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Title: Spoken From the Heart by Laura Bush
Details: Copyright 2010, Simon and Schuster Inc
Synopsis (By Way of Front and Back Flaps): "
In this brave, beautiful, and deeply personal memoir, Laura Bush, one of our most beloved and private first ladies, tells her own extraordinary story.
Born in the boom-and-bust oil town of Midland, Texas, Laura Welch grew up as an only child in a family that lost three babies to miscarriage or infant death. She vividly evokes Midland's brash, rugged culture, her close relationship with her father, and the bonds of early friendships that sustain her to this day. For the first time, in heart-wrenching detail, she writes about the devastating high school car accident that left her friend Mike Douglas dead and about her decades of unspoken grief.
When Laura Welch first left West Texas in 1964, she never imagined that her journey would lead her to the world stage and the White House. After graduating from Southern Methodist University in 1968, in the thick of student rebellions across the country and at the dawn of the women's movement, she became an elementary school teacher, working in inner-city schools, then trained to be a librarian. At age thirty, she met George W. Bush, whom she had last passed in the hallway in seventh grade. Three months later, "the old maid of Midland married Midland's most eligible bachelor." With rare intimacy and candor, Laura Bush writes about her early married life as she was thrust into one of America's most prominent political families, as well as her deep longing for children and her husband's decision to give up drinking. By 1993, she found herself in the full glare of the political spotlight. But just as her husband won the Texas governorship in a stunning upset victory, her father, Harold Welch, was dying in Midland.
In 2001, after one of the closest elections in American history, Laura Bush moved into the White House. Here she captures presidential life in the harrowing days and weeks after 9/11, when fighter-jet cover echoed through the walls and security scares sent the family to an underground shelter. She writes openly about the White House during wartime, the withering and relentless media spotlight, and the transformation of her role as she began to understand the power of the first lady. One of the first U.S. officials to visit war-torn Afghanistan, she also reached out to disease-stricken African nations and tirelessly advocated for women in the Middle East and dissidents in Burma. She championed programs to get kids out of gangs and to stop urban violence. And she was a major force in rebuilding Gulf Coast schools and libraries post-Katrina. Movingly, she writes of her visits with U.S. troops and their loved ones, and of her empathy for and immense gratitude to military families.
With deft humor and a sharp eye, Laura Bush lifts the curtain on what really happens inside the White House, from presidential finances to the 175-year-old tradition of separate bedrooms for presidents and their wives to the antics of some White House guests and even a few members of Congress. She writes with honesty and eloquence about her family, her public triumphs, and her personal tribulations. Laura Bush's compassion, her sense of humor, her grace, and her uncommon willingness to bare her heart make this story revelatory, beautifully rendered, and unlike any other first lady's memoir ever written."
Why I Wanted to Read It: First Ladies are kind of fascinating to me. Throughout history, they've offered a glimpse behind the scenes into the highest office in the country, and also there's always a discussion of how close these women were allowed to get to power without actually being President (including at times when it was unheard of for a woman to even have a bank account in her own name).
Laura Bush is particularly interesting since she's thrown some pleasant curveballs into expectations, and after reading the Bush daughters' memoir and seeing how she was portrayed, I was interested what her memoir would have to say.
How I Liked It: Who is Laura Bush?
She is sandwiched between two of the most public (and controversial) and iconic First Ladies in history. Even between those two her memoir seemingly gets lost between the memoirs of Hillary Clinton (which paved the way for her own political career and future Presidential runs) and Michelle Obama's enormously popular memoir which sale-wise, continues to seriously rival her husband's own memoir of his Presidency.
When you get down to it, Laura Bush is so private, in eight years she didn't even warrant an impression on SNL (unlike her husband, daughters, and fellow First Lady mother-in-law).
But every now and then, when she'd make a public statement, it was usually worth the listen. She defended the wife of then-Senator Barack Obama as he was running for President, insisting that Michelle Obama's "For the first time in my adult life, I'm really proud of my country" was taken out of context and people are too quick to misinterpret. It was solid help to the campaign and quite a surprise. She also at times has voiced her support for LGBTQ+ rights and her pro-choice stance, both in stark contrast to her husband's politics and policies.
According to her daughters, she's a loving, devoted, firm mother always ready to make the best out of a not-great situation and devoted fan of reggae(!?!). That Laura Bush sounds well worth reading a book about.
So who is the Laura Bush in this book? We'll get to that.
Laura Bush (with an assist from journalist Lyric Winik) gives some of her ancestral history, but the book feels like it really gains footing when she gets to her parents, who ran a home-building business in Texas (her mother serving as the company's bookkeeper). A rich description of mid-century west Texas follows as Laura describes life as the only child of parents who desperately wanted a house of children and were left with only one. The small town energy of Midland at the time is a community that nurtures and comforts the Welchs, even as tragedy strikes (in addition to her lost siblings, Laura Bush accidentally killed a classmate and good friend as a teenager via automobile accident).
She finds her way to teaching, and ends up a teacher in the inner city before becoming a librarian. A few years after, mutual friends introduce her to a boy from her hometown, and they marry soon after, and she describes navigating his huge family, a anomaly to an only child.
Meanwhile, they struggle to have children and attempt adoption, before an extremely difficult pregnancy and delivery of twin girls (which lands in the papers given that her husband's father was vice President at the time).
Her husband's political career begins to take off and finds her and their daughters (and their pets) living at the Texas governor's mansion. In a seemingly short time, she's First Lady and comparisons to her father-in-law's time as President inevitably follow.
She undertakes numerous initiatives as First Lady as well as keeping up with ceremonial duties. The book ends as she and her husband fly off to Texas at the inauguration of his successor.
The Bush Presidency is sadly as relevant as ever as I write this, but something else to consider was the era in which this memoir was published. In 2010, the TEA Party was thriving and the Right's darling was not Laura Bush, but former Alaska governor (and John McCain's 2008 running mate) Sarah Palin. If anything, the swiftness with which George W Bush and his Presidency was more or less buried and forgotten by the Right (he gave but a short speech via video at his party's national convention in 2008, despite being the sitting President) in favor of newer, more outrageous stars. It led to a climate that in 2016 saw Jeb Bush, the all but inevitable nominee and a sure jolt to Hillary Clinton, buried in the primaries in favor of two candidates, a widely disliked (even among his own party and movement) media-seeking Representative and TEA Party leftover Ted Cruz, and a former reality show cast member and 1980s punchline who would eventually "grab" (I said what I said) the Presidency.
So in 2010, the market for the Bush Presidency was pretty small and if you wanted to sell books to Republicans and conservatives, you had better talk like Sarah Palin. This memoir was a chance to try and redeem her husband's legacy, a legacy she had no way of knowing would be nicely burnished (and papered over) given the fact his successor as Republican President is widely considered to be one of the worst Presidents (if not the worst) in history. But at the time, the Bush Presidency was mostly an embarrassment to be forgotten.
Laura Bush appears to have wanted to change that. I've mentioned in my review of the Bush daughters' memoir that even political memoirs of people not actually involved in politics are to a degree political, as they seek to (or at least contribute to) change the image of political figures. To the Bush daughters, their father had a "determination to serve" and they tell stories about his grief and horror at the loss of life (particularly of soldiers he sent into war), with Jenna Bush Hager venturing that she still believes history will be the judge of her father's Presidency.
Laura Bush is vastly more political and pointed and her versions of certain events are interesting, to say the least.
