Laura Bush: America's new queen

10:30 AM

WASHINGTON - If you want to know how far Laura Bush has come, consider the gown she will wear tomorrow, writes RUPERT CORNWELL.

The little number dreamed up by her trusted designer from Dallas, Michael Faircloth, for the inauguration festivities to celebrate the Republican restoration in Washington, is by the standards of such occasions nothing too daring.

The material is red chantilly lace, with a modest adornment of Austrian crystal beads. The skirt is full but not extravagantly so; the sleeves are demurely long, the neckline slightly scooped, but careful to reveal no hint of cleavage. In short, just what you might expect; the very picture of the well-bred southern lady as she takes the arm of her very Texan husband, the freshly minted 43rd president of the United States.

But compared with what might have been, this is progress indeed. When Laura became first lady of Texas, just six years ago, she was all greys, browns and invisible beiges; a reflection of her retiring nature, but not exactly a stand-out on television.

Now the dowdy has given way to the elegant – in line with the transformation of the librarian, primary school teacher and self-admitted bookworm into the First Lady of the United States, dinner hostess to kings and queens.

And so those learned gentlemen known as "presidential scholars" are all agog: just how will she do the job, which of her predecessors will she most resemble? It certainly won't be Hillary Clinton, the woman she replaces, famously touted by Bill: "Elect me and get two for the price of one."

Nor for all her blossoming, will it be the incomparably classy Jackie Kennedy – nor the bitchy and vindictive Nancy Reagan, nor the pushy-pious Rosalynn Carter. Maybe Betty Ford offers a few clues – or Lady Bird Johnson, the last Texan first lady, and the only human who ever tamed LBJ.

The fashionable comparison however – based on Laura's track record of meek domesticity – is Mamie Eisenhower. Did she not, after all, describe the division of labour in her White House as, "Ike runs the country and I turn the lamb chops."

But the answer to the riddle of Laura may lie much closer to home – with her mother-in-law. To understand this Bush, look no further than ex-first lady Barbara Bush – and suddenly Laura looks anything but the meek little pushover she seems. For contrary to widespread impression, the ruling house of Bush, the most successful American political dynasty of the modern era, is a matriarchy.

The prevailing belief says otherwise. Bush women are thought to be modest, unassuming creatures, who find fulfilment in devoting themselves to home and hearth while their jockish, politically obsessed and goofy spouses get on with real men's business – being senators, governors and presidents.

The females of the Bush species, according to this theory, believe their duty is to transmit those remarkable family genes from generation to generation, and to ferry the next batch of presidents, senators and governors to cook-outs, church and little-league baseball games until they are old enough to get a driving licence. The theory, alas, does not bear close examination.

At every turn in the Bush story, you find a powerful woman. First up was the redoubtable Dorothy Walker Bush, wife of Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut, daughter of George Herbert Walker who founded the Walker Cup golfing competition, and mother of the 41st President.

Then came Barbara, known for her sweet and grandmotherly smile, her blue dresses, her artificial pearl necklaces and her authorship of Millie's Story, a cute little account of the White House years as seen through the eyes of the Bush family spaniel.

The reality was a woman with a tough mind, a sharp tongue and political antennae better attuned than those of her famously out-of-touch husband, baffled by supermarket scanners and other subtleties of daily life.

Now Barbara moves up a notch to Queen Mother and Laura becomes First Lady in her own right. The classic Bush pattern holds – of a shy and unassuming mother, loyal to the man she loves, stoically enduring a limelight she never sought. Barbara soon detected the appropriate strand of self-sacrifice in her daughter-in-law: "Laura follows a great philosophy in life: you can either like it or not like it, so you might as well like it."

Here, incidentally, a fascinating difference emerges with the Kennedys, displaced by the Bush clan of New England and Texas as America's unofficial royal family.

The relentlessly self-centred Kennedys scorned and traduced their women; Joe Sr gave the run-around to Rose, JFK to Jackie, Bobby to Ethel and so on. Whatever your opinion of George Sr and George W, they are not serial adulterers. By and large, the Bushes are gentlemen; mostly faithful husbands who respect the opposite sex.

Needless to say, the role of matriarch requires its training. To Laura's considerable embarrassment, Barbara confirms the story of how at a gathering of the matriarchs, the new First Lady was asked about herself by Dorothy (who died in November 1992, just after her son was defeated by Bill Clinton). "I read, I smoke, I admire," came the demure answer. At which, Barbara recounts, the eldest Mrs Bush "darn near collapsed". Bush women have to learn that behind the scenes, it is they who pull the strings.

But the correct public legend was in place. Laura was indeed the shy former school librarian whose one sin was smoking (she gave that up 10 years ago), who has emerged highly successfully, albeit a mite reluctantly, into the public arena. Yes, she only married George W after he agreed she would never have to make a political speech. Yet there she was in Philadelphia last July, delivering the opening address at her husband's nominating convention with the grace and quiet aplomb of one whose been doing it all her life.

