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" Her popularity is the envy of politicians everywhere. Even as President Bush endures dropping poll numbers, and the 2008 White House candidates struggle for voter applause (or even attention), the First Lady floats above the fray. Good Housekeeping&amp;#039;s Editor in Chief Rosemary Ellis sat down with Mrs. Bush to learn what she&amp;#039;s spending her time on right now.  ROSEMARY ELLIS: It&amp;#039;s Father&amp;#039;s Day this month, and I know that you&amp;#039;re leading an initiative that&amp;#039;s concerned with boys and their dads. LAURA BUSH: Yes. It&amp;#039;s called Helping America&amp;#039;s Youth. A couple of summers ago, I read an article in The New York Times Magazine about a young man who had grown up without a father and had a baby. He is not married to his child&amp;#039;s mother, and he didn&amp;#039;t want his child to grow up with the same profound feeling of loss that he&amp;#039;d experienced, so he promised himself that he would stay active in his child&amp;#039;s life. I started thinking when I read that article. I already knew the statistics about boys...that they are more likely to be arrested, more likely to drop out of school. The new statistic that we&amp;#039;re all sort of surprised about is that there are fewer boys going to college than girls, and fewer men in graduate school than women.  RE: You&amp;#039;ve also said that boys somehow don&amp;#039;t acquire the same sets of life skills that girls do. LB: Well, I think that we don&amp;#039;t nurture boys like we nurture girls.... It&amp;#039;s really important for boys to have a father around, or a grandfather, or an uncle \u2014 a man they can really relate to who loves them, and who they know loves them. It&amp;#039;s important for girls as well. Girls learn how to relate to men from the way their fathers love them. And if their fathers really love them and want the very best for them, then they&amp;#039;ve seen that kind of good behavior that they&amp;#039;d want in a husband.  I went to a workshop for fathers and children at the National Center for Fathering in Kansas City, MO. And they did the sweetest and most moving thing \u2014 the 15-second hug, where fathers hug their little sons or daughters for 15 seconds.  RE: That&amp;#039;s a long time to hug somebody.  LB: Yes. It&amp;#039;s a really good way to get across this point of nurturing.  RE: Another group of kids whose parents are absent for long periods of time now are kids whose dads are in the service. Are there any programs for them? LB: Yes. There&amp;#039;s a terrific one called Our Military Kids, which provides extracurricular activities for children grades K to 12 whose parents are deployed Reserve and National Guard troops. And I met an Army sergeant in Iraq, a woman who started a program where parents tape themselves reading a favorite book and then send it home, so their babies can hear their voices at night reading them a bedtime story.  RE: Now, if we may, I want to talk a little bit about you. Last year you turned 60.  LB: [Laughs]  RE: Which is amazing, looking at you! And you also had a squamous cell carcinoma.  So which was the greater wake-up call? LB: Turning 60, I guess. The little skin cancer was not really that bad.... RE: So turning 60 was more momentous. I think 50 is the new 30.  LB: 80 is the new 60! [Laughter]  RE: Have you seen the movie The Queen? LB: I have. [Laughs] ...In a lot of ways the movie was fiction, and I know that. But I thought it was interesting.  RE: Do you relate to it in any way, in terms of the invasiveness of the publicity...the accommodations you have to make? LB: When someone you love runs for president, you know what will happen. And we really did know, because we had a president [in the family already]. We knew the criticism that anybody who runs for public office gets no matter what happens or what their party is. It&amp;#039;s just a fact of life. And you know then that if you can&amp;#039;t stand that, then you can&amp;#039;t get into politics.  RE: As the road has gotten bumpier in terms of the public eye on your husband, what&amp;#039;s been the hardest thing for you? LB: Well, all of it is hard. Any criticism of someone you love is hard to take.... I think it&amp;#039;s really harder on Barbara and Jenna and me than it is on him, of course. But on the other hand, we know him. And we know what he&amp;#039;s really like. And so in many cases, I think he&amp;#039;s characterized in a way that I know he isn&amp;#039;t.  RE: On the occasions when you disagree with your husband...  LB: I tell him. [Laughs]  RE: What do you tell him? LB: We talk about issues...I remember one time when George was governor. Barbara and Jenna were talking about the death penalty and said they weren&amp;#039;t for it. And George said, &amp;quot;I want you to know that you should have your own opinions. And that whatever your opinions are, they don&amp;#039;t have to be my opinions. That you should have your own. And that whatever they are, you should work for those opinions. If you believe that, then you should work on that as an issue.&amp;quot; So I think he, more than I, really raised them with a lot of liberty.  RE: In terms of the person that you&amp;#039;ve become, what do you think is the greatest gift that your father gave you? LB: I had a very close relationship with my father. He was very funny, and fun to be with. He was the daddy that people wanted to drive us places, if we were going to the movies or something.... I always knew how much he loved me, and how important I was to him.  [For all parents], doing things with your children is really important. You know, &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s go for a walk.&amp;quot; When the girls were little, maybe 3 or 4, it snowed in Midland. It didn&amp;#039;t snow that often, but it would every once in a while. And it got dark after we&amp;#039;d finished dinner, and George said, &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s go for a night snow walk.&amp;quot; And so we all bundled up with the girls. And I know they&amp;#039;ll never forget it. It was very quiet out on the street. A walk in the snow after dark.  RE: A simple thing.  LB: Yes. That&amp;#039;s what people remember. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/inspirational-stories/interviews/a16200/laura-bush-jun07/>