Bush Has a Magic Word to Stir an Audience: ‘Barbara’

When President Bush needs a sure-fire applause line to spark up a lackluster speech, he can count on his wife, Barbara.

It’s not that she offers snappy comments. It’s the mere mention of her name that evokes applause.

On his many politicking sorties out of Washington, the President increasingly brings greetings from “Bar,” relays her regrets that she couldn’t be there, praises her dedication to the cause of literacy, brags about her Wellesley graduation speech or gripes about her affinity for the vegetable he hates--broccoli.

His most recent and best crowd-pleasing boast is about the First Lady’s triumph in the Wellesley commencement address flap.

Mrs. Bush’s June 1 speech to the graduates generally was acclaimed as a smash hit. When she first was announced as the speaker, some students objected strongly, arguing that she is well known largely because of her husband rather than her own accomplishments.

Afterward, Bush immediately began gloating about the warm response to Mrs. Bush’s simple, direct talk. He has been reminding audiences about it recently.

“I thought it came out pretty well--Bar Bush, seven; Wellesley, you know what,” he said at a Charlotte fund-raising dinner for Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).

And noting a lively batch of anti-Helms protesters outside the fund-raising dinner, he commented, “They’re upset because they think that the only reason I was invited to speak this evening is because I’m Barbara Bush’s husband.”

That brought a roar from the Helms loyalists.

Bush has even taken to quoting his wife.

At a recent ribbon-cutting for a children’s facility at the National Institutes for Health in Bethesda, Md., the President cited the Wellesley speech.

The devotion that led to the new National Institutes home for seriously ill children and their families, he said, reminded him of Mrs. Bush’s sentiment that “family is the key to everything.”

“She told the graduates there . . . ‘You will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret, however, the time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent.’ ”