The New Republic
August 20, 2001
SECTION: Cover Story
LENGTH:
3877 words
HEADLINE: Portrait of a Lady ;
How Laura
Bush conquered feminism.
BYLINE: By Sarah Wildman
BODY:
On
an oppressively humid day in late July, a slew of female aides in
Crayola-colored suits scurry under the stained-glass windows of
Georgetown University's Gaston Hall. They are preparing for the White
House Summit on Early Childhood Cognitive Development, a conference
highlighting "First Lady Laura Bush's Education Initiatives." An hour
and a half after the media arrive, Laura Bush steps up to the podium.
Wearing a candy-apple-red suit and speaking in her confident
It's a strange way to host a
conference. But then, over the last few decades, the position of first
lady has become an awfully strange job. Historically, the role was
largely private. Neither Bess Truman nor Mamie Eisenhower gave political
speeches, press conferences, or radio broadcasts--let alone presided
over televised conferences on education policy. Indeed, while Bess slunk
off unimpeded to pout in
But this has made the job
harder, not easier. Before feminism, it was brutally constricting; today
it's simply impossible. The twenty-first century first lady must be
poised. Polished but not slick. Accessible but not intimate. Smart but
not ambitious. Motivated, interested, an advocate--but never political.
Beautiful but uncaring about her appearance. Happy. She must retain her
own identity but negate it where it diverges from her husband's. And if a
first lady appears unhappy with those requirements, even a little, she
weakens the administration and is pilloried not only by its enemies but
by its friends.
Laura Bush resolves this conundrum by filling all
these contradictory expectations simultaneously. Or, more accurately,
by allowing them to fill her. Depending on whose account you read, she's
a quiet intellectual, a career woman, a stay-at-home mom, a teacher, an
empowered woman, or a society wife. She was deeply committed to her
career as an educator and felt no pressure to marry; yet she left the
classroom more than two decades ago without a backward glance. She is an
intellectual--a voracious reader-- yet she appears to have no dark,
subversive, or even complex thoughts. She is totally fulfilled by her
husband, although he seems uninterested in, or ignorant of, her
intellectual and literary pursuits. She is passionate about education
yet offers no opinions that don't shadow her husband's. She is the
Play-Doh first lady: Mold her into whatever shape you want, then stamp
her back down into a pile of putty for her next audience. Is it a
pleasant existence? Probably not. It's certainly not an honest one. But
for a public figure absurdly caught between society's conflicting
notions of what women should be, it's a way to survive.
First
ladies weren't always forced into such contortions. Until 1960 the first
lady was important for social functions, for rearing the first family,
and for presenting the president as a family man. But she wasn't
required, or allowed, to be outspoken about issues. The job was never
enjoyable; Martha Washington called herself a "state prisoner." But it
was straightforward.
Eleanor Roosevelt was an exception: FDR's
disability helped make her an essential part of the White House
operation. But with Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower, the first lady's
role became private once again. It was not until 1960 that an
administration discovered the first lady's public relations potential.
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy provided glamour, family connections, and a
multilingual education to a family that, for all its wealth, still
craved old-money respectability. Her disdain for the average American
would have ruined her in today's media maelstrom--witness the backlash
against Nancy Reagan when she tried to follow Jackie's example 20 years
later. But in an era when life in the White House was the subject more
of curiosity than of scrutiny--and when the presidency itself inspired
awe, not casual derision--Jackie was worshiped. Thousands copied her
hair and clothing styles. When she refurbished the White House,
showcasing historic preservation and the arts, she won accolades. She
performed "woman's work," albeit a society woman's work, and, for an
But, as the '60s wore on,
conventional notions of femininity gave way to feminism, and it was only
a matter of time before those changed expectations infiltrated the
White House. Increasingly, first ladies had to twist themselves into
knots to meet modern ideas of what women could be, without exceeding the
traditional bounds still enforced by large swaths of society--all under
the increasingly intrusive eye of the public. Lady Bird Johnson, the
first to try on this role, may have fared the best. Lady Bird's "actions
rarely sparked criticism or controversy," writes Myra Gutin in The
President's Partner: The First Lady in the Twentieth Century. "However,
even though she did advocate projects that were safe, and was not an
initiator, these criticisms are tempered by all that she did
accomplish." She is widely cited as a catalyst for the modern
environmental movement, and she pushed Lyndon subtly to the left. "Man,
Lady Bird was just shrewd," sighs George Washington University Professor
Allida Black. "She lobbied people behind the scenes and played a key
role in Head Start as well as a crucial role in keeping the South in
line after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act." The first first lady to
campaign without her husband, Lady Bird braved a whistle-stop tour of
the South at a moment when her husband's programs were least popular.
Lady Bird spoke of her "Southern birth, kinfolk, and memories" while
pleading that it would be a "bottomless tragedy for our country to be
racially divided."
