Laura Bush: low-key education advocate
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WASHINGTON - In her quiet way, Laura Bush is signaling she will be a different kind of first lady from Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose legal tangles and aggressive policy role made her a polarizing figure.
The new first lady is stepping out as a vocal advocate for education - the one-time teacher and school librarian's signature issue - without injecting herself into policy debates.
She already has used her visibility to focus on literacy, but played no role in developing the education plan President Bush presented to Congress yesterday.
Her precise role in the White House is being worked out. For now, she and aides are developing a program to stress the importance of child development and education.
Hillary Clinton was the first president's wife to occupy a West Wing office alongside other White House policy-makers. Laura Bush returned the first lady's operations to the traditional East Wing location, taking with her an all-female team of 15 aides.
She scrapped the traditional first-lady tribute ceremony Friday and held a reading by authors such as Stephen Ambrose and Mary Higgins Clark instead. She later visited a school in a poor Washington neighborhood.
Mrs. Bush was at her husband's side Monday when he met education leaders. She plans to visit another school tomorrow.
Her interests and approach invite comparison to those of Barbara Bush, her mother-in-law and first lady when George W. Bush's father was president. Barbara Bush also championed literacy but steered clear of policy.
Laura Bush, 54, is the second first lady, after Hillary Clinton, to hold an advanced degree. She has a master's in library science.
Yet in some ways, she embodies the traditional first lady. She long ago mastered "the gaze," an adoring look first ladies are expected to have for their husbands.
Van Morrison, her favorite musician, will get heavy play in the White House residence. A voracious reader with a husband who battles a perception that he's an intellectual goof-off, she is organizing her personal books in the residence as she always has: by the Dewey Decimal System. "Any librarian would do that," she said.
Her husband strongly opposes abortion, but she said last weekend she does not think Roe vs. Wade, the decision that legalized abortion, should be overturned.
The remark suggests "this is a woman with her own mind and opinions, who's not going to be looking at opinion-poll numbers. She's just going to be herself," said Carl Sferrazza Anthony, author of "First Ladies." "Not only is that healthier for her personally, it's healthier for the country."
Information from The (Baltimore) Sun is included in this report.