For the man that's the reason why she's writing this book and her primary claim to fame (wanted or not), Laura is rather mum on the subject of their courtship and there aren't many lovestruck stories or the types of funny, charming, meet-cute type tales that couples tell at parties and that seem to populate this sort of memoir. She is introduced to George through mutual friends trying to get them together.
For at least a year, my friend Jan Donnelly's husband, Joey O'Neill, had been telling me that he wanted to introduce me to one of his friends. Jan had gone to Lee High School and had lived with me in Houston at the Chateaux Dijon. After spending a few years in San Francisco, Jan and Joey had come home to live in Midland. Joey was working on his dad's oil business, and his childhood friend George Bush was working as an oil landman, scouring county courthouse records for land that might be leased for drilling wells. Joey talked up George every time I stopped by to visit with Jan.
I was in no rush. I had a vague memory of George from the seventh grade, almost twenty years before. I knew that his dad had run for Senate and lost in 1970, when I first moved to Houston, and I assumed that George would be very interested in politics, while I was not. (pg 94)
But finally she meets him at a party and there is no elaborate recollection, no either fawning about his handsomeness or humorously recounting some way he put her off, or even her impression of him at all. The next day he called her for a miniature golf date and their friends "tagging along as our chaperones" which I'm going to assume/hope is a joke, since this was the late 1970s and she and George were in their 30s. She does say that George started visiting on the weekends and he came every weekend save for the end of August when he was in Maine with his family. Supposedly, he called her apartment and some man answered, and he raced to a plane and flew right back down to Texas, a story Bush says her mother-in-law loves to tell. As to their quick marriage (they met in late July and by late September he asked her to marry him), she defends that "we have been dating only six or seven weeks but our childhoods overlapped so completely and our worlds were so intertwined, it was as if we had known each other our whole lives." (pg 95) She loved how he made her laugh and his "steadfastness" and she knew he was the one.
Interestingly, a friend (?) recounted to Bush a nasty comment from the mother of another friend, who on hearing the news about Bush's marriage, cracked
"Yes, can you imagine? The most eligible bachelor in Midland marrying the old maid of Midland!"
Bush claims she found it funny.
It's worth noting in the earlier sections, she offers a kind of fanciful, fateful approach to marrying someone she had known, somewhat, all of her life:
But I wasn't the only one gazing up at that all-encompassing sky. Amid the baseball diamonds, backyard slides, and sandlots, another child was listening to the croak of frogs and watching for the stars. That boy was George W. Bush. My Midland childhood was his as well. We were the same age, and only about ten blocks separated our two homes, his on Ohio, mine on Princeton. My elementary school friends Mike Proctor and Robert McLeskey played catch with George; his dad, George H. W. Bush, coached the local Little League. The Bushes lived in Midland from the time George was three until the year 1959, but the closest he and I ever came to meeting was passing each other in the hallways of the seventh grade at San Jacinto Junior High. (pg 48)
But okay, Bush isn't required to give us a love story.
But something that's come up and been discussed by her husband himself, was his struggles with addiction, which include a drunk driving incident that resulted in the suspension of his driver's license (he had a prior arrest for disorderly conduct). Purportedly, Bush threatened to leave him at certain points, until he ultimately got clean and sober at age forty. Her husband has credited his wife and his faith for helping him get sober.
In this book, however, Bush reduces her husband's struggles almost expertly. She goes into great detail about Midland being a "drinking town" and the culture at mid-century (that held over) that encouraged unhealthy and frequent alcohol consumption. As for her husband, she notes
George drank the three Bs, a bourbon before dinner, a beer with dinner, and then B&B, a sweet after dinner drink. It was lethal, and it was completely accepted because that, or some version of it, was the drinking life of most men. At parties as the night deepened, the men grew louder, the cut of their jokes sharpened, and they laughed at everything. In many homes, the morning began with coffee and aspirin. George would go for a run. He is an incredibly disciplined athlete, and he ran every day, even at lunchtime in the summer, when the sun seemed to stand still atop Midland. He ran and he sweated out the dregs of the alcohol. But come nightfall, he'd pour another drink. (pg 118)
He goes on that he didn't have three drinks every night, many times all he had was a beer, but "when he poured enough, he could be a bore." She sniffs that maybe it was funny when other people's husbands had to much to drink at a party, but she never thought it was funny when hers did.
She describes his final outing, at a fortieth birthday celebration (she and her husband's birthdays fall close to each other's, as do several friends) and that was the last time. She opines maybe it was turning forty, maybe it was the fact he knew his father would run for President and didn't want to embarrass him (further), maybe it was the Bible study. She talks about how great George felt after, how he "ran better, he read better" and now "reading became a pleasure for him again."
Attending the same parties, George would now have a nonalcoholic beer and gradually many friends stopped and slowed their drinking "one after being stopped for drunken driving, another after a stay at the Betty Ford clinic" and one friend confessed after joining AA that she had driven with Bush's daughters while she was drunk. Bush adds that her mother once said that she had never thought to ask Bush's father to stop drinking the way her daughter asked her husband.
Bush again, isn't required to give us a gruesome story about her husband's struggle with addiction (although he's frequently talked about his addiction) but a thoroughly whitewashed recounting complete with scattering marvels at just how downright terrific George is is a bit ridiculous when for years he told a different reality. If it's too painful to discuss, why bring it up at all?
Which brings me back to why this memoir was written. A memoir was pretty much inevitable, and here was a great time to sell her husband's legacy to those who might be interested. Even a recounting of his addiction, however glossed over, is not immune to singing George's praises.
And Bush does a lot of singing of her husband's praises.
George knew all of this [how difficult it would be to be elected as a Republican in a famously Democratic congressional district]. He has an amazing intuitive grasp of politics, not just the people aspect of it but the numbers, the vote totals that a candidate needed in each part of the district to win. He understood the science of politics in a way that was quite sophisticated for a candidate in 1978. (pg 100)
As painful as it was for his family, George H. W. Bush's[second-term Presidential] loss had finally freed his own children to say what they thought and to go after their own objectives. George's brother Jeb was running to be governor of Florida. Both brothers had uphill battles in their election races, but both believed deeply in the responsibility of public service and were also fascinated with politics and public policy. (pgs 129 and 130)
Of course, if George and Jeb really believed deeply in the responsibility of public service, they'd have been community organizers and volunteers rather than, say, owning professional baseball teams and scoring real estate deals before pursuing public office, but that of course is an inconvenient detail to the narrative, which is George W Bush is not only an inheritor in a family of great political minds, he has one all of his own.
[Barbara and Jenna] were with us that Christmas [of 2002] in the woods at Camp David, and a few days after they left, George sat down and typed out a thank-you note to them for his gifts. The note was full of fatherly love, but one line in particular has always stayed with me. He told Jenna and Barbara that he prayed that Saddam Hussein would disarm, that he would give up his weapons of mass destruction, and that there would be peace. (pgs 275 and 276)
George did not want war. No president ever does. He knew how precious any child is, and every person sent into war is someone's child, and often someone's mother or father. (pg 276)
Although I'm using this as an example of Bush selling her husband's legacy, it's also a great example of some of the purple prose as well as downright ridiculousness in some of the passages of the book (which I'll get into later). Plenty of Presidents, including American ones, absolutely want war. They want it to look strong, they want it because generally in the past (at least, in conventional wisdom that existed up until the point when Bush's husband was in office), it's good for those with stock in weapons manufacturing, and good for a number of similarly hideously soulless reasons.
