Barbara Bush : The President’s Biggest Asset in a Time of Political Trouble

It seems nearly everyone has a soft spot for Barbara Bush. Her down-home style and self-deprecating humor have made her so popular with Americans that when Republican candidates need help from the White House these days, they ask not what the President can do for them but whether the First Lady is available.

Barbara Pierce Bush, who turns 67 next week, dropped out of Smith College to marry the first man she ever kissed. Almost personifying her class and generation, she never pursued a career. Instead, she raised their five children and set up more than two-dozen homes over a span of four decades to accommodate her husband’s pursuits in the oil business, in Congress and overseas before he assumed the presidency. Affectionately regarded as “the nation’s grandmother,” Mrs. Bush has 12 grandchildren of her own.

Now she is President Bush’s biggest personal asset at a time when the First Family has run into political trouble. Son Neil Bush, as director of a now-defunct savings and loan, was found to have engaged in conflict of interest by participating in the approval of $132-million loan to his own business partners. Other Bush family members appear to have exploited their relationship with the White House to win favors from the federal government or foreign interests for themselves and their business associates. Democratic Party leaders have let it be known they are collecting potentially embarrassing information involving business dealings of the Bush family.

The President’s approval ratings--at an all-time high following the Gulf War--appear in free fall in the wake of the Los Angeles riots. A recent Times poll found that Californians would put him last in a three-way race, with Texas billionaire Ross Perot 14 points ahead of the incumbent President. Recently, Hillary Clinton, wife of presumed Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton, raised old allegations of womanizing by the President.

Through it all, Barbara Bush remains the one shining point of light. She devotes much of her time to such causes as literacy and caring for AIDS victims. In her spare time, she has become a best-selling author with “Millie’s Book,” a dog’s-eye view of the White House. All profits go to the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.

She is such a hot political commodity that Bush Administration strategists made her available--five days before the California primary--for an exclusive hourlong interview in the elegant family quarters of the White House. Wearing a simple, apple-green ensemble, with her trademark three-strand pearls, Mrs. Bush sat on a couch petting Millie, her beloved English springer spaniel. At one point, she put on a pair of reading glasses held together by a safety pin.

She displayed the genuine warmth and charm she is noted for and spoke freely on a wide range of subjects. “That’s a philosophy of mine,” she said. “You may say things people don’t like, but you’re saying what you feel.”

Question: You’ve heard, no doubt, that you are the better half of the presidency, you’re more popular?

Answer: Then they’re crazy. They ought to love George Bush. He’s the most wonderful man. . . . We’re talking about apples and oranges, and that’s what really counts. The orange is what counts. I’m the apple.

Q: Are you comfortable with the role of “national grandmother?”

A: I guess I have to accept it now. I’d like to think of myself as “national teen-ager,” but I don’t believe I’m going to get away with that. I might even go for “national mother.”

Q: Is it realistic to envision a woman as President any time soon?

A: Yes, I think it’s very realistic. Any time soon? Are you talking like the Chinese? Are you talking about 50 years? I think, well, within the next 10 years or so, I think, we’ll have a woman in the White House. If she’s well-qualified. And we’ve got a lot of very qualified women out there.”

Q: Do you see Americans embracing a First Lady who asserts herself in the decisions that the President makes?

A: Some people share in their husband’s work and some don’t. That’s going to depend upon the marriage or their wife’s work. But you have to have influence. When you’ve been married 47 years, if you don’t have any influence, then I really think you’re in deep trouble.

Q: Do you have an influence on the President’s office?

A: I don’t think so. . . . If I thought someone was ill-serving the President, you may be sure I would tell him. I would. But I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone else.

Q: If we were to put Bess Truman, who kept out of politics as much as possible, on one side, and Eleanor Roosevelt on another side, where would you place yourself?

A: I always thought Bess Truman was terrific, incidentally. I got ridiculed for that once. But she was a great wife. So was Eleanor Roosevelt . . . . I think I’m half-Eleanor, half-Bess. I think I go out and do a lot of things. I do lot of traveling and a lot of programs . . . . I really stay out of government business if I possibly can.

Q: It seems that everyone today, whether on Main Street or Pennsylvania Avenue, is talking about Ross Perot. He is a Texan. You spent a number of years in Texas. Are you old friends?

A: I knew him.

Q: Tell us your recollection of him.

A: I don’t talk about Ross Perot. I don’t think people know much about him right now. But I’ve never talked about the people George has run against.

Q: Well, he’s not running yet.

A: (Laughter) Oh, Ross is running. . . . Would I vote for him? N-O! . . . . George Bush or no George Bush. That’s about the strongest I’m ever going to get, and as succinct.

Q: Can you say why you feel that way?

A: No, that’s it. Enough.

Q: Parental responsibility and family values are becoming big issues in the presidential campaign.

A: You know, that’s so interesting to me, because, first of all, they’ve been big issues for a long time. The President spoke about them in his State of the Union Address . . . saying that the major problem that big- and small-city mayors have mostly could be rooted to the breakdown of the American family. . . . So it’s not new. Everybody’s coming a little bit late to this party. But it is true.

