Former First Lady Barbara Bush Dies @ 92

The wife of the 41st POTUS and mother of the 43rd passed away 48 hours after it was announced she was in end-of-life palliative care.

Statement by President George W. Bush on the passing of Mrs. Barbara Bush: https://t.co/PwYs9SHwo3 pic.twitter.com/FZMcRwv0Ve

— George W. Bush Presidential Center (@TheBushCenter) April 18, 2018

Among the things I liked about her, from CNN:

Still, Barbara Bush promoted women's rights, and her strong personal views sometimes surfaced publicly and raised eyebrows — especially when they clashed with Republican Party politics. For instance, she once said as her husband ran for president that abortion should not be politicized.

She also was not shy about the possibility of a female president, disarming a Wellesley College audience at a 1990 appearance protested by some on campus who questioned her credentials to address female graduates aiming for the workplace.

“Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow my footsteps and preside over the White House as the president's spouse.

“I wish him well,” she said.

Bush was less winning when, speaking of the ramp-up to the Iraq War, she said:

I watch none. He [former President Bush] sits and listens and I read books, because I know perfectly well that, don’t take offense, that 90 percent of what I hear on television is supposition, when we’re talking about the news. And he’s not, not as understanding of my pettiness about that. But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it’s gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him suffer.

And her comments on Katrina were roundly derided as abhorrent: