Men Like Husband Needed, Barbara Bush Says

Barbara Bush called it “that word.”

“It was a cheap shot,” she said Saturday, referring to a news magazine’s cover story this week on her husband. It was entitled “George Bush: Fighting the ‘Wimp Factor.’ ”

“It hurt. It hurt our children, truthfully. It hurt George’s mother. It hurt me. I mean it was hurtful.”

Stopping in Orange County with the vice president on his nationwide tour to announce his candidacy for the 1988 Republican nomination for President, Barbara Bush said in an interview that she did not know “what that word (wimp) means.”

“If it means he’s a man who fought for his country and built a business and made jobs and had tough decisions and led the CIA and led the (Republican) National Committee and was a decent, fine, strong, honest man, then we need more of them.”

But she hastened to add that while she and the couple’s five children were concerned about the story, “I don’t think George felt hurt by it.”

Though the story put a damper on the Bushes’ week, things are far from glum for Barbara Bush on the campaign trail. Actually, by her account, she is having a great time.

People don’t ask “who?” anymore when she introduces herself, she said. “And people tell you very interesting things. And they do very funny things. It’s always sort of fun.”

On Saturday, she gazed fondly--though without the Nancy Reagan fixedness--as her husband told friendly groups of Orange County Republicans in what by now must be a familiar speech to her why he would like to be President. For his part, Bush frequently began sentences with “Barbara and I . . . “

“Barbara and I mean to win,” Bush told those attending a conference of the California Federation of Republican Women at the Anaheim Marriott. Later, speaking to groups of volunteers and supporters at events at the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach, the reserved Bush drew a laugh from his wife and the crowd when he joked that he was trying to keep his charisma in check.

The Bushes, married 42 years, appear to be a loving, if not demonstrative, couple. While their reserve would not be of much public importance under normal circumstances, Bush is being criticized by some for lacking the fervor needed to win the presidency, and somehow his ability to express his emotions to his family has become an issue.

But Barbara Bush said that while “men don’t find it easy to say ‘I love you,’ ” her husband “finds it easier now.”

As for herself, she attempts to explain: “Everybody knows I think George Bush is the most--I mean, I’m embarrassed about how much I love him.” She said that with a recent illness of their 30-year-old son, whose colon was removed, they both “have learned that you must tell people you love them.”

Though she did not want to discuss politics, Barbara Bush talked freely about her husband and her five grown children, as well as a daughter who died at the age of four of leukemia.

She said she does not object to having to talk about her deceased daughter on the campaign trail.

“A lot of things we did later probably we did because of that child,” she said. “I mean we care more about people now because of that child. Certainly our own children, our other living children, have become more valuable. . . . I think we’ve changed because of that.”

Her voice became stronger. “So I don’t mind talking about that. Because I want other people to know that it’s not the end of the world.”

As for possibly following in the mighty, if tiny, footsteps of the petite Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush laughed at the thought.

“I mean she’s a size 2 and I’m a size 52,” she said.

She said, however, that while “you can’t be as good as Nancy Reagan--she’s perfectly beautiful, and she’s done a fabulous job,” she is “not unconfident” of her own accomplishments.