TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/082492/08249926.000

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                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 26

PRESIDENT BUSH

The Best Days of Their Wives


Though still the adoring spouse, Barbara Bush speaks her mind
on abortion, thus joining Marilyn Quayle in sharing the spotlight
-- and the microphone --with their husbands

By MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON -- With reporting by Ann Blackman/
Washington


    The morning after the New York Post published charges
that George Bush had an extramarital affair, Noelle Bush, 15,
asked her grandmother what all the fuss was about. As the two
sat by the White House pool Wednesday morning, Barbara Bush
explained that the newspapers were reporting that Noelle's
grandfather allegedly had a fling with a former staff member
eight years earlier. "Come on, Ganny," said the girl. "That's
what they're saying," Mrs. Bush replied. When Noelle broke into
giggles, the First Lady upbraided her in mock horror. "That's
sort of insulting to your grandfather." Replied Noelle: "That
is so funny." Recounting the exchange a few hours later, the
First Lady concluded, "Well, I guess he looks ancient to her."

    Score one more for Barbara Bush, master of the
self-deprecating gesture -- particularly in the midst of a
crisis that might cause other political spouses to lose their
sangfroid. In the course of two days, her husband faced
accusations of adultery, backpedaled on abortion and overhauled
his political team. Mrs. Bush leaped into the fray herself,
staking out a position on abortion well to the President's left,
criticizing a top Bush aide in public, and then getting in a
lick or two of her own at Bill Clinton. "I'm feisty as the
dickens," she said in an interview with newsmagazine
correspondents.

    In a year when both parties are trying to appeal to
disenchanted voters, Republican officials are hoping that
Barbara Bush -- who is roughly twice as popular as her husband
-- can bring back many of the disaffected when she speaks in
Houston this week. Convention planners say they are counting on
Mrs. Bush's 10-minute remarks -- and a five-minute talk by
Marilyn Quayle -- to be nearly as appealing to female voters as
her husband's much longer make-or-break address. "We sometimes
fantasize," said a campaign official, "what it would be like to
have Barbara and Marilyn on the ticket."

    Ever since the Clarence Thomas hearings last fall, the
Republican Party has been struggling to overcome the perception
that its regard for women is only a notch or two higher than
that of the Navy's Tailhook Association. The hearings galvanized
a long-struggling movement to put more women into the House and
Senate, and Democrats have rushed to showcase a sizable ballot
of women candidates. But the G.O.P. is woefully short on female
office seekers, which is one reason why it is calling on Mrs.
Bush and Mrs. Quayle to take high-profile convention roles for
the first time. In addition, the two women can play the party's
family-values card in a way their husbands cannot.

    By an ironic quirk of timing, Mrs. Bush was preparing her
speech when the latest round of adultery stories erupted. But
she was bearing up proudly in an interview the next day. "You
know, we're talking about people's lives," she said. "It's
really not a very nice thing. I should quickly tell you that the
fact this comes up every four years is not an enormous surprise
to me, but it's a disappointing one . . . I know it's a lie, so
it doesn't bother me. But it bothers me that we've come to
this."

    Asked to explain more fully her husband's relationship
with Jennifer Fitzgerald, a former appointments assistant who
now serves as deputy chief of protocol at the State Department,
Mrs. Bush described it as "employer-employee." Says Mrs. Bush:
"She's a good friend of mine. I mean, it's so ugly, the whole
thing. And it's been very deceitful and harmful and ugly. I
haven't seen Jennifer, but my heart goes out to her. This is
just mean." She said the two had not spoken because Fitzgerald
was out of the country.

    Mrs. Bush then dropped a bombshell of her own. The
decision to have an abortion, she said, is a "personal choice,
personal thing." The day before, the President had said he would
support a granddaughter who decided to terminate a pregnancy --
although his own party is trying to outlaw the procedure unless
the mother's life is endangered. Mrs. Bush went well beyond
that, saying all discussion of abortion should be removed from
the political arena. "The personal things should be left out of,
in my opinion, out of platforms at conventions . . . You can
argue yourself blue in the face, and you're not going to change
each other's minds. It's a waste of your time and my time."

    Mrs. Bush had been suspected of harboring pro-choice views
for years, but she never before said it publicly to avoid
unnecessary skirmishes with the Republican Party's conservative
wing. Coming the day after the Fitzgerald boomlet, the
pronouncement's timing was curious and set off a round of
political speculation. Some thought the abortion comment was an
attempt to change the subject from the infidelity flap. Others
believed that G.O.P. campaign officials were attempting to have
it both ways by having Mrs. Bush woo independent and Republican
women who find the party's pro-life platform unrealistic.

    Whatever the motivation, Mrs. Bush's remarks put her at
odds with Marilyn Quayle. The Vice President's wife last month
contradicted her husband's public comments by insisting that if
their 13-year-old daughter ever became pregnant out of wedlock,
she would "carry the baby to term." Mrs. Bush had little use for
this inflexible logic. Said she: "You can't pin a child down and
say, `You can't have an abortion; that's against the law.' " But
the First Lady quickly added that any differences between the
two women were a measure of the G.O.P.'s diversity. "[Marilyn]
does it differently. That's what's big about our party."

    In fact, Mrs. Quayle differs from the President's wife in
many ways. While the First Lady's image is cuddly and
grandmotherly, Marilyn Quayle can seem hard, intolerant and
combative. "I'm a great devil's advocate," she explained in an
interview with TIME. "I can pierce holes through anything."
Convention organizers will try to turn her tough-as-nails
reputation into a political asset. Her midweek address on health
care and education will mark the first time a Vice President's
wife has ever given an actual convention speech. "The idea,"
said a planner, "is to show women voters that you can be a
Republican and not just wear Talbots and pearls and join the
Junior League."

    Ever since a Washington Post series on her husband last
winter depicted her as a power-mad spouse who once kicked to
shreds a framed picture of her husband playing golf, Mrs. Quayle
has been trying to soften her Cruella De Vil image. She is
cooler in interviews and slower to anger. She proudly announces
that she saves money by shopping monthly at the Price Club and
that her kids come home and eat tuna "right out of the can."
Normally careful to shield her children from public scrutiny,
she now admits the abortion gaffe was unfortunate and
"embarrassing" to her daughter Corinne. "We have reared our
daughter so this would have to be a hypothetical situation,"
said Mrs. Quayle. But, she added, the girl "was not pleased."

    But Corinne's mother has her independent streak as well.
She takes issue, for example, with the President's wish that
philandering charges have no part in a political campaign.
"That's all part of the character issues," she insisted. "And
anyone who is going to be President -- you do look at the
character of the person. That's what makes a person whole." Such
remarks led a party official to quip, "She's our answer to
Hillary."

    The our-wife-can-top-your-wife game can be carried too
far. No sooner had Bush been accused of infidelity than G.O.P.
chairman Rich Bond attacked Mrs. Clinton for likening marriage
to slavery -- a gross distortion of an educational review
article she wrote in 1973. But Mrs. Bush, as if she were waging
a one-woman campaign to court the political middle, publicly
chastised Bond for his remarks. "I didn't like it," she said.
"She's not running for office." Mrs. Bush added, "I know a lot
of wonderful men married to pills, and I know a lot of pills
married to wonderful women. So one shouldn't judge that way."

    But it is bound to happen. In an era of sound bites and
short attention spans, when complex issues like deficit
reduction and health care often seem too difficult to
understand, many voters will simply choose the candidate who
best fits their "values." And one way to judge a man's values
is to look at the woman he married.