George never wavered under the pressure. It was the same as that moment after 9-11 at the height of the anthrax attacks, when he strode out to the mound, alone in the middle of Yankee Stadium, and threw out the first pitch. He has never been afraid to step up to the plate for whatever was required. When he first ran for president, he told his staff that he didn't want to make campaign promises that he could not deliver. He said, "If I run on something and say I'm going to do this, make sure it's something that really can be done." He is very disciplined and practical. He did not want to invade Iraq, but most of the global intelligence community was telling him that the next time, a 9-11 could happen with chemical or biological weapons. We had been brutally attacked once, he would not allow it to happen again.
I remember too how during those weeks I would glance out from my sitting room window and see George walking Spot outside the Oval Office. On the lawn he could be alone with his thoughts. He was sending the best of America to fight and even die in Iraq because he thought it was the safest thing to do for our country. It was a decision that he had always hoped he would not have to make. (pg 284)
Many in and out of government, including prominent Republicans and nearly every Democrat, opposed the surge [in Iraq in 2007]. Many inside George's administration also disagreed with the plan. It was a hard and lonely decision, and it was one of his bravest moments in office.
Day in and day out, the criticism of George from all sides was withering. He was denounced and caricatured in ways far worse than his father had been. I survived it because George did. He is not a self-pitying man. He is not a man of outsize ego or arrogance, despite what his critics said. He simply did what he believed to be right and expected to be judged based on outcomes and history, not by daily headlines or pundits on talk shows. (pg 383)
George always believed that it was his responsibility to treat the office [of President] with great care.
Presidents are not always right, but history tells us that our core values are right and that our country is good. Those are the values that guided George, the touchstone by which he measured what he did. George knew that in the heat of the moment, presidents tend to get much of the blame and little of the credit. Not all of his decisions would be popular, but as a nation, we would not want our presidents to make decisions solely on the basis of their personal popularity, or poll numbers, or daily headlines. The challenges we face are too great for that.
I am proud that, as president, George acted on principle, that he put our country first and himself last. (pgs 420 and 421)
Bush isn't just out to sell her husband and shower him with praise, she's out to sell his whole administration.
George liked Dick [Cheney]'s thoughtful, measured demeanor and had asked Dick to head up his vice presidential search. I had long liked and admired his wife, Lynne, who had overseen the National Endowment for the Humanities and is an accomplished scholar and author in her own right. [...]
Dick arrived [to the ranch in late summer 2000] with crisp file folders and sheaves of paper covering each possible vice presidential pick. But the more the two men spoke, the more George began to think that Dick himself was the best partner and candidate. He possessed the perfect combination of experience in Congress and the executive branch, and he had that clear, plainspoken, unruffled style of the West, which appealed to us as Texans. He liked to laugh and was funny, smart, and devoted to his wife, his daughters, and his grandchildren. Underneath, though, Dick had what George and I would call a great strength. As their meetings drew to a close, George asked Dick to be his running mate. He agreed, and there were so many times when we were both glad Dick Cheney was the nation's vice president. (pgs 157 and 158)
Condi [Rice] and I used to joke about her "inadvertent nap," the one she took when she was sitting on the couch to work and, from sheer exhaustion, fell asleep. Since the late 1990s, Condi had become like family. She traveled with us, joined us for dinner, and whenever she was in the room, her lively mind and sparkle were on full display. We are fortunate to have not only her advice but her friendship. (pg 263)
Inside the White House, Karl Rove was named deputy chief of staff. Karl had been with us in the trenches of Republican politics for years. Not only did we respect his thoughtful and intuitive understanding of the political world, but his interests spanned well beyond vote counts and elections. As a person, Karl is funny and warm. He was invaluable to George as an advisor and would remain one of our closest friends. (pg 311)
If selling her husband and members of his administration wasn't enough, Bush is also out to sell some of the grimmest parts of her husband's legacy, the war in Afghanistan and in Iraq, which at the time of the book's publication, was still ongoing. In addition to her portraying war as inevitable after 9/11, she goes hard on Iraq in a way that occasionally borders on the utterly tasteless.
[N]o one ever believed that our intelligence would make a mistake about whether or not Saddam Hussein had military weapons of mass destruction.
For that matter, our intelligence was confirmed by the Germans, the French, the Russians, the Israelis, the Jordanians, and the Egyptians. The major intelligence services in Europe and in the Middle East, indeed in the rest of the world, stated that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. In January of 2003, a key Middle Eastern leader warned U.S. general Tommy Franks that Saddam "will use WMD- biologicals, actually- on your troops." Here at home, Bill Clinton and Al Gore believed Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. So did leading members of Congress, including John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Jay Rockefeller, Joe Biden, and John Edwards. The big open question was how close Saddam's scientists were to creating a nuclear bomb. The unfolding debate was over whether the United States and its allies should go to war to prevent Saddam from having the chance to use those weapons himself or to divert them to terrorists, or where we should continue more years of sanctions, which had been in places since 1990.
After 9-11, George did not feel that he could subject the safety of other American cities or American civilians to the whims of one man. For George, the potential dangers we faced were numerous. What if he gambled on containing Saddam and was wrong? What if his gamble cost tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of lives in a terror attack on U.S. soil?
Beyond the deep worry over weapons of mass destruction, in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, U.S. national security and common humanity intersected. Few tyrants on the world stage abused human rights like Saddam. The images were haunting and pervasive. Saddam had repeatedly ordered mass killing of Iraq's Kurdish minority. Best estimates are that tens of thousands of men, women, and children were gassed with chemical weapons or rounded up and executed in deserts far from their mountainous, northern homes. After the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam executed hundreds of his Kuwaiti captives and launched strikes on Shi'ites, Kurds, and other ethnic groups he thought might be a threat to his regime. George and I heard stories of little children forces to witness their parents being gunned down with bullets to the back of the head. We heard of Saddam's opponents who were tossed from the open doors of flying planes, plunging to a grisly death; we heard about torture chambers where electrical wires were wrapped around young men's testicles and prisoners hung from molten hooks. Saddam read the works of Adolf Hitler and required his top Ba-ath Party officials to read Mein Kampf. He patterned much of his regime after that of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who had ruthlessly repressed his nation; as did the Nazis and the Soviets, Saddam and his Ba'ath Party elites recruited children to spy on parents and neighbors. No one can say for sure how many Iraqis were killed under Saddam's orders-- the number is too high-- but the estimates range from hundreds of thousands to 1 million. Human Rights Watch has said that 290,000 Iraqis alone with "disappeared" by the Iraqi government over two decades.
[...] [I]n the age of al Qaeda and the post 9-11 world, there were fresh worries that he was a ticking time bomb.
Throughout the fall and winter, George attempted to persuade Saddam to disarm. He did not act alone. In October he sought a congressional resolution to authorize "the use of military force against Iraq." It passed the Senate 77-23, with Senators Kerry, Clinton, Biden, Edwards, and Reid all voting in favor. In November he sought and received a unanimous UN Security Council resolution calling on Saddam to disarm or disclose his weapons. He also sent private messages to Saddam through the French and the Russians. A few nations indicated that they could be persuaded to offer Saddam refuge if he chose exile. But when the offers were raised, Saddam refused to go. We waited, hoping for a last-minute breakthrough, for some kind of reprieve. (pgs 277, 278, 279)
As I walked [within the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, past the barracks and the crematoriums], I realized that there are things that textbooks, photographs, or even graying documentary footage cannot teach. They cannot teach you how to feel when you see prayer shawls or baby shoes left by children torn from their mothers, or prison cells with the scratch marks of attempted escape. And I wept when I saw the thousands of eyeglasses, their lenses still smudged with tears and dirt. I, who would be nearly blind without glasses or contacts, could suddenly suddenly imagine people being driven into terror, with no way to see, groping about with their hands. And then there was the larger blindness, of all the people who lived around the camps and around the world, of all of those who refused to see what was happening.
