It used to be that the words “Bush twins” and “party” would never appear in any sentence the White House would be eager to read. But this week the president’s famously fun-loving daughters were unleashed on the party scene on official business–to help their father win re-election.
Americans who know the first twins mainly through celebrity gossip–partying in New York or being cited for underage drinking–will see them this week as representatives of the Bush-Cheney campaign, Republican starlets working to attract young voters to the GOP cause.
Just like the Democrats, who rolled out John Kerry’s two daughters at their convention, the Republicans are showcasing
22-year-old Bush twins Barbara and Jenna in carefully stage-managed events.
As the Bush daughters appear at this week’s Republican convention, they do so having participated in just one interview their whole lives–a spread in last month’s Vogue, where they appeared like Disney princesses in lush gowns, pledging loyalty to their dad.
Twinkle and Turquoise–the Bush twins’ Secret Service code names–have always indicated they’d rather lead private lives. So if they’re finally going to campaign, their friends say, they’re not going to talk policy in St. John’s suits, but instead will find a public role that fits them.
“They seem like they’re really enjoying themselves,” says Mia Baxter, 22, a longtime friend of the Bush twins who will room with Jenna when she moves to New York after the election. “If they could choose, they probably don’t want to be noticed everywhere they go after the campaign is over, but it’s just that they know … that putting in their words and helping their dad is more important than that.”
For now, the Bush twins are still finding their political voice–in prescreened comments in a campaign e-mail and Web chat, they are part adoring daughters, part campaign loyalists, part sassy sorority sisters.
“He made everyone feel welcome and comfortable in our house [except for the occasional boyfriend],” they said of their dad in a recent e-mail to supporters, “and our friends got to know him as a really good guy.”
President Bush’s daughters are not expected to formally address the convention, but they will appear at various events. Before this campaign, the twins traveled below the radar. They met world leaders, but kept it quiet. Only in this month’s Web chat did they gush about meeting Vaclav Havel, president of the Czech Republic, calling him inspiring, intelligent and adding, “he loves the Rolling Stones!”
Barbara and Jenna, who this year graduated from Yale University and the University of Texas, respectively, are normally ensconced behind a barrier of friends and Secret Service.
Jenna “would just as soon be another Joe Blow,” says Ransome Foose, 23, a friend from Dallas who shared a Florida beach house with Jenna and their Texas friends during spring break this year. “She doesn’t want to bring attention to herself. If a stranger says, ‘Oh, you look like Jenna Bush, anybody ever told you that?’ She’ll say, ‘Oh I know her, I’ve met her, they’ve told me I look like her.’ “
But, in fact, these daughters have never been anonymous. When they were born, their grandfather was vice president; by 2nd grade, they were retrieving presidential autographs from “Gampy” for their Dallas friends. Long before their father got to the White House, they left their mark–small handprints that former President Bush let them impress in concrete in a children’s garden there.
So far, the twins have visited privately with state campaign volunteers and attended their father’s stump speeches, occasionally serving as comic relief when he teases them for managing to graduate in four years. But to hear a Bush daughter actually speak often requires a political donation.
Jenna made her speaking debut last month at a $500-a-plate fundraiser in Birmingham, Ala., where she stood atop high heels in a country club ballroom, confessed her nerves, said “oops” once and introduced her mom.
Republicans were thrilled.
The attention is double-edged. Although audiences may be moved by a loyal child weeping at the sight of her father–as Barbara did in her first campaign stop last month as the president took the stage in Michigan–a photo of Jenna sticking out her tongue at reporters shot around the globe. Friends of the twins say the daughters don’t fixate on negative press. The twins were the subject of public fascination from the start, but when they were cited for underage drinking at a Texas bar three years ago, their wild-child reputation took off. A Web site,
thefirsttwins.com, contemplates every story: There’s Barbara dancing with an Ecuadorian socialite. There’s Jenna falling down, cigarette in hand.
Campaign observers believe the power of the daughters rests in the pictures they present, not in their political pronouncements: “All [Bush] has to do is point at his daughters and have the camera catch a tear in his eye,” says Doug Wead, author of “All the Presidents’ Children.” “That’s all he needs to soften the cowboy-warrior image.”
