Inside Barbara Bush’s Quiet Yet Forceful Influence on American Politics

Barbara has been most influential on issues that concern her deeply or where her husband is behind the curve, like AIDS, the homeless, civil rights and education. In the late 1950s, she battled segregationist innkeepers who refused to let the family’s black baby-sitter stay with them in the same hotel. She was instrumental in the appointment of the only black in Bush‘s Cabinet, Dr. Louis Sullivan, whom she came to know from her work at [Atlanta’s Morehouse School of Medicine].

It was Barbara‘s visits to AIDS hospitals in Harlem that nudged her husband into endorsing additional federal funds for fighting the disease when the Reagan Administration was still balking. Similarly, after an early debate when her husband brushed aside a question about the homeless with boiler plate about housing, Barbara exhorted him to make homelessness a campaign issue. ”She really talked hard at him,” said an aide, ”and rode him until he got it right.” Barbara‘s interest in children and literacy, meanwhile, helped Bush commit himself to being the ”education President.” ”Every time he says ‘Head Start,’ that’s Bar,” says Sheila Tate, Bush‘s transition spokeswoman.

Barbara tries to mask her views where they differ from her husband’s. Her preferred line on abortion is ”I’m not going to tell you my opinion,” a perhaps pointedly transparent admission of her pro-choice views, since if she agreed with Bush she would presumably say so. She disagreed behind the scenes with his hardball campaign tactics, masterminded by Jim Baker, Atwater, Roger Ailes and others. Late in the general-election campaign, aides sensed Barbara’s unseen hand after speeches were rewritten in a softer tone. ”There were drafts of speeches that went into the suite at night and came out the next morning with changes,” an aide recalls.

Some staffers credit Barbara with getting George to suddenly pledge cleaner campaign tactics at a fund raiser last fall at Bob Hope’s Hollywood spread. The announcement so stunned aides that they disappeared on purpose afterward. But Barbara wasn’t all softball. When Bush was resisting advice to air the now famous ”straddle ad” in New Hampshire that showed Iowa caucus victor Robert Dole flip-flopping on taxes, Barbara finally chimed in, ”I don’t see anything wrong with that ad.” It ran, and Bush took the state by 10 points.