Politics

Meet The First Family

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 31, 2000 / 4:19 PM EST / CBS

George W. is the latest very public face of the Bush political dynasty, but the president-elect keeps his immediate family private. Bush's wife Laura was once a reluctant political spouse who came into her own on the presidential campaign trail and appears ready to step into the high profile role of First Lady. But hardly anything is known about Bush's twin daughters -- and that's just the way their father intends it.

The family dog, Spot, however, has been known to relish the spotlight. Spot is, after all, the progeny of Millie, the elder George Bush's First Pooch.

Laura Bush, a former children's librarian and teacher, now seems happy enough in the public eye, even though she once made her husband promise that she'd never have to campaign. Nonetheless, she was a steady figure by his side on the trail, making speeches, giving interviews and generally doing what it takes.

Both the president-elect and his wife grew up in Midland, Texas. They went to the same junior high school and lived in the same Houston apartment building, but they didn't really meet until friends introduced them when they were 30. They married three months later.

"We knew that we were meant for each other," Laura Bush told CBS News Correspondent Rita Braver in an interview before the election. "We're perfectly matched: He's gregarious and I'm more introverted. But also I think there are a lot of ways we're really alike."

Mrs. Bush also set the record straight for those who say she's the "brainy one" in the family and her husband is the "fun one".

Laura Bush, future first lady.

"I wouldn't pick anybody unless he was pretty brainy himself," she said.

The president-elect describes his wife as "a down to earth person. She's plenty good about keeping me in my place if I get a little rambunctious or I step out of line."

But Laura Bush keeps her counsel private. Though there's speculation that in contrast to her husband that she opposes the death penalty and supports abortion rights, you won't hear it from her.

"If I differ with my husband, I'm not going to tell you. Sorry," she once told a press conference.

Mrs. Bush pointedly says she's not her husband's adviser, but that she's his wife. As first lady, she'd be likely to stick to so-called "safe issues," like reading readiness.

"I have a personality, really, that tries to avoid conflict. I'm not a real confrontational type personality," she has said.

Laura Bush was reluctant to take on a presidential race, fearing the oss of privacy for herself, her husband and their daughters Barbara and Jenna.

During this year's GOP primary campaign, she awoke one morning to tabloid headlines about the night when she was 17 years old and ran a stop sign in Midland. A young man was killed, and she was the driver.

"It was hard to have that come out, although I expected it to come out," said Mrs. Bush of the story. "I mean, it would be hard if it never came out."

But that core of West Texas strength sustained her then, and now.

College girls: Jenna and Barbara Bush.

Mrs. Bush says that she and her husband have tried to instill that same sense of self-reliance in their daughters.

Barbara and Jenna Bush graduated from high school in Austin last spring and are now college freshmen. If their father gets his way, that's about all the public will ever know about his 18 year-old twin daughters. While Bush has forfeited most of his privacy, he has ferociously guarded theirs.

Barbara and Jenna lived a very un-public, if not quite anonymous, life growing up at the governor's mansion in Austin. The girls were rarely seen in public with their parents. Amazingly, they stood by their parents' side for photo-ops only twice during the presidential campaign. They first appeared with their father after he lost the New Hampshire primary. The second spotting came in Austin during their father's victory speech on Super Tuesday.

What do we know about the girls? Precious little.

Barbara is attending her father's alma mater, Yale University in New Haven, Ct., while her sister Jenna remains in Austin and attends the University of Texas.

Named for their grandmothers, Barbara Pierce Bush and Jenna Welch Bush are fraternal twins, born five weeks premature on November 25, 1981 in Dallas. Their father was in the delivery room. Governor Bush wrote in his autobiography, A Charge to Keep, that he and his wife, Laura, had trouble conceiving for several years. They were in the process of filling out applications for adoption when Laura Bush got the good news that she was pregnant.

Today, the two girls are pretty, wholesome-looking teenagers. Barbara (the Yalie) shares her father's looks but is more introverted like her mother, according to Bush himself. Jenna Bush looks like her mother, but is extroverted like her father. In his autobiography, the GOP presidential candidate wrote that some in the Bush family consider his "feisty daughter Jenna ... Barbara's (the former first lady's) revenge" on him.

Do they date? Do they watch MT? Are they are fans of the Backstreet Boys? Don't expect to find out.

A Texas reporter who has covered Bush since his inauguration as Texas governor sums up the Bush girls in two words: "off limits."

Proud papa: George W. at the birth of his twin daughters.

"When the governor arrived in Austin, from that day forward he has always called his daughters off limits to reporters and some of his staff has been very aggressive in enforcing that," said a print reporter. Bush's communications director as governor and presidential candidate, Karen Hughes, was known as "the enforcer" of that policy at the Austin statehouse.

"You are not to ask about them, you are not to follow them or be nosy about their lives because he (Bush) doesn't want to talk about it and they made it well known that if we went that way that would not be appreciated," the reporter added. The press corps certainly believes that there would be severe repercussions for a reporter who violated the "off limits" policy.

The governor's intense sensitivity on this was amply demonstrated during an innocuous question and answer session with an audience on the campaign trail last February. He was asked his reaction should one of his daughters want to appear on the Fox TV show, Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? His answer was swift and stern.

"My ground rules for my family are that I won't talk about my girls in any hypothetical," said Bush. "I know that frustrates some in the media. That's too bad."

Laura Bush never speaks in detail about her daughters, either.

"I think one thing that's very interesting about politics and about our country is the interest that people have in the families of people who run for office. And I understand that interest. I understand why people are interested in the private life of people who are running for office," she told an audience in Metairie, La.

Bush does talk about his kids with press regulars occasionally, but he prefaces any remarks about them with an emphatic "This is off the record." When it appears to him a reporter might be writing notes during his chats about his girls, he'll reiterate, "This is off the record."

And reporters just listen, carefully. They rarely ask any sort of follow-up questions, nervous that a question interpreted as intrusive by the governor will send him turning on his heels back to the "no media" part of the campaign plane. In general though, Bush, like any proud papa, has boasted of his girl' many accomplishments like their high SAT scores, the impressive selection of colleges they were choosing among, as well as sharing the occasional wonderful nuances that come with having teenage daughters.

But it is overwhelmingly evident at this point that the press and thus the public will never know any real details about Barbara and Jenna. Their 24-year-old cousin, George P. Bush, the son of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, was the subject of a front-page profile in The New York Times. It is doubtful we will ever see the girls open themselves up to that kind of scrutiny.