I thought too of Saddam Hussein, who had said how much he admired Adolph Hitler. (pg 292)
I have to admit being taken aback by that one, although I should've seen in coming. Bush talks about her father's traumatic experiences of World War II and the photographs of the death camps he kept, which she publishes in the photo insert section. So why on earth put that little reminder about Saddam Hussein and the Iraq War in this of all sections? Even if it's true (that that thought crossed her mind) comparing one atrocity to another is generally tricky, and gets even trickier when one of those atrocities involves a highly controversial political action by your husband the President.
We can and should debate all American wars, but can anyone truly say that the world was a better place and Iraq a better nation when Saddam Hussein was in power? Or that it would not have become a full-fledged terrorist haven? And then there were the unanswerables. What, for instance, would the world have said if, in 1999, the United States had invaded Afghanistan? But had we done so, might the World Trade Center be standing today, its offices and observation deck still crowded? We will never know. The world does not operate according to the principles of "what if?" All leaders make choices, and no one can say for certain what would have happened had a different path been taken. For myself, I prefer to stand against oppression, to stand, with George, for freedom. (pg 295)
Violence was markedly declining, as were attacks on U.S. troops and U.S. combat deaths. In mid-December, British troops would return control of the once violent port city of Basra to the Iraqis and the Iraqi army. It appeared that the surge, which earlier that year had been so derided by its critics, was beginning to bear fruit. (pg 402)
Just as the financial crisis was roiling America, the surge in Iraq was cementing some of its largest gains. Iraq, which had once been cited as a failure, was becoming a far less violent, far more peaceful and stable place. It was not perfect, but it had an opportunity to build a better, healthier society, and perhaps in time, ten or twenty-five years from now, it would help transform the Middle East into a more peaceful region. The loneliest of George's decisions, the surge had been the right choice. But ironically, drowned out by the din of a political campaign, Iraq's success was pushed out of the headlines, if it was mentioned at all. (pg 421)
But as you've now seen glimpses, it's not all glowing praise. Bush has plenty of particular vitriol for various targets. The media continues to be a popular target for all politicians, but Bush really gets her Palin impression on with her ire.
Hillary Clinton was waiting for us on the South Portico [for the First Ladies meeting in December 2000]. With plans to move out and to assume her role in the Senate, I was the one who was running late that morning, but in the press reports, I was the one who was chided for tardiness and for my clothes. That's the struggle with trying to find news when you have twenty cameras trained on two women greeting each other at a doorway for a private tea. (pg 165)
Inauguration Eve began early in the morning with a series of interviews at Blair House, including a sit-down with Katie Couric, then of NBC's Today show. Toward the end of our conversation, she said to me, "You appear to be a very traditional woman. Is that a fair characterization?" It was slightly better than the other perennial interview question, "Are you going to be Hillary Clinton or Barbara Bush?" as if the first lady's role was like hand-me-down shoes and I had to choose between two previously worn pairs. but there was, from the start, an underlying assumption on the part of the press that I would be someone else when I assumed the role of first lady, that I would not, under any circumstances, simply be myself. (pg 169)
The British tabloids didn't help [ease nervousness about meeting the then-British prime minister and his wife]. CLASH OF CHERIE AND DUBYA'S COWGIRL headlined The Daily Record, FROSTY FORECAST AS OUR MODERN MUM MEETS BUSH'S LITTLE WOMAN AT SUMMIT. The Brits were convinced that it would be torture for Cherie Blair to sit down and have a meal alone with me while George and Tony got to know each other. "Laura is a cookie-baking homemaker," they wrote, "dull, mumsy, and old-fashioned." At least with the British press, one never needs to say "Tell us what you really think." (pg 178)
[Reporter] Jason DeParle's tenor suggested he saw my efforts [to curb gang violence alongside others such as reformed drug dealer and pimp Kenyatta Thigpen who was invited to speak about his experience] as some kind of joke. His article after the conference was no better. It opened by smugly saying that I was "wealthy and white," while Ken was "poor and black." as it happens, Jason DeParle himself is wealthy and white, but does that disqualify him from writing about poverty and African-American welfare mothers? (pg 353)
To be fair, by her account, that reporter truly does sound unbearable; insulting, frequently in a racist way, the man who turned his life around (although Bush makes it more than a bit about herself, ""So what's a nice woman like you doing with a guy like him?" Meaning Ken Thigpen. It was demeaning to me, and it seemed even more demeaning to Ken."" pg 352. IT WAS DEFINITELY MORE DEMEANING TO KEN, MRS BUSH). And Bush's question about privilege and someone's right to tell a story is inadvertently a good point (although I'm really side-eying "welfare mothers"). Is Bush holding up and helping the marginalized people who are trying to better their community or is it a photo op/white savior moment? Would the story be told better by a Black journalist (yes) in a better position to evaluate Bush's efforts? But that's not really the point she's trying to make, that's her defense at a rude reporter.
[At the 2006 winter Olympics], [a]s with every international event, there were scattered groups of protesters in Turin, arrayed against a variety of causes. Most were antiglobalization; some were protesting Coca-Cola, smog, fast food, and plans for an Italian high speed train; and some were protesting the Iraq War. Media reports before the Olympics had predicted large-scale demonstrations, but they did not materialize. What protest groups did form stayed far away from most Olympic cites. But when Brian Williams interviewed me a few hours before the Opening Ceremony, his second question was: "How much do the protest signs get to you along the motorcade route? I told him I had seen only a few protest signs. And I wondered whether he, tucked away in his broadcast booth, had seen any at all. (pg 366)
But it was still painful to see the man I loved, the man I knew, so misrepresented by his opponents to the American people. And the hardest part was knowing that our daughters saw it too. The dad who had held them as babies, who had loved them unconditionally, was now the target of mocking late-night comics and near hysterical cable television hosts. It hurt me to think of our daughters picking up the newspaper or reading the Internet or walking into a room where the television was on. Their resilience in the face of this onslaught was remarkable. As a family we have listened to some of the worst things that can be said about us or someone we love, and never has our own love dimmed. But what we endured is a meanness of spirit, a viciousness, and a cruelty that I hope no political family will ever be subjected to again. (pg 383)
Opponents of the Iraq War, be they famous or civilian, also garner Bush's ire:
In the winter of 2003, politics had begun to intrude more fully into the East Wing. [...]
[M]any of the scholars we invited [to the White House for celebrations of literature] did not, at first, want to come. David Levering Lewis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of W.E.B. DuBois, told The New York Times that he was shocked when my office invited them. A leading [Mark] Twain scholar was so surprised he told my staff he'd have to call them back, and Ursula Smith, a scholar of the American frontier, also didn't initially want to come. I found that sad. Everyone can appreciate and enjoy literature; books do not come with a "do not read" sign for Democrats, independents, or Republicans. Some of the participants believed I did not read widely. But they came away with their minds changed. The western scholar Patricia Limerick later said, "I did Mrs. Bush a terrible disservice thinking that maybe she didn't know, that she thought these [works] were all little houses on the prairie."
We ultimately had rich discussions, and all our literary events included Washington D.C., [sic] high school students. But that was the end result. The first impulse, too often, was prejudice. Most of us over the course of our lives are guilty of some kind of stereotyping, but I have always found it a uniquely distressing attribute in people who study and teach. For these people who have chosen as their profession the life of the mind, and they are the ones whom we trust to teach our children. They, who have had every educational benefit, should welcome different thoughts and viewpoints. But so many responded to a White House invitation with their minds closed. And that was particularly true of a significant group of poets.
