Laura Bush Advice to Future First Ladies or Gentlemen (C-SPAN)

Former First Lady Laura Bush talks about advice she'd give to future First Ladies or Gentleman in an exclusive interview with CSPAN for its First Ladies series. More information here

C-SPAN: Mrs. Bush, you talked about the First Lady being seen glamorous, et cetera. Are we too obsessed with your hair, your makeup, your clothes?

BUSH: Yes.

C-SPAN: OK.

BUSH: For sure. But I don't think we can get around it. Maybe when we finally have a First Gentleman and maybe we should be that way about the First Gentleman also and really critique the way they look all the time, they're choice of tie or their hairstyle or whatever.

C-SPAN: What's your advice...

BUSH: Or maybe their weight.

C-SPAN: What's your advice for the First Gentleman? For the first First Gentleman?

BUSH: Stand back and be quiet. I don't know. It will be interesting when it finally happens what the First Gentleman will do. I hope they'll take on men's health, perhaps.

C-SPAN: In your book, you call this a parlor game. But if you had disagreement on policy issues with the president, how would you get that across or would you?

BUSH: No. No. I would, of course. I would just tell him. But the parlor game part was to always trying to find out or the press trying to know, you know, what do you think about it and how does that differ from what your husband thinks about it and my answer was always I'm not the one, you know. You didn't elect me. I don't have to even tell you what I think about an issue. But on the other hand, there are plenty - there is plenty of debate on all the issues and I didn't have to be one of the people debating the president.