BARBARA BUSH 1925–2018
Matriarch of a political dynasty dies at 92
HOUSTON — Barbara Bush didn’t hesitate to tell people that her trademark pearl necklaces were fake. Americans liked that everything else about the snowyhaired first lady was real.
The wife of the nation’s 41st president and mother of the 43rd brought a plainspoken, grandmotherly style to buttoned-down Washington, displaying an utter lack of vanity about her white hair and wrinkles.
“What you see with me is what you get. I’m not running for president — George Bush is,” she said at the 1988 Republican National Convention, where her husband, then vice president, was nominated to succeed Ronald Reagan.
Mrs. Bush died Tuesday, according to a statement from family spokesman Jim McGrath. She was 92.
The Bushes, who were married on Jan. 6, 1945, had the longest marriage of any presidential couple in American history. And Mrs. Bush was one of only two first ladies who had a child who was elected president. The other was Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams and mother of John Quincy Adams.
“I had the best job in America,” she wrote in a 1994 memoir describing her time in the White House. “Every single day was interesting, rewarding, and sometimes just plain fun.”
The publisher’s daughter and oilman’s wife could be caustic in private, but her public image was that of self-sacrificing, supportive spouse.
In the White House, “you need a friend, someone who loves you, who’s going to say, ‘You are great,’” Mrs. Bush said in a 1992 television interview.
Her uncoiffed, matronly appearance often provoked jokes that she looked more like the boyish president’s mother than his wife. Latenight comedians quipped that her bright white hair and pale features also imparted an uncanny resemblance to George Washington.
Eight years after leaving the nation’s capital, Mrs. Bush stood with her husband as their son George W. was sworn in as president. They returned four years later when he won a second term. Unlike Mrs. Bush, Abigail Adams did not live to see her son’s inauguration. She died in 1818, six years before John Quincy Adams was elected.
Mrs. Bush insisted she did not try to influence her husband’s politics.
“I don’t fool around with his office,” she said, “and he doesn’t fool around with my household.”
In 1984, her quick wit got her into trouble when she was quoted as referring to Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice presidential nominee at the time, as “that $4 million — I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich.”
“It was dumb of me. I shouldn’t have said it,” Mrs. Bush acknowledged in 1988. “I apologized to Mrs. Ferraro, and I would apologize again.”
Daughter-in-law Laura Bush, another first lady, said Mrs. Bush was “ferociously tart-tongued” from the start.
“She’s never shied away from saying what she thinks. … She’s managed to insult nearly all of my friends … ,” Laura Bush said in her 2010 book, “Spoken from the Heart.”
In her 1994 autobiography, “Barbara Bush: A Memoir,” she said she did her best to keep her opinions from the public while her husband was in office. But she revealed that she disagreed with him on two issues: She supported legal abortion and opposed the sale of assault weapons.
“I honestly felt, and still feel, the elected person’s opinion is the one the public has the right to know,” Mrs. Bush wrote.
In 2003, she wrote a follow-up memoir, “Reflections: Life After the White House.”
“I made no apologies for the fact that I still live a life of ease,” she wrote. “There is a difference between ease and leisure. I live the former and not the latter.”