Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 36

C-14 Santa Cruz Sentinel Wednesday, Oct. 11, 1989 Barbara Bush she's the genuine article She outdoes her predecessor and her husband in popularity it in (si i The Associated PressSentinel file George and Barbara Bush are all smiles at the August 1 988 Republican National Convention after the Texas votes are logged. By MICHEL McQUEEN The Wall Street Journal WASHINGTON A year ago, in the thick of the 1988 presidential election, Detroit-area antiques dealer Patricia Biggs had this to say about Barbara Bush: "I could not see myself in her circle. I cannot even imagine what this lady does all day." Today, not only does Mrs. Biggs have a much higher opinion of the first lady, but she adds, mother has started wearing her pearls again." Mrs.

Bush has done more than just make the world safe for pearls, her trademark accessory. Against great odds, much of the public seems smitten by the self-deprecating wife who refers to herself as "no Marilyn Monroe" and delights in her fan mail from all the "fat, white-haired, wrinkled ladies" presumably just like herself. She is in some respects an anachronism, very likely the last first lady of her kind. A well-born finishing-school graduate, she dropped out of college at 19 to marry the first boy she ever dated. She left family and friends to move across the country in pursuit of someone else's dream moving, not always ecstatically, 29 times in 44 years of marriage.

She learned to quell her opinions, subordinate her own needs and stand in the background as she supported her husband in his rise, ultimately to the highest office in American political life. Yet somehow in her first nine months in the White House, Barbara Pierce Bush, the 64-year-old daughter of an affluent publishing executive, has managed to cross the the wide barriers of age, class, and genteel values, and to win the approval and affection of broad segments of the American population especially women. And unlike her predecessor Nancy Reagan, who carefully calibrated her image with the help of pollsters and public relations experts, Mrs. Bush has achieved this popularity with what seems a notable lack of effort. Mrs.

Bush's analysis of her own popularity with Americans is typically straightforward. "1 know they find me no threat and they know I care about them I hope," she says. "I don't have to make any major decisions; I don't have to take stands on issues I don't want to take them on. I have chosen the cowardly route, which is to pick issues I'm very interested in and work for them. I'm leaving the controversy to my husband." A few years ago more might have scorned the choices Mrs.

Bush has made. But at a time when American women in particular feel stressed by competing demands of work, family and relationships, some suggest her appeal rests in the fact that she seems comfortably at peace with herself. "She's not a woman recreating herself all the time," says Columbia University government professor Ethel Klein. "People like Barbara Bush because she is who she is and doesn't appear to be proselytizing about that," says Ruth Mandel, director of the Center for the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers University. "She isn't leading a campaign for women to do what she does and she isn't out apologizing ever for doing what she's done.

She just comes across as the genuine article, which is an important quality for anyone in politics." How popular is Barbara Bush? A recent Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll found that 10 times more Americans have a positive opinion of her than have a negative one. Moreover, though the questions aren't directly comparable, a number of groups have a more favorable opinion of her personally than they have of her husband's job performance. Among liberals, 60 percent have positive views of her, while 50 percent approve of the president's job performance. In part, this may reflect the fact that "she speaks a more progressive language" than her husband, as Columbia's Professor Klein puts it. Among professionals, 76 percent have a favorable opinion of her, compared to 62 percent who approve of her husband's performance.

While a quarter of black voters disapprove of Bush's handling of his job, only 15 percent have a negative view of his spouse. Mrs. Bush's popularity ratings are in line with most other first ladies at this stage in their careers. But they are in conspicuous contrast to those of Nancy Reagan, who in her first year won the sobriquet "Queen Nancy," and who suffered at that point from what Reagan pollster Richard Wirthlin acknowledges were "noticeable negatives." The public's impressions of Mrs. Bush are more remarkable when compared with earlier views of her, especially during the last two presidential campaigns.

