Opinion: Exclusive: Why Bush’s “surprise” Iraq visit was no surprise

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Back in the 1970s when Laura Welch met George W. Bush at a backyard picnic in Midland, Texas, an accidental encounter actually set up by mutual matchmaking friends, there was an instant attraction between them.

They both love the wide open spaces of West Texas, where Laura grew up and where George was drawn to form his own oil business. The two had actually lived in the same Houston singles apartment complex without knowing each other. She was the relatively shy school teacher who had practiced her classroom manner as a child by lining up dolls in her bedroom and teaching them what she had just learned in school. When she actually got to teaching, she sought an assignment in an inner city school for the most challenge and where she thought she could do the most good.

He had something of a reputation as a playboy; at least he dated quite a bit, but at the same time he signed up at an inner city youth center and mentored a young boy as a big brother on weekends.

Bush wooed Ms. Welch assiduously, charming her friends and family as well. And when they married, they made a solemn promise to each other: He would never ask her to give a political speech and she would conscientiously work out with him. In fact, they spent their honeymoon campaigning unsuccessfully for a House seat in Texas. She went with him to all those dusty West Texas towns in an old beat-up pickup truck with lawn chairs in the back, stood by his side and shook every hand she could. Many times there were few hands to shake.

Then, one day while he was speaking elsewhere, Bush asked his new bride to...

fill in for him. She later recalled standing outdoors on those cement steps and looking out at an expectant crowd as one of the most terrifying moments of her life. It was far different than talking to dolls. She had no notes, no class lesson plan, so she decided simply to talk about the man she knew. She’s been doing it ever since, though she still prefers notes.

Neither George nor Laura, of course, lived up to their mutual promises. She has never worked out with him. But despite her reputation as a politician’s wife who prefers the background, fed by news stories every election cycle about her actually taking the campaign trail as if she never had before, Laura Bush is a veteran campaigner. Few political wives have campaigned so much over such a long period.

She has been an active campaigner on the road in every single presidential election campaign since 1980, except 1996, either for her father-in-law or her husband, not to mention two Texas gubernatorial races, including the unexpected upset of popular Ann Richards. She comes across as an ardent if guarded advocate for her husband. She does not forget the negative coverage of her husband as easily as he does but never shows it.

Everywhere she went, just like back on those cement steps in West Texas, she talked about the man she knew. She would touch on policies, but the focus was the man. And who would know the man better than his wife, the one who still picks up his discarded shirts in the hotel room after he’s rushed off to give a speech?

Laura Bush particularly comes alive around children and could turn a simple classroom storybook reading into a rapt experience that drew in watching parents about the adventures contained inside of books. ‘She’s a real pro,’ the classroom teachers would say.

During every political campaign like the 1999-2000 one, where she would campaign in Iowa while her husband visited South Carolina, she and her husband would talk several times a day on the phone. Every two or three days one of them would fly home to check on their twin daughters. At the GOP debates Laura Bush would stride up to shake the wives’ hands of her husband’s opponents, as Barbara Bush had advised. ‘You be the first to reach out,’ she said.

And when the primary season was over and the long months until the convention ended, when the final two intense months of the 2000 campaign against Al Gore came up, Bush knew what he wanted: his wife by his side every step of the way, not off campaigning on her own, no matter how much extra helpful media that might attract. He was clearly more comfortable with her around and comfort is a hard thing to come by in intense days like that when the stakes are so high and the cities and faces blur.

The two of them would read in their front seat on the campaign plane or talk privately. He often sought her opinion of others. And she was candid. Or she would read one of the two or three books she consumes each week while Bush cajoled reporters in the back of the plane.

Often, when the candidate would see some hands to shake, he would begin to stride off. His wife would clear her throat and the future president would mark time until she caught up with him and they would go together. She was there through thick and thin, through the colds and flu, the bumpy plane flights, the long days and short nights, the hot sticky Labor Day parades, the times away from their teenage daughters, with an encouraging word the public never saw her share.

So last weekend when the White House quietly announced on a somnolent Sunday afternoon that Laura Bush would not be traveling with her husband to Australia because of a ‘pinched nerve,’ it was an obvious signal of something else. The White House said doctors advised against her traveling on such a long flight that might exacerbate the problem and Mrs. Bush phoned Australia’s First Lady to explain.

What she did not explain but was clear to those who know her toughness was that no pinched nerve would keep her home by itself. Something else was up, most likely an unannounced ‘surprise’ visit by the president to Iraq. And they did not want to expose the First Lady.

The visit makes perfect political sense, coming just before Gen. Petraeus’ report to Congress and the great September debate over war policy. Those who figured out the ruse did not write or speculate about the advance plans of a chief executive to enter a war zone. Who knows who reads blog items like this online?

But to those who know Laura Bush, after all these years in public with her husband in pickup trucks and armored limos, she wouldn’t choose to stay home without a very good reason, albeit a secret one. After all, she can read another book on a long plane flight just as easily as in her air-conditioned bedroom in Crawford.

--Andrew Malcolm