Known unknows: The former FLOTUS (AP photo)
In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, former first lady and author Laura Bush hints around at what we’ve been saying all along: That she is seriously misunderstood and maybe not like you thought. But whose fault is that?
BUSH: Well, I mean, I think that’s a little bit of a bias, the — the media bias that we — everyone talks about a lot and I think that’s part of it. I also think that because George was a conservative, a Republican president, that people assumed that I was, you know, a cookie-baking, stay-at-home mother. And — and I think that’s sort of the box that we put our first ladies in every time. You know, Barbara Bush was certainly seen as a grandmotherly type and she was a grandmother and a wonderful grandmother to her children, but she’s also a very strong, outspoken woman herself.
And I think that’s the way that we’re a little bit unfair, many times, to the women that live in the White House, because they’re always a lot more interesting and complex than — than just a flat description of them.
BLITZER: Do you think you got a fair treatment from the media?
BUSH: I do. I think the media was actually very fair to me. But I think the media assumed things about me, even after I’d given the presidential radio address about the treatment of women in Afghanistan. The whole time that George was president there was this assumption that
I was staying home, you know, hosting teas or whatever instead of a really full picture…
Good point but — Mrs. Bush, didn’t you do a lot to perpetuate that image? Her new book, “Spoken from the Heart,” includes quite a bit of score-settling and record-straightening. And some image adjustment that, if it bothered her so much when she was in the White House, Mrs. Bush could have done a lot to fix. But that would have been complicated.
BLITZER: I guess reading the book, you wanted to convey the impression to people that you weren’t just this meek little housewife, you know, baking cookies —
Mmm-hmm.
