Mrs. Bush and Prof. Olds

I have been thinking about Laura Bush for a long time.

Her husband does the damnedest things, and she appears not to have a problem with it. Or does she? Last winter, when the Bush Administration’s manipulation of information was big news, I wrote a blog about Mrs. Bush as a champion of books and libraries. I wrote:

“Mrs. Bush appears happy, content and assured in her well-positioned advocacy of good, reliable information. She has also, in her second term, decided to speak in behalf of providing good, reliable information to boys about their role in society and their need for good, reliable information about themselves, their fears, their hopes, their psyches, in helping them fulfill their role. This is a subject that is near to my heart. No boy should have to wait to the age of 50 finally to understand what he was missing as a man.

“So in one of those big, airy East Wing rooms, Mrs. Bush presides while a teacher reads good, reliable information from a library book to young people sitting on the floor.

“Down the White House hall, meanwhile, people who work for her husband are writing checks to journalists in return for information that they can count on as being what they want to hear. Frank Rich in The New York Times said this has happened at least six times recently, when a ‘journalist’ has been ‘unmasked’ as ‘a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally . . . while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news.’

“One of these, Karen Ryan, offered ‘news reports’ explaining the administration’s Medicare drug prescription program. These reports were seen over CNN until the Government Accounting Office pulled them as illegal ‘covert propaganda.’ Another, television commentator Armstrong Williams, was paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to put a favorable spin on administration programs.

“The Department of Education? Purchasing slanted information? Does Laura Bush know about this?

“And so I wonder if I should wonder. It would be natural to wonder how Mrs. Bush could sleep at night, wanting to teach boys to be strong, good, reliable men, when down the hall men are being paid to deceive. But I have to wonder if I should wonder, because it is possible in such a world that Mrs. Bush is not who she seems, or has suspended who she is. Maybe she sleeps just fine. It just doesn’t look right . . . . “

At the time, and ever since, I have been forming the conviction that it is not the media, not the print and broadcast pundits, not the Democrat Senators and former presidents who will finally penetrate the White House bubble. The penetration will be grassroots. Most, if not all, people, understand instinctively the importance of credibility to their well-being, and their freedom, and their self-interest. Even those politically aligned with the Bush Administration are starting to sense that something is wrong when an administration is so dependent on spin that its message becomes tripped up by reality.

But the grassroots needs a way to get in, and it is not through the traditional, front-door channels. The grassroots representative Cindy Sheehan, who set up camp outside the Texas White House demanding to talk to President Bush about Iraq, was demanding to talk to the wrong man. After Katrina – well, even before – the nation had developed a pretty clear idea of how carefully the president would listen to grassroots Americans.

Now comes Sharon Olds, a poet and New York University professor. She has won a National Book Critics Circle Award and as such was invited by Laura Bush to the National Book Festival in Washington on Sept. 24, including breakfast at the White House.

Professor Olds declined the invitation in a letter to Mrs. Bush. She praised the event. “But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you,” she said. “I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush administration . . . . I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.”

Is Laura Bush the one the grassroots need to talk to? Is she torn at all between good information and spin? Maybe she sleeps just fine. But it just doesn’t look right . . . .