First Lady's Influence Goes Global
Speaking Out on Burma, Bush Takes Her Highest-Profile International Role

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

The first lady has taken an interest in Burma ever since a family member told her about the Asian nation's plight five years ago, but she has taken a higher-profile leadership role on this in recent weeks than she has on any international issue during nearly seven years in the East Wing. She has lobbied officials and diplomats, issued public statements, given multiple interviews, supported new sanctions against the junta, and written an op-ed column speaking out on behalf of the repressed population in the country that some call Myanmar.

"It's the one foreign policy issue she's really spoken out on, and that makes it significant," said Victor D. Cha, who managed Asian affairs at the White House until earlier this year and now teaches at Georgetown University. "She was always very careful about the issues she would be involved in and would pick them very selectively."

Activists and analysts credit Bush with helping to focus international attention on the conflict in Burma in a unifying way that her husband could not. With virtually every other major figure in the administration compromised on the world stage to one degree or another, she does not bring the baggage of Iraq to the table. And yet everyone understands that if she speaks out, she has the force of the administration behind her.

"Laura Bush is one of the few people in the administration who has maintained her popularity and credibility both at home and abroad," said Nancy E. Soderberg, a former senior U.S. diplomat at the United Nations under President Bill Clinton who is now at the University of North Florida. "So when she says something on an issue, it has an impact. There's no question when a first lady takes on an issue, it's at the top of everybody's inbox."

Her outspokenness on Burma reflects a growing confidence. Bush has mapped out an ambitious agenda in recent years that extends beyond issues such as literacy. She traveled abroad on her own just five times during President Bush's first term, but later this week she will leave on her ninth solo overseas trip since his reelection, destined this time for the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

"You know, this is not new for me," the first lady said in an interview last month, noting her travels to Africa and elsewhere. "But as I've lived here longer, I realize -- I became more aware that I have more of a chance to speak out about these sorts of issues that especially concern me. And I want to take advantage of that."

All told, she has visited 68 countries so far, either with the president or on her own, just shy of the 82 visited by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Unlike her predecessor, Laura Bush tends to steer clear of controversial issues on such trips. But she has tripped up before. During a visit to Egypt in 2005, she praised President Hosni Mubarak for democratic reforms that turned out to be little more than a sham, and her statements were deeply disillusioning for opposition activists.

She is not an independent actor and generally coordinates closely with the National Security Council and the State Department before speaking out. "There's no lone-ranger action on the part of the East Wing," said Anita McBride, the first lady's chief of staff. "It just doesn't happen that way."

When it comes to Burma, Bush confers with her friend Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, as well as with national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and other senior officials. McBride is routinely included in e-mails and staff meetings on the situation there, and activists have put the first lady's office in their mailing lists for regular updates from the field.

The first lady traces her interest to Burma to Elsie Walker, a cousin of her husband who takes an interest in human rights issues. Walker told Bush about Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning opposition leader whose party won free elections in 1990, only to have the Burmese military nullify the vote and keep her under arrest for most of the years since. The first lady became captivated by Suu Kyi's story when she read her book "Freedom From Fear," which led to her interest in the broader Burmese situation.

"She represents to me, really, the hopes of everyone in Burma, of all the Burmese who long for a day of democracy there, a day without an oppressive regime like the military regime is," Bush said in the interview. "I know what she wants, and she wants political reconciliation. She wants the government to start responding to the needs of the people. And she wants the chance to be able to build a democracy."

The first lady has never been to Burma, nor met Suu Kyi, but over the past year in particular she has inserted herself increasingly into the cause. She hosted a roundtable on Burma at the United Nations last fall and talked about Burma during a graduation address at Pepperdine University this spring.

In April, she invited officials from State and the National Security Council to join her in watching a BBC documentary on Burma in the White House theater. The next month, she participated in a Burma event sponsored by the Senate women's caucus and wrote a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Over the summer, she hosted Burmese dissidents at the White House, met with U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari to discuss Burma, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece marking Suu Kyi's birthday and went on CNN to talk about it.

But the beginning of protests in Burma in August, in response to a crippling fuel price increase, intensified her efforts. Aside from her phone call to Ban, she gave more than a half-dozen interviews, issued increasingly tough statements, sent written testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and last week penned another Wall Street Journal op-ed, this time calling on the junta to begin democratic reforms "or get out of the way." Asked his opinion of the op-ed as he walked across the South Lawn, the president gave a thumbs-up.

More tellingly, Ban called Laura Bush last week to update her on his actions, underscoring how she has become the U.S. government's main interlocutor on Burma. The soft-spoken first lady told USA Today that the Burmese government should move toward democracy "within the next couple days" or face additional sanctions from her husband's government.

"People understand she was speaking not just for herself but for the president," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "The U.N. hears from the U.S. on 50 different issues a day, but when they hear in this very special way, it has an effect. . . . I'm a big critic of her husband on a lot of issues, but I think he cares about this too and they're doing the right thing."

Having said that, he noted that Burma is an easy issue for an administration that faces so many harder ones. "It is one of the places in the world where it appears that pure good is at war with pure evil," he said. "The universe of other problems that the administration faces is far more morally ambiguous. Burma is refreshingly simple."

For the first lady, Burma is providing a way to make her voice heard as she looks for ways to make her mark in her last 15 months in the White House. "When you step into the second term, you leave campaigns behind you . . . so it does free up your time," said McBride, her chief aide. "And you begin to see how fast the time moves, and you want to use it as much as possible."

And as Bush does, analysts said, she will redefine her legacy. "She's not quite as faint-hearted and removed from public policy as her current image would suggest," said Bruce Buchanan, who has followed her as a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. "This is the biggest example of it so far and, if it makes any difference, it might not be the last."