NPR: Will We Get Our White House Wedding After All?

Will We Get Our White House Wedding After All?

Oh, I love a wedding. I'm thinking maybe next summer.

News that President Bush's daughter Jenna is engaged to Henry Hager (a guy who Laura Bush once dismissed as "not a serious boyfriend") has Washington atwitter. Hager has impeccable conservative credentials: His dad is a former lieutenant governor of Virginia and now heads the state's Republican Party; Hager himself once worked for Karl Rove. It's a marriage made in GOP heaven.

The cable TV networks, looking for something to balance the terrible news out of the Utah mine today, played it up big time. If the couple goes for a White House wedding, that would make Jenna the first presidential daughter to be married there since Tricia Nixon in 1971. No date has been set yet, but my money is on next summer for a couple of reasons.

First, the weather -- everybody wants good weather, and it's not too often you get a chance at a Rose Garden wedding. Second, and perhaps I'm being too "Roveish" here, but it could give the party a good-feelings bump just before the election and serve to underline a big issue for the GOP -- traditional marriage.

Whatever the date and place, mazel tov!

The White House wedding of Tricia Nixon and Edward Cox on June 12, 1971.

National Archives

1:18 PM ET | 08-17-2007 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

A summer wedding...? In sweltering DC?
That sounds like a new form of torture...!
On second thought...that may be a good way of making all the guests experience the pleasures of 110 degrees in the shade...
Sort of like Iraq, plus the mosquitoes!
A year from now the number of war victims (Iraqi and American) will probably have reached staggering proportions so NOBODY should be in the mood for a celebration.
And a nice, white wedding in the Rose garden while Iraq and Agfhanistan are in chaos would probably highlight what most of us have been sensing for a long time: our President is totally in denial and out of touch with reality

Sent by Alguien | 4:12 PM ET | 08-17-2007

CNN.com placed the wedding story at the top of its homepage as a bright yellow breaking story banner, pre-empting a similar banner stating the Padilla verdict was coming out momentarily. I wonder if that was a hard call for them to make.

Sent by andy carvin | 4:23 PM ET | 08-17-2007

Your sarcasm with respect to the Bush wedding is misplaced and petty. First of all, the fact that the groom is a GOP employee/supporter is irrelevant. If a Kennedy married another far-out lefist, you'd describe that person as an "activist" and leave it at that. With this young man, the GOP aspect of the union is somehow unseemly or at least so very tedious and predictable, I suppose.

Then there is the sarcasm with the word "atwitter." Major events that happen within first families are always of great interest to the public. The prospect of a White House wedding is historic.

Sent by Scott Drury | 10:17 PM ET | 08-18-2007

Just to lighten things up a bit, anyone seen the Robot Chicken episode of Jedi George Bush? It's on Youtube and it's pretty funny. Check out the end when George, as Darth Vader, tells Jenna, as Luke Skywalker, that he's her father.

Sent by John R. Otten | 5:17 PM ET | 08-20-2007

Yes, lightening things up a bit is quite right, Mr. otten.
Don't you hope the wedding is held before she starts to 'show'?

Sent by jack | 11:14 AM ET | 08-27-2007

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