First Lady Laura Bush provides the first electronically archived and perhaps the last fully accurate national perspective of the duties of the First Lady. During this presidential couple's eight year term of office year, amid the aftermath of Nine Eleven Tragedy and Katrina, Laura Bush records our national perspective. As a teacher with a Library Science degree, mother of twins, Jenna and Barbara, wife of Texas Governor George Bush, then a president's wife and First Lady, her work emphasizes the duty she accepted in her position: creating the National Book Festival, initiating America's Youth Program, heading up the women's True Heart cardiac information program, initiatives on the repressive lives of Afghan and Burmese women. She worked tirelessly to preserve our culture, art, and heritage, restoring, repairing the White House, preserving period furniture and art of previous presidents (bandannas from Jackson's campaign).
She makes incisive, though unsettling connections between events and people lives, as in her discovery of the Pentagon construction that begun September 11, 1941. The reader can't help but wonder, did the Taliban's advance team use that in their plot to take down the U.S. economy? On the lighter though formal side of White House security, it was humorous that four women invited to an event, showed up in the same red gown as Laura. Pictures were taken, Laura changed her gown, and only one of the remaining women could not get over her anger for the evening. Laura says, "the White House gives up its secrets one by one."
The political capital that Laura and George Bush amassed together was cemented by the friendships they had with Vladimir and Lyudmila Putin and Tony and Cherie Blair. Their first visit with the Putins in this Office was November 13, 2001. Laura and George entertained the Putins and Blairs subsequently at their ranch and Camp David. The Bush's visited the Putins and Blairs multiple times, during their foreign trips for G8 Summits, and on trips to establish and maintain international diplomacy with France, Japan, China, Poland,Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Lithuania, Germany, Canada. Truly, this Presidential couple and the entire delegation of support that was their advance team, and the military protection provided them speaks of their commitment, their service to the people of the United States. And this service never wavered. They emboldened our troops protecting our values in Iraq and Afghanistan. But their work as our First Lady and President emboldened us here at home, when our economy was ravaged by Nine Eleven and our homeland by Katrina. (And it was Governor Blanco who slowed the response of aid to her own state following Katrina. She refused Federal aid, wanting to manage it state side. Some NYT journalists are equally graceless in their inaccuracy of events.) If there is any discrepancy of information in trip logs during that eight year term, her book stands as the definitive source.
It is telling that approximately every six weeks Laura had a formal event at the White House. The State Dinners and other events require a necessity to formality, that is uniquely our American style, just as much a part our national heritage as is the annual Egg Roll. In contrast, it is interesting that Mamie and Ike had separate TVs side by side in the sky parlor. She watched I Love Lucy, and Ike liked westerns. And it was three years after Nine Eleven the Hallmark card that Laura chose as prototype for the White House Christmas card surfaced in a mail sack. Laura softly imparts signs of the times in their gifts to foreign leaders and close friends, as in their gift to Japan's Prime Minister Koizumi, the juke box filled with all Elvis Presley tunes, and the arranged meeting between Prime Minister Koizumi and Pricilla Presley and her daughter. We read that Tony Blair strummed the guitar and sang at the Crawford ranch.
Laura executed the duty of her Office as First Lady as one who took the job seriously, preserving and recording history, an involved First Lady with her projects and goals. The pace of the White House is brutal. She says the demands of the White House is not one of celebrity but one with the demands of a nation that is fierce and "unrelenting." She visited seventy-five countries in her eight years. That means every five weeks, she was traveling, developing international ties, reaching out, advancing American ideals.
As history looks back on Laura Bush as our First Lady and George W. Bush as our President we will appreciate (1) this presidential couple preserved their respective Offices of our Nation, (2) they cemented international friendships that helped the U.S. economy after Nine Eleven, (3) and they sustained our military as a global leader of strength with their genteel art of comfort and compassion. The southern charm that this Texas couple shared with us and the world is now most accurately spoken from the heart, by Laura Bush, our First Lady.
Respectfully Submitted,
Nancy Faudree, Madison Wisconsin
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Alles war perfekt! Ich bin ganz zufrieden! Danke!
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