As she admits, her spicy sense of humor has occasionally made her appear sharp edged. "Sometimes it gets the best of me," she concedes, "and I'm sorry about that." Sorry indeed was her husband's campaign in 1984, when she made her instantly notorious characterization of Geraldine Ferraro, as something that "rhymes with rich." Although Mrs. Bush later said she considered the remark off the record, she was forced to call Ferraro to apologize. And last year she was remembered mainly for her sour comment that the openly affectionate relationship between Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis and his wife Kitty was "phony" and "fake." She took it one step further, rehearsing a routine with her husband in which they appeared to mock the Dukakises' relationship. It wowed the GOP convention in New Orleans but added to an aura of bitterness and negativism surrounding the 1988 contest.

But such bad impressions may not have sunk deep because to most voters, Mrs. Bush was simply an enigma, rarely considered and often dismissed. When The Wall Street Journal brought a group of Detroit-area women together to discuss the election in September 1988, Anna Gendron, 47, a special education teacher, had difficulty remembering Mrs. Bush's name. "Bush's wife, I don't think I've ever seen her.

She's so much in the background," she said. Elinor An-cinec, 65, a retired librarian said, "Kitty is on our side and Mrs. Bush is just kind of in the background, not saying anything." A year later, these two women, both Democrats, have dramatically changed their views. Now Mrs. An-cinec thinks it's Bush who is in the background.

"I've seen more of her than I've seen of him," she says, "you don't see too much of George anymore." And what she sees of Mrs. Bush, she likes. "I really admire the woman and what she stands for," says Mrs. Ancinec. "Before, we didn't know, it was just ol' grandma." Now she identifies with Mrs.

Bush, noting that she's "more like me. I'm not a feminist, I'm for equality." And she adds, "I really think she cares about everyone." --V "Jr -urn--, jfi I V'i. pi urn ii inn I She isn't flash and she isn't greed." She adds that Mrs. Bush's refusal to diet, dye her hair or buy expensive designer outfits except for the most formal state occasions is deeply appealing even to college students who are years away from concerns about their hair color, because "they feel they live in a culture where everybody has to look like Jane Fonda." Historian Betty Caroli, author of a study of first ladies, says that the public has long had highly contradictory expectations for a president's wife. "At times they want her to be the very' model of style and elegance and the epitome of the very best that can be offered, and at other times they feel she should be just like us," she says.

This ambivalence about the degree of royal airs tolerated among first ladies dates to the founding of the republic. The press chronicled the number of horses drawing Martha Washington's carriage, what she wore and whom she visited. Later, Woodrow Wilson's first wife, Ellen, published her clothing bills in the newspapers to counter charges that she spent too much. And Theodore Roosevelt's wife, Edith, saved for her scrap-book an editorial criticizing her for spending too little. Mrs.

Bush, says Caroli, has so far successfully managed to straddle the conflicting public demands on her. Mrs. Bush says her increased visibility as first lady has a lot to do with her improving public image. She points out that her much-lauded visit to Harlem Hospital earlier this year where she cuddled babies with AIDS was actually her second such visit. "I did that as the vice president's wife; nobody really cared," she says.

Since becoming first lady, she has continued to sometimes get out front of the policy makers. For instance, condemning the racially motivated killing of a black teenager in New York's Bensonhurst neighborhood in August, weeks before the president did so. She denies rumors that she pushed her husband to ban imported semiautomatic rifles, but she has a long history of supporting gun control measures. The public often resents a first lady who calls the shots behind the scenes. Both Mrs.

Reagan and Rosalynn Carter suffered from that perception. But so far, though Mrs. Bush has used her influence, she has done so sparingly and with a directness that seems to have defused criticism. Unlike Mrs. Reagan, for instance, she rarely uses intermediaries on the White House staff to convey her wishes, preferring to deal with Bush directly as when she asked to have governors' spouses included in the working sessions during the recent education meeting in Charlottesville, Va.

