Why I love Laura Bush

I'm a staunch liberal who hates George W. And yet I think his wife is sincere, down-to-earth, smart -- and a role model for all Americans.

By Curtis Sittenfeld

Jan 29, 2004 | I'm a 28-year-old woman, a registered Democrat, and a staunch enough liberal that I take would-be epithets such as "flaming," "knee-jerk" and "bleeding-heart" as compliments. I believe that George Bush's policies are at best misguided and at worst evil. And yet I love Laura Bush. In fact, there is no public figure I admire more.

Looking back, I can see that the love that dare not speak its name came over me gradually. In January 2001, I found watching George W. Bush's inauguration on television so surreal and horrifying that I had to call a friend, and the two of us just sat there in our separate apartments, not really talking except to say, "I can't believe this. Can you believe this?"

A few months passed, George Bush and Co. settled into the White House, and in the June 2001 issue of Vogue, I read a profile of Laura Bush in which it was revealed that she is "indifferent" to clothes and shopping; she finds giving interviews "kind of boring"; and when an acquaintance saw her in line at the post office while her husband was governor of Texas and asked what she was doing, she calmly replied, "I'm mailing a letter." Then an October 2002 article in the New York Times described the White House symposiums Laura hosted at which complicated books and topics were discussed and to which writers who clearly disagreed with George Bush's politics were invited. Multiple authors -- including biographer Arnold Rampersad and historian Patricia Nelson Limerick -- told the Times that they had assumed beforehand that Laura was unfamiliar with both their work and their views; they had been humbled and impressed to learn they were wrong. In spite of myself, I found all of these details extremely endearing.

Now, with the publication of "The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush," by Washington Post reporter Ann Gerhart, I finally feel ready to share my love of Laura with the world. The book is generally flattering -- though Gerhart does take Laura Bush to task for "spoiling" her daughters and not being a more "effective" first lady -- and is filled with anecdotes that illustrate Laura Bush's integrity, unpretentiousness and intelligence. Admittedly, anyone who doesn't already admire the first lady isn't likely to be drawn in by either the book's retro-sounding title or the cover, which features a baby blue background and a photo of Laura gazing up at her husband while he speaks. It looks, at first glance, like bedtime reading for someone's 70-year-old Republican grandmother. When I purchased it at Kramerbooks, an independent bookstore a few miles from my home in Washington, the cashiers seemed so disdainful that I was compelled to announce, "It's for research!" One of them, a woman with a crew cut and all-black clothing, simply looked at the book and shook her head without speaking.

My (decidedly liberal) friends are just as appalled. My friend Jamie said the fact that I publicly admit I admire Laura Bush is evidence that Republican operatives have planted a chip in my brain. When I mentioned to my friend Emily that, according to People magazine, Laura recently read the same short story collection Emily and I were reading -- "The Shell Collector" by Anthony Doerr -- Emily exclaimed, "She's not one of us! She's on the dark side!" My friend Matt said, "I hate Laura Bush because she's culpable, and she's culpable because she's intelligent." Much of the public frustration with Laura seems to stem from her perceived passivity, especially in light of widespread assumption that she's significantly more liberal than George Bush. But what, I asked the people I know, is she supposed to do? Their answers ranged from "drive a wooden stake through her husband's skull" to "poison him."

Clearly, liberals' visceral loathing of George Bush transfers into a loathing of Laura as well. But that transference strikes me as reductive and even sexist. Because here's the thing: Both the new biography about Laura Bush and Laura Bush herself are a lot more complicated than they initially appear.

As the Gerhart book proves, Laura Bush is a true role model. She's smart and curious about the world. She's sincere and down-to-earth and compassionate. She's both confident and modest, she knows who she is, and she doesn't try to prove anything. I suspect the reason so many people I know believe her to be fake is that she doesn't aggressively demonstrate her authenticity.

But to read any part of "The Perfect Wife" -- which is based on over 100 interviews, including several Gerhart conducted with Laura herself -- is to realize that Laura Bush is the opposite of fake. In one anecdote Gerhart relates, it is December 2000 and the Texas Book Festival, an annual event started by Laura in 1995, has kicked off at the same time that the Supreme Court is deliberating on the presidential election recount. The day after the court rules in Bush's favor -- that is, the day after he officially becomes president of the United States, while he is preparing to deliver his acceptance speech on television -- Laura, who earlier gave the Book Festival's opening speech, attends the festival's wrap-up meeting.

"At that very moment of this unprecedented election being decided, history was about to change," Stephen Harrigan, a novelist and festival organizer, told Gerhart. "[Laura's] life was about to change. And she was sitting there listening to how many T-shirts we had sold, and asking were those tote bags moving well, because we would need to order them again." What I love about this story is its implication that Laura is respectful of other people, that she takes her responsibilities seriously, and that she maintains a life separate from her husband -- what Gerhart calls Laura's "stealth independence." And these rare, impressive qualities are shown again and again.

Next Page: Laura Bush shops at Wal-Mart, flies Southwest Airlines, hates the title first lady and has lots of liberal friends

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