First Lady Raising Her Profile Without Changing Her Image

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

The New York Times

CRAWFORD, Tex., Oct. 14 — This Saturday, a military jet with the code name “Bright Star” will take off from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, bound for a diplomatic mission in the Middle East. It will carry an increasingly outspoken and quietly powerful White House emissary: Laura Bush , the first lady of the United States.

The official purpose of the trip is to promote breast cancer awareness; nobody expects the president’s wife to engage in bare-knuckle negotiations over war and peace. Yet in the twilight of her husband’s presidency, the woman who once made George W. Bush  promise she would never have to give a speech is stepping out in a new and unusually substantive way.

Related:
First Lady’s Influence Goes Global

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/15/washington/15bush.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

First Lady’s Influence Goes Global

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 15, 2007; Page A04

CRAWFORD, Tex., Oct. 14 — It’s a long way from the broad expanse of Texas to the lush forests of Burma, from the boots-and-broncos rodeo in nearby Waco to the bloody crackdown against barefoot monks in Rangoon. Yet that troubled faraway land somehow has gotten under the skin of a former librarian from the Lone Star State and vaulted toward the top of the U.S. foreign policy agenda.

Laura Bush, while vacationing at the family ranch here in August, was going through news clippings sent by her staff back in Washington when she read about the burgeoning protests and arrests in Burma. She grew alarmed enough that, as soon as she got back to Washington, she picked up the telephone and called the U.N. secretary general. And ever since, she has waged a campaign to rally world pressure on Burma’s military junta.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/14/AR2007101401676.html