For Immediate Release
Office of the First Lady
July 7, 2004
Remarks by First Lady Laura Bush at Media Availability in Council Bluffs, Iowa
Council Bluffs Public Library Council Bluffs, Iowa
10:30 A.M. CDT
MRS. BUSH: Thanks for coming out today. I'm so glad to be in
Iowa. Four years ago, we spent a lot of time here, and this year we
didn't spend that much time here, so it's really nice to be in Council
Bluffs. I came to Council Bluffs before, during the last campaign, to
this library, in fact. So it's great to be back here today.
I'm back with the message about how important it is for children to
read over the summer. These children are involved in a book club that
you saw today, and they are involved in the Council Bluffs Library Book
Summer Reading Program which, as you could tell from all of our
discussion, is based on the Corps of Discovery.
And so I want to encourage you to encourage your listeners or your
readers to make sure children come to the library in the summer and
check out books. It really is true, there's a lot of research that
shows if children don't read over the summer at all, if they don't pick
up a book, when they start school, they have to start over, and they
start school behind in September. And it takes them another couple of
months at the first of the school year to get back into the habit of
reading. So that's my main message today, how important it is to come
to your library in the summer and to make sure your children read.
So now I'll answer questions.
Q In your travels, Mrs. Bush, when you speak with these
children, do you find that most of them do read? Or do you come across
a lot of children who don't?
MRS. BUSH: Of course, in most of my travels, I'm here at a library
or a school; the students that are there usually do read. But I know
that many students don't read over the summer. And I hear that from
teachers and I hear that from people all over, that it's easy in the
summer to turn on the television and to quit reading. And it's really
important for parents to encourage their children to read, to read to
them, to read at night to them before they go to bed.
Because of the long days, there's plenty of light late in the
evening, when you can read chapter books. You can read Charlotte's Web
or the Little House on the Prairie, or Harry Potter books to your
children and read a chapter a night, and really make memories for your
children besides making them learn to love to read.
Q Mrs. Bush, do you have a favorite life verse from the Bible,
something that speaks to you, or a book of the Bible that really speaks
to you?
MRS. BUSH: I have a lot of favorite verses. One that comes to
mind immediately is: We walk by faith, not by sight. I think
especially now, under the circumstances in our country, when we have so
many difficult decisions and we're faced with so many challenges
everywhere, and there's a lot of anxiety because of what happened on
September 11th, that we do walk by faith and not by sight. We don't
know what's going to happen, but we have faith. We have faith in God,
we have faith in the people of America.
Especially right now, as I watch in Iraq and in Afghanistan, as
those two countries try to build a democracy, and I think about how
long it took us in our country, even though we were given the very
perfect document by our founders. It was not -- it was perfectly
written; it wasn't lived perfectly. We took another almost a hundred
years before slavery was abolished, almost another hundred years before
the civil rights legislation. Women didn't get the right to vote until
early in the last century.
When you look at how long it took us and at how we -- each
successive generation of Americans corrected the flaws of our country,
and how we still hope each successive generation will do that, then
when we look at these other emerging democracies, the Central European
emerging democracies that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union,
Iraq and Afghanistan, we know how hard it is to build a democracy. But
also how important it is, and how right it is.
Q How would you explain it to children who have parents
overseas?
MRS. BUSH: Pardon me?
Q How would you explain it to children who have parents
overseas?
MRS. BUSH: Well, you mean the -- yes. I mean, that's very, very
difficult. And I've met with a lot of children on military bases
around the United States whose parents are deployed. I gave the
commencement address at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, high school last year,
where those children -- some of those children's parents were
deployed.
But, you know, they grow up in a family that knows that their
parents are willing to sacrifice for their country, and they see the
example of their parents, the courage of their parents, of the parent
that's in the Army or in the military, and their parent that might not
be, the other parent, the mother or the father who is a civilian.
And those kids move around from state to state because their
parents move from military base to military base. They really deserve
special attention from all of us. One of the things I've worked on is
a program to get states to accept the credits from other states of
military children. Military children move so often and, quite often,
when they get to high school, they don't get to take their class rank
with them.
They might have been the valedictorian in the school they were in
before but don't get to take that. Or, in an example in my state,
Texas requires a study of Texas history, which you do in the seventh
grade. So those children have to -- those students have to take Texas
history and -- or they can't graduate.
And I think it's really important for all of us, all over the
country, to give special attention to those children whose parents are
in the military and try to make their transition as they move from base
to base with their parents easier.
Q Mrs. Bush, now that the Democratic ticket is set, questions
are already being raised about John Edwards' experience or lack of
experience, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Given the fact
that President Bush had little or no foreign policy experience four
years ago, is it fair to criticize Edwards for having a lack of foreign
policy experience now?
MRS. BUSH: You know, I'm interested in the ticket, I'm interested
that John Edwards was chosen yesterday. But I'll have to say, I fully
support the other ticket, the Bush-Cheney ticket. (Laughter.)
I'm not going to criticize the other ticket. But I really do
believe that President Bush and Vice President Cheney share the values
and the character that Americans have, that most Americans have, and
certainly Americans in the heartland have. But I'm not going to
criticize.
Q The exit polls in 2000 showed that Al Gore defeated your
husband among women. And I think the polls are showing now that he
trails among women to Kerry as well. What is it that those women
aren't seeing that you see in your husband?
MRS. BUSH: Well, I mean, I hope they saw little girls go to school
in Afghanistan for the first time in their lives. I know that American
women -- and I see this everywhere I go -- feel a real solidarity with
the women of Iraq and Afghanistan. And the lives of those women have
been changed in a very, very positive way.
Imagine a country that forbids women to be educated, that literally
condemns women to ignorance. And that's very hard for American women,
particularly -- American men and women, but I think American women
particularly to imagine.
There are so many ways that I think my husband and his
administration have been very important for women worldwide. But
that's certainly one that is the most startling.
Q Do you think Iraq had a role in the 9/11 attack?
MRS. BUSH: No. I don't think that's what they found, and the
President never said that either. Did Iraq harbor terrorists? Yes.
Did they pay suicide bombers' families? Yes. I mean, those are a lot
of things we do know.
Q Hasn't the Vice President --
MRS. BUSH: Not that I know of.
Q Have you seen Fahrenheit 9/11? (Laughter.)
MRS. BUSH: What do you think? (Laughter.)
Q I think that you haven't. (Laughter.)
MRS. BUSH: I think that would be right.
Thank you all. Thanks so much. And I really want to enlist your
help and get the word out to parents to make sure their children read
this summer.
Thank you all. Thanks for coming in.
END 10:40 A.M. CDT
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