Q: Do you see an opportunity now for us, as a nation, to do something about the state of the American family?

A: The state of the American family can only be, I guess, affected by two things. We have weakened the American family, whether we like it or not. If you try to work on welfare, they take the welfare and the Aid for Dependent Children and the public housing away from you. That isn’t right. . . . So that’s one thing we do.

The other thing is example. How can you know about family if you’ve never had one? That’s very difficult. So that’s pretty hard. So we’ve got to start setting examples. Whether we do it in our own personal lives, certainly our public figures should do it. And television and movies. They’re not just racking up scores of good examples for us.

Q: What about “Murphy Brown? “

A: I’ve never seen “Murphy Brown,” I’m ashamed to say. . . . First of all, it isn’t real life. The children I’m talking to are the 14-, 15- and 16-year-olds. . . . It’s a very different situation. They won’t have nannies. They won’t have all those expensive carriages. They won’t have babies that have a man in their life, a father who’s responsible. That leaves an enormous gap in a child’s life, I believe. You need a role model--man and woman. . . . I don’t like to see a trend where we sort of hate men. I don’t like that . . . .

Q: You have a daughter who’s a single mother, right?

A: Yes. . . . But she has a former husband who takes enormous responsibility for those children, and is a good dad. She also has a mother and father and a mother-in-law and father-in-law who take responsibility. And she has brothers. . . . The American family isn’t necessarily one man and one woman and two-and-a-half children. It might well be one woman and a brother and other people who help. It’s a different world out there, I know that. But she can’t be compared. Her husband takes responsibility. He’s a loving father.

Q: There is a widespread assumption that, contrary to the President’s position on abortion, you are pro-choice.

A: I support George Bush because I know what he thinks in his heart. That has nothing to do with whether or not I support abortion. . . . When I run for public office, I’m going to let you know exactly what I think. I’ll be right out there. But I’m not running for public office. Nor is Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton and George Bush are running.

Q: We’re seeing more women candidates this year a nd we’re seeing women break all kinds of fund-raising records. In California, two-thirds of Democrat Barbara Boxer’s Senate campaign is financed by women--

A: They don’t care about (Boxer’s) bounced checks?

Q: She had a lot of bounced checks. I asked her about it. She said the only people who ask questions about bounced checks are reporters.

A: No, no. Just add one more. (Laughter) Just kidding.

Q: In his “Murphy Brown” speech, Vice President Dan Quayle said that “poverty of values” is to blame for the Los Angeles riots.

A: We do have a poverty of values. . . . If a little kid is racially ugly, he didn’t learn that. He had to be taught that. You get that from home. We have too much discrimination. We have too much cheating, getting by. You learn that from home . . . .

Listen, I’m not an expert or authority on the Los Angeles riots. I saw what everyone else saw. I saw a perfectly wonderful man, a black man, standing, with tears running down his face, saying, “What are my people doing? I need things too, but I’m not going to go out and steal.” I wondered about his background. Here was a guy who had problems (and) needed, too. I wept with him because he really felt like it was all breaking down.

Q: There is a perception that President Bush, because of his privileged upbringing, is insulated in the White House--

A: Not so.

Q: --that he can’t get a real sense of what is going on in our inner cities and what it’s like to be a young black man growing up.

A: That’s just not true. I mean, I’m not sure I can say what it’s like to be a young black man growing up. But we read and we see and we talk and we go. But in all honesty, George hasn’t had great coverage on those things. . . .

The perception is well documented by the press, I will say. George, for instance, went down to the Grocers Convention in (Florida) . . . and they said, “We want to show you that American know-how is better than any foreign know-how. We’ve got to show you this machine.” It’s an absolute, state-of-the-art scanner. George had seen the scanner for years in stores, but this was one that had never been in a store. It did everything but pick up the food and shake it and tell you what was in it. It did the inventory, it did everything on this one machine. George said it was the most fantastic thing he’d ever seen . . . .

He was appalled to come home and find (in news stories) that here’s George Bush out of touch, doesn’t know how to use a scanner. The press knew (better). They were there. He wasn’t even in a grocery store. I don’t think any Americans knew that. I think they thought he was in a grocery store and he wasn’t. . . . It’s so unfair. But I have great faith in the American public, and so does George. I believe they see through all that. . . . I hate whining. I don’t want to be seen as a whiner.

Q: The Times ran a poll last week that showed Ross Perot ahead of the President in California. That stunned a lot of people.

A: Not us. It didn’t stun us at all. I really don’t think people know Ross Perot.

Q: It’s been reported that you were hurt when Hillary Clinton recently referred to allegations of infidelity by the President?

A: . . . . I wasn’t hurt by it. I really didn’t believe she said it, to begin with. I thought it was too ugly for words. . . .

It wasn’t nice. That goes with the game. But it’s not nice, and it certainly isn’t true. . . . But George is the most looked-into man in the world, so I don’t worry about that . . . .

It’s funny. Nobody ever asks if I’ve fooled around! (Laughs).