Customer Reviews

The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

Gerhart's book is neither a puff piece nor a hatchet job. Readers seeking either will be disappointed. Gerhart instead presents a balanced, factual account of Laura Bush. And if you read between the lines, you will realize she's more complex than she appears.

First, as other reviewers noted, the most astounding piece of Laura's history is her car accident at age seventeen. There's no evidence that she had been drinking, yet she mysteriously ran a very visible stop sign. Even more mysteriously, the city declined to prosecute. She didn't even get a traffic tickert for running a stop sign and smashing into a truck, instantly killing the driver. Later she realized she had killed a good friend.

I can't help wondering where Laura Welch (her maiden name) would be today if she had been charged with involuntary manslaughter. Would she have gone on become an SMU sorority girl? A teacher and librarian?
Maybe the real lesson isn't that Laura got away with something but that we shouldn't be too quick to punish someone for a one-time mistake, however tragic.

And while Laura never talks about the "accident," there must have been long-lasting impact. Did this experience contribute to her shy, self-effacing qualities?

Relatedly, we get a sense of the Bush family dyamics. In his younger days, Bush did his share of drinking and partying. Laura had memories of her tragic accident. when Twins Jenna and Barbara grow up to be self-absorbed, uncontrollable brats. An analyst would have a field day with this family.

And there's the unspoken question. How does Laura Bush, a smart woman with mostly liberal friends, separate her husband's political persona from her own values? She does what she can and doesn't even try to impinge on her husband's territory.

We also learn about Laura Bush's book programs, where she invites authors to read and contribute. Most authors, being liberals, are reluctant to accept, but soon they are won over by Laura's intellect. She's a real reader.

And she's hardly a doormat. Barbara Bush would be a formidable mother-in-law but Laura avoids yielding. Nor does she take the easy way out. Barbara's issue was literacy, so Laura makes it clear her approach will be different.

I'm reminded of stories of another big Texan president, Lyndon Johnson Indeed, Laura refers to Johnson when she compares herself to other first ladies. Like Laura, Lady Bird knew when to push and when to back off, and she retained her own integrity.

After reading the book, it's hard to see how Laura and George came together so successfuly. They're opposite in many ways. Gerhart hints of disagreement on key political issues. Laura reads; George doesn't. Laura is devoted to her children; George flew to Florida for a planned vacation while Jenna underwent an emergency appendectomy. In the end, Perfect Wife isn't about politics. It's about a family that, with less wealth and public scrutiny, might be termed dysfunctional.

This book was fascinating. The Perfect Wife is well written, well researched, insightful and informative. Ann Gerhart is able to place Laura Bush in context for us; through every chapter she delineates how the personal and the public coexist within a complex person. Laura Bush seems stereotypical of a certain sort of southern woman, but as we know, stereotypes are confining in their lack of dimension. The Perfect Wife ably shows us how Laura Bush is not one-dimensional, rather, she is an intellectual surrounded with stacks of books at her side, she has had friends who are Democrats (and hippies, back in the day), she has known tragedy first-hand, and, like many wives and mothers, is at times annoyed by her spouse and offspring (but is too well-mannered to ever say so in public.) I loved this book - I never thought I could relate to a "first lady" (or a perfect wife... ) but after reading this, I'm rethinking many expectations.

I don't really understand why so many of the earlier reviews of this book are so negative. Apparently many admirers of Mrs. Bush want a portrait that will admit of no shadings of character at all. This is a nuanced and thoughtful book, not at all unfavorable to Mrs. Bush, if you read it with an open mind. Clearly Mrs. Bush has not had an easy or uncomplicated life; and clearly, also, she is a woman who does not let much of her inner life show. The vehicular manslaughter episode when she was 17, for instance, would be enough to irretrievably affect many people for their whole life. Mrs. Bush, however, managed to "move on," as they say, and within weeks to return to her high school routine and from that on to college. To do that takes a person capable of erecting some very powerful defenses. That Mrs. Gerhart is able to penetrate those defenses at all, and show us Mrs. Bush as a real person, with both strengths and flaws (rather than as the waving, smiling china doll which so many of her fans apparently prefer to see her as) is a credit to her as a writer.

