Friday, February 20, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

First lady notes Nevada's importance

In Las Vegas, Laura Bush touts her husband and promises he will campaign here this year

First lady Laura Bush attends Mary Ziegler's English class at the Advanced Technologies Academy on Thursday. The students were discussing "Crime and Punishment" by Bush's favorite author, Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

First lady Laura Bush smiled broadly after taking a seat in Mary Ziegler's English class at the Advanced Technologies Academy on Thursday when she heard the students rattling off with ease the Russian names and, more importantly, motivations of characters in "Crime and Punishment."

Later she told the 22 students that Fyodor Dostoevsky is her favorite author, his "Brothers Karamazov" is her favorite novel and that she was lucky enough to visit his home during an official trip to Russia last year.

But Bush wasn't here just to talk literature, or to tout a $500 million job training program her husband proposed last month. She was here, she said during a news conference, because "Nevada is very important."

"Every state is very important," Bush said, promising her husband would be back campaigning here this year.

Las Vegas was the final stop on a three-day trip through three states to promote education initiatives and to raise money for Bush-Cheney '04.

The visit is believed to be the first official visit to Las Vegas by a sitting first lady.

Bush did not hold any public events or take part in any fund-raisers in Las Vegas. She did take questions from reporters for about 15 minutes, staunchly defending her husband and his administration's policies from the No Child Left Behind initiative to gay marriage and Yucca Mountain.

Bush said No Child, the federal education accountability act, was "working well" despite complaints from at least a dozen states and widespread criticism from the Democrats running for president.

"I know that there are some states that are not happy with it," she said. "There's more money in the No Child Left Behind act than there's been in any previous federal law ever before."

Bush cited statistics that indicate Title 1 schools in Nevada get $72 million more in the proposed 2005 budget than in the previous budget.

She also noted that some states have not drawn from the $6 billion earmarked for the act.

"The point is, the testing that a lot people object to is not punitive," said Bush, a former librarian with a background in education. "You're not given a test to punish people. You're given a test so you know what you need to do. You can't solve a problem unless you diagnose it."

Roughly $100 million of the Jobs for the 21st Century training program she was promoting is earmarked for high school reading remediation.

"I'm here at this school, specifically Advanced Technologies Academy, because this school is such a great example of what we want schools to be like in the 21st century," Bush said, impressed by the school having a computer for each student and its offering of rigorous Advanced Placement courses.

Later, she said the school, which has won praise from the U.S. Department of Education, is successful because it wasn't designed or built by the federal government.

The academy is a Clark County School District magnet school with a focus on technology, math and science.

State Archivist Guy Rocha said visits to Nevada by first ladies are extremely rare. Ida Hayes and Lou Henry Hoover accompanied their husbands on train trips through the state. Eleanor Roosevelt accompanied Franklin Roosevelt for the dedication of Boulder Dam and Ely-native Pat Nixon visited Reno in 1970 to stump for Bill Raggio.

"Most of the time that they came, they came as escorts," Rocha said.

In 1999, then-first lady Hillary Clinton attended a fund-raiser in Las Vegas for her bid for the U.S. Senate in New York.

During the news conference, Bush was asked about her husband distancing himself from his economic advisers' forecast that the U.S. economy will add 2.6 million jobs this year.

"The economy's getting better and hopefully that will increase the number of jobs," she said.

Bush also defended her husband on his decision to recommend Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste repository, saying he based the decision on "sound science."

Bush also defended her husband's military service record saying the issue is "a diversion by the Democrats."

She also referenced her husband's opposition to gay marriage.

"I know what he doesn't want is for the Supreme Court of Massachusetts or the mayor of San Francisco to make the choice for the rest of the country," Bush said. "This is a subject that will definitely need to be talked about with the American people."

Bush also called for the renewal of the USA Patriot Act as being "very important in the fight against terrorism" despite concerns the law infringes on personal liberties and allows the government to monitor what books people borrow from libraries like the one in Houston where she used to work.

"I understand the concerns of librarians," Bush said. "But I also know that no part of that act has been acted upon in a library."