Laura Bush: A Second Look at the First Lady
A Teacher and Educator
When Laura Bush walked into the room wearing a stunning tangerine(橘红色) suit, I wanted to say—just the way I would to a friend—"Have you been working out？" "Have you changed your hairstyle？" She looked slimmer and even younger than the woman I interviewed a little less than four years ago, on the day before the world changed. Back then, on September 10, 2001, Washington, still reeling from an election that rested on a mere 537 votes in Florida, was recovering from culture shock. The Bushes ran a very different White House than the Clintons. They were on time for appointments, they spent quiet evenings with intimate friends, and they went to bed early. Not exactly a hip Hollywood lifestyle. But the First Lady—a title she still thinks of as too lofty and inauthentic to describe her—was winning hearts and minds. She is, after all, a teacher and educator. She taught elementary school in Houston and Austin for several years, and produced an outstanding book fair in Washington with some of America's greatest authors populating(聚集于) vast lawns filled with tents, talking to throngs about their works. Laura Bush's love of reading is partly what defines her. I always wondered if books were substitutes for the brothers and sisters she didn't have growing up in Midland, Texas if they kept her from feeling lonely.
Why She's So Popular
On the day of our visit last January, as my colleague Bill Beaman and I sat in a room waiting for the First Lady, we noticed a wall full of children's books, and thought they might be some of her favorites. The room was plain, rather cozy, and under-decorated. We were told the interview would take place in Mrs. Bush's office, and assumed this was a waiting room. Wrong. This was Laura Bush's office: child centric art and literature, a simple desk, a small sitting area, and that's it. How true to her style, I remember thinking. The tangerine suit was a compromise to the role of political wife. The office wasn't you could imagine her in jeans and a work shirt. The reason Laura Bush is perhaps the most popular First Lady since her mother-in-law, Barbara Bush, is because of the jeans and work-shirt attitude she projects to the country.
Not Exactly a "Desperate Housewife"
To her critics, Laura Bush's solid and consistent behavior. translates as dull, boring, she's been called a Stepford wife, obedient and risk opposing. But after 9.11, some began to see her true value. Laura Bush had become the "nurturer-in-chief", offering the kind of compassion and rhetoric to the 9.11 families—and the country—that you can't fake. She emerged from that tragedy as a true believer in the fight against terrorism. But her war would be waged in the classroom.
She jump-started an educational reform. program in Afghanistan that would allow women to attend school for the first time. "Women were not empowered(授权力), and the result was that one-half of the population could contribute to society," she says. "We are building an American school in Kabul, where women teachers can be trained and have a safe place to live...a teachers' institute, so they can go back to their provinces and teach."
Laura Bush's commitment to education and literacy has gone well beyond chairing the occasional benefit fund-raiser, or offering photos as she tours schools. "My whole life I've been interested in education and children. I've done a lot of work with teaching recruitment organizations, like Troops to Teachers and Teach for America. I'd like to encourage people to choose teaching as a career because it's so important." She taught underprivileged kids in Austin, where she was a librarian. Laura's daughter Jenna, a recent graduate of the University of Texas, has followed in her mother's footsteps and is teaching at a Washington, D.C., public school.
Growing up an only child in Midland and hav

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