Remembering Barbara Bush

Presidents’ wives are expected to be an asset to their administrations without being daring or controversial. They may be disliked because of whom they married or because they fail to live up to some unattainable ideal. There are many ways a first lady can go wrong, and no misstep goes unnoticed.

Barbara Bush, who died Tuesday at age 92, walked through that thicket and emerged almost universally beloved. The wife of the 41st president and mother of the 43rd, she retained her popularity even when theirs eroded. A 2014 Gallup poll found that 77 percent of Americans regarded her favorably. Edward Rollins, who ran the 1984 Reagan-Bush re-election campaign, called her “far and away the greatest political spouse I’ve seen.”

That’s not because she was glamorous, inspiring or groundbreaking. It was because people perceived her as real.

Mrs. Bush, who succeeded the famously fashionable Nancy Reagan, once joked, “There is a myth around I don’t dress well. I dress very well—I just don’t look so good.” Plenty of people could identify.

Her children knew their father as the indulgent parent and their mother as the disciplinarian. A flinty quality was evident beneath her grandmotherly aura. She embraced a traditional role of a political wife, tirelessly campaigning and listening attentively to speeches she had heard over and over. Yet she was known as someone with a mind of her own who brooked no nonsense.

As first lady, she made her mark by embracing the cause of literacy. She continued that work after leaving the White House with her Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy, which has raised millions of dollars in an effort to make sure that everyone can read.

She was an indispensable part of the Bush family’s tradition of public service. And for many Americans, she will long remain the picture of what a first lady should be.