I always thought of Barbara as a decent and classy individual, but she wasn’t an extraordinary first lady. I think she carried herself well and genuinely cared about a range of issues of high importance, with literacy being among the more notable ones. But she was otherwise “safe” and stayed in her lanes. One of the reasons Hillary was so immediately and forever reviled by the Right is that she refused to be cut from the same mold that Barbara, Nancy, and pretty much every first lady going back to Jacqueline Kennedy had formed. Hillary didn’t know that politics was a male arena and that she should do women’s stuff. I don’t blame Barbara Bush for that of course - just an observation.
Over the past year I’ve wondered how she has reconciled the recent (and mounting) evidence of her husband’s apparent unwanted advances and misconduct. I’m sure that whenever Bill or Hillary dies, all we’re going to hear about is analysis of how they managed to stay married in spite of their private problems that became very public.