I have long been a lover of poetry, and I very much wanted to host a symposium featuring the works of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and Walt Whitman. I planned the gathering for February 12, 2003. But one of the invited poets sent a blast e-mail to fifty friends asking for antiwar poems and statements. He refused to attend but wanted another guest to present me with an antiwar anthology and have the event become an anti-war protest. What would have brought the works of three great American writer into American homes via C-SPAN was now set to become a forum for a purely political agenda. With real regret I postponed the event. It was never rescheduled. I had not selected the poets on the basis of politics, nor has the guest list been political. I wondered what victory the invitees thought they had won by keeping the East Room dark and silencing some of the nation's most eloquent writers. (pgs 281 and 282)
She later goes on that in March of 2004, she held a symposium on Southern writers featuring Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, and Flannery O'Conner, "each of these writers was in his or her own way familiar with prejudice, which comes in many forms. I find particular beauty in the words of Eudora Welty, who over the years grew hunchbacked and misshapen but who created some of the most complex characters to appear on the printed page." (pg. 282)
This is a fascinating example of what we'd now call "both sidesing" an issue, and I regret to point out that political "prejudice" is not the same as, say, racism, sexism, homophobia, or other forms of bigotry. Also, wow, Eudora Welty was sure hunchbacked but somehow overcame this to write well?!
Late one afternoon, Barbara called home. The teaching assistant in one of her classes at Yale had starkly told her, "I will only give you an A in this class if you tell your father not to got to war." Barbara handled the situation herself, making an appointment to speak to the dean of her residential college, who said that she should submit all of her coursework directly to her professor. (pg 283)
I tried to factcheck this (wouldn't this be major news? Wouldn't we have the name of the teaching assistant by now?) and all I could find is that Barbara Pierce Bush has told the story herself, saying she asked what she could do to improve her grade and that was her response. Was it meant to be a joke? Albeit not one the teaching assistant should've made? If this actually happened, shouldn't the TA at least have been penalized and maybe lost her job? If this really happened, I repeat, why do we have no idea who this is?
In early March, antiwar protestors converged on Washington, waving signs and shouting epithets while George and Tony Blair worked to get the United Nations to vote on a final resolution taking Saddam to task for violating seventeen previous UN solutions and authorizing military actions if he refused to cooperate. (pg 283)
If you haven't already, you'll start to notice a theme whenever Bush describes opponents of the Iraq War. They are profane, ill-mannered, irrational, and plain rude. Not people concerned with human life, just agitators and grandstanders.
I have often wondered if [then-French President] Jacques Chirac or [then-Chancellor of Germany] Gerhard Schroeder could have done more, if one of them could have persuaded Saddam to go into exile, if they could have conveyed that the United States was not bluffing. After Saddam was finally pulled from his spider hole, looking like a madman, he said that he had not believed the United States would invade; he had not believed we were serious. (pg 285)
[In 2006] many Americans blamed [George] for the war; the attacks were shrill and personal. (pg 382)
Bush also aims big at some expected targets.
In the middle of that same summer [of 1995], after we'd packed Barbara and Jenna off to Camp Longhorn, George and I ducked out to a lunchtime matinee movie, Forrest Gump. Just as we were pulling into the parking lot of the theater, the phone rang in the car-- it seems almost quaint to recall those big car phones now, when most of us walk around with BlackBerries hooked to our hips. One of the campaign staffers was on the line telling George that Ann Richards had just called him a jerk. "Some jerk" were her exact words at a rally in Texarkana. George rolled his eyes, shrugged his shoulders, and we went in to watch Tom Hanks on the big screen. Although it was shocking at the time, and it didn't help Governor Richards, I look back now and find it pretty tame mud that she slung. (pg 133)
Wow, imagine how upset she'd have been if he'd been called a major league asshole! Also "BlackBerries"? In 2010?
The nasty personal criticisms of George had begun in earnest in 2004. In a May 2004 interview with her hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives, said, "Bush in an incompetent leader. In fact, he's not a leader. He's a person who has no judgement, no experience, and no knowledge of the subjects that he has decided upon." She went on, "Not to get personal about it, but the president's capacity to lead has never been there. In order to lead, you have to have judgement. In order to have judgement, you have to have knowledge and experience. He has none." In 2005, after being invited to a meeting at the White House, she called George "dangerous." Meanwhile, the Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada, called George a "loser" and a "liar." Subsequently, in a private, one-on-one meeting in the White House Cabinet Room, Reid said to George that he would stop calling him names. But he didn't stop. And he later told both Rolling Stone and then The New York Times Magazine, with apparent pride, that he had "never" apologized for the liar comment.
These two congressional leaders also made those statements about the sitting United States president when the country was at war, though George and I knew, similar invectives had been hurled at presidents during wartime from the earliest days of our republic. Franklin Roosevelt had complained that "every senator is a law unto himself and everyone seeks the spotlight." Interestingly enough, when Pelosi and Reid were asked to suggest their own policy proposals, their answer invariably was withdraw from Iraq immediately, whatever the consequences.
Nevertheless, George and I repeatedly invited Harry and Landra Reid and Nancy and Paul Pelosi to the White House. They came for small gatherings and for black-tie dinners, and received invitations to major state events. When the Queen of England visited in the spring of 2007, Nancy Pelosi danced in the White House in her long ball gown.
Of course, I hated hearing all of those terrible things said about my husband. The comments were uncalled for and graceless. While a president's political opponents, as well as his supporters, are entitled to make what they see as legitimate criticisms, and while our national debates should be spirited, these particular words revealed the very petty and parochial nature of some who serve in Congress. George, as president, would never have used such language about them. It demeans honest debate; it debases the office of the presidency; and just as importantly, it does little to produce good decisions or good policy. George did not use interviews to call political opponents "losers" or "liars," and if he had, the outcry would have been enormous. The president doesn't have the luxury of behaving like a smart-aleck kid on a school playground; he has to work not just with Congress but with leaders around the world. The cockiest thing George did say was that he wanted to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive."
Pelosi and Reid and others got to say whatever they wanted, and George and I were still polite. We still shook their hands in receiving lines and posed for photographs, and George did not exclude them from important meetings or White House events. He respected the offices that they held. (pgs 384, 385, and 386)
That's some impressive, blistering shade, but as we've seen already, plenty of times her husband wasn't afraid to take pot-shots and a part of the reason we have the obnoxious "Democrat Party" term today (rather than Democratic Party, Democratic candidate, Democratic President, et cetera) is because of her husband making use of the term exclusively, usually with a bit of emphasis on the last syllable (rat). Also, Nancy Pelosi's hometown (where she was born and raised in an established political family) is Baltimore, Maryland, but don't worry, Mrs Bush, we caught the dogwhistle. It sounds more elite and out of touch if her hometown is San Francisco. There was seriously no fact-checker for that? This isn't about defending Pelosi, this is about accuracy.
In the news and on the presidential campaign trail, George was attacked ruthlessly. We had both long ago given up stewing over the things said about either one of us. When you are president, there simply isn't time. George did not have time to be mad at a press person who wrote or said something nasty about him. He did not have time to be upset at a candidate who lashed out at him in an effort to secure higher office. Then too, as we had long ago learned, there is a certain luxury that comes from being a candidate. It is easy to criticize a sitting president when you are not the one in the Oval Office, when you are not responsible for the decisions that must be made and for the whole of the nation. I thought of that when I heard the daily rants from the campaign trail. It got so that even the weather seemed to be George's fault. And I wondered if Barack Obama, who spent far more time attacking George than he did his opponent, John McCain, would want to amend his words once he discovered the reality of the White House and was himself confronted by all the challenges and crises that hit a president every day, all day. (pg 420)
One wonders if she realizes her husband ran on "Restoring Dignity to the White House" which was literally a commentary on the previous President's personal life?
There's also a good stretch aimed at the 2004 Presidential campaign, particularly both Kerrys (and an Edwards):
[During the last Presidential debate of the 2004 election], [w]e all heard Bob [Schieffer, the moderator] say, "Both of you are opposed to gay marriage. But to understand how you have come to that conclusion, I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?" John Kerry began his answer by saying, "I think if you were to ask Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as." Beside me, Jenna and Barbara gasped. They were both utterly stunned that a candidate would use an opponent's child in a debate. John Kerry's statement did not seem like some off-the-cuff remark. His running mate, John Edwards had also mentioned Mary during his vice presidential debate from Dick Cheney, the week before. Lynne Cheney was rightly furious to see her daughter be used by these men in a calculated attempt to score political points. Lynne called it "cheap and tawdry," and it was. (pg 305 and 306)
We'll get to Bush's own thoughts on same-gender marriage. But while it's hypocritical for a campaign that also did not support full equality to use that line, it's worth asking of an administration as blatantly anti-gay as the Bush administration was how they justify that when the vice-President has a lesbian daughter. Also, Bush's pearl-clutching over the use of a candidate's child in a campaign conveniently overlooks the fact that Karl Rove, of whom she spoke so lovingly, purportedly heavily used John McCain's adopted daughter in a particularly ugly attack in the 2000 primaries, claiming that she was the result an affair with a Black escort. His daughter was actually a child at the time, not a grown woman (although yes, I agree with leaving non-public figures in peace).
But a postscript to the 2004 campaign was that it changed, perhaps irrevocably, how the families, especially the children, of national candidates are treated. The strategy of making Mary Cheney's private life and issue failed with the voters in November of 2004. But in the years since, it has become acceptable to mock candidates and their families, and other elected officeholders, in highly personal ways: David Letterman feels free to ridicule Sarah Palin's teenage daughters, and the audience laughs. That is the legacy of the 2004 campaign. (pg 307)
I cannot stand David Letterman. But there was an outcry when that happened and he was made to apologize for his gross joke. Also, Chelsea Clinton's treatment from Rush Limbaugh and SNL (which Bush handwaves) when she was literally a child took place a decade before the 2004 election. But Bush did work in a Palin mention so score?
[D]ays later, I was the one in the campaign spotlight. In a brief interview, Teresa Heinz Kerry was asked by USA Today if she would be different from me as first lady. These are the trick questions of politics. They may seem benign coming off a reporter's lips, but they are minefields for whoever answers. Teresa began by saying, "Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her, which is good." Had she ended at that sentence, there would have been no headline. But instead she continued, "But I don't know that she's ever had a real job-- I mean since she's been a grown-up." Of course, Teresa had no idea that I worked as a teacher and a librarian from 1968 until I married George, in November of 1977. Her husband's campaign issued an apology the same day. I was never offended. But from then on, at political rallies, I would see women holding signs; "I never did anything either, I'm a teacher" or "I don't do anything either, I'm a librarian." (pg 306)
While it's pretty rich for a billionaire heiress to complain about someone else not having a real job, Bush's "never offended" strikes a bit false in recounting the story as well as her supporters' reaction to it.
But between the praise and the condemnation, there's a curious category of person for whom Bush seems to have both affection and castigation. Among them, her mother-in-law:
When I married George, I had thought that I would be embraced by his mother every bit as much as he was embraced by mine. I had planned on being more a daughter than a daughter-in-law, but Barbara Bush had five children of her own. She was their defender first. What I came to see ultimately as our bond was that we both loved George, and the depth of our love was what we had in common. Beyond that, we had little contact. I saw her during those harried Maine vacations, when the onslaught of adult children, their spouses and companions, and then their children often drove her to distraction-- she is only partially kidding when she ways that, when all else fails, follow the directions on the aspirin bottle: take two and keep away from children. I look back now through album photographs, at everyone grouped together, smiling gamely for the camera, and someone always looks as if he or she is about to cry. In a number of photos, the person on the verge of tears is Bar.
But from the start, she was also ferociously tart-tongued. She's never shied away from saying what she really thinks [...]
I was with Bar in the mid-1990s when people would come up to us in a store or restaurant in Kennebunkport and say, "I know you," thinking they'd met her somewhere, and her response was "No, you don't. You don't know me." She's even managed to insult nearly all of my friends with one or another perfectly timed acerbic comment. Once, once of them, Lois Betts, called her on it, and Bar was truly chagrined. (pgs 123 and 124)
But a decade after my marriage, Bar Bush and I finally got to know each other. We both loved reading and share our favorite books. [...]
At last, I saw Bar for who she is, a funny, warm woman and a mother who is devoted to her husband and her children. Away from that overflowing Maine summer house and the conventions and inaugurations, those high-profile, high-pitched events where Gampy's political career was on the line, Bar and I came to know and love each other. (pg 125)
It's quite notable that her mother-in-law is "Bar" but her father-in-law is "Gampy", her daughters' name for their grandfather.
Two families from the international community, oddly enough, also fit into this "affectionate scold" category.
Bush has great affection for the Blairs and for Cherie Blair, who debated her husband endlessly and cordially, including the anecdote of the Blairs' oldest son telling his mother to "Give the man a break."
More eerily, the Bushes hosted Vladimir Putin and his then-wife regularly, and Bush describes a warm kinship:
Our friendship was built not simply out of frequent meetings but the common threads of our lives. Like me, Lyudmila had two daughters, Maria and Yekaterian, both close in age to Barbara and Jenna. The Putins were proud that their daughters were fluent in English and several other languages. During a visit that previous summer to the Putin's dacha-- a sprawling, steep-roofed house in the middle of a birch forest just west of Moscow-- the girls played violin and piano for us. Another time, Vladimir proudly showed George the chapel he had built inside the compound and his stables, where a troop of Russian riders treated us to a command acrobatic performance. And as I walked through the dacha's brightly painted rooms with their massive fireplaces, I thought back to Lyudmila's surprise at seeing all the windows and open doors at our Texas ranch. Frigid Moscow winters and nights do not lend themselves to vast expanses of clear glass. (pg 273)
For Putin himself, George (and George alone!) was able to break through to him but did so with not a small amount of scolding:
Vladimir Putin struck up a conversation with Don Evans, the commerce secretary, over the fire pit. Putin said, "You've had such a short history. You only have two hundred years of history and look how far you have come. How have you done it?" We forget that Russian history dates back well over a thousand years, with centuries of czars and dynasties. Donnie looked at him and said the answer is simple, freedom, democracy. "Here in the U.S.," he added, "people are free to run their own lives." (pg 236)
Both here [in the US] and in Russia, [George] repeatedly chided Putin for cracking down on the press, telling the Russian president that his country had to have a free press, that a free press is essential for a democracy. "You need to have an independent press," George would tell him. And Putin would invariably rely, "Well, you control your press." George would shake his head and say, "No, Vladimir, I don't. I wish sometimes that I could control them, but I can't. They are free to say whatever they want. In our country, the press is free to write terrible things about me, and I can't do anything about it."
