From the WSJ Opinion Archives
SCENE & HEARD
Laura Bush Rules
She'd be a much better first lady than the power-mad Hillary or the insipidly feminine Tipper.
It's the oldest rivalry in the world: the fluffy blonde cheerleader type obsessed with her sex life vs. the placid brunette with her nose stuck in "The Brothers Karamazov." So which one would make the ideal first lady?
Much like the contest between their husbands, the Laura vs. Tipper choice is bigger than it first appears. Both women have cast themselves as devoted wives--more loving and less assertive than the White House's current pushy occupant. But there's a difference. Laura Bush is the stronger of the two.
So there it is: I'm a huge Laura Bush fan, no matter what anyone says about that turquoise polka-dot suit. She's elegant and brainy without being a showoff. She's mature, she's good at just being herself. She's independent and actually seems to float above all the ego and elbows and flashbulbs of the campaign.
No disrespect to Tipper, who seems like a real nice mom. But the problem with the Gore campaign is that they've made the marriage issue about sex instead of about respect. Since the face-sucking incident at the Democratic convention, Tipper has been trotted out to "humanize" her honey by being a girly girl. She romps around in khakis, talks about losing weight and offers testimonials to what a good man (wink, wink) he is.
While the strategy has clearly been aimed at the Oprah crowd, do we really want our first lady to swoon and bat her eyes on command? Asked by Ladies Home Journal about Al's "worst husband habit," she demurred that "he is perfect in every way." When pressed, she offered up the Cosmo standby: He hogs the remote control and compulsively channel-flicks.
Laura Bush, on the other hand, isn't afraid to give as good as she gets. After her husband joked one too many times that the former librarian Laura's idea of oratory was "Shh!," she famously retorted that he thought a bibliography was the biography of the person who wrote the bible.
Her refusal to weigh in on campaign hot buttons like abortion and capital punishment is the clearest sign of this. Watching her quietly dodge the queries, you get the sense that she may not agree with the governor on everything. And while she won't throw these opinions in people's faces, neither will she compromise them for politics.
In our annoyance with Hillary, we've too often viewed her brassy manipulations as a referendum on "modern" womanhood. In fact, what we disliked was that she was a throwback. Her unelected ambition made her the kind of age-old backbiting social climber leveraging her power on her husband's.
Laura Bush is out on the campaign trail because her husband is running and she loves him, not because she has a jones to redecorate the Green Room or overhaul the health-care system. Asked recently if she wanted to be thought of as one of Mr. Bush's advisers, she smiled. "No, I'm his wife," she said. "That's better, don't you think?"
And that's important this year: Our next first lady will have to help slough off the eight-year-old scab of Hillary chafing. Laura Bush would make the better first lady not because of her traditionalism but because of her strength. She will neutralize the memory of Hillary's scrappiness without returning the proper political wife to June Cleaver land.
Ms. Levey is an editorial page writer at The Wall Street Journal. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.
