TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/012389/01238900.043

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NATION, Page 22

COVER STORY: The Silver Fox

And now for something completely different: a down-to-earth

First Lady

By Margaret Carlson


    I had a small crisis this week.

    I was staying at a very stylish hotel in New York City where
I knew they always had a bathrobe in the closet, so I left mine at
home. I had called room service for coffee, then discovered there
was no robe. When the coffee came, I took a sheet off the bed and
wrapped it around myself toga style to answer the door. I can
imagine what the waiter thought. I can just see him going back to
the kitchen and saying, "You'll never guess what I saw in Room
1712!"

    -- From the campaign diary of Barbara Bush


    America, meet Barbara Bush, taking center stage in national
life just in the knick of time. Nancy Reagan had many good
qualities, but she was, well, something of a strain: those
rail-thin looks, that hard-edged show-biz glitter and no children
or grandchildren around to mess things up. The country may be ready
for a First Lady who is honest about her size (14), her age (63)
and her pearls (fake). She sports sweats on the weekends with no
intention of jogging, does her own hair, likes takeout tacos,
devours mystery novels, poaches at the net in mixed doubles, teases
her husband and speaks her mind. When she is home near her own
bathrobe, she wears it outside to walk the dog.

    Barbara Bush knows that the two-mile move from the Vice
President's 1893 Victorian mansion on Embassy Row to 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue is more than a change of Zip Codes. As she puts
color-coded stickers on the furniture and pictures to signify what
goes, what stays and what gets tossed out in this latest move, she
is already nostalgic over life as Second Lady. "I got away with
murder," says the woman who allowed as how Nancy Reagan should have
simply replaced the White House china a piece at a time instead of
buying a whole new set, and who suggested that her husband strip
down to disprove rumors that he was wounded during a tryst. As she
prepares for her new post, she says, "I'm now slightly more careful
about what I say." (Pause) "Slightly."

    On its face, First Ladyhood looks easy enough: one gets to live
in a big house with a large yard, travel a lot and throw fancy
dinner parties. Someone else cleans up. But the job -- unpaid and
with no days off -- has its pitfalls. The person a pillow away from
the presidency is held up to an undefined ideal; she bears all
America's conflicting notions about women as wives, mothers,
lovers, colleagues and friends. A First Lady should be charming but
not all fluff, gracious but not a doormat, substantive but not a
co-President. She must defend her husband and smile bravely when
he says stupid things. She must look great, even fashionable, when
a shower and clean clothes would suffice for anyone else; possess
perfect children though such critters do not exist in nature; and
traipse around the globe in a suit and sensible pumps when she
would rather be home with a good book. She has both a day and a
night job, but is not allowed a profession of her own. Hardest of
all, she has to appear to love every minute of it.

    Yet, in an era when the concept of First Lady seems like a
stuffy anachronism, Barbara Bush may prove to be the right woman
in the right place. She has projects -- literacy, cancer research,
education -- that predate her husband's bug for politics. As she
heads for 64, with no regrets about having poured her energies into
raising her family, she seems to have enough heart left over to
suffer fools gladly.  Years of good works behind her, she is the
embodiment of the kinder, gentler world that her husband so gauzily
evoked during the campaign.

    Like many political wives, Barbara has devoted her life to her
husband, the first man she ever kissed, with whom she has survived
a wartime separation, 44 years of marriage, 29 moves, the death of
a child, public rumors of his infidelity and the rigors of three
national campaigns. Through it all, she has remained defiantly
independent. Her Secret Service code name -- Tranquillity -- belies
the fact that she has several hot buttons. Criticism, particularly
of her husband, moves her to anger, as it did in 1984, when she
suggested to reporters questioning the Bushes' wealth that a word
that rhymes with rich might be an appropriate label for Geraldine
Ferraro. She can cut off an interview with a wave of the hand,
having been burned once too often by those who talk sweetly but
interview harshly (as when Jane Pauley asked her, "Your husband is
a man of the '80s, and you're a woman of the '40s. What do you say
to that?").

    She refers to Ann Richards, who delivered a stinging critique
of her husband at the Democratic National Convention, as "that
woman." As for Ted Kennedy's famous "Where was George?" line,
Barbara can only say, "He shouldn't even say George Bush's name."
Though she has spent much of her life in Texas, this product of
tony Rye, N.Y., can still summon a patrician bearing to cut the
uppity down to size. The next President says she is "more direct"
than he is. Says campaign manager and Republican Party Chairman Lee
Atwater: "She can spot a phony a mile away."  Her children have a
nickname for her: the Silver Fox.

