Secret revealed! What Laura Bush and Michelle Obama really talked about

Closets.

No, really.

According to First Lady Laura Bush, whose taped interview with Cynthia McFadden appears on ABC's "Nightline" tonight, there were no personal problems and no weighty issues of state discussed when First Lady-elect Michelle Obama visited the White House recently with her daughters, Malia and Sasha.

Michelle did not ask Laura for any advice. Had she, Bush said she would advise presidential parents to "err on the side of privacy for children."

"I think that lets children grow up and make childish mistakes which, of course, they will out of the limelight. And I think that's really the best."

Bush said the two mothers talked about "what any women would talk about as one is moving out of a home and one is moving in."

Bush told Obama the White House has great closets.

The two Bush daughters, Barbara and Jenna, showed the two Obama daughters their bedrooms and offered advice on acclimating to new schools and new friends, as well as the confining Secret Service protection, which the Bushes had known since the days their grandfather was president.

"They'll be fine," said Barbara. "They're really cute, smart girls."

The full interview, taped while Laura Bush (with Barbara) was on the last solo foreign trip to Panama as first lady, is scheduled for airing tonight on "Nightline."

Closets.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credit: Joyce N. Boghosian / White House

Comments

[LKitsch]

I wish I had more closet space. Nice to know they do in the White House.

[Michael Schultz]

I think it's at least as telling, if not more so, that Michelle Obama didn't ask any questions, chose not to take advantage of Laura Bush's eight years of experience in the White House. Mrs. Bush is, by all accounts, a decent and gracious woman. If she chose not to force herself upon Mrs. Obama and the result was light conversation about closets, then so be it. But the final comment does seem a somewhat reflexive dig at the First Lady. Perhaps another moment's reflection would have benefited everyone, not least the author.

[Catherine]

I really wonder more about what the atmosphere was like than conversation. I do not believe that any woman can see her top dog man be upstaged, and be truly hospitable for the wife of the man who is performing the upstage.The discussion probably veered toward tea and the weather.

[steve rodriguez]

Laura Bush is both beautiful and gracious!
A great first lady for America!