The White House will now have its first genuinely Texan first lady since Lady Bird greeted visitors with a broad, "How y'all doin'?" But if Laura's soft twangy drawl is recognisably Texas, the rest of her is not. She is understated and quiet where Texans are supposed to be brassy and loud. Her marriage with the frat-brat Dubya is proof that exact opposites attract. He is untidy; she is neat, orderly and super-organised, reputed to enjoy cleaning out bathroom cabinets as a form of relaxation.

He is a talker, she is a listener. She reads avidly and widely, from Greek tragedy to Truman Capote. She has identified her favourite literary passage as the "Grand Inquisitor" section of The Brothers Karamazov, an ambiguous dialogue about an imagined return of Christ to earth in Seville at the height of the Spanish inquisition.

What this says about Laura is unclear; but it certainly distinguishes her from her husband, whose preferred recreational reading is the baseball scores and who would probably guess "Dusty Yevsky" was a former New York Yankees pitcher.

The two first set eyes on each other in Midland, Laura's home town and financial capital of the Texas oil industry, where they attended the same middle school in the late 1950s. She was the only daughter of a successful builder, and describes her childhood as "slightly lonely" and uneventful – barring a road accident when she was 17 when she went through a stop sign, hit another car and killed its driver, a high-school friend. Charges were never brought, but to this day she flinches at mention of the incident.

Early on, she knew she wanted to be a teacher. After leaving college, she taught at racially mixed elementary schools in Dallas and Houston. In 1973, she took a master's degree in library science from the University of Texas and moved to the state capital, Austin, as an elementary-school librarian.

Four years later, she ran into George W again, at a barbecue thrown by mutual friends in Midland. On 5 November 1977, they married – and Laura found herself spending part of the honeymoon on the campaign trail as her husband made his failed quest for a congressional seat.

Barbara and Jenna, the Bushes' twin daughters, arrived in 1981, but only after a difficult pregnancy and a long failure to start a family that had the couple on the brink of starting an adoption. Ever since, Laura has ferociously protected the privacy of the girls, taking a fortnight off to see them off to college last autumn as the campaign for the White House was nearing its climax.

Throughout her husband's career, first in oil, then in politics, Laura has been an important backstage presence, a sounding board and source of advice – above all for George W's crucial decision to give up the booze. She disputes the bald ultimatum version, "It's either me or Jim Beam." She did, however, let it be known it was "necessary" for the family that he quit. And so he did, cold, after a monster 40th birthday party hangover in Colorado in 1986.

These days, Laura is a quiet brake on her husband when he gets cocky; "Bushieee," she will whisper when that maddening spoilt little boy's smirk becomes too frequent. "Rein it in, Bubba," she once smilingly reproached him on the campaign plane. During the agonising weeks of uncertainty after the election, she was calmness itself. "If it happens it happens, if not we'll be OK," was Laura's approach. The night it did happen, she went off to a routine board meeting of the Texas Book Festival, even as her husband awaited the promised concession call from Al Gore.

Some believe she was a Democrat before she met her future President – though in the Texas of that time there was precious little practical difference between the two big parties.

Today, she gives little away about her political views. One suspects that, like her mother-in-law, she disapproves of abortion but believes in a woman's right to choose. She is silent on the death penalty, carried out more than 100 times in Texas since George W became governor in 1995.

She has, however, said she supports public funding for the arts, something most God-fearing Republicans regard as the advancement of sacrilege and pornography.

Whatever their views of her husband, however, most Texans acknowledge Laura has been an impressive first lady of the state, a deft and accomplished hostess and a tireless campaigner for education and child literacy.

She played an important if unsung part in securing a $215m elementary education bill in 1998. Her proudest personal achievement has been the Book Festival, promoting Texas authors and raising almost $1m to stock the shelves of the state's public libraries.

In the White House, we can expect more of the same, and America is likely to warm to her. Recent first ladies have alternated between the assertive and the homey.

Nancy Reagan, scourge of her husband's advisers, was followed by the self-proclaimed "nester" Barbara. After Hillary Clinton, super-smart lawyer, senator and sworn foe of cookie-baking comes the serene and understated Laura.

A typically catty put-down defines Barbara's view of the difference between Hillary and Laura: "I'm not criticising Mrs Clinton, but it's like oil and water. We're talking about two different subjects. They are two different people. I think Laura thinks of others." In return, Laura gushes that her role model in the White House will be – of course – her mother-in-law.

But in that quiet way she has, she will make her mark. First ladies, as well as presidents, can use their office as a bully pulpit – in her case, for the promotion of education and literacy.

If the next couple of years are as rough and partisan as predicted, Laura's style will appeal to centrist voters, softening and blurring her husband's image. And do not doubt it: she will be a power behind the throne. Once, of course, she's fixed the family move and arranged the furniture. That's what Bush women are supposed to do.