Laura Bush: It's OK, Teresa

Laura Bush said Thursday that Teresa Heinz Kerry didn't need to apologize for saying she couldn't remember whether the first lady had ever had "a real job."

"She apologized but she didn't even really need to apologize," Mrs. Bush told reporters at a coffee shop before attending a rally in Lebanon for President Bush. "I know how tough it is and actually I know those trick questions."

USA Today had asked Heinz Kerry, the wife of Democratic candidate John Kerry, if she would be different from Mrs. Bush as a first lady.

"Well, you know, I don't know Laura Bush. But she seems to be calm, and she has a sparkle in her eye, which is good," Heinz Kerry said in the interview published Wednesday. "But I don't know that she's ever had a real job -- I mean, since she's been grown up. So her experience and her validation comes from important things, but different things."

Heinz Kerry later said she had forgotten that Mrs. Bush had worked as a teacher and librarian. "There couldn't be a more important job than teaching our children," she said in a statement. "As someone who has been both a full-time mom and full-time in work force, I know we all have valuable experiences that shape who we are. I appreciate and honor Mrs. Bush's service to the country as first lady and am sincerely sorry I had not remembered her important work in the past."

Bush adviser Karen Hughes later criticized Heinz Kerry twice -- first for remarks "indicative of an unfortunate mind-set that seeks to divide women based on who works at home and who works outside the home" and later for an apology she called "worse because she left out the very important real job of a mother."

Mrs. Bush was spending her day in New Hampshire with daughter Jenna Bush, on a campaign bus tour. At the Lebanon rally, she sounded off on the dominant themes of her husband's reelection campaign -- No Child Left Behind, tax cuts, the war on terror, health care and the economy.

She also tackled a controversial issue -- stem cell research.

Without naming anyone, Mrs. Bush said "some people" were misinterpreting her husband's stance on stem cell research.

"The president looks forward to medical breakthroughs that may arrive through stem cell research. You might not realize this, because people try to distort his record," she said.

"My father died of Alzheimer's disease, and I share the president's eagerness to find a cure for this devastating disease," she said.

She added, "The truth is George Bush is the first president to invest federal money in stem cell research."

Bush, however, signed an executive order in 2001 limiting federal research money to embryonic stem-cell lines then in existence, to ensure government does not support future production of embryos for research purposes. Kerry said he would reverse Bush's restrictions, ensuring unspecified ethical standards are followed through "good will and good sense."

In an election in which candidates' spouses have campaigned nearly as intensely as the candidates themselves, aides called the first lady's tour of New Hampshire -- a battleground state with four electoral votes -- her first and only solo bus tour of the presidential campaign. On Monday, Heinz Kerry visited New Hampshire, greeting students at the University of New Hampshire and speaking about the environment in Rye.

At a "W stands for Women" rally at Hopkinton Town Hall, Mrs. Bush was preceded by Sept. 11 widow Cheryl McGuinness, whose husband, Tom McGuinness, was the co-pilot of American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center.

"President Bush led us as a nation in our climb out of the devastation of September 11th. That horrific tragedy brought us together as a nation. The terrorists didn't win that day. Yes, they did bring us to our knees, but we were on our knees before God," McGuinness said.

Jenna Bush introduced her mother, calling her "a powerful voice to women all around the world." She highlighted the intensity of the campaign, drawing on a familiar anecdote about her mother's former reluctance for politics: "She made him promise that she would never have to give a speech. He agreed and three months later they were married," she said.

"This month alone she will give 30 political speeches."

Democrats took issue with the name of the rally, saying it "masks the reality of Bush's years in office."

"Bush has turned his back on women in the workplace, in their doctor's office, in hospitals, and through government programs," said New Hampshire Women for Kerry Chair Perry Williamson. "President Bush opposes equal pay legislation, while women's salaries are still only 76 percent of those earned by men."

By Beverley Wang