Ann Gerhart tries heroically to get a handle on the character and personality of Laura Bush, but like other biographers before her, she is foiled by the fortress-like serenity of this imperturable woman. To readers familiar with Hippocrates' notion of the four basic temperaments, there is no doubt about it: Laura Bush is the poster child of the phlegmatic nature. She's the epitome of a stoic, self-contained woman who expends as little energy as possible in the course of living.

Perhaps the most striking example of this (in addition to her "late" marriage by the early-Boomer standards of her time) is her "hand-off" attitude toward her adolescent daughters, a kind of detached resignation which has forced their father into an unlikely role as disciplinarian.

"Laura-Steady-as-she-goes" is the extremely apt nickname given to her by father-in-law George. An enigma even to the most gifted biographers, she's a tough subject. Gerhart has done a little better than most, although she does reiterate some well-known facts of Bush's life. One of the most burning questions women might want answered is, why did she marry someone so far beneath her levels of intellect and emotional maturity? "He makes me laugh," Bush tells Gerhart, and uses the word "laugh" five times in one short response regarding her husband. Somehow, this reader cannot identify and must conclude wonderingly, "It must be a phlegmatic thing." (!)

I read this book in October 2004 - an interesting time to be reading such a book, during the latter weeks of the US presidential campaign with Bush seeking a second term as president. The book dragged in places, the earlier and latter chapters being the more interesting. The writer seems sympathetic to Laura Bush - hence it is almost a shock to read the chapter on their twin daughters which is not at all sympathetic to them, and critical of the parenting they have received, such a contrast to the tone of the rest of the book (and perhaps also something of a relief?). A woman who says (and seems to believe) that supporting her husband is the most important part of her job, "whether my husband is president or not", and who gave up her own career as soon as she married him (after knowing him for just 12 weeks), a woman who has been able to refrain from voicing any of her own views and opinions - maybe that sort of woman is indeed the perfect wife for a President of the United States. I may have my own thoughts about what that tells us, but it is interesting to read about a woman with such a different outlook from your own and to try to see the world through her eyes for a time. I have considerable respect for anyone who has been through what she went through as a 17 year old (when she drove her car through a STOP sign at 50 miles an hour, crashing into and killing a very popular 17 year old male friend) and has managed to come to terms with it and go forward. And there is no denying the wisdom of this woman - whether it has come from her life experience or from her extensive reading - we can probably all take something from the lessons she teaches. Having read the book, I am no more enthusiastic about Bush and his policies than I was before, and have not been converted to a die-hard Laura Bush fan either, but I feel considerable respect for the choices she has made and for her commitment.

This book is, first of all, beautifully written --Ann Gerhart can craft the kind of sentence that makes you want to go back and read it again just to linger on the words and the perfect pitch of her writing voice.

Beyond that, what struck me is how much The Perfect Wife, while it is the most illuminating portrait I have read to date on the mysterious Mrs. Bush, is really a deeper study on the choices that so many women confront. How to raise a family and be its emotional center of gravity while holding on to some independent sense of self? How to have a career (or not) while being the "perfect wife" to a needy husband. (And, yes, the George Bush portrayed in this book is needy.) What's fascinating is that Laura Bush seems to do this so effortlessly, or so I thought, before reading Gerhart's book, which lays out the First Lady's family history and some real pain that she has experienced along the way.

I would recommend this book to anyone -- mothers, daughters, grandmothers, husbands (if you could get them to read it!) -- anyone interested in a really good read and a penetrating look at the challenges and rewards of being a wife and mother.

This book is an insightful, balanced view of one of the most enigmatic figures in the Bush administration. Laura Bush is a virtually unknown first lady -- our country owes Ann Gerhart a great deal for explaining her journey down the aisle with W and down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. I bought the book yesterday and gobbled it up. This is the perfect gift for political junkies and it is also a fascinating read for anyone who is interested in the influence wives have on their husbands or the difficulties of raising children in the public eye.

The chapter on the Bush twins (YIKES!!) is great.

Everyone needs to read this book.

Ann Gerhart set the bar for herself very, very high by titling this book "The Perfect Wife." After reading this book twice, I feel that a better moniker would have been "An Almost-Perfect Life." Deft reporting redeems much of the book's unevenness: It's as fine a book as might be expected, given the extended Bush clan's passion for spin control. Penetrating the facade of the Bush family's interactions would try the patience of a skilled Kremlinologist. One gets the impression that Gerhart just got worn out and wrapped things up in fewer than 200 pages. This is especially unusual brevity for a biographical subject that the author actually has covered, met, and interviewed, as Gerhart has for The Washington Post.

The few factual errors are quite surprising, given their on-the-recordness: for example, Barbara Bush Sr. is not a "Smith graduate," as Gerhart avers, having dropped out to marry, and Mrs. Bush Sr.'s surviving daughter is identified as "Doro[thy] Koch Bush."

Gerhart begins with a trip to Midland, Texas, yielding a finely nuanced report of life in the '50s and '60s for affluent white kids like Laura Welch, a sheltered and adored only child. Her status in town did a great deal to protect her from the uglier consequences of killing a classmate, the town's golden boy, Mike Douglas, in a traffic accident when both were seventeen. (Laura's driver license was not even suspended.) Has this tragedy been the "turning point" in Laura's life that some claim it to be? If so, Laura herself changes the subject rapidly whenever it is raised.

Gerhart also does a fine job summarizing and filling out previously known data (about Laura and George W.'s whirlwind courtship, for instance). There's disappointingly little new information to share with readers, though it's nice to learn about Mrs. Bush's band of lifelong friends, and the fact that Laura voted for McCarthy in 1968. Even in face-to-face reported conversation with Gerhart, this undeniably smart woman comes off as surprisingly inarticulate and repetitive--probably due to her unceasing efforts at self-protection.

However, there are other facts (not opinions, facts) about the Bush family--including Laura on an intimate level--that a Google search can find in seconds. The author makes much of the issue that both Mr. and Mrs. Welch and Laura and George W. had looked into adopting children from what Gerhart calls "the Gladney home" in Fort Worth. (George and Laura abandoned this quest when she became pregnant with twins.) That's a poignant story. However, The Gladney Center is a well-known donor to Bush candidacies, and George W.'s brother Marvin and his wife Margaret, who speaks frequently as an adoption advocate, adopted two children from Gladney. There's a salient connection, missed in this book.

As an avid reader, I was keen to find out what Laura Bush actually reads during all those stints on the couch with a surreptitious cigarette. However, what Laura claims to read might have been concocted by a focus group--The Bible, Zora Neale Huston, "The Willie Mays Story." It was an endearingly personal touch to learn that Laura had chosen mystery writers Mary Higgins Clark and her daughter Carol as the two females, among five writers, to lead a literary conference.

The section of this book that has drawn the most attention is Gerhart's depressing retelling of the antics of the sullen Bush twins. Their mother has publicly commented upon their actions (including multiple arrests) by saying, even after the girls turned 21, "They just want to do what other teenagers do." Gerhart implies that since the twins' gestation and birth was difficult, their mother has always viewed them as little miracles regardless of the tackiness of their actions.

Apart from reporting on the poshness of the travel and accommodations of various Bush family gatherings--Kennebunkport, The White House, the Vice-President's Mansion, various governors' mansions--Gerhart tells very little about Laura Bush's interactions with her in-laws, except for her formidable mother-in-law. Marvin, Neil, Jeb, and Doro are scarcely mentioned, though the index contains twelve lengthy references under "Bush family, politics as business of."

Four stars to Ann Gerhart for doing as good a job as she has, under the circumstances.

After thoroughly enjoying 'American Wife' by Curtis Sittenfeld, I decided to pick up this book. I was hoping for more juicy details on the life of Laura, but the book was still interesting. It dragged a bit at parts, but overall was a quick read with some interesting insight. I particularly liked reading about the twins. Despite the author's fondness for Laura, you can tell she has issues with the way the Bush's raised the girls. To be honest, her account gave me a negative view of the twins - their entitled attitudes and spoiled behavior.

I would recommend borrowing this book from the library. As other reviewers have pointed out-there are factual errors-one of the most glaring being that Barbara Bush is NOT a Smith graduate. She dropped out to marry George. I have read several other books and articles about the Bushes and this is just a compiliation of other people's work. It seems like one of those "quickie" books put out for an election year. A lot of the quotes and incidents cited in previous articles and books are just rehashed here. It is interesting if you haven't read anything on Laura Bush, but if you have-save your money-I wish that I had.