Barbara and Jenna Bush (AP photo) | ZOOM |

        Few people would recognize 19-year-old twins Barbara and Jenna Bush if they met them on the street.

        They did not appear in George W. Bush's campaign ads. They were rarely seen during the campaign.

        If they ever advised their dad on campaign strategy — even if it was something like, wear a teal-striped tie on Inauguration Day so it matches mom's suit — no one would know it.

        From official sources, more details have been released about their dog than about them.

        The Bush family dog, Spot, is an English springer spaniel born March 17, 1989. Spot is the son of Millie, the First Dog of President George and First Lady Barbara Bush. Spot likes to chase tennis balls and used to dive into the governor's garden fountain on hot afternoons. He was named Spot after Texas Rangers Infielder Scott Fletcher. And if you want to know more, his favorite books are still listed at the official George W. Bush Web site (www.governor.state.tx.us) kid's page.

        The public knowledge of the twins is limited to the few details that have been reported about them. The official White House Web site (www.whitehouse.gov) only mentions their first names and it lists their age wrong. In a patchwork of published reports and Web gleanings, the public knows:

        • Barbara and Jenna are fraternal twins — that's why they don't look alike. They were premature and Barbara was born first. Their birthday is Nov. 25 so that makes their sign Sagittarius. They are named after their grandmothers.

        • They grew up in Texas. They went to a public school until the sixth grade when the family moved to Austin because their dad was elected governor. They attended St. Andrews Episcopal School and until ninth grade when they transferred to Austin's downtown public high school where the slogan is “Everybody is somebody at Austin High.”

        • Before the presidential campaign, they are reported to have led fairly normal lives — although you have to wonder about that because they were the daughters of the Texas governor, nieces of the Florida governor, great-granddaughters of a U.S. senator and granddaughters of a former president. They were not constantly escorted or monitored by guards, although the Secret Service did show up for parents' meetings last year at their high school. Their friends had been able to visit them easily.

        But increased security that began with the presidential campaign put an end to some of their freedom. “Their friends can no longer pull in the back driveway of the governor's mansion or just drop in and out,” an aide to Mr. Bush told The New York Times. “That's no fun for teen-age girls and that's been a big change for them.”

        • They have behaved as teen-agers typically do, bowing to the latest pop-cultural fashions. Sometimes remarking on how unfashionable their father was. In interviews with Texas journalists in the past, Mrs. Bush bemoaned that the girl's television-watching habits, at least a few years ago, included Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place and noted that they would sometimes stop their father before he walked out the door, questioning his choice of attire. Supposedly, they share the same favorite musician — Texas country/rock singer Robert Earl Keen.

        • Barbara Pierce Bush, the brunette, was voted “most likely to appear on the cover of Vogue” by her high school classmates. She was homecoming queen and is described as quieter than Jenna, physically resembling her mother, but carrying some of her father's athletic traits. He's an avid baseball fan and a runner; she played softball and ran cross-country. Susan Dell, the Texas designer who made the twins' inaugural gowns, described Barbara's style as “whimsical, trendy, chic.” Now, Barbara is studying at Yale University, the Ivy League college attended by her father, her grandfather and great-grandfather.

        • Jenna Welch Bush, the blonde, is described as “bubbly.” High school classmates voted Jenna as “most likely to trip on prