Word: husband
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...presidency is held up to an undefined ideal; she bears all America's conflicting notions about women as wives, mothers, lovers, colleagues and friends. A First Lady should be charming but not all fluff, gracious but not a doormat, substantive but not a co-President. She must defend her husband and smile bravely when he says stupid things. She must look great, even fashionable, when a shower and clean clothes would suffice for anyone else; possess perfect children though such critters do not exist in nature; and traipse around the globe in a suit and sensible pumps when she would...
...when the concept of First Lady seems like a stuffy anachronism, Barbara Bush may prove to be the right woman in the right place. She has projects -- literacy, cancer research, education -- that predate her husband's bug for politics. As she heads for 64, with no regrets about having poured her energies into raising her family, she seems to have enough heart left over to suffer fools gladly. Years of good works behind her, she is the embodiment of the kinder, gentler world that her husband so gauzily evoked during the campaign...
Like many political wives, Barbara has devoted her life to her husband, the first man she ever kissed, with whom she has survived a wartime separation, 44 years of marriage, 29 moves, the death of a child, public rumors of his infidelity and the rigors of three national campaigns. Through it all, she has remained defiantly independent. Her Secret Service code name -- Tranquillity -- belies the fact that she has several hot buttons. Criticism, particularly of her husband, moves her to anger, as it did in 1984, when she suggested to reporters questioning the Bushes' wealth that a word that rhymes...
...refers to Ann Richards, who delivered a stinging critique of her husband at the Democratic National Convention, as "that woman." As for Ted Kennedy's famous "Where was George?" line, Barbara can only say, "He shouldn't even say George Bush's name." Though she has spent much of her life in Texas, this product of tony Rye, N.Y., can still summon a patrician bearing to cut the uppity down to size. The next President says she is "more direct" than he is. Says campaign manager and Republican Party Chairman Lee Atwater: "She can spot a phony a mile away...
Barbara Bush has been training for her new job as long as her husband has been prepping for his. The third of four children of a father who worked his way up the ladder to become president of the McCall Corp., which among other things owned McCall's magazine, and a mother happy to entertain and garden in suburban Rye, Barbara attended public and private schools. She finished at Ashley Hall, a South Carolina prep school where neglecting to wear white gloves was virtually a punishable offense. At a party in Greenwich, Conn., during Christmas break her senior year...