A Pillow Away From The President

By MARGARET CARLSON

Hillary Clinton wore us out, something the current First Lady will never do. As soothing as a warm bath, Laura Bush came into the Diplomatic Room of the White House at 11 a.m. last Wednesday, after being up since 5:30 a.m., when the President brought her coffee and papers in bed, and fresh from hosting a Starlight Children's Foundation event. She was squeezing in 45 minutes with TIME before getting ready for two Christmas receptions (at which she would shake 900 hands in four hours) and prepping for a Meet the Press interview.

Meet the Press? Who'd have thunk it? There she was, the first First Lady to mix it up with Tim Russert, not to mention with Mayor Rudy Giuliani, over whether the President was put on earth to lead us after 9/11 (intermittently Rudy's Catholic view of his mayorship) or whether God is less specific (her modest Methodist take). The least ambitious First Lady in recent memory, save perhaps Mamie Eisenhower, Mrs. Bush recalls the pact she made upon her engagement: she would join her husband on his daily jogs; he would never ask her to give a speech. "We're even now," she says as the President goes off for his midday run--without her. "We've both broken our prenuptial promises."

On 9/11, Mrs. Bush was headed to the Capitol for a Senate education hearing when the second plane struck the World Trade Center. Committee chairman Ted Kennedy recalls seeing her looking "so alone" as she walked down the hall toward him. As she tried to reach her daughters, mother and husband, she was struck by the fact that she was watching, with Senator Kennedy, the worst tragedy since his brother John was assassinated. Together they went to the Caucus Room to calm the press. Kennedy says, "You take the measure of a person at a time like that. She is steady, assured, elegant." That night, she and her husband were finally in their own bed after hours at a secure location when a panting Secret Service agent burst into the room, saying there was an unidentified plane in the airspace. "I couldn't see a thing without my contacts, so I held on to my husband to go down to the basement," she says. "Before they could get the lumpy foldout couch made up, they identified the plane. I got back to sleep, but I can't say the President did."

For the first weeks, Mrs. Bush was happy that there was no "immediate retaliation." Revealing a strain of pacifism, she says, "I knew the President would do the right thing, but like a lot of women, I was hoping that was going to be nothing." A few days before he authorized the bombing of Afghanistan, the President confided his decision to Mrs. Bush. They stuck to their plan to have close Texas friends go to Camp David that weekend (lest the terrorists win), although they would now be joined by the national security team (who helped the President put together a jigsaw puzzle of the White House).

Mrs. Bush is unlikely to make an outright political statement. Indeed, she hardly seems interested in making a fashion statement (though she lifts the hem of her brown slacks to show a stocking-free leg: Women Against Panty Hose, Unite!). Before 9/11 the First Lady was happiest reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to kindergartners. She is no co-President but has become a part-time surrogate for her husband, appearing on 60 Minutes, three times with Larry King, addressing the National Press Club and giving the radio address on Nov. 17, while continuing to work hard for education. Kennedy says she's devoted and selfless. "At various panels, I ask if she doesn't want to speak first and leave. Instead, she comes early, listens to everyone else and speaks last. I can't tell you how rare that kind of effort is."

Still, Mrs. Bush seems to prefer the personal to the political. She will have 27 for Christmas at Camp David, where, to the relief of her family, she will not be cooking (she loves to read cookbooks, not follow them). Before wrapping it for Jenna, Mrs. Bush hastily read Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered, by Ruth Kluger, about "an interesting mother-daughter relationship. They're all interesting," she says, adding that the twins like to comment on her appearance ("Mom, your hair moves as a unit!"). She has hinted that she might write a book about Barney the Scottish terrier if she could "get that $8 million advance or whatever it is." Asked what Barbara Bush thinks of her daughter-in-law's surpassing her in the polls, Laura pleaded, "Please don't tell her."

It matters who's a pillow away from the presidency. David Gergen writes in Eyewitness to Power that a chipper President Clinton would arrive in the morning only to get a call from Hillary, after which "his mood would darken." The Bushes keep a lid on criticism. "In politics you always have an opponent. It shouldn't be your spouse," she says. It's impossible to judge a marriage from the outside, yet it's hard to picture Mrs. Bush ever darkening the President's day. The peace she carries with her spills over to him, and so to us.