Laura Bush (nee Welch) was on Larry King this week to talk about her new memoir “Spoken From the Heart,” and be grilled on the turbulence of her life before her marriage to George Bush and currently.  From this interview was exposed to me a woman I was unaware of: Laura Bush is fairly liberal.  She believes in gay marriage and not only acknowledges, but advocates, the woman’s right to choose. She identifies as a Republican,  but seems to disagree with some of the core values of the current Republican party.  She supports women’s rights, in 2005 suggesting to her husband that he replace retiring justice Sandra Day O’Connor with another woman– which he did. Laura Bush is a proponent of literacy and over the years gave an incredible amount of attention to the academic needs of not only America’s children but children world wide, focusing much of her work on literacy and education. She was a teacher and a librarian, the second first lady (after Hilary and before Michelle) to have a master’s degree. I have no idea what her stance on “no child left behind” was, but I’m sure she was for it (keep in mind that Ted Kennedy was also for NCLB and the program’s abysmal outcome does not reflect what was projected — one of those “good in theory not in practice” kind of situations).

Based on the pairs difference in values, President Bush seems like the last person this woman would want to spend her time with, but she did, she married the man. That must be a true testament to the charm that must be oozing out of the pours of George W. Bush.

How does their marriage work? Are certain topics taboo? Do they just agree to disagree, roll over and go to sleep? For me, that kind of divide seems like it would kill a relationship very quickly, possibly before the relationship even began. I was completely befuddled. “I could never do that” I thought to myself; I wouldn’t give a guy like that the time of day; I could never have taboo subjects with my partner; I could not disagree with them on that kind of level; A person’s moral judgements clearly reflect their personality and thus I could never fall in love with a person like that, we just wouldn’t gel.

But we could, all that is wrong and superficial and silly. You can’t help who you fall in love with. I didn’t expect to fall in love with a Canadian ( and not because I have something against Canadians) and have my life’s plan turned upside down. Clearly George and Laura Bush have a connection deep enough to get past those disagreements. Clearly, they are more mature I, who stick to my bleeding heart liberal guns until the last minute. I don’t agree with conservative values, but I hope that I could be big enough to lay those aside and give a person a chance. In a funny way, I really admire their relationship (if it is what it appears, for all I know, this could be a total fraud).  Laura Bush is a much stronger woman, in many ways, than I originally gave her credit for.