Laura Bush: busier than the president?
Suddenly, it seems like first lady Laura Bush is making more news than the president.
Today she's in Vermont, the only state George W. Bush hasn't visited as president (see our earlier post) to deliver remarks about national parks at the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park in Vermont. "As we celebrate the very start of the summer season, it's a perfect time for us to recommit ourselves to preserving and protecting our fabulous national parks," she said.
The president has only two public events on his schedule today -- a photo op with the 2008 presidential scholars and with the 2007 WNBA champion Phoenix Mercury. "They brought new glory to women's athletics and the sport of basketball," Bush said at the team event. "As they like to say, 'Mighty Mercury, we are number one!' And these women proved it."
Meanwhile, the president's own first lady was out on the road, giving speeches that if delivered by her husband might have drawn protests.
Yesterday she was in Boston for First Bloom, a program that teaches children how to protect fragile ecosystems and create gardens in urban neighborhoods. Last week she made remarks in honor of World Refugee Day. And when the president was in Europe, she gave a speech in Paris to an international donors conference on Afghanistan, pressing for more aid to that country, a cause she also trumpeted in an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal and when she traveled solo to Afghanistan, speaking to troops at Bagram Air Force Base.
With the president's popularity ratings hitting historic lows -- and Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama battling it out for who has the best and least-plagiarized cookie recipes -- maybe the White House is putting its best ambassador out front. Or maybe Laura Bush has just come into her own.
"It's probably a whole lot easier to be a lame duck first lady than it is be a lame duck president," said Jennifer Duffy of the Cook Political Report. Noting Laura Bush's kind words toward Michelle Obama, Duffy said she's "really found her voice" in the second term. "She has the freedom to say these things now. She doesn't have to be partisan."
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: Shealah Craighead/White House
