DBWI Laura Bush is white

Laura Bush first african american first lady.Born in 1946 to father who was in the famed tuskegee airman, and a mother who was a firm supporter of the civil rights movement, Laura grew up knowing the value of organization and bravery.


What would the bush presidency look like if Laura was white? How different would the bush presidency be?
 
Bush probably wouldnt have won a second term... His progressive civil rights policy was key to convincing many minorities to vote republican for their first time.
 
Bush probably wouldnt have won a second term... His progressive civil rights policy was key to convincing many minorities to vote republican for their first time.

Really surprised that happened after dubya punched Spike Lee in the face. Yes it was right after he insulted his wife by saying some really horrible things, but he still punched a famous director in the face on national television.
 
Really surprised that happened after dubya punched Spike Lee in the face. Yes it was right after he insulted his wife by saying some really horrible things, but he still punched a famous director in the face on national television.

To be fair when people learned exactly Spike had said Bush's reaction became a lot more understandable.
 
To be fair when people learned exactly Spike had said Bush's reaction became a lot more understandable.

Yeah some guy got Spikes rant on his smart phone and uploaded to youtube. I saw it, it was about five minutes of him going on the attack.

You think a guy who spent so much time fighting racism would not say those kinds of things.
 
Laura Bush first african american first lady.Born in 1946 to father who was in the famed tuskegee airman, and a mother who was a firm supporter of the civil rights movement, Laura grew up knowing the value of organization and bravery.


What would the bush presidency look like if Laura was white? How different would the bush presidency be?

Well, for one, Bush might have been rather more socially conservative than he was IOTL-interracial marriage was still a tad controversial in Texas when he married Laura in 1972(according to independent research done by Texas A & M in the '90s, they estimated that about 70% of Texans disagreed with interracial marriage to one extent or the other, around that time, compared to about 55% of the country as a whole.).....the backlash that he did get from some of the more hardline conservative sections of West Texas society essentially turned him towards moderates(and horrified his dad). But by the time he ran for governor in 1994, it didn't really matter, and he was able to win a solid majority of votes.

I think it also saved his presidency; had he been less sensible, the '08 recession might have been a lot worse.....and, not only that, a more staunchly conservative Bush would have given the Tea Party a much wider opening into the GOP, assuming the TP still happens in 2005 as in OTL(although their entrance into the GOP, ironically, might have staved off the outbreak of extreme RW violence that happened in 2010-14.....boy, those folks sure did hate President Obama!).

Really surprised that happened after dubya punched Spike Lee in the face. Yes it was right after he insulted his wife by saying some really horrible things, but he still punched a famous director in the face on national television.

And if you thought that was bad, check out what happened when Mass Gov. Deval Patrick married his second and current wife, an Italian-American and longtime member of the Democratic Party, in 2013-Chauncey De Vega went absolutely nuts! He called that poor lady just about every anti-Italian ethnic slur in the book, prompting even Ta-Nehisi Coates to condemn him on air! But the good news is, De Vega didn't get away with it; he later got practically shouted at by both Al Sharpton and Melissa Perry on live television! (Check out the Rachel Maddow Show episode from 11-12-13. They dressed him down quicker than Larry O'Donnell did with Spike Lee back in 2004.....although Mr. Lee later apologized. De Vega, however, never did, and actually doubled down, prompting his banning from Blog Talk Radio, and whatever few conventional stations still carried him.)
 
Last edited:
Actually, not much would be different on the civil rights front. Instead of marrying a community organizer, he would have married an elementary school teacher or some such. He would still have given the most foreign aid to Africa, still have Colin Powell and Condelezza Rice, still have renewed the Civil Rights Act. He would still have won a second term, because unseating a President during wartime is incredibly difficult ("War on Terror") and Kerry would still have been swiftboated.

The main difference is that Bush's main character flaw, listening to the wrong people, wouldn't have manifest itself so greatly. Instead of firing Darth Cheney and Donald Duck, he would have kept them on. If it wasn't for her influence, comparing the persecution of the various Iraqi tribes to the persecution of blacks, I doubt Bush would have taken the steps he did to force the Iraqi government to give equal rights to the Kurds and Sunni. Because of Laura, Iraq was ruled by a triumvrate of Kurdish + Sunni + Shia leaders and the most progressive government in the world guaranteeing minority rights, women's rights and human rights. Gunboat diplomacy had a whole new meaning under the Bush administration.

These key decisions probably laid the groundwork for the splitting of Iraq into de facto three countries by the next administration aka Republican government. If it wasn't for that, we might have sectarian strife in Iraq today as these groups would feel marginalized and persecuted. Who knows, maybe Al Qaeda or something much worse could have manifest itself.
 
Actually, not much would be different on the civil rights front. Instead of marrying a community organizer, he would have married an elementary school teacher or some such. He would still have given the most foreign aid to Africa, still have Colin Powell and Condelezza Rice, still have renewed the Civil Rights Act. He would still have won a second term, because unseating a President during wartime is incredibly difficult ("War on Terror") and Kerry would still have been swiftboated.

The main difference is that Bush's main character flaw, listening to the wrong people, wouldn't have manifest itself so greatly. Instead of firing Darth Cheney and Donald Duck, he would have kept them on. If it wasn't for her influence, comparing the persecution of the various Iraqi tribes to the persecution of blacks, I doubt Bush would have taken the steps he did to force the Iraqi government to give equal rights to the Kurds and Sunni. Because of Laura, Iraq was ruled by a triumvrate of Kurdish + Sunni + Shia leaders and the most progressive government in the world guaranteeing minority rights, women's rights and human rights. Gunboat diplomacy had a whole new meaning under the Bush administration.

