Public Eye the White Gloves Come Off

By MARGARET CARLSON

America's Favorite Grandmother, the author of the best-selling Barbara Bush: A Memoir, is sitting on the plumped-up cushions of a luxurious suite in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Towers and revealing another side. It's not one that rhymes with rich, as she so famously characterized Geraldine Ferraro, her husband's 1984 vice-presidential rival, but not one that's soft and cuddly either. Pose a question about the Clintons, and she will snap,"Oh, them. This is supposed to be about my book." Point out that her pro-choice stance is totally at odds with her husband's -- he would make abortion illegal, after all -- and she says, "I'm not going to sit here and argue with you." But the wonder of it is that she is talking at all. Perhaps she has been saving up her presence, like a farmer who doesn't plant soybeans so the price will go up.

Barbara Bush, author on tour, is a lot more interesting than the old one. She discloses that she was so depressed for a six-month period in 1976 that she felt like driving into a tree. She adds,"It was the kids' being gone and menopause. Today I would take chemicals to help me through." For the first time she talks poignantly about a Mother Problem. She regrets that her mother, who had everything, "wanted this, had to have that, didn't know how well off she was."

She claims civility toward the Clintons, but lands zingers. In her book she observes that there are many pros and cons on homosexuals in the military, "but like Bill Clinton I have never been in the service and so have little to base my judgment on." She has decided, she says, not to read anything about the Clinton campaign in the memoir by political advisers James Carville and Mary Matalin. "I'm only reading the 'Mary' parts."

In going negative, Mrs. Bush is listening to her inner flak. First it told her she was going to have to do more than recite the guest book from Blair House. Now it's telling her to endure a promotional tour that would tax a stand-up comic pushing her new fall series. David Letterman went very easy on her, but she got testy when he didn't want to let her labor the point that George Bush (she always refers to him in the third person) had once worked in the private sector, unlike a certain President from Arkansas. Letterman said, "I think she's pretty steamed at me." Who would have thought Barbara Bush and Madonna would ever have something in common?

When taking aim, the former First Lady often puts the arrow in someone else's quiver. She remains furious at Jane Pauley for calling her "a woman of the '40s" in an interview in 1979, but puts the criticism in a TV-crew member's voice. "He conveyed the impression that it was not unusual for ((Pauley)) to be so ugly." When she is asked about calling Al Gore a demagogue, she shrugs and says, "Well, it was in my diary," as if that relieves her of responsibility.

She takes full credit for press bashing. She nearly lifts out of the down- filled cushion when she remembers how unfair it was when journalists made her husband out to be an elitist by erroneously reporting that he didn't recognize a supermarket scanner. But she remarks on the novelty of using a juicer and discovering that you can order carryout for dinner.

She is proof that no one, once famous, will ever willingly recede into obscurity. As First Lady, her failure to use her platform to speak out on the issues was accepted because of her conviction that people like her didn't blab about themselves. But now there's product to move. When told that she doesn't sound like herself, that she's a lot more acerbic, she says, "Well then, you don't really know me." No, not really, after all.