    Barbara and George Herbert Walker Bush have striking yet
compatible differences. He hates to quarrel; she once liked it. She
kids him about being too big for his britches, especially his style
of britches. She particularly goes after the cowboy boots he sports
for both day and evening wear. "They've got his initials in gold
on the side -- just two of them, not four of them -- and the Lone
Star State star. In color."  He kids her about suspending the usual
rules of conduct when it comes to her English springer spaniel,
Millie.  "That dog literally comes between us at night," he
complains. "She wedges right up between our heads, and Bar likes
it. She's failing with the discipline. She was better with the kids
than she is with the dog." Millie is pregnant, Bush announced last
week.

    George grumps about having to pack a few boxes to be shipped
to the summer house in Kennebunkport, Me.; Barbara meticulously
plans every move and every trip. "She's the type of person," says
son Marvin, "who always wanted us to get to the airport an hour
early. Dad likes to get to the airport five minutes before
departure." She was so organized -- rarely missing one of the kids'
games, throwing labor-intensive birthday parties, volunteering for
scoutmaster -- that a friend says she could have run General Motors
with time left over. "She always made me feel like a slob," said
Marion Chambers, an acquaintance from the Bushes' days in Midland,
Texas. Barbara writes thank-you notes the minute she gets home.
While other people throw mementos from trips into a box, Barbara
has arranged hers in a series of more than 60 giant scrapbooks.
It's a wonder she doesn't have more enemies.

    Barbara may spoil the dog, but she criticizes George for not
disciplining the kids enough. She still posts the rules of conduct
on the doors at Kennebunkport in case anyone has forgotten them.
The kids agree that their mother ruled the court of common pleas
while George rode the circuits and was brought in only for major
infractions.

    But having five children close together made Barbara more than
a one-minute manager. It gave her a sense of humor, a playful,
teasing manner (the secret of a strong marriage, she says), and a
casual attitude toward how many people the pot roast can feed. Says
Marvin Bush, now 32: "Everyone always wanted to come over to our
house." She loves to have her five children and ten grandchildren
around her; she is flexible about George's 5,000 closest friends
dropping by. On a few hours' notice two  weeks ago, Bush brought
Senator Nancy Kassebaum, Treasury Secretary Nick Brady, Senator
Lloyd Bentsen and lawyer-Democrat Bob Strauss home to dinner. One
of the best things about moving to the White House, Barbara says,
is that the vice-presidential mansion "has one guest bedroom. Now
I'm going to have a lot more."

    While Barbara's humor is clever, Bush's can be prep-school
puerile. Several weeks ago, at a private dinner at the Chinese
embassy, the President-elect brought a novelty gag, a dollar bill
attached to a long fishing line that appears to be free for the
taking on the floor. When a waiter went for the bait, Bush quickly
snatched it out of reach. Bush and his host, the Chinese
Ambassador, found the gag great fun. Barbara, whose humor tends to
be verbal, rolled her eyes and turned to the Ambassador: "You're
going to have your work cut out for you with the new
Administration."

    The humor has served her well in politics. In her campaign
stump speech, she regularly poked fun at herself, telling audiences
that, if recognized at all, she is confused with Mrs. George
Shultz. After the Ferraro crack, she opted for an immediate apology
and told reporters that "the poet laureate has retired." Though
public criticism of her hair, weight and wrinkles have hurt her,
she has turned such remarks to her advantage.  After her hair
turned white in her early 30s, she began dyeing it "warm brown,"
although it was a nuisance for someone who swam frequently and
shampooed every day. "One time," recalls Marvin, "I came home, and
it was brown and orange, and it was like, `Whoa, Mom, what
happened?' " Eventually, she just gave up the coloring -- "It was
ridiculous," she said.

    Barbara's clothes are attractive, but she will never be known,
as her predecessor was, by her designer affiliation. To keep from
hyping Seventh Avenue, she broke with tradition and did not issue
a press release about her Inaugural gown in advance, although
details leaked out.

    As for weight, well, she enjoys eating too much ever to be as
svelte as she once was. She laments that the campaign added 13 lbs.
to her 5-ft. 8-in. frame.  During the Bushes' Florida postelection
vacation, photos appeared of her swimming in the type of bathing
suit popular with matrons in the '50s. Later, she jokingly asked
photographers to cap their lenses -- "My children are complaining
all over the country." When she told a reporter that her trademark
pearls were $90 fakes worn to hide her wrinkles, it was a comment
on the universal regret at aging and the hopeless human foible of
trying to hide it.

