ticking off her points, reading embarrassing passages from the candidate’s own earlier handouts. “You now turn around and as a candidate have a very short memory,” she finished. As they say in Arkansas, she ate his lunch.
The Eyewitness News man wound up his thrilled coverage with the tag line “Hillary Clinton showed again that she may be the best debater in the family.”
* * *
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It is the Year of the Political Woman. [Presidential candidate] Paul Tsongas [the former Massachusetts congressman and senator], whose least appealing quality was his mopey personality, said with a grateful nod to his attorney wife, Niki, “If you don’t have charisma, you marry it.” Ruth Harkin, a former prosecutor, assumed the role of her husband [the Iowa senator Tom Harkin]’s unofficial political adviser for his six-month run. Marilyn Quayle, who told The Washington Post through clenched teeth that politicians in the past never acknowledged that “your little wifey . . . helps you,” commands entry into the Office of Vice President [Dan Quayle] from a six-office suite across the hall, passing judgment on lobbyists and other supplicants. (Marilyn says she raises a subject with the vice president “if I think it’s important enough.” Otherwise, staffers “let me make the decision instead.”) President [George H. W.] Bush, who often leans on his vastly more popular wife [Barbara] at public appearances, has recently brought on board his rudderless re-election team wordsmith Peggy Noonan. Her job description: “Message development.” Even bullyboy Pat Buchanan, Beltway pundits say, wouldn’t have run [as a Republican challenger to President Bush] if it hadn’t been for his sister—who is also his campaign chairwoman.
And it is Hillary Rodham Clinton, lawyer–activist–teacher–author–corporate boardwoman–mother and wife of Billsomething, who is the diesel engine powering the front-running Democratic campaign. In the space of one week in late January, Hillary fast-forwarded from being introduced as “wife of” (60 Minutes) to the victim of “the other woman” (PrimeTime Live) to “Trapped in a Spotlight, Hillary Clinton Uses It” (The New York Times), the last illustrated by a picture which said it all: Hillary with her arm thrust in the air and wearing a big campaign smile, out in front of her husband.
The forty-four-year-old wife and mother still shows flashes of the sweet ingenue smile of her college years, and has maintained her size 8 by touching little more than a lettuce leaf and water during campaign fund-raisers (her less disciplined husband has put on twenty-five pounds). When the cameras dolly in, however, one can detect the calculation in the f-stop click of Hillary’s eyes. Lips pulled back over her slightly jutting teeth, the public smile is practiced; the small frown establishes an air of superiority; her hair looks lifelessly doll-like.
But there is no mistaking the passion in her words or the impact of her presence. “The instant she came in the door of the ballroom, I knew it,” said a savvy pol, Patricia Derian, an assistant secretary of state under Jimmy Carter, who saw Hillary sway a big-ticket Washington crowd at a benefit in March. There was no fanfare, no spotlight, the lady isn’t even much taller than a podium microphone. “But there was no missing her,” said Derian, “and that’s really rare. She’s a spectacular candidate in her own right. She’s got my vote.”
In Los Angeles, at a March 26 salmon-and-spinach luncheon hosted by Hollywood producer Dawn Steel and television producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason (among others), Hillary dazzled an audience that is usually ho-hum about stars and plenty impressed with themselves. “We need to be against brain-dead politics wherever we find it!” she thundered, looking fierce in a fire-engine-red suit. “We need to forge a new consensus about [our] new political direction . . . that doesn’t jerk us to the right, jerk us to the left, prey on our emotions, engender paranoia and insecurity . . . but instead moves us forward together.” Producer Sherry Lansing pronounced it “an extraordinary speech, extraordinary.”
The sold-out luncheon—her most successful of the season, raising $50,000—came off in the heat of the controversy over Hillary’s role in her husband’s campaign. Her snappish response to [former governor of California and Democratic presidential candidate] Jerry Brown’s broadside on her career—“I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas”—had offended millions of women who have chosen to be full-time homemakers, reinvoking the arrogance of the Tammy Wynette quote that so irritated the country-music vote. That very morning, New York Times columnist William Safire had written about what he called “the Hillary problem,” describing her as a “political bumbler” who suffers from “foot-in-mouth disease.”
In a private interview after the luncheon, I asked Hillary how she felt about being labeled “the problem.” Uncharacteristically, she squirmed and stammered. “I don’t know how to feel about it. . . . I think I’ll just have to be more . . . careful in the way I express my feelings, so I don’t inadvertently hurt anybody.
“I think the only legitimate concern is around the misconstruction of what I said about baking cookies and having tea. I can understand why some people thought that I was criticizing women who made different choices than the one I had—in fact, criticizing the choice that my mother and a lot of dear friends have made. Nothing could be further from what I believe.”
Did she, then, agree with Barbara Bush, who stirred up a hornet’s nest at Hillary’s alma mater, Wellesley College, when she told students that a working mother should always put family before career? “For me, I believe that,” Hillary replied fervently. “Personally, I believe that a woman should put her family and her relationships—which are really at the root of who you are and how you relate to the world—at the top of your priority list.” She hastened to add, “But I don’t believe that I, or Barbara Bush, should tell all women that’s what they have to put first. . . . What we have to get away from is the idea that there’s only one right choice.”
&n
bsp; Hillary seems to understand why she has become a lightning rod in her husband’s presidential campaign. “What they’re trying to figure out is ‘How will she be able to influence him? Who is this person?’ Well, Bill Clinton is the kind of person who asks advice from literally dozens of people. If you look at George Bush, he’s advised by a coterie of men . . . who are, frankly, all of one mind, a very narrow, all-white coterie of, exclusively, men.”
The president is one of Hillary’s favorite targets, and she pillories him mercilessly in her speeches. “When it’s all stripped away,” she told the L.A. crowd, “at bottom what we see is a failure of leadership, rooted in a very hollow sense of what politics is and can be.” As one listener put it, “She’s unbelievably articulate and connects with her audience with a message that hits home.” Then she joined the buzz heard all over the room: “You can’t help but think, Why isn’t she the candidate?”
She almost was. Two years ago, when Bill Clinton considered forgoing his fifth gubernatorial contest in order to build an early base for his lifelong presidential ambitions, Hillary called up a friend and former newspaper publisher in the state, Dorothy Stuck, and asked, “What would happen if I ran for governor?”
“After all this time Bill’s been in office, you’d be hung with his baggage,” answered the veteran newspaperwoman. She pledged her support, but advised Hillary to wait a few more years. “She thought she had a good chance,” remembers Stuck, who adds that Hillary Clinton is revered by many women in Arkansas. Hillary’s closest confidante, Carolyn Huber, confirms, “She got very enthusiastic about the prospect of running for governor.” Hushing her voice, as if telling a little tale out of school, Huber says, “I think she’d like to be governor, but she wasn’t about to try if Bill wanted to again.”
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