Grudging fondness for our erstwhile First Lady

After reading American Wife and seeing W, I find myself strangely supportive of a woman I hadn't given much thought to before, Laura Bush.

I find First Ladies fascinating. Like Betty Ford, was this or that First Lady thrust into a spotlight that neither she nor her husband ever anticipated? Or, like Jackie Kennedy, was she given a heads up and just didn't believe it could ever happen? (A Catholic President! Whoever heard of such a thing?) Was she a helpmate to her husband through the painful times, like Lady Bird Johnson, or a distraction, like Mary Lincoln? Did acting as a full partner, like Awesome Abigail Adams, strengthen their marriage or complicate it, like Eleanor Roosevelt? What the hell is going on with the Clintons, anyway, and how would Bill have handled the role of First Gent?

But Laura Bush has always seemed, at best, annoying. Positioned as "the anti-Hillary," she seemed aggressively bland and uninvolved. Proud to have no thoughts of her own, just standing by her man.

The woman who emerges from these current fictionalized depictions of her life is wise, a little sad, tested by life and truly and deeply in love with her husband. While I cannot IMAGINE spending 20 minutes with George W. Bush, much less a lifetime, she can. I respect and admire her for seeming to make her marriage work in the most difficult of circumstances. The part of me that still believes in true love hopes these fictionalized accounts are true.