Laura sees an agenda worthy of a ‘shove’

DENVER — First lady Laura Bush considers much of the national media biased against Republicans, but she empathizes with Democrat Teresa Heinz Kerry, who told a journalist to “shove it.”

During an interview with The Washington Times, Mrs. Bush laughed incredulously when asked whether the press was fair and impartial in its coverage of a conservative such as President Bush. Her press secretary, Gordon Johndroe, laughed even more heartily.

“I mean, I think it’s obvious in some parts of the media — some newspapers, some television networks — that there’s a bias,” she said late Tuesday. “Or an agenda — maybe I should say an agenda.”

The first lady said she has resigned herself to the reality that conservatives seeking the presidency must work harder than liberals in order to compensate for the liberal bias of the press.

That theory has been confirmed by influential journalists themselves. For example, Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas recently acknowledged that the press wants Sen. John Kerry to win and thinks that is responsible for 15 percent of his support. ABC News political director Mark Halperin mused whether the press would root for the Massachusetts Democrat as vigorously as it did for Bill Clinton in 1992.

Although Mr. Kerry is ranked by National Journal magazine as the most liberal member of the Senate, Mrs. Bush said she could relate to his wife, Teresa, telling a journalist to “shove it” just before the Democratic National Convention in Boston last month.

“I empathized with her, because she and I really are sort of in the same club,” she said. “We’re the ones who know what it’s like for our husbands to run for president.”

Mrs. Bush was asked whether she has ever felt the impulse to give a journalist a piece of her mind.

“Sure, but so far I haven’t,” she said with a smile. “I’m much more practiced, frankly, because my husband’s been president for four years.”

She also took the press to task for perpetuating simplistic misperceptions about herself and her husband. She lamented that she is constantly portrayed as the “traditional” first lady and that the president is portrayed as bellicose and unyielding.

“Journalists try to put people in a box — it’s easier,” she said. “People are just a lot more complicated than that.”

Yet she acknowledged that the press wasn’t entirely to blame for her husband’s tough-guy image.

“I think what George hasn’t been able to show very well because of the circumstances of his presidency — with September 11th and the war — is the soft side that he has,” she said. “He’s very loving and compassionate and really sweet.”

She added: “He is a tough-talking guy, but there is a soft side to him that I don’t think people have gotten to see.”

The president’s re-election campaign strategists consider the first lady their not-so-secret weapon — able to portray her husband in a more human light and therefore help close the “gender gap” — and have employed her extensively in TV ads and on the campaign trail.

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