    Barbara Bush has been training for her new job as long as her
husband has been prepping for his. The third of four children of
a father who worked his way up the ladder to become president of
the McCall Corp., which among other things owned McCall's magazine,
and a mother happy to entertain and garden in suburban Rye, Barbara
attended public and private schools. She finished at Ashley Hall,
a South Carolina prep school where neglecting to wear white gloves
was virtually a punishable offense. At a party in Greenwich, Conn.,
during Christmas break her senior year, she met George Bush,
recently graduated from Andover. A generic dancer -- she complains
that whatever the tempo, he does the fox-trot -- George asked her
to sit out a waltz. They sat down and fell in love. The two became
engaged that summer in Kennebunkport. It was a secret engagement,
Bush says, meaning "the German and Japanese high commands weren't
aware of it." But after Bush was shot down over the Pacific in
September 1944, Barbara dropped out of Smith in her sophomore year
to marry him at the First Presbyterian Church in Rye. "I married
the first man I ever kissed," she says. "When I tell this to my
children, they just about throw up."

    After Bush graduated from Yale in 1948, the couple packed up
their Studebaker and with their son George  headed west to make
their way in the oil fields of Texas. The first stop was Odessa,
and a one-bedroom apartment where they shared a bathroom with a
mother-daughter team of prostitutes. Then it was Midland, where
Bush would make a small fortune by Texas standards. After moving
to Houston in 1958, he sold his stake in Zapata Off-Shore in 1966
for $1 million.

    While in Texas, Barbara suffered her biggest losses. In 1949
her mother died in a freak accident: her father, trying to keep a
cup of coffee from spilling off the dashboard, lost control of the
car. Then one day in the spring of 1953 the Bushes' second child,
Robin, 3, woke up feeling too tired to go out to play. The doctors
diagnosed leukemia and gave her two weeks to live. She hung on
eight months, with Barbara, whose hair began turning white, sitting
by the bedside at Memorial Hospital in New York City and Bush
commuting on weekends. Friends say they handed their grief back and
forth, acting alternately as mourner and supporter. Barbara says,
"George held me tight and wouldn't let me go. You know, 70% of the
people who lose children get divorced because one doesn't talk to
the other. He did not allow that." By then they had the two boys,
George, born in 1946, and Jeb, in 1953. Three more children in
quick succession -- Neil, 34, Marvin and Dorothy, 29 (all her
children, she emphasizes, were planned) -- helped ease the pain.

    There would be two terms for Bush in Congress, from 1967 to
1971, a lost race for the Senate, and a stint at the U.N. in 1971
before Barbara developed her public persona. Until then she was so
shy she once cried over having to speak to the Houston Garden Club.
Sunk deep in diapers and dishes for so long, she lacked confidence.
"George was off on a trip doing all these exciting things," she
said, "and I'm sitting home with these absolutely brilliant
children who say one thing a week of interest." By contrast, when
Bush was appointed U.S. envoy to China in 1974, she became an
important part of the enterprise. For the first time without car
pools and PTA meetings, she could give everything to the post. She
loved the challenge of breaking out of the small foreigners'
enclave in Beijing into the prohibited city around them, riding
bikes everywhere, practicing Tai Chi, studying Chinese, breaking
a long-standing legation taboo by playing tennis with foreign
officials of lesser rank.

    After China, the return  to Washington,  where Bush would head
up the CIA, was something of a letdown. Barbara went from being
included in everything to being shut out. "Why would he tell me any
secrets," she joked, "when he says I begin every sentence with
`Don't tell George I told you this, but . . .' ?"

    Living over the store as First Couple, the two will once again
be spending a lot of time together. Barbara will not have to find
a cause since she already has so many, in part as a result of
events in her own life. Her son Neil's dyslexia first got her
interested in fighting illiteracy. In 1984 she wrote a book, C.
Fred's Story, a surprisingly wry look at Washington life as told
by  her first dog, after publisher Nelson Doubleday assured her it
would be a good way to promote her literacy efforts. C. Fred could
have been a disaster, but Barbara's wit and candor made it work.
"I didn't have to squeeze it out of her. There was no ghostwriter,"
says editor Lisa Drew. "And it came in on time." The book sold
15,000 copies; Barbara donated her share of the profits to literacy
charities.