Still, Lady Bird's outspoken defense of her
husband's policies was tolerated precisely because they were his
policies. A president who can't control his wife is seen as a president
who can't control the country, as soon became apparent. In the summer of
1975, Betty Ford, in an interview on "60 Minutes," spoke frankly about
sex, her relationship with her husband, drugs, abortion, and her
children. Asked what she would do if her teenage daughter, Susan, had
"an affair," the first lady said she "wouldn't be surprised" because
"she's a perfectly normal human being like all young girls, and if she
wanted to continue I would certainly counsel and advise her on the
subject." The first lady admitted "all" her children had "tried
marijuana" and that she probably would have, too, had she come of age in
the '70s. Later that summer, the first lady told McCall's magazine that
she wanted to have sex "as often as possible" and boasted that she "got
a woman in the Cabinet" and was "working on getting a woman on the
Supreme Court." "Mrs. Ford's candor may have killed her husband's
chances of winning in 1976," writes historian Gil Troy in Mr. and Mrs.
President: From the Trumans to the
Rosalynn
Carter came to the White House determined to be an activist first
lady--particularly on mental health issues. But by then feminism's
advance had made the balance between advocacy and wifely duties all but
untenable. After Rosalynn toured Latin America on behalf of her husband
in 1977, Judy Woodruff, then of NBC, sniffed, "You were handed an
assignment simply because you were the wife of the president--isn't that
kind of a setback for the women's movement?" Rosalynn was stuck: not
feminist enough for feminists, too feminist for those who feared them.
Her presence in Cabinet meetings provoked harsh criticism: When the
president fired several of his Cabinet members in midsummer 1979,
Rosalynn's defense of the purge prompted Republicans to dub her "Lady
Macbeth," as though she were responsible for the shake-up. To defuse the
situation, Rosalynn defensively told The Washington Post: "I sat in on
the meetings. I don't say 'Do this' or 'Do that.' I don't ever do that
to him. We just discuss things. I'm a wife. I like to know what's
happening. I have never been interested in detail of policy and
legislation." Her image as an adviser, she insisted, was "exaggerated."
Ultimately,
of course, it was Hillary Clinton who exposed the agony of the office.
After eight years and innumerable versions of Hillary Clinton, one
sentiment can be distilled from every profile written about the former
first lady: a distinct sense of discomfort. Too much of a feminist to be
just a presidential accessory, she was a dubious feminist icon all the
same. After staunchly retaining her maiden name for the first half of
her professional career, she suddenly--and expediently--let it slip into
second place behind her husband's, where it disappeared and reappeared
throughout her husband's tenure in public office. Changing her image,
her motivations, and her title (partner? co-president? first lady?) left
her open to attack. No one knew quite what to do with her. The first
first lady with a graduate degree, refusing to back away from a life of
accomplishments? Or a battered and torn tarpaulin, badly shielding her
husband's indiscretions?
The difference between the outgoing
first lady and the incoming one was painfully obvious at their meeting
in December: Hillary in her now-trademark black pantsuit, Laura in a
terrible purple plaid number, looking like nothing so much as country
mouse. When Laura later announced that the two women spoke about
"everything" from "closets to ways to raise children in the White
House," some interpreted it as a sign that the role of first lady was
being returned to its pre-Hillary, pre-feminist roots. But it's not that
simple. Much as they would deny it, Laura and the people around her are
careful not to stray too far from the trail Hillary blazed. "Laura is
inching toward a third way," says historian
This carefully managed
image of Laura Bush begins with a core, undisputed narrative, related
in nearly every media profile by the same set of family friends and
White House insiders. The daughter of a homemaker and a homebuilder,
Laura hails from "unpretentious folks" in
It's an ideal setup: blank. Just enough to feel
like she's within reach, not nearly enough to pin her down. And from
there, profilers are allowed--indeed encouraged--to see in Laura Bush
whatever they see lacking in her husband. Listen to Bush adviser Karl
Rove, gushing to Vogue: "$(W$)hat people don't realize is that this is a
woman of enormous strength. You have to be, I suspect, to be married to
a Bush." In this telling, Laura is not an incidental but an essential
ingredient of the Bush political machine. W., we're told, would never
have made it to the White House without Laura's down-home insistence
that he choose her or the bottle. She's the frontier wife, a babe on
each hip, telling the man she fiercely loves that he better put down
that Jack Daniels or walk right out that door. W.'s history of carousing
and clowning (not so terribly unlike her second graders) was smoothed,
"mellowed," by Laura--a role she has continued to play, according to her
part-time biographers, in the White House. "Bushieeeee," she'll say
with a warning lilt if his clowning goes too far. We heard it in her
speech at the Republican convention when applause from the floor went on
too long. "That's enough," Laura said sternly to her flock. Ah, we can
all sigh. Laura will keep her mothering hand on our teenage president.
Yet
equally important is Laura's demure refusal to confirm her centrality
to the story--which leaves its true import open to interpretation,
softening the image for those who might read it as a sign of
presidential weakness or hidden female authority. "The ultimatum was an
exaggeration," she told Harper's Bazaar. "I think that was a joke...
