Barbara Bush died Tuesday at 92, surrounded by family and following an evening of phoning friends and sipping bourbon. Bush joins the ranks of only one other woman in U.S. history who has both married and raised men who turned out to be presidents, the indomitable Abigail Adams being the other. Because Bush enjoyed a privileged upbringing and focused most of her life on parenting, marriage, and promoting literacy, many on the Right and the Left criticized her for failing to be a feminist role model. Though not a feminist in the modern sense of the word, and likely a title she herself would have eschewed, she did embody traditional feminist tenets of yore: choice, loyalty, grit, and determination.
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It’s true, Bush acknowledged her choices and perks full well, saying at one point, “All I ever did was marry and birth well.” She married George H.W. Bush as a teenager and of course he went on to build a successful oil company. While he was building the company, Bush committed to raising her six children, one of whom, a daughter nicknamed Robin, died at the age of three of leukemia. When her husband ran for president, critics questioned her priorities which were mostly her husband and children. While campaigning in New Hampshire in 1979, the “Today” show presenter Jane Pauley asked her in an interview: “Mrs. Bush, people say that your husband is a man of the 80s and that you are a woman of the 40s. What do you say to that?” When Wellesley College invited Bush to be its commencement speaker in 1990, debate about her accomplishments and the nature of feminism ensued. President Bush rose to her defense.
Liz Carpenter, former press secretary of Lady Bird Johnson, criticized Barbara Bush for accompanying her husband to the White House yet failing to use the platform, as she saw it, to speak out on issues that were important to women. As far as outside causes, Bush had championed volunteerism and literacy–but that was not enough for women in the 1980s and 1990s. In her 1994 memoir, Bush penned her reply: “Long ago I decided in life I had to have priorities. I put my children and husband at the top of my list. That’s a choice that I never regretted.”
As outspoken as she was committed to her beliefs, Bush knew what she believed about politics and family; she held firmly to those beliefs without wavering, and even when disappointed or struggling, she was not afraid to re-evaluate her life while prioritizing what mattered to her. While feminists might look at her accomplishments–a strong marriage, several successful children, and a love for literacy and volunteering–and say she did too little with what she had, almost like a betrayal of sorts, I say they were just enough.
In fact, Bush made specific choices and those were her priorities. This is indeed the truest form of first-wave feminism, which advocates women be heard, women have choices, and that women get to make those choices without fear of punishment. While Bush didn’t choose to pursue a career in a traditional sense outside of her home and family, she did do the best with the choices she made, despite criticism.
Bush did end up speaking at Wellesley College’s commencement in 1990 in the wake of criticism, and she took that opportunity to champion true feminism–choice: “At the end of your life, you will never regret not … winning one more verdict, or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child or a parent.”
If that is the case, Barbara Bush died with no regrets.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
