Biography unveils another side of 'The Perfect Wife' (Laura Bush story)

[MoonAndSun]

<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=709&ncid=762&e=13&u=/usatoday/20040106/en_bo_usatoday/biographyunveilsanothersideoftheperfectwife>


snip> Gerhart, who has been on the beat since Laura Bush assumed her unofficial office in 2001, is an unabashed fan. She describes the first lady in this first full-scale biography by a major-media journalist as an unpretentious woman who reluctantly got drawn into public life when she married. Mrs. Bush did not cooperate with the writing of the book but Gerhart says she had "excellent access" to Mrs. Bush in the course of her newspaper reporting. (Related item:Read an excerpt from The Perfect Wife)


Gerhart may be fond of her but is too much of a pro to pull any punches. Among revelations:


• Gerhart reviewed police files on the fatal accident and came away with pointed questions about how thoroughly the investigation was conducted.





more info in article, some about the bush twins....

[Fleshdancer]

1. The only time I saw Laura Bush in person....

It was when Dubya was Governor. She and a handful of her friends walked into Whole Foods on 6th and Lamar.

So I'm standing in line at the check out when these women walk in the store. Laura keeps her sunglasses on while inside (pet peeve of mine)and all her friends trail her, noses in air, looking around making fools of themselves. It was a "hey, look at me and who I'm with" moment for the pals. Laura didn't look snotty like her friends did, but the sunglasses thing cracked me up. I start to laugh and asked my Mom "what the hell was that"? She rolled her eyes and said it was Laura Bush. I didn't even recognize her.

Not much of a story, I know.

[Bryan T]

3. That little store scenario...

...certainly speaks volumes about her, and those she surrounds herself with.

Real "bush league"...:+

[pippin]

7. The accident is a non story??

Killing someone is a non-event??!! Negligence is o.k.?? Sorry, I can't buy that. Some of the things that sparked the French revolution included the fact the aristocracy could race their horse-drawn coaches killing the peasants without
bothering to stop to assess the damage. As far as I am concerned there is no
difference between Laura Bush driving through an intersection and killing someone and the French aristocracts who callously dismissed the deaths of ordinary people. They boy who was killed when Laura Bush ran the stop sign had parents and loved ones whom no one seems to have noticed or cared about.


Remember too, Mama Bush's remarks to Diane Sawyer as to why she should bother "her beautiful mind" about war casualties in Iraq. The Bushes and their ilk are the sickening aristrocracy we don't need in America. :mad:

[Silverhair]

8. You are allowing your hatred for W to distort your judgement.

Remember - 40 years ago Laura was a nobody, a commoner. Are you advocating that the at fault person in an accident be treated as if it were deliberate?

[CatWoman]

9. I can't believe that the "majestic" bush's

would intermarry into a family of "commoners".

[Silverhair]

17. He did. Sorry that you don't like it, but it is a fact.

Previous marriages in the Bush family had, indeed, been to other "blue-bloods". When he was 20, he was engaged to a Cathy Wolfman, daughter of Houston's finest clothiers. But the relationship didn't last and they broke up.

Luara's father worked in Midland for CIT Credit Corp. They financed car purchases. He rose to the level of district manager, quit and started his own construction company - building houses. There was great demand for that in oil-boom Midland. He was successful and prosperous, but not super-wealthy. Upper middle class. Her pre-college education was in public schools. Her college was Southern Methodist University. She was a "commoner".

[radwriter0555]

13. LOL is she royalty now? Pigs ears and silk purses I say. Trash

is always trash.

LB is trash. Look who she married.

[barbaraann]

18. She wasn't a nobody.

Her family wasn't a poor family from the wrong side of the tracks.

[Silverhair]

19. No that weren't. But they weren't a "somebody" either.

Her dad was a successful local home builder, a small businessman. A commoner.

[rumguy]

28. Quit using the word "commoner"

It's annoying. It sounds like a rethug word. And a so-called "commoner" is not a "nobody". These sound like rethug country club words...

[Red State Rebel]

20. I agree...I knew someone in high school that had a similar

situation - she had an accident that killed her best friend. I will never forget the devestation that she felt. It effected her entire life for a long time. Sometimes and accident is just an accident.

[Silverhair]

30. What about Kennedy?

If you think that we would be right in going after Laura today over an accident from 41 years ago, are the Reps right in still going after Kennedy for his accident with a fatality, from 35 years ago?

If one is still a "story", then so is the other. Are do we have a double standard, like we accuse the Reps of having?

[Silverhair]

2. The accident is a non story.

It happened in 1963, in a small Texas town. At the time Laura Welch was a 17 year old nobody. No connection with the Bushes. Traffic accidents, then and now, are usually not given extreme scrutiny unless there is some reason to. Even if there is a fatality, if the situation is obvious, and nobody important is involved, it is a low priority routine case.

I am a Private Investigator. I have, on several occasions, been requested to do an accident reconstruction where a fatality was involved. In each case, the police reports always went to the obvious, and didn't dig any further. BTW - On each of those cases, my own detailed investigation ended up confirming the police report. The obvious was what had indeed happened.

