Mrs. Bush: Former first family adapts to new life

[February 27, 2009]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former first lady Laura Bush says she didn't watch President Barack Obama's speech to Congress because "I just totally forgot about it."

But Mrs. Bush hasn't become totally disengaged from politics in the roughly five weeks since she and her husband, George W. Bush, moved out of the White House. She says, for example, that she remains very interested in what happens in Afghanistan, calling Obama's developing policy there "encouraging."

Mrs. Bush made women's rights issues in Afghanistan a personal priority, and she visited there alone on at least two occasions.

She said the fact she overlooked Obama's speech was more a product of her new lifestyle than any political inclination.

In an interview broadcast Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Mrs. Bush said: "I thought it was so ironic that for eight years I would be a nervous wreck before the State of the Union, and for days before, as George would be preparing his speech, worried about it and thinking about what was going to be in the speech. And this time it came and went and I didn't even think about it."

[Associated Press]

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