But Russia is a country without those traditions, and with no memory of them, and many in Russia believed that the U.S. government did control our press. In fact, following a summit meeting, one of the first questions George got from a Russian newsman essentially was, How can you complain to President Putin about the Russian press when you fired Dan Rather? (pgs 236 and 237)
[W]henever George was scheduled to meet with Vladimir Putin, leaders from around the world would start calling the White House weeks in advance. First it would be the Baltic countries, then the Balkan ones. Nation after nation wanted George to deliver messages from them. Even Tony Blair would call and say, "You've got to tell this to Vladimir." George would got to the meeting with a string of messages from others. And he would have a few of his own as well. (pg 236)
There's a distressing story from the 2007 G-8 Summit in Heiligendamm, Germany about both Bushes getting violently ill (along with a dozen of so members of their delegation) and several reported lasting effects. "The most concrete conclusion any doctors could reach was that we contracted a virus that attacks a nerve near the inner ear and is prevalent in Heiligendamm. But we never learned if any other delegations became ill, or if ours, mysteriously, was the only one." (pg 391)
Speaking of international relations, there's this rather unfortunate passage:
Zeenat Karzai wore a long, gray coat, and her head was tightly swathed in a full white scarf. Unlike some Muslim women, who push their scarves back above their hairlines to reveal a tantalizing bit of their dark tresses, she concealed every strand of hair. In a nod to Western ways, she clutched a gray purse in her hand as we were introduced. (pg 317)
I assume ("tantalizing", seriously?) that she's referring to Muslim women in Afghanistan, rather than all Muslim women in the world.
But beyond scolding or praise or both, Bush is out to sell a version of herself and her husband as "just folks." This is nothing new in American politics, but given Bush's lineage (and the fact his father was President) a bit ridiculous at times.
The "big oil" I knew were the people who worked at decent jobs, who bought homes, sent their children to school, prayed in church and pushed their shopping cards down the supermarket aisle next to mine. (pg 116)
She marvels at the smallness of the Texas Governor's mansion for living ("the house was a grand antebellum design, but our actual private living space was a modest upstairs apartment, small enough that I had to leave many of our things behind", pg 134) and the vastness of the White House which she claims granted them a way to give that they could never afford on their own. Her shock at how many clothes a First Lady would have to wear leads to embarrassing incidents like wearing the exact same outfit to be interviewed again on the same show and having to frantically change tops with her press secretary, along with buying the exact same gown as several in her friend group to a Kennedy Center Honors awards show. She emphasizes all beauty and fashion came out of her own money and budget and the burden they became, preferring these days to "flip through home decorating magazines while I dry my own hair" (pg 186).
Late that January afternoon in 2009, we stopped in Midland, where George spoke to a cheering crowd. [...]
"This guy who went to Sam Houston Elementary spent the night in Buckingham Palace." (pg 429)
I genuinely rolled my eyes at this. Again, nothing new for American politics, but the Bushes are blue-blooded on both sides of the President's family and his father, again, was literally President. They don't have the plausible deniability for the bootstraps myth.
It's far from just class, though. Bush describes herself pretty much the way you'd imagine a Bush-voter to be. While by most accounts she's a reggae fan, and her daughters in their book describe her taking them to concerts as children, this Bush is modestly grateful to see some performers she likes, like Naomi Judd. She says she and her husband tell their daughters "nothing good ever happens when you are drunk" and spreads this kind of image to her husband:
On nights and weekends, I had second career inside the White House: movie critic. [...]
[F]or his part, George did not like films that depended on the F-word for much of their dialog. (pg 365)
Much but not all?
That cultural conservatism goes a bit awry at this anecdote:
For the better part of six months, I had been planning to host a group of my old Midland friends for four days at the White House, to tour Washington gardens, including Mount Vernon. I have been looking forward to seeing them, as had Susie Evans, my kindergarten friend and George's second-grade friend, who had moved from Midland to Washington, D.C., when her husband, Don, became the secretary of commerce. But when the days arrived, I regretted the invitation. I could tell that it irritated George to have a group of women sitting around, laughing, talking, opening a bottle of wine as he strode off to the Treaty Room after dinner for one of his frequent nighttime meetings with Condi Rice and her National Security Council deputy, Stephen Hadley. (pg 283)
"Irritated" by a bunch of women? Not a bunch of people having fun when he's working, but a bunch of women, specifically? He's literally meeting with a female member of staff. It's flawed word choice that creates a really unpleasant image.
At my [college] commencement, just over a month after Martin Luther King was assassinated and a few weeks before another bullet felled Bobby Kennedy, SMU's president, Willis Tate, implored students not to abandon rational thought and judgment, saying, "We live in a day when contagious hysteria and social pressures can completely anesthetize a person's ability to reason," and adding, "In times of rapid change, the old may be destroyed along with the decayed. There are some time-tested, eternal values." (pg 81)
Too literary, Mrs Bush! You would have lost the TEA Party!
Israel is a beacon of democracy for the region and has had, since its founding out of the ashes of the Holocaust, a special relationship with the United States. It is one of America's staunchest allies, and the United States is in turn committed to Israel's survival. (pg 321)
The next week, on October 2 [2001], George and I went out to dinner in Washington, D.C., with Mayor Anthony Williams and his wife, Diane, at Morton's, a steakhouse. Across the country, people had stopped going to shopping malls and to restaurants. They had stopped flying on airplanes and staying in hotels. No one could promise them that other strikes would not come. But now, in addition to all the fears of another terror attack, George was concerned that the economy would spiral in to a full-blown crisis. We had already been in recession from the bursting of the dot-com bubble. He did not want the specter of more people losing their jobs, of store fronts being boarded up and businesses going bankrupt. It's not a large gesture for a president to go out and have dinner, but we hoped that by doing so we might encourage other Americans. It was why George wanted them to shop, to fly on commercial airlines, and to travel again-- those were all ways to bolster business. If the terrorists had succeeded in undermining our economy too, they would have scored a double blow. (pgs 215 and 216)
That last line actually made it through an editor. The economy is as important as the thousands of lives lost?
But wait, how does Bush justify two key social issues where she differs from her husband's political stances?
In 2004 the social question that animated the campaign was gay marriage. Before the election had unfolded, I had talked to George about not making gay marriage a significant issue. We have, I reminded him, a number of close friends who are gay or whose children are gay. But at that moment I could never had imagined what path this issue would take and where it would lead. (pg 303)
A super important point here is that you do not have to know someone or know someone who knows someone from a marginalized group for you to feel it's wrong to discriminate against them, as her husband's administration put into law and put out on the campaign trail, repeatedly. She might have said that, however misguided her ideas (it IS a significant issue and you're on the wrong side of history) but the campaign didn't, and kept their easy cultural warrior stance (with George himself standing and smiling later with an anti-gay activist actively protesting gay characters being depicted in children's media). But never mind all that, look at that horrid John Kerry!
I thought of Barbara's and Jenna's shock when, as young girls, they first learned what abortion is. They knew how much George and I had longed for children, how much they were wanted. Talking with them around our small kitchen table, I, who had come of age during the bitter fights over Roe v Wade, was also a bit shocked at their surprise and disbelief.
On the issue of abortion, I have always been struck by the deep divide between the sides. And how rarely the alternative of adoption is raised. [...]
While cherishing life, I have always believed that abortion is a private decision, and there, no one can walk in anyone else's shoes.
When Katie Couric raised the issue of Roe v Wade [during her interview], I knew George's views, and I knew what the federal law is. I also knew the religious objections and the personal anguish of women on both sides. [...]
