They’re Talking About … Our Kid

In their sunny living room in Houston, former president George H.W. Bush, 80, and his wife Barbara, 79, sat down with TIME’s Hugh Sidey to talk about parenting a two-term President, their daughter-in-law, the family’s detractors, their hopes for their son’s legacy and whom Barbara plans to marry if George dies first. Excerpts:

TIME: You’ve finished one term of parenting a President and a First Lady. What are the rules? How do you do it?

BUSH: We talk a lot, Barbara and I, to Laura and George. I talk mainly to the President. They know that we’re not going to make any statements about what we talk about. He’s very interested in how his brothers and sister are doing, although he sees more of Doro and Marvin than we do. Plus, we can talk on issues, but it’s not real in-depth. It’s not his saying to me, “What do I do now?”

MRS. BUSH: He knows we’re the only two people in America who are awake at 6 in the morning. He calls from the Oval Office to talk to George, and we put him on speakerphone. The rules are, No repeating what he tells you, No. 1, and not giving unsolicited advice and not passing on things that people ask you to give the President or Laura: gifts or advice or ideas or wanting jobs. We pass those on to Jean [Becker, the former President’s chief of staff]. We just have made that deal, because we were there. We know what it’s like.

TIME: What is it like to have a son in the White House?

BUSH: It’s pride of a father in a son, and it transcends or avoids the issues. You know, the idea that George wanted to redeem me after my loss, all this crazy stuff like that, it has nothing to do with that.

TIME: Here’s the most important man in the world, your son.

MRS. BUSH: It’s an extraordinary feeling every now and then. You think, they’re talking about–

BUSH: Our kid. Remember when Ann Richards said George Bush was born with a silver foot in his mouth? And then when George beat her in his first run for Governor–I must say I felt a certain sense of joy that he finally had kind of taken her down. I could go around saying, “We showed her what she could do with that silver foot, where she could stick that now.”

MRS. BUSH: Good speech material.

TIME: What’s bad about having a President for a son?

MRS. BUSH: Criticism of your children is just the worst.

BUSH: Sometimes I’ve got ideas on things, and I don’t feel free to discuss them because I think it might in some way be used against him. If I ever varied publicly on any policy, then the press would immediately go off: “He’s sending some signal, disapproval, through this column to his son.” So I don’t do it. If there’s some difference, I can talk to him about it. The thing that was perhaps the most hurtful to me was the theme that the President doesn’t know what he’s doing, that he’s dumb, that he’s some know-nothing cowboy from Texas. And when I sat with him, as I did out at Camp David, at Crawford, and heard him with the intelligence people, talking about the world and asking the appropriate questions–what’s the development in this country or that–I was surprised at how broad the vision and grasp are. But he gets no credit for that.

TIME: What has surprised you about George W.?

MRS. BUSH: I think his steadfastness has. I think that’s a surprise–not a surprise, but it’s something to be very proud of. Let me put it that way.

TIME: What has surprised you about Laura?

BUSH: What surprised me was that years ago, she didn’t want to give a speech, didn’t want to be involved, and now she’s captured the imagination and the hearts of the country. She really has.

MRS. BUSH: Laura does not surprise me. When she came into our family, our huge family, noisy and loud, she was a reader and a gentle Southern girl, and she took to us like nothing you ever knew. Immediately she was generous and part of the family.

TIME: What was the low point of this past term?

MRS. BUSH: When a bunch of books all came out, filled with half-truths, like saying George’s father was an alcoholic.

BUSH: Kitty Kelley. Did you see where somebody handed her her hat the other night, the Washingtonian? [Kelley was dropped from the magazine’s masthead.] I loved that.

MRS. BUSH: Well, anyway, suddenly we found ourselves–what we thought was a nice, normal family with bumps and warts–we suddenly found ourselves as the devil.

BUSH: Michael Moore’s got to be the worst for me. I mean, he’s such a slimeball and so atrocious. But I love the fact now that the Democrats are not embracing him as theirs anymore. He might not get invited to sit in Jimmy Carter’s box [at the Democratic Convention] again. I wanted to get up my nerve to ask Jimmy Carter at the Clinton thing [the opening of Bill Clinton’s library], “How did it feel being there with that marvelous friend of yours, Michael Moore?” and I didn’t dare do it.

MRS. BUSH: Darn.