Aides say the first couple maintains an easy working relationship, with Mrs. Bush apt to pop into the Oval Office if she has a visitor Bush might want to see, or Bush likely to join her and their dog for a quick midday stroll around the Rose Garden. As with most recent first ladies, Mrs. Bush has taken a special interest in one issue. In her case, it is literacy, an issue that combines her personal interest with a sense of political savvy.

With five children, including one son who struggled with dyslexia, she had always had an interest in education. But she also adds: "I knew George was going to run for office in about '78 and I really worried I ought to have an issue." Mrs. Bush frequently uses her own family as a frame of reference for social problems. She does so despite the fact that, as President Bush himself acknowledges, the family is far wealthier and more socially connected than most with affluent and powerful figures on both sides and with means enabling the women not to work outside the home. Perhaps as a result, Mrs.

Bush's comments on work and family issues occasionally seem out of date, as when she told National Public Radio last month that a woman probably couldn't be a bank president and a mother and still give her children the time they need. Tht- Associateu Press. Sentinel file Barbara Bush received plaque at the Los Angeles Mission. Adds Ms. Gendron: "Now that she's in, I'm really pleased with her." In contrast with Mrs.

Reagan, "She's showing the person, not the clothes or the glamour that's a real change." Mrs. Bush once laughingly compared herself unflatteringly with her predecessor by observing that Mrs. Reagan is a size three, and "so's my leg." But many believe the comparison redounds to Mrs. Bush's favor: According to the Journal-NBC poll, voters by a ratio of 3 to 1 say they like Mrs. Bush as first lady better than Mrs.

Reagan. (The former and current first ladies never socialized much, and have scarcely spoken since Mrs. Bush took over.) Columbia's Klein observes: "Here's a woman who spends a lot of time with her family. She isn't wearing Christian Dior clothing. Tehran gropes for direction Killings aimed at paper critical of drug traffic As a result, it may take months before Iran can turn its attention to the three most urgent domestic problems confronting it: Rebuilding after the eight-year war with Iraq, which subsided after a ceasefire in August 1988 Reining in rampant inflation, which Tehran says is at an annual rate of about 30 percent, although independent economists say it is several times higher: Eliminating severe shortages of essential food and consumer goods, created largely by the war and nationalization of what once was a private-sector economy.

The urgency is highlighted by the growing realization in Tehran that the gap between the resources Iran commands and what it needs is so wide that it cannot be bridged without foreign help. Iran's current five-year economic plan calls for a minimal expenditure of $70 billion to $80 billion. But Iran's income for the five years will not exceed $50 billion to $55 billion, virtually all of it from oil exports, which guarantee Tehran about $10 billion a year, about half its oil income just five years ago. In any case, the actual amount needed to repair the war damage to Iran's economy and significantly improve living conditions is estimated by Iranians at $100 billion. But financial help is not readily available.

Potential creditors from Western Europe and Japan are witholding any extension of credits as they wait to see what sort of government eventually emerges in Iran. "The time has not yet come for us to offer significant credits because it is not By YOUSSEF M. IBRAHIM The New YcxV Times TEHRAN, Iran Four months after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran seems unable to settle on a clear course in its domestic and foreign policies. Although the country's recently elected president, Hojatolislam Hashemi Rafsanjani, has become the focus of rising economic expectations, he has yet to take decisive command of the policymaking process, political observers say. Instead, Rafsanjani, who is widely viewed abroad as the leader of the so-called Iranian pragmatists, is carefully feeling his way around the treacherous domestic political front, where a wide group of militant Islamic opponents in Parliament, the press, the Revolutionary Guards and universities regularly voice their disapproval of his actions.