Finally, to the question Did I think Roe v Wade should be overturned? I answered no, and of course, that one word became the headline. (pg 303)
Hemming and hawing and "both sidesing", but she does land on pro-choice, sort of, although one wonders exactly what she told her daughters as children. "Adoption" is not an option for someone who does not wish to be pregnant for a number of reasons: health of the pregnant person for one (which you think given her own difficult pregnancy and labor Bush would understand), the fact if they are a victim of a sex crime they might not want a child out in the world as a reminder, the fact giving up a zygote is a lot easier than giving up a living breathing baby, and that's not even getting into the foster care system.
Most famously notorious about this book however, is the fact Bush discusses a teenage car accident wherein she accidentally killed a good friend (rumored to be an ex boyfriend, but Bush shuts that down) a few days after her 17th birthday. It's notorious because Bush mentions that she intended to go to the boy's funeral while her parents didn't think she should, but she ended up sleeping through it, so the point was mute.
But that's not what struck me the most about her account. She goes into how she felt, and how her family coped. She laments that she didn't see a counselor and discusses her guilt, but really, the only time the boy or his family factor into the story is mostly about Bush. She didn't ever go to see them, since she assumed they wouldn't want to see her and she regretted it. I realize this is her memoir, but when she remembers the incident primarily that way, how hard it was for her, it's not exactly the relatable take of her side of the story she may have thought it was.
This book is not without value. There's some genuinely interesting stories about her time as First Lady, including some fascinating behind the scenes information about White House decor and how holidays (especially Christmas) at the White House are planned, and Bush goes into some history about the redecoration of various rooms. Genuinely funny, interesting events happen, like the Bushes arranging for the then-Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a huge Elvis fan, to visit Graceland and meet Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley (to whom he sang Elvis songs). Bush talks about faulty world leader intelligence on minor things (presenting one leader with a bowling ball since they heard he loved bowling; he did not actually) but unfortunately caps it with another plug for the Iraq War.
She doesn't actually call it this in the book, but it's clear she and the President suffered from PTSD from the 9/11 attacks, fearful of low-flying planes and well-aware that a plane targeted the White House and couldn't find it. She describes several terrifying false alarms, including one where she and her husband had to flee from their bed, her without contacts or glasses, and holding on to their pets as they made their way to safety.
Even before her time as First Lady, her almost lyrical descriptions of her early life and her parents are probably the best part of the book, and certainly the most heartfelt-seeming. Her anguish over her father's deterioration from Alzheimer's and her mother's own subsequent slipping (Bush had no way of knowing at the time of publication that her mother would live for almost another decade, until she was just shy of her 100th birthday) feel more genuine than some of the other sections of the book. Bush is not without some worthwhile insight:
I wonder too about the passions that seem to be so permanently entrenched in all sides of American politics, where elected officials become near instantaneous celebrities, and crowds are expected to swoon as teenagers once did for the Beatles almost half a century ago. Celebrity is a particularly poor model for politics. At the White House, there is no off-season hiatus or a director to yell, "Cut, that's a wrap." The demands of not just the nation but of the world are fierce and unrelenting. I am certain that all presidents have moments when they simply ask God, "Please do not let anything happen today." (pg 431)
The increased celebritization of politics is indeed a problem although Bush probably didn't see (how could she?) how much of a problem they would be in just six short years later.
As I briefly mentioned before, she (or her advisor) is occasionally given to some truly and unfortunately purple prose:
For months, I would lie in bed at night or wake in the darkness and think of our troops, think of them sleeping on cold, hard ground beneath the unforgiving Afghan winds, and feel guilty that I had a warm room and a warm bed while they risked everything. At Camp David, on that first Sunday morning after 9-11, our chaplain, Navy Lieutenant Bob Williams, had selected scripture reading Psalm 27, "I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." I knew that goodness wore camouflage and khaki; it wore Army green, Navy white, Marine tan, and Air Force blue. (pg 218)
That evening, as Jenna and [her new husband] Henry slipped on their shiny new rings, George and I basked in their love. (pg 411)
She's describing she and her husband being extremely happy for their daughter at her wedding. I understand how putting that into words might be difficult, especially since it's a private moment, but there has to be something better than "basked in their love" which sounds insincere at best.
But as to the question of who is Laura Bush, some offhand passages answer it probably better than Bush intended.
After San Jacinto Junior High, I should have attended Midland High, but instead I went to the brand-new high school, Robert E. Lee, because we had moved again. Every other school in Midland was named for a Texas hero or event, from Jim Bowie, Sam Houston, James Fannin, Mirabeau Lamar, Davy Crockett, William Travis, and Lorenzo de Zavala to San Jacinto and Alamo, for the famous battles against Mexico.[...]The only outside hero was George Washington Carver, whose name adorned the segregated high school where Midland's black students went. But now there was Robert E. Lee.
Midland had not existed during the Civil War, and it seemed both absurd and wrong to name a school for a Confederate commander in the year 1960. At the time, my mother told me that one school board member was adamant about calling it Robert E. Lee and with a shake of her head just let it go. And I did too. No one I knew protested; it was simply considered to be out of our hands. As kids, we lived in our own little world, where we could ride our bikes wherever we wanted and sneak out in our pajamas because Midland was a safe town and we safe within its limits. Our parents were not afraid for us to dash outside the minute school was over and play until the front porch lights and streetlamps flickered on and it was time to come in and eat. We lived our lives in a kind of easy oblivion and ceded the important decisions to the adults.
At Lee, they played "Dixie" at the football games and were expected to sing when we heard the first chords. Our teams were called the Rebels, our annual was the Rebelee. But it bothered me. It bothered me from the moment I went. (pg 54s and 55)
I'm struck by this since I assume it's meant to establish both setting and Bush's character, and it does both, but she doesn't list it as a radicalizing moment, or something that pushed her to take a certain job or take up a certain cause as an adult. It just made her uncomfortable but since she thought there was nothing she could do, she put it out of her mind.
It seems connected with this musing from her post-college years:
I was not a placard-waving protestor. But the scenes from the Alabama [civil rights] marches or the riots that left Detroit and Newark in flames cemented my desire to do what I could, and that was to teach in an inner-city, minority school. I wanted to work with children who had been left out and, too often, left behind, simply because of the color of their skin. When I taught, I always asked to be placed in what were called "minority schools." (pg 79)
I feel this passage gives away again what Bush thinks about protesters in general, be it against the Iraq War or against segregation and white supremacy. There are those who protest, and then there are those who do work, be it being President or being a teacher for inner city students. The two do not meet. It's certainly fine to have beliefs, so long as you have them in the right way.
All in all, this book is extremely useful as a reminder of what so much of the Bush years were (although certainly not the way Bush intended), something that's been lost even before 2016. While the Bush daughters' memoir had enough easy appeal to draw in those who did not support their father politically, this memoir does not (and as I said, the point doesn't seem to be to draw in the people who didn't support her husband for President, it's to build his legacy for those potentially interested).
As for the answer to the question "Who is Laura Bush?" you might find it, somewhat, in this memoir. But you probably won't be happy with the answer.
Notable: Bush talks mostly warmly of Hillary Clinton and describes their "First Ladies" meeting in December 2000, where in Hillary gave her a piece of advice and a story.
In late winter of 1995, Jackie Kennedy had called Hillary to invite her and her daughter, Chelsea to the ballet in New York. Chelsea was in school; Hillary had a full schedule, and, feeling pressed, she declined. In May, Jackie died of cancer. Hillary said that she long regretted her choice to stay home and wanted me to know that story so that I would not do the same. (pg 165)
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died in May of 1994. I'm assuming it's a typo rather than a faulty recollection, but it does kind of make one wonder about the level of fact-checking and editing this went through.
Final Grade: C-
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