Washington – Laura Bush, former inner-city schoolteacher, says Hurricane Katrina could have a silver lining if it forces the nation to respond “in a different way” to difficult poverty and racial problems.
“A large percentage of our population probably doesn’t realize what inner cities are really like and has looked away from that,” Bush said in an interview Tuesday.
The first lady sat down in the White House’s Map Room to promote this weekend’s National Book Festival, a day-long event on the National Mall that she has put on in concert with the Library of Congress for five years – a tradition she started as first lady of Texas.
But she readily allowed the brief interview to range beyond books to more difficult issues such as Katrina. With her popularity in polls twice that of her husband’s, which is stuck at a record-low level, she often plays the president’s chief defender and puts a smiling, trusted face on administration policies.
Her husband, beset with criticism about the government’s initial response to Katrina, traveled to the region for a fifth time Tuesday and is returning again this weekend.
“He has to. That’s his job,” she said matter-of-factly.
But she said she also hopes for a broader national discussion of poverty and race. “I think it’s really important for us to talk about it in a different way,” said the first lady, who more than three decades ago taught elementary students at an inner-city school in Houston and was a school librarian in a poor Austin neighborhood.
Without offering specifics, she urged policymakers to tackle not only improving education so that poor and minority children have a leg up in life, but increasing the amount of affordable housing stock and the jobs available to those who most need them. She pressed for job training programs, whether through the government or unions or corporations.