These key decisions probably laid the groundwork for the splitting of Iraq into de facto three countries by the next administration aka Republican government. If it wasn't for that, we might have sectarian strife in Iraq today as these groups would feel marginalized and persecuted. Who knows, maybe Al Qaeda or something much worse could have manifest itself.

OOC: This is a good post, but that one small part about a Republican administration after Bush does seem to kinda contradict my post before that, which established that Obama was President between 2008-16 as per OTL.....just so you know(although if you actually meant something else, my apologies for the misunderstanding on my end.).
 
Maybe if President Bush hadn't been sensitized to the issue that police officers often do have a different mindset regarding African-American citizens, especially regarding young black men, the 2007 Community Policing Bill which tied funding to how rapidly departments implemented body cameras for officers would not have passed as easily.

But with the same cluster of cases which appeared in late '06 and early '07 (I'm sure you remember the Harris case, and esp. the Rodriquez case), I think the same bill would have passed, just maybe not to the same acclaim.

And giving President Bush some credit, he certainly does have a down home, folksic way of explaining things. You most probably remember the press conference where he responded to a question this way: It's like the guy said in Vegas. My mother is the most ethical, moral person in the entire world. But if Mom's dealing blackjack, she's going to be on camera and that's just all there is to it. It's no impingement on dealers to use cameras, and it's no impingement on police officers either. And just like you wouldn't allow a dealer to turn off a camera for three minutes, you shouldn't allow a police officer either.

And this became one of the minor threads of the conversation, but I tend to think the reforms would have happened anyway.

=======

PS And Laura would be just as beautiful if she were white. And she'd be the same builder and the same appreciator of persons of all walks of life. She simply would have had a somewhat different life journey.
 
Last edited:
Yeah some guy got Spikes rant on his smart phone and uploaded to youtube. I saw it, it was about five minutes of him going on the attack.

You think a guy who spent so much time fighting racism would not say those kinds of things.

OOC: If Spike's punching of Bush happened BEFORE Bush got re-elected, it likely wouldn't have been uploaded to YouTube, since YouTube didn't exist at the time of the 2004 election.

Unless you meant that it would have been uploaded to YouTube a year or so later.
 
Maybe if President Bush hadn't been sensitized to the issue that police officers often do have a different mindset regarding African-American citizens, especially regarding young black men, the 2007 Community Policing Bill which tied funding to how rapidly departments implemented body cameras for officers would not have passed as easily.

But with the same cluster of cases which appeared in late '06 and early '07 (I'm sure you remember the Harris case, and esp. the Rodriquez case), I think the same bill would have passed, just maybe not to the same acclaim.

And giving President Bush some credit, he certainly does have a down home, folksic way of explaining things. You most probably remember the press conference where he responded to a question this way: It's like the guy said in Vegas. My mother is the most ethical, moral person in the entire world. But if Mom's dealing blackjack, she's going to be on camera and that's just all there is to it. It's no impingement on dealers to use cameras, and it's no impingement on police officers either. And just like you wouldn't allow a dealer to turn off a camera for three minutes, you shouldn't allow a police officer either.

And this became one of the minor threads of the conversation, but I tend to think the reforms would have happened anyway.

=======

PS And Laura would be just as beautiful if she were white. And she'd be the same builder and the same appreciator of persons of all walks of life. She simply would have had a somewhat different life journey.

Yep, and might I add that this bill was co-submitted by both then Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Maine Sen. Susan Collins.

OOC: If Spike's punching of Bush happened BEFORE Bush got re-elected, it likely wouldn't have been uploaded to YouTube, since YouTube didn't exist at the time of the 2004 election.

Unless you meant that it would have been uploaded to YouTube a year or so later.

OOC: Google Video might work, as it was around before YouTube, IIRC.
 
OOC: why on earth would he happen to choose a woman with the same name. Remarkably improbable.

OOC: Well, given that there have been two First Ladies with that surname, by keeping the given name, the OP doesn't have to engage in awkward phraseology to let us know which Mrs. Bush is being talked about, eg. "Penelope Bush, wife of George W. Bush, was the first African-American..."

That wouldn't really sound like a plausible post in a time-line where the woman's name would be instantly recognizable.
 
OOC: If Spike's punching of Bush happened BEFORE Bush got re-elected, it likely wouldn't have been uploaded to YouTube, since YouTube didn't exist at the time of the 2004 election.

Unless you meant that it would have been uploaded to YouTube a year or so later.

OCC lets go with the year or two later thing, with the video being given over to fox news first and then ending up on youtube later on. If thats cool with you OCC

So how differntly do you guys think he would have handled Katrina?
 
Last edited:
OCC lets go with the year or two later thing, with the video being given over to fox news first and then ending up on youtube later on. If thats cool with you OCC

So how differntly do you guys think he would have handled Katrina?

OOC: This might depend on whether you think the mishandling of Katrina in OTL was a result of racism, incompetence, or some combination of the two.

If it was just incompetence, a black First Lady probably wouldn't make a difference, as there would be no particular reason for the president to consult her on matters of emergency response.
 
Yep, and might I add that this bill was co-submitted by both then Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Maine Sen. Susan Collins.
And as I remember it, Sen. Obama skillfully and effectively used low-key methods to present and advocate for this bill.

Whereas Sen. Collins (R-Maine) rolled out more of the heavy artillery so to speak, at one point saying, this is not the America any of us were told about in school. We're going to have to take a deep breath and really look at these issues. And we're going to have to make some reforms.
 
Top