http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001217/pl/laura_profile_dc_1.html Sunday December 17 9:09 AM ET
Laura Bush, Different Style of First Lady

By Patricia Wilson

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - At first blush, Laura Bush, the next first lady of the United States, might seem a pale imitation of her predecessor Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites).

But the woman widely credited with taming George W. Bush (news - web sites) is an unassuming behind-the-scenes force to be reckoned with, a sounding board and a helpmate.

When the Republican nominee's campaign was floundering, it was she who pointed the Texas governor in the right direction. Bypass the national press, no more chitchatting at the back of the campaign plane with the traveling media, she said. Go over their heads, appeal directly to the people.

It was Laura Bush who suggested her husband go head-to-head with Oprah Winfrey, the queen of confessional daytime television, and Regis Philbin, talk show hosts' king of kitsch.

For the now president-elect, this was unfamiliar territory. Bush is not a man given to self reflection.

``I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure me out ... I'm just not into psychobabble,'' he said in an interview earlier this year with the National Journal.

But he is clearly a man besotted with his wife. He credits her with turning his life around, the catalyst that prompted him to give up drinking 14 years ago.

``There were some times when she said you need to think about what you're doing,'' Bush said. ``She said it was either Jim Beam or me.''

In front of Oprah's average daily audience of millions, mostly the women who Bush needed to win over to his side in the election battle with Democrat Al Gore (news - web sites), the governor said the defining moment in his life was marrying Laura Welch, which he did three months after they met at a barbecue in Midland.

Defining Moment

Tears in his eyes, he described the birth of his now 19-year-old twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, which was difficult for his wife, as ``an unbelievable moment in our lives.''

Laura Welch Bush's long losing battle to stay out of the political spotlight ended on Wednesday night in total capitulation when her husband accepted the next presidency of the United States.

Now she steps into a new spotlight as she travels on Sunday to Washington, D.C., where she will be welcomed as the nation's next first lady.

Although she has been a major influence in Bush's life, Laura Bush is likely to provide the country with a return to the more traditional style of first ladies promoting noncontroversial social programs after eight years of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was every bit as much a political animal as her husband.

In fact, as she took a more visible role in the waning days of the campaign, introducing her husband at town hall meetings, Laura Bush signaled she would not be the power behind the political throne.

She often remarked that a Senate seat was not in her future and that she would take up her pet project of literacy if she were lucky enough to be the next first lady. Mrs. Clinton was elected to the Senate from New York on Nov. 7.

The former teacher and librarian's biggest moment came at the Republican convention in July when she was the opening speaker. With her daughters watching, she praised her husband as a consensus-builder. And she spelled out a difference Republicans wanted to hear. ``I don't see myself as one of his advisers,'' she said. ``I'm his wife.''

Watching on a big screen in a nearby school, Bush seemed ready to burst with pride. ``One of the very best reasons to vote for me for president is to have Laura Bush as first lady of the United States of America,'' he said.

Married Into Political Family

Laura Bush's attempts to stay in the background were probably doomed from the moment in 1977 she agreed to marry into one of the leading political families in America.

First with her father-in-law serving as vice president and later president and then when her husband was elected governor of Texas in 1994, she was drawn more and more into the political maelstrom.

Laura Welch, the daughter of a successful home builder, grew up in the same west Texas city of Midland at the same time as George W. Bush. They both attended the same school during seventh grade before he went off to Phillips Academy in Massachusetts but said they never knew each other at that age.

While he followed the footsteps of his father, she stayed in Texas, earning an education degree from Southern Methodist University and teaching in Dallas and Houston.

Again their paths almost crossed while she was teaching in Houston as they lived at the same apartment complex.

Laura, however, lived in what was considered the studious wing of the complex where she could read Dostoevsky in peace and quiet. George W., the fun-loving, footloose bachelor, lived in the party wing. They did not meet.

That came a few years later, when after getting a master's degree in library science from the University of Texas and settling down in Austin, she accepted an invitation from an old friend in Midland to attend a barbecue there.

Also on the guest list was Bush. They met, made a date for miniature golf and were married within three months.

Some friends were surprised, thinking the quiet, reserved librarian and man known as the ``bombastic Bushkin'' to friends could never hit it off.

But as Mrs. Bush said, ``his energy really brings a lot of excitement to me and to my life.''

-- Anonymous, December 17, 2000

Answers

She is the best looking first lady we have had in many years. She has a cute smile!

-- Anonymous, December 17, 2000

Too bad she married a spoiled brat drunk fraternity boy, and imitates him by picking her nose in public.

drilling for oil

-- Anonymous, December 17, 2000