In hopes of a Laura Bush tell-all

In a series of exit interviews she and President Bush are giving, Mrs. Bush resisted efforts to draw out her inner witch. (Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)

MAYBE Laura Bush will finally break out of the plastic.

The outgoing first lady is writing a book. Her publisher, Scribner, said it would offer "an intimate account of Laura Bush's life experiences, including eight years in the White House."

Her husband remains a captive of his own spin, which explains the lack of publisher interest in a memoir by an ex-president. Perhaps Mrs. Bush is more inclined toward introspection and honest disclosure, although evidence at the moment is slight.

During a recent interview with his wife, President Bush told CNN's Larry King that he likes President-elect Barack Obama.

"But he was so critical of you. Do you take that personally or don't you?" King queried.

"I did," Laura Bush quickly answered.

"Were you angry at it?" King asked.

"Yes, sort of. George didn't even really know about it because he didn't watch it that much, I don't think," replied Mrs. Bush.

No one's going to be shocked at the suggestion that George W. Bush didn't pay much attention to campaign trail critiques of his presidency. But at least his wife showed some willingness to drop the happy talk for a moment.

Of course, it will take much more than that to make a Laura Bush memoir interesting.

Her competition is a work of fiction, "American Wife," by Curtis Sittenfeld, who said she was inspired by "The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush," a biography by Ann Gerhart.

Sittenfeld's novel paints a sympathetic portrait of a complex character, Alice Lindgren, who causes the death of a high school classmate by running a stop sign as a teenager; cherishes books and libraries; and eventually marries a rambunctious and shallow man named Charlie Blackwell, who, improbably, becomes president.

The protagonist in "American Wife" opposes the war her husband launches and on the final page discloses that "I didn't vote for Charlie for president. I did vote for him both times for governor, but when he ran for president, I didn't want the upheaval or the burdens and I also believed sincerely that his opponent would do a better job. He had more experience, a more nuanced view of the issues; he was a lifelong public servant rather than an intermittent dabbler."

So far, that level of spousal betrayal is solely the product of one writer's imagination. During their White House years, the real Laura Bush displayed nothing more than a bit of welcome irreverence toward her husband and some good political sense - for example, she chastized him for saying he wanted Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive."

Although a Pew Research Center poll showed some slippage in Mrs. Bush's favorability ratings a year ago, she remains more popular than Bush. That's why she was in Minneapolis for the Republican National Convention, and introduced the president's video appearance.

She is not linked publicly to any Bush policy decisions, so if she argued against any of them, and is willing to write that, it would certainly help book sales.

Her public persona is that of traditional first lady. She is always perfectly coiffed and conservatively dressed, with her guard up and her emotions under wraps as she carefully chooses words about education or breast cancer or women in Afghanistan.

In a series of exit interviews she and Bush are giving, Mrs. Bush resisted efforts to draw out her inner witch.

When Fox News host Chris Wallace asked, "Is there anything that you'd like to get off your chest that you've had inside there for the last eight years?" she said no. When he asked her to respond to people who view the Bush years as "a failed presidency," she repeated the party line: Bush policies "kept our country safe after September 11th"; her husband is driven by his belief in freedom. Pressed for details about what she and Michelle Obama discussed in White House meetings after the November election, Mrs. Bush said they talked about "closets."

Her publisher can only hope the former librarian will get lost in the pages of her own life and reveal the human being behind the political wife.

Joan Vennochi can be reached at vennochi@globe.com.