Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [227]
The following week (September 18, 2000) she welcomed Governor Bush of Texas, who arrived with coconut macaroons from Texas-based Neiman Marcus for her studio audience and greeted her with a huge kiss. The photo of Bush bussing Oprah on the cheek as she smiled gleefully made the front page of The New York Times.
“Thanks for the kiss,” she said, sitting down next to him.
“My pleasure.” He grinned.
“There were people on the street yesterday who told me that they were going to make their decision [about whom to vote for] after today’s show,” she told him. The cocky governor nodded as the cocky host dug right in and asked if he was running to restore his father’s defeat by Bill Clinton. “To get revenge?”
“Not even in the teeniest, tiniest part,” Bush insisted, saying he felt “a calling” to be president. “I see America as a land of dreams, hopes, and opportunities.…”
“I wanna go behind the wall now,” snapped Oprah. “Tell us about a time when you needed forgiveness.”
“Right now,” said Bush as the studio audience erupted with laughter.
“I’m looking for specifics,” Oprah said sternly.
“I know you are, but I’m running for president.” Even she had to laugh at that, and her studio audience clapped with delight. When she asked him his “favorite dream,” he raised his right hand as if to be sworn in as president, and the studio audience again rocked with laughter. Bush later got teary-eyed as he discussed his wife’s difficult pregnancy and the birth of their twin daughters. He admitted that he finally stopped drinking at the age of forty because alcohol had taken over his life.
“Ever mindful of her status as the Most Powerful Woman on the Planet, Winfrey approached the Gore and Bush interviews as if they were a sacred duty,” Joyce Millman wrote on Salon.com. “You could tell she was serious, because she interrupted Gore and Bush even more than she usually interrupts guests who have ceased to interest her.… I don’t understand why Bush was so reluctant to debate his opponent; facing Al Gore for 90 minutes has got to be easier than keeping She Who Must Be Obeyed amused for an hour.”
Oprah did not endorse either candidate, but by the end of his hour, George W. Bush had hit a home run straight out of her ballpark. When Chris Rock appeared a few months later he blamed Oprah for handing the White House to the Republicans.
“You made Bush win. He came here and sat in the chair and you gave the man a win. You know you did.”
“I did not,” she said with an unconvincing laugh.
Gloria Steinem sided with the comedian. In her profile of Oprah for Time, she wrote, “Only when she leaves her authentic self behind does she lose trust, as when she aided the election of George W. Bush.”
A few weeks after Bush became president, Oprah asked for an interview with Laura Bush for O magazine, and while she and the First Lady were talking in the family quarters at the White House, the president poked his head in, saying he wanted to greet the next president of the United States. “Thank you for coming to see Laura,” he said, “and letting her show her stuff.”
Days after 9/11 shattered the country, the White House called Oprah and asked if the First Lady might appear on her show to address teachers and parents on how they could help their children through the trauma. Oprah welcomed Mrs. Bush on September 18, 2001, and they walked onstage hand in hand to try to reassure a nation that had been profoundly shaken by the horrific attacks. Reflecting the mood of the country at the time—a desire and need to come together to try to understand what had happened—Oprah presented shows on “Islam 101,” “Is War the Only Answer?” and “What Really Matters Now?”
She also did a show featuring Afghani women titled “Inside the Taliban,” which prompted another call from the White House, asking her to join Mrs. Bush, Communications Director Karen Hughes, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice as part of an official U.S. delegation to visit Afghani girls returning to school after the fall of the Taliban. Oprah declined, saying she was too busy, when in fact she,