Laura Bush: A Teacher in The (White) House

By Joetta L. Sack

Washington

It was only a laugh line, a bit of drollery designed to stoke up the crowd at the expense of the opposition. But Laura Welch Bush's jab at Vice President Al Gore in her keynote speech at the Republican National Convention last year likewise carried the unstated message that the GOP was staking a claim on a mainstay Democratic issue: education.

Mr. Gore, she noted, had made much of his practice of spending the night at teachers' houses when he was out visiting schools on campaign stops.

"Well," Mrs. Bush said in her unmistakable West Texas twang, "George spends every...