$(W$)hen somebody gives up drinking, they're the ones who do it; they're
the ones who deserve the credit." The Bazaar piece subtly shifts the
iconography of this first lady back to a supporting role. In it, Doro
Koch, W.'s sister, confirms, "She teases him a lot. She'll say, 'You're
completely wrong.' She'll correct him, but not seriously." Adds Lynne
Cheney, "She has no compulsion to put all of her accomplishments on the
table... She doesn't feel a need to be anybody but who she is."
It's
all part of the balancing act: a strong mothering figure but not just a
mother, a traditional wife but also a contemporary woman. When Katie
Couric asked Laura, within hours of the inauguration, if she was a "very
traditional woman," Laura balked. "I don't think that's really exactly
fair," she responded, "I've had traditional--jobs that were
traditionally women's jobs... I had the luxury of staying home and
raising my children... That was really what I wanted to do, was to be at
home with them. But I also think that I've been a very contemporary
woman in a lot of ways. I had a career for a number of years. I didn't
marry George until I was in my thirties. I worked on issues always that
are very, very important to me, either working as a teacher or librarian
or working as a volunteer or working as the first lady of my state. And
so I think I'm both ways."
Both ways, indeed. Although she was a
stay-at-home mom, the Bush camp reminds reporters at every turn that
Laura spent ten years in the classroom. "One of the things we really
admire about Mrs. Bush," Noelia Rodriguez, Laura's press secretary, told
CNN last week, "is that she's very much a contemporary woman. She had a
career before she was married. She married ... in her early thirties,
then had her children later." Phrases like "a teacher by training" are
often tacked to Laura's name, simultaneously providing feminine bona
fides and a weightiness the Bush camp appears to think "housewife" and
"full-time mom" do not. It seems to have worked. Paul Burka, who
profiled Laura for Texas Monthly, told Chris Matthews in April that,
even though "she hasn't taught anything for years and years," teaching
is a "big deal to her." Laura herself has told interviewers that "I've
always done what traditional women do" but adds that she's also done
what she "always wanted." In other words, nothing forced her to abandon
her career for domesticity. She chose to.
The problem, of course,
is that when you line up all these statements side by side, they
conflict. By all accounts, it was Laura Bush's dream to teach. "Growing
up, I practiced teaching on my dolls," she told Cokie Roberts in May,
using the same line she employed at the Republican convention in August.
"I'd line them up in rows for the day's lessons. Years later, our
daughters did the same thing. We used to joke that the Bush family had
the best-educated dolls in
And
that's not the only perplexity. Consider another image beneficial to
the Bush camp: Laura as a sophisticate, a cosmopolitan. She backpacked
through 17 countries the year after college, we are informed; in
subsequent years she has spent countless hours in museums and libraries.
On her first trip to
Again,
it's a politically useful tableau. She is someone who, one would think,
would otherwise not find George W. compelling. (Can you picture W.
spending time in a library anywhere, let alone in a country where most
of the books aren't in English?) Ergo, if Laura finds George W.
fulfilling, he must have something more to offer than the bumbling,
parochial presentation we see day to day. Her years immersed in the
Western canon subtly counteract the image of her husband as shallow and
glib. As Dan Quayle showed, it is critical that a male politician
suspected of being dim-witted not have a dim-witted wife. And yet, for
all the seriousness that Laura's reading brings to her husband's
persona, she never expresses a controversial or sophisticated idea about
the great books she has thought so much about. She is a deep thinker
utterly free of the dark angst or subversive notions that might come
from such contemplation. Take her favorite moment in literature, the
"Grand Inquisitor" chapter of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Asked
about this ambiguous and unsettling passage--in which Christ returns to
earth only to be arrested as a heretic and threatened with burning at
the stake--Laura replied bafflingly, "It's about life, and it's about
death, and it's about Christ. I find it really reassuring."
But
it is when Laura Bush makes her tepid forays into the world of policy
and politics that the tension between her competing images--between the
conflicting expectations that so bedeviled her predecessors--is most
salient. She has called herself a "Republican by marriage," even
admitting to Oprah Winfrey that, had she not married "43," she has
"wondered if $(she$) would have voted for the first President
Bush--number 41." Like all Laura propaganda, it's a carefully planned
admission, allowing us a false sense of intimacy. It shouts to soccer
moms: Her husband's policies may make us shudder, but the pillow talk in
the living quarters tempers the man.
Or does it? In a "Today"
show interview last January, Laura expressed support for leaving Roe v.
Wade untouched. Many liberals were relieved, interpreting her admission
as a white flag to pro-choice Americans. (It took years for Nancy Reagan
and Barbara Bush to reveal the same inclination.) But, queried on that
ostensibly candid moment, she has retreated from any suggestion that her
personal views matter. She told Oprah that she and George W. "agree on
nearly every issue." Pressed further, Laura assured
On
education, Laura has cultivated the role of public advocate, burnishing
her husband's reputation as someone personally committed to the issue.
This in turn has led her to endorse such unassailable projects as Teach
for
And
yet neither she nor her husband has suffered from these contradictions.
A poll released last week by the
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