"Sweetsie," he (Poppy) wrote to Barbara Bush.

[kskiska]

It was 1988, and the height of the presidential election campaign between George Bush Sr and Michael Dukakis. The Bush campaign had an image problem: Mr and Mrs Bush just didn't seem to click on camera. So the candidate sent his wife a memo.

"Sweetsie," he wrote to Barbara Bush. "Please look at how Mike and Kitty do it. Try to be closer in more - well, er, romantic - on camera. I am practicing the loving look, and the creeping hand. Yours for better TV and more demonstrable affection. Your sweetie pie coo coo. Love ya, GB."

The exchange is taken from one of 184 documents charting the human - as well as the bureaucratic - side of the relationships between presidents and their first ladies printed in My Dear President: Letters Between Presidents and Their Wives. Each letter appears in its entirety with the original spelling and grammar intact.

more…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1708566,00.html

[beam me up scottie]

1. I think I just felt my womb shrivel.

[bleever]

3. Don't go there, girlfriend!

Remember who you are, and take several deep cleansing breaths.

[beam me up scottie]

6. Whew, thanks.

That was a close one.

The mental images are trauma inducing, no?

[bleever]

13. Si.

A glimpse of the horror of aristocratic marriages.

No wonder Prince Albert was in a can!


:rofl:

[beam me up scottie]

15. ROFLMAO!!!

I never thought of the correlation!

All that inbreeding and frigidity...no wonder there were so few heirs.

[tsuki]

2. I'm going to bed. That did me in. n/t

[Punkingal]

4. He had to send a memo.....

Great relationship, there. No wonder he needed to practice the loving look.

[fortyfeetunder]

14. I think he forgot to remove the bag first --

before the recommendation :rofl:

[hwmnbn]

5. Ooohh! Poppy Bush......

getting his freak on!! :puke:

[Tanuki]

7. Sweetie pie coo coo?

He was busy porking Jennifer Fitzgerald in those days. Does anyone here know if she is still in the picture?

[yorkiemommie1]

8. some relationship they must have

n/t

[journalist3072]

10. Exactly. If you have to "practice" a loving look, what does that say

about the quality of your marriage?

[kskiska]

9. They have to take lessons in faking it

That says a lot.

[journalist3072]

11. We're on the same page!!! That's what I just was saying, lol!

[kskiska]

16. Right-O

I hate to think where that "creeping hand" is going.

[mitchum]

12. Oh yes, the lyric poetry of the patrician WASP