    Robin's leukemia got Barbara involved in medical activities.
She has been on the board of Atlanta's Morehouse School of Medicine
since 1983, and she spearheaded a $15 million fund-raising drive
there. Years ago, quietly, Barbara befriended a woman at a
Washington hospice and went to see her every week for several years
until she died. She went to Atlanta during a spate of murders of
children to comfort the grieving mothers. For more than 30 years,
she has visited cancer wards at Christmastime to play with children
-- her way of honoring Robin.

    Barbara will probably never sit in on Cabinet meetings a la
Rosalynn Carter or get people fired, as Nancy did. But a spousal
"Dear, I wouldn't do that if I were you,'' delivered with a raised
eyebrow, can often defeat a stack of position papers. During Bush's
postelection vacation, he was asked whether he had received any
advice about his new job. He smiled broadly and pointed to his
wife, standing nearby in tennis shoes and sweats. Barbara raised
her eyebrows and said, "Just kidding." Replied Bush: "No, she's
not."

    Long before President Bush begins his official day by
conferring with top aides or national-security advisers, he will
already have had his first briefing of the day -- in bed. Each
morning, as they have for years, the Bushes awake to country music
early -- about "5 and change," says Marvin -- and take coffee,
juice and the papers in bed while they watch the news shows.
Together they discuss the hot news of the day,  and she weighs in
on everything from policy to personnel. "He clears his mind by
talking to her," said one aide who knows them both. "It helps him."


    Barbara has been most influential on issues that concern her
deeply or where her husband is behind the curve, like AIDS, the
homeless, civil rights and education. In the late 1950s, she
battled segregationist innkeepers who refused to let the family's
black baby-sitter stay with them in the same hotel. She was
instrumental in the appointment of the only black in Bush's
Cabinet, Dr. Louis Sullivan, whom she came to know from her work
at Morehouse.

    It was Barbara's visits to AIDS hospitals in Harlem that nudged
her husband into endorsing additional federal funds for fighting
the disease when the Reagan Administration was still balking.
Similarly, after an early debate when her husband brushed aside a
question about the homeless with boiler plate about housing,
Barbara exhorted him to make homelessness a campaign issue. "She
really talked hard at him," said an aide, "and rode him until he
got it right." Barbara's interest in children and literacy,
meanwhile, helped Bush commit himself to being the "education
President." "Every time he says `Head Start,' that's Bar," says
Sheila Tate, Bush's transition spokeswoman.

    Barbara tries to mask her views where they differ from her
husband's. Her preferred line on abortion is "I'm not going to tell
you my opinion," a perhaps pointedly transparent admission of her
pro-choice views, since if she agreed with Bush she would
presumably say so. She disagreed behind the scenes with his
hardball campaign tactics, masterminded by Jim Baker, Atwater,
Roger Ailes and others. Late in the general-election campaign,
aides sensed Barbara's unseen hand after speeches were rewritten
in a softer tone. "There were drafts of speeches that went into the
suite at night and came out the next morning with changes," an aide
recalls.

    Some staffers credit Barbara with getting George to suddenly
pledge cleaner campaign tactics at a fund raiser last fall at Bob
Hope's Hollywood spread.  The announcement so stunned aides that
they disappeared on purpose afterward. But Barbara wasn't all
softball. When Bush was resisting advice to air the now famous
"straddle ad" in New Hampshire that showed Iowa caucus victor
Robert Dole flip-flopping on taxes, Barbara finally chimed in, "I
don't see anything wrong with that ad." It ran, and Bush took the
state by 10 points.

    She won't be guided by astrology, but, like Nancy Reagan,
Barbara will take control of her husband's schedule when he begins
to suffer, as she did on the eve of the election in November. As
Michael Dukakis mounted a last-minute "double red-eye," flying
nearly coast to coast and back again on election eve, Bush's
handlers argued for a similar marathon. But Barbara put her foot
down. "People are going to vote the way they're going to vote," she
said. "We're going to Texas."

    No First Lady escapes microscopic scrutiny, and before the new
family pictures are hung in the second-floor family quarters at the
White House, Barbara Bush is likely to offend someone or other,
perhaps for her informality, perhaps for her patrician noblesse
oblige. Yet First Ladies are more than the sum of their good works.
They offer a glimpse into the heart of a President -- if she loves
him, he can't be all that bad -- and they often reflect the culture
of the times. After eight years of new-money flash and glitz, of
appearances over substance, of friends over family, Barbara Bush's
unspoken message may be as important as anything she may do: there
is honor in motherhood; it is O.K. to be a size 14; a lined face
is the price of living; and growing old is nothing to get frantic
about. No small contribution, that.

-- Michael Duffy/Washington