It was an obvious case of negligence on Laura's part. She didn't notice the stop sign, because she wasn't looking for one. (My own daughter, at 16, did the same stupid thing and hit another car. Luckily, no one was injured.)Police don't do detailed investigations on obvious things.

If Democrats try to use an old accident from her teenage years to attack the Bushes with - IT WILL BACKFIRE. It will be seen as a desperate, grasping-at-straws, effort. People don't vote for desperate parties.

Our critisms must be based on current substantive things, and there are plenty of those. Dragging up old accidents will be shooting ourselves in the foot.

[CatWoman]

4. where the hell did that come from???

If Democrats try to use an old accident from her teenage years to attack the Bushes with - IT WILL BACKFIRE. It will be seen as a desperate, grasping-at-straws, effort. People don't vote for desperate parties.

This incident is being reported in a book.

:shrug:

[ElsewheresDaughter]

6. true

[Silverhair]

11. It is already well known.

Several times I have seen posts pop up here where someone seems to have come across the accident story for the first time, and thinks they have found the perfect thing to take down the Bushes with. The lead post listed only the accident from the book, so I concluded that this was another one of those type posts. (I am probably right in that too.) So I give my usual caution about shooting ourselves in the foot.

Also, W's daughters are not political. Like Chelsea, they should be given a zone of privacy. It looks like, and is, really cheap shots to try to use the twins for political capital against W. Not only is it a cheap shot, IT ALWAYS BACKFIRES. Leave the Presidental kids alone - unless upon reaching maturity they become politically active.

[CatWoman]

14. You know

I really don't care about Bush's no-class daughters nor his no-class wife.

I just think you jumped the gun by admonishing people not to use info in a book to bash Bush with.

The author of the book is reporting these incidents (?), not anyone here.

But then, when the right wing did the very thing you admonish people here not to do, did it blow up in their faces? Hardly.

[Silverhair]

21. Then what was the original poster's purpose in bringing that

particular incident up in this forum? And yes, as I have already posted in this thread, the RW's use of similar tactics blew up in their faces.

[CatWoman]

25. You have to ask the original poster that

IMO, there's much better juicy details in the linked story.

[King Coal]

23. It's a double standard Cat,

Or... maybe we shouldn't say anything about the First Lump because the right would never say anything about Hillary.

[rumguy]

29. No one is attacking Laura about this ok, Silverhair?

Chill out.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

5. i concur

[SheilaT]

10. We'd all be willing to let it go

except that we KNOW how the Republicans would treat a similar incident in the past of the wife of ANY of our candidates.

Think about it. Not Hillary, she doesn't count. Picture the various wives, and now imagine she ran a stop sign when 17 and accidentally killed someone. Now imagine the REPUBLICANS saying, Oh that's in the distant past and it doesn't matter.

The mind boggles.

I'd let this one go if the Republicans had ever played fair about things, but no, they spent TEN YEARS trying to get Clinton, starting when he was still governor of Arkansas. They made mountains of molehills, they wasted millions upon millions of dollars over nothing.

I do agree that Laura Bush's accident was a long time ago, and she's the one who has to live with the memory of it. But I think the golden rule, Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You is something they need to learn, they need to experience as we've experienced.

[Silverhair]

12. And trying to use the old stuff BACKFIRED on the Reps.

When they tried to use it, it created sympathy for Clinton. Attempts to use Chelsea against the Clintons really backfired.

ANY ATTEMPT BY DEMOCRATS TO USE THIS WILL BACKFIRE.

Now what part of that sentence don't you understand.

[zbdent]

15. Yes, but then, the Repubs didn't have the "liberal media" cowed

into submission at that time, nor did they own most of it.

Haven't you ever got the memo about how Hillary defended the murderous Black Panthers on her campus? (The reality was, she was at the same school at the same time as the trials).

She was a nobody then, but it still goes around. Better bone up on snopes.

[Military Brat]

16. I much prefer the story of bush crashing into the garbage cans

In his 30's, driving drunk, with his 15-year-old brother as a passenger, coming home on Christmas Day and totaling the garbage cans. Poppy bush comes out and reprimands him, at which point baby bush challenges him to a fight man-to-man. Or maybe I should say, weiner to weiner. http://www.salisburypost.com/2000nov/110300ed.htm

Birdbrains of a feather. No wonder bush was attracted to Laura :)

[Silverhair]

22. Now that one says something about him.

Bush handles that by saying, "When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible." and then he shuts up. All of this stuff came up in the 2000 election and is pretty well know. Don't expect to get much traction with it.

[Catherine Vincent]

24. Isn't it sad and ironic that first lady Laura Bush is responsible

for someone's death. Unlike Hillary, whom rightwingers constantly harped on her killing someone.

[0007]

26. Laura Bush reminds of that evil Senator's wife in the movie,

"The Manchuria Candidate" 'Tis was an excellent movie but the book was even better.

Yeah, the police in Midland along with the Welch,s juice cleaned up Laura's accident and her vindictive personality. The police scrubbed her police report on her lover's accident squeaky clean.

[CatWoman]

27. That was just on last night

:D

:hi:

Angela Lansbury played the role in question.

she was a nasty *)&^%^%*, wasn't she?

[0007]

31. Hi CatWoman,

I needed your warming greeting, thanks.