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First: “She knew who she was, and she saw no need to apologize for it,” writes the journalist and biographer Jon Meacham, about Barbara Bush. I particularly enjoyed her line about a potential future First Spouse listening to her graduation speech at Wellesley College.

Also, Christopher Buckley, one of her husband’s old speechwriters, remembers her as “Mrs. No-Nonsense,” and The Times obituary, by Enid Nemy, offers a sense of the sweep of Mrs. Bush’s life.

For anyone inspired to read more, try Richard Ben Cramer’s classic political book, “What It Takes.”

That was then. “All the evidence we find is that, as a political issue, it is falling flat, influencing very few votes, if any.” So said NBC’s David Brinkley on the air in 1972, referring to the story known as Watergate.