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TODAY o July 30, 2000
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Speech may shed light on reticent half of Texas' first couple
Saeed Ahmed & Julie Bonnin - Staff
Sunday, July 30, 2000
Austin, Texas -- There are advantages and disadvantages to being married to a presidential candidate. Just ask Laura Bush.
As first lady of Texas, she is treated like the next best thing to royalty: Tortilla vendors, wealthy businessmen and even Democrats sing her praises.
But as the wife of presidential candidate George W. Bush, the media throng has gotten thicker, the questions meaner.
Before her husband announced he was running, Laura Bush, 53, was "reluctant, absolutely" to subject her family to the rigors of a presidential campaign.
"I know what the ugly side of politics is. It's very difficult to have bad things said about the people you love," she said in an interview last year.
But the "woman who dared to be publicly hesitant" is on the campaign trail now, feet-first in the unpredictable waters of a political campaign and ready for the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, where she will step from the shadows onto the national stage in a speech Monday night.
Laura Bush, the only child of a builder (her mom helped keep the books for his business), grew up in Midland, forever crossing paths with the man she'd eventually marry.
They went to different elementary schools in Midland, but attended the same junior high for a year. Then he left to attend a prep school on the East Coast.
In the '60s, when she was a teacher and he was flying fighter jets for the Texas Air National Guard, they lived at opposite ends of the same Houston apartment complex.
It wasn't until 1977, when she was working as the librarian at an Austin elementary school, that friends got the two of them together at a barbecue.
"I thought he was someone who was interested in politics and that he would be someone I wouldn't be interested in because I was so uninterested in politics at that time," Laura Bush said.
They fell in love anyway.
"I think I was struck by her beauty and her charm," George W. Bush said in an interview in the governor's office last year. "She was an intriguing personality to me. We had a whirlwind courtship and it stuck."
They married three months later, when both were 31.
Their romance came on the heels of a period that has invited so much speculation about the governor's past. It's as if his life is split neatly in two sections, with the pre-Laura Bush era comprising the years when, as Bush has said, he was "young and irresponsible."
Was she then the good woman who tamed him, as so many have suggested?
"I think marriage and children settle people down, particularly if you take your vows seriously. I did," Bush said.
Laura Bush immediately met two challenges: campaigning with her husband, who was making his first run for office (he lost a race for Congress); and fitting into the extended Bush family -- a huge competitive clan.
Inevitably, George W. Bush's grandmother, the Bush matriarch, asked the future Laura Bush, "And what do you do?"
Her reply, "I read," quieted everyone within earshot.
"Mrs. Bush couldn't believe her ears," Barbara Bush recalled.
George W. Bush says the biggest challenge he and Laura have faced wasn't the '94 governor's race that nobody thought he would win. It was the birth of their twin daughters, after Laura was ordered to bed late in her pregnancy.
He was in Midland and she was hospitalized in Dallas when he got the call from her doctor. "Your children will be born tomorrow; either that, or your wife's kidneys will fail," the physician said.
Bush got on a plane.
"She was absolutely determined to do whatever she could to make sure those little girls come into the world healthy and safe," Bush said. "And she did."
The girls, named for their grandmothers Jenna and Barbara, are now 18.
A tragic piece of Laura Bush's past has been campaign fodder this year: A tabloid newspaper revealed details of a fatal car accident 35 years ago in which Laura Bush was one of the drivers.
According to reports, Laura Welch, then 17, ran a stop sign in Midland, colliding with a vehicle driven by a high school friend; the teenage boy was killed.
George W. Bush, who's been more even-tempered on his own campaign trail than when his father was the target of criticism, has voiced concerns about what his wife might have to endure.
"It's a lot easier to be the candidate where people say ugly things about you than the person who loves the person about which ugly things are said. I know firsthand," he said.
Depending on your vantage point, they're an odd couple or a completely complementary pair. She's reserved and shy; he's a fiery extrovert.
Their contrasting personalities -- his high-energy temperament and her laid-back style -- have provided "a good check and balance," George W. Bush said.
In 1994, when everyone else was urging her husband to run for governor, Laura Bush was one of the last people to get behind the idea.
"Laura's not the first to say, 'Oh boy, let's go do that,' sort of shoving me into the limelight," the governor said. "She's the opposite of that. She says, 'Wait a minute, buddy, are you sure that this is something you really want to do?' "
Laura Bush "is in a life that I don't think she ever envisioned," her husband said. "But she has seized the opportunity and made a difference in people's lives."
As first lady of Texas, her pet projects have channeled money to libraries, literacy programs and young children. Last year, after she championed early childhood initiatives, the Texas Legislature approved \$17 million for preschool reading programs.
"I would most like to be known as an advocate for children," Laura Bush said.
Her work to empower other families would be expanded if her own were to occupy the White House. Her self-assured answer to the oft-asked question: Would Hillary Clinton or Barbara Bush be a role model?
"I think I'll just be Laura Bush."
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