FIRST LADY - Growing into her role, balancing humor, consolation

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Post-gazette.com

First lady growing into her role, balancing humor, consolation

Friday, November 09, 2001

By Ann McFeatters, Post-Gazette National Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Laura Bush, it turns out, is a funny lady.

Yesterday, she became only the third sitting first lady in modern history to speak to the National Press Club in Washington, talking candidly and humorously about her life in the White House.

Her throat tickling from allergies, she coughed so much as she began that she finally had to take allergy medicine as she stood at the lectern in front of a bank of TV cameras. "This is great for C-Span," she joked.

Asked if she plans to write a book because she loves reading so much, she said without hesitation, "I guess it'll be whether I get that $8 million advance," a sly reference to the sum that New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the previous first lady, has reportedly been paid for a yet-to-be-published autobiography.

But Mrs. Bush said she would like to write a book -- a book for babies, the kind they chew on, she said -- about Barney, the Bushes' dog. It would be done all in black and white because she's heard babies like black and white.

She said she accepted the invitation to speak to the press club, the first incumbent first lady to do so since Eleanor Roosevelt and Rosalynn Carter, about how the nation has changed since Sept. 11 and her belief that America has become more compassionate.

"President Bush said we are a nation awakened to danger," she said, "but we are also a nation awakened to patriotism and citizenship and service. None of us could have imagined the evil that was done to our country, yet we have learned that out of tragedy can come great good."

In her new role as a national grief counselor, Mrs. Bush said Sept. 11 was a day when strangers became heroes, a national defining moment. She remembered that as the attack on Pearl Harbor was a defining moment for her parents' generation, the day that former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated had been the defining moment for her generation until Sept. 11.

On that day, she was on her way to Capitol Hill to speak with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., about childhood education when the Secret Service told her that America was under attack.

"Words can't describe the depth of feeling I had, being with President Kennedy's brother as another tragedy broke our nation's heart," she said.

But as a result of that day, she said, "we are a kinder nation today. People seem to take more time to ask about each other. I notice more people hugging their friends and even reaching out to touch people they barely know. We are opening our doors to our neighbors and our hearts to strangers."

Married for 24 years, the first lady said her husband promised when they married that she would never have to make a speech, and she pledged that she would jog regularly with him. Now, she must make speeches all the time, and she never did jog with him, she said.

"So much for political promises," she said.

When she asked her mother-in-law, Barbara Bush, for advice, the former first lady told her not to criticize her husband's speeches, she said. But when, at the end of a long day of campaigning, her husband insisted upon her honest opinion of how that day's speech had gone over, she replied: Not so well. She said he drove the car into the garage wall.

Asked about life in the White House, she said it's grand living with the furniture of past presidents in the same house where Abraham Lincoln resided, and that she and her family love the fact that she doesn't have to cook.

Asked if she and the president have disagreements, she said: "Sure, we disagree. We've been married a long time." But she couldn't think of an example of current discord.

As for whether her husband has changed since becoming president, she said he's more serious. But she doesn't think his hair is any grayer.

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2001


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