The Presidency

By Hugh Sidey

According to year-end public-opinion polls, Barbara Bush is the world's most admired woman by a landslide, and still gaining. Author Carl Sferrazza Anthony, chronicler of First Ladies, proclaims her two years on the job "utterly unique." She has avoided plunging into the President's business and generating the kind of hostility stirred up by Eleanor Roosevelt. Yet she heard the human cries and carried the banner for compassion when the Administration's number crunchers studied the bleak budget ledgers and looked the other way.

"My best two years," confirms Barbara. "But then I always think what I'm doing is best. I haven't had too many bad ones, you know." In fact, the First Lady has had trying times: she has ridden the political roller coaster with her husband, seen divorce and financial trouble touch her children, been slowed by illness. Yet she smothers it all with what one close friend describes as her "big optimism."

The political pollsters regularly put Barbara Bush's public-approval rating in the 80s, some 30 points above her husband's. There have been no jealousies or catcalls such as those endured by fashionables Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Reagan. Barbara has been visible but never dominating, as Rosalynn Carter sometimes appeared to be. The old pols have always contended that a First Lady could harm but not help a President. Some Republican Party experts, though, believe that if Barbara were not on board, the President's standing would be lower than it is, his leadership less effective.

The First Lady is at her best in this season -- a kind of Mother Christmas determined to hold high her doctrine of faith, family and friends, not only inside the Beltway but across the nation and the world. "With her white hair, her smile and her hugs," says writer Anthony, "she seems just like Mrs. Santa Claus." She wants one thing for the holidays: "Peace -- George and I need nothing." She even voices a peace wish for Saddam Hussein.

Directly or indirectly, Mrs. Bush will preside over the hospitality for the 110,000 visitors who are expected to pass through the White House this month. And the halls are well decked to receive them, with 47 Christmas trees, 54,000 lights and 50 wreaths. Pastry impresario Hans Raffert will produce 120,000 cakes and cookies; gardener Irv Williams has festooned the North Portico with a quarter-mile of Lycopodium garland and gathered more than 300 poinsettias for inside. Forty-four groups of bell ringers, carolers and other musicians are heading for Washington.

Barbara's attempt to keep the spirit of peace and good cheer alive at a time of trouble is part of a long tradition. White House Christmases have often been bittersweet affairs. None was bleaker than the 1963 holiday, observed under the shadow of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Back in 1929, just a few weeks after the stock-market crash, Herbert Hoover's family was having Christmas Eve dinner when fire broke out in the west wing of the White House. As fire trucks clanged, Lou Hoover gathered her grandchildren and read them Christmas stories to calm their fears.

In 1941, during some of the darkest days of World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited Franklin Roosevelt in the White House at Christmas. He helped the President light the White House tree and in a short speech noted the curious intermingling of doubt and joy enveloping the world: "Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grownups share to the full their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us. "