Iranians and foreign diplomats say this relentless squabbling has placed in abeyance any significant opening to the West that Rafsanjani might make, including a hoped-for exertion of Iranian influence to free foreign hostages held by pro-Iranian kidnappers in Lebanon. "There is no big fish capable of eating all the other fish," said Ibrahim Yazdi, a former foreign minister and opposition figure, assessing the domestic political scene in an interview. "They are not able to eliminate each other, so they are spending much of the time checking each other's aggressions." "The multiplicity of centers of powers is, if anything, increasing," said Yazdi, who was Iran's first foreign minister after the 1979 Islamic revolution. "This leads to paralysis, and that is where we are." clear what policies Rafsanjani will follow," said the ambassador of a major Western nation here. "For the moment he is moving step by step, trying to chart a new course in foreign policy, for example, but the radicals are jumping to contest almost everything," said the Western envoy, who asked not to be identified.

Even though Rafsanjani won election handily as a new Constitution was approved last August, he has been hampered in consolidating power. He must contend with an influential minority of as many as 130 so-called radicals in Iran's 270-member Parliament, which asserts considerable influence over executive policy through its approval of Cabinet appointments. Radicals in Parliament and the newspapers they control, like Kayhan and Ahrar, have criticized what one Iranian described as "Hashemi's perestroika." This includes Rafsajam's outspoken advocacy of consumerism, his oft-stated preference for private enterprise over state-owned management of the economy and his emphasis on the work ethic over ideology. Speaking in his Friday speech a little more than a week ago, for example, Rafsanjani called on Iranians to rid themselves of the notion that poor is beautiful. He argued that poor men can never be free, remaining forever subject to humiliation and exploitation by other nations.

This view is at odds with the tenet upon which Khomeini built his revolutionary model of the power of the dispossessed, strongly emphasizing the happiness and rewards of an afterlife. I BOGOTA. Colombia (AP) Gunmen on motorcycles Tuesday killed two employees of the newspaper El Espectador in an attempt by cocaine traffickers to force the Bogota daily to end its anti-drug crusade. The shootings in Medellin, where only 11 El Espectador employees remain, followed 13 bombings in three other Colombian cities overnight. It was the largest outbreak of bomb attacks since drug lords, blamed for slaying a presidential candidate, went to war with the government nearly two months ago.

Tuesday's violence came during a visit to Colombia by U.S. Army Gen. Maxwell Thurman, head of the U.S. Southern Command based in Panama. Killed within an hour of each other Tuesday afternoon were Marta Luz Lopez and Miguel Soler, a spokesman for El Espectador in this capital told The Associated Press.

Miss Lopez was administrator of the paper's Medellin office, and Soler was the daily's circulation manager in the city of 2 million people. In a telephone call to the paper's Medellin office, a man who did not identify himself said a group known as the Extraditables had killed the two and he said they would kill other El Espectador workers who did not leave Medellin within three days, an editor at the newspaper said on condition of anonymity. The Extraditables are suspected drug traffickers sought for extradition to stand trial in the United States. A senior El Espectador reporter, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, told AP in a telephone interview that none of the paper's 1,200 employees had quit, though many have received death threats in the past. However, one of the paper's owners, speaking in Monterrey, Mexico, at the annual conference of the Inter American Press Association, said El Espectador may close its Medellin office.

"I don't know if we'll be able to continue operating in the city of Medellin under the circumstances," said Luis Gabriel Cano, president of the paper's editorial board. He also said the 102-year-old newspaper may have to close eventually because of financial problems caused by the bombing of the main offices last month. The car bomb at its Bogota building caused heavy damage and forced the newspaper to cut operations. About 50 soldiers now guard that building 24 hours a day. El Espectador publisher Guillermo Cano was assassinated by drug traffickers in a spray of submachine gun fire Dec.

17, 1986, as he was leaving the newspaper in his car. Soler was killed in front of his house Tuesday by a man who rode by on a motorcycle, EI Espectador spokesman Alfonso Bernal told the Associated Press. Miss Lopez was killed by a shot in the neck, and her mother was wounded in a leg while the two women sat in their white sedan at a traffic light, the paper's spokesman in Bogota said..