Reply #56: Why Laura Bush is fair game

[Malva Zebrina]

But as she begins several weeks of solo barnstorming in states crucial for her husband's re-election, Laura Bush is becoming an increasingly visible and effective part of White House strategy, largely because she is seen as someone above the rough-and-tumble of the political fray.
.In the last four months, she has been steadily raising her profile, projecting an image much more assertive and assured than she did during the 2000 campaign. She has joked with Jay Leno, made the morning news-show circuit and appeared in Internet campaign commercials. She has also proved to be a formidable fund-raiser, generating $10 million for the campaign this year while speaking at more than a dozen events from Maine to Missouri.


.And less than three weeks from now, in what will undoubtedly be her most important public moment of the 2004 campaign, she will give one of the prime-time speeches at the Republican National Convention in New York. (Her every handshake, smile and speech on the campaign trail are being recorded for a videotape that will be shown as she is introduced at Madison Square Garden.)


Instead, she delivered reliable applause lines this week to groups of women who own small businesses in Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota, reminding them that a woman, Condoleezza Rice, advised her husband on foreign policy and another, Margaret Spellings, advised him on domestic policy. ."This means that in the White House, women are in charge of everything abroad and everything at home," she said, breaking into a smile, "which sounds just about right to me."

http://www.iht.com/articles/533778.html