BUSH: You can write that if you want. Michael Moore just slandered our family and me.

TIME: After this election, some people talk about Karl Rove as if he were the puppet master that created George W.

MRS. BUSH: Karl is a political animal, no question about that, but George W. is not going to do something he thinks is wrong. I know that for a fact, and I saw it in action election night. They wanted George to go accept that moment, when it was 3:30 in the morning and it was clear he’d won, and he said, “Absolutely not.” He said, “I’m not going to do that. It isn’t right.”

TIME: How did you deal with the rest of the family while you were parenting a President through four years?

MRS. BUSH: He’s just one other member, and we all try to leave him space, because you need space when you’re President.

TIME: Let’s talk about John and Abigail Adams and John Quincy.

BUSH: It’s so different. It’s hard to compare because Quincy was in office so little time while his dad was still alive. I think they were close, but I don’t know whether John Adams and John Quincy were as close as we are with George W.

TIME: Here was a case in which the father reared his son to be President.

BUSH: Not the case here at all.

MRS. BUSH: Just wanted him to grow up.

TIME: You’ve got no plan for Jeb?

BUSH: No. And he’s got plans for himself, which do not include running for public office. He’s been successful, and he’s knowledgeable, and he’d be a wonderful public servant at the national level. So–

MRS. BUSH: But he won’t.

BUSH: I’m convinced he won’t. He says he won’t.

TIME: What would you like to see in the second term?

BUSH: Peace. Clear, positive solutions to Iraq and the Middle East. What I’d like to see is the President’s view of a Palestinian state come true.

TIME: What about the divide in the country?

BUSH: As long as you have a major thing like Iraq, which divides, why, it’ll be there. But I think if my dream comes true, if the President’s dream comes true, these divisions will be far less. And, of course, you’ve got these domestic issues like revenues and Social Security reform. These are huge problems that the President is trying to face up to, and in a way that’s very different from that of any of his predecessors. Social Security, if that’s a success, why, that will be enormous in terms of history.

TIME: Mrs. Bush, what are your personal plans going forward?

BUSH: She’s writing every morning. I don’t know what she’s writing.

MRS. BUSH: I’m writing–if this old man doesn’t stop talking, I’m through.

BUSH: All right. I promise–

MRS. BUSH: I’m trying to write things that I find interesting, and–

BUSH: You’re trying to write a new book.

MRS. BUSH: Well, I’m surely going to write one if 10 years go by.

BUSH: If I die, are you going to marry a younger man?

MRS. BUSH: Darn right.

BUSH: Don’t let him use my golf clubs, though.

MRS. BUSH: He’s a rich young man. He won’t use them, because he’s lefthanded. Now, go on. That’s the oldest joke. When I say, “Now, George, when I die don’t let her use my golf clubs,” he says, “Don’t worry. She’s lefthanded.”

TIME: You’re going to be on the Inaugural stand again soon. What will you feel?

MRS. BUSH: I keep wishing that our parents were alive. They would think this was the cat’s meow.

BUSH: They didn’t think in terms of grand, you know, leadership-of-the-country terms.

MRS. BUSH: No. I meant that we would be at the White House with our boy.

TIME: Last question. The Bush effect or the whole Bush–

BUSH: Dynasty?

TIME: The Bush influence. It permeates so much of our national and international life.

MRS. BUSH: I hope it’s a good influence.

BUSH: I don’t really think much about that. It’s mind boggling in a sense to think that we’re a family that has had, continues to have, an interest in shaping national affairs. But it’s not something we spend a lot of time on. I think it’s there. But we don’t dwell on it. We have a certain standing, not just here but abroad, because of that. But having said all that, again I just keep repeating, I don’t try to do anything to enhance that.

TIME: You must feel that what has transpired suggests this country reflects your values.

MRS. BUSH: Yes. I think very definitely.

BUSH: Well, I think the election was an affirmation of that, not totally but pretty much so, because I don’t think the élites in this country, quote, got it, unquote, about George when he talked about family and faith and marriage and these things. So after the election was over, they said, “Well, it was a bunch of radical, Evangelical pastors that won this election.” They missed it, that it was something far deeper and far bigger. I do think that the President’s onto something, maybe in the same way that we are too, his parents are, certain values.

TIME: Thank you.

BUSH: All right. Let’s get our pictures taken, and then let’s go get a pizza.