America's Weapon Of Mass Seduction

Whe

n George W. Bush addressed the U.N. in New York City last month, the applause was tepid, the audience somber. When Laura Bush addressed UNESCO, the U.N.'s scientific and cultural offshoot, in Paris last week, the response was heady, enthusiastic. Sure, that's partly because she's a coiffed First Lady and not a controversial President — but the glowing response was also because Mrs. Bush spoke in the gentle, feminist language penned by consigliere Karen Hughes that U.N. types favor. At times she even sounded a bit like Hillary Clinton, saying that "learning empowers women to ask questions, to understand their rights and to make their own decisions," and citing the moving example of an Afghan girl who once wore a burqa and now wants to be a women's-rights lawyer.

At a time when the President's poll numbers are sinking and the West Wing is fending off questions about whether it had a role in exposing a spy, Mrs. Bush had a week of mending fences with the world and being cheered by schoolchildren. Not bad for a woman who less than nine years ago was a stay-at-home mom married to a businessman. Now she's a globe-trotting goodwill ambassador.

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She was also a goodwill ambassador to the press. In contrast to the President, who rarely visits with reporters, Mrs. Bush was chatty, constantly available, eager to see that the journalists who followed her were comfortable. "Did you all get some good French food?" she asked us at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Paris. She even had her staff push the Russian authorities to let us join her for the Bolshoi ballet — a pleasant surprise for journalists used to being kept far from the President or deprived of such galas because of his 9 p.m. bedtime.

Her travels gave her time for a tete-a-tete with French President Jacques Chirac, who despite now famous differences with the U.S. over Iraq, planted a Gallic kiss on Mrs. Bush's hand and looked, said one British paper, as if he were ready to move up her arm. Inside the closed-door meeting, things were similarly cozy. When the subject of Iraq came up, Chirac waved his hand and said, "Let bygones be bygones." By contrast, when President Bush met with Chirac in New York City a week earlier, a slightly exasperated Bush said at one point, according to an aide, "A lot of people think you want us to fail in Iraq."

On the trip, Mrs. Bush displayed a fun, feisty side the American public rarely sees. When asked what she had done to prepare for the journey, she joked, "Well, I have a lot of new clothes. Just kidding. I mean, not really kidding! There's something a little intimidating about going to Paris. But I actually do have some new clothes." (For the record, she took along sleek outfits, including a fitted maroon velvet jacket from Carolina Herrera that she wore to the Bolshoi.) When she spoke to UNESCO she cited a program in Kosovo that teaches women how to start businesses and even how to deal with their mothers-in-law. "I don't have that problem," she confided with a smile.

In Moscow, the second stop on her tour, Mrs. Bush attended a book festival sponsored by the wife of Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Mrs. Putin acknowledges she got the idea from Mrs. Bush, who had a bookfair in Texas and last week led the National Book Festival in Washington.) Her message to the crowd: "This festival is a celebration of freedom — the freedom to write what we want to write and to read the books we want to read." In a large exhibit hall teeming with Russian schoolchildren, Mrs. Bush, using her best librarian's voice, told the kids that the Goosebumps series, by author R.L. Stine, who traveled with her, is "scary, creepy, cool and awesome." Her charm worked. One 9-year-old boy described her as "beautiful, clever and nice."

While Mrs. Bush slept on the flight back to the U.S., aides reflected on what comes next. She attends a summit of Western Hemisphere First Ladies next month in the Dominican Republic and this week her fourth state dinner. But next year, says one aide, "will mostly be about the campaign." Will Mrs. Bush play as well at home as she does abroad? Her good friend Commerce Secretary Don Evans says, "She's our secret weapon." Her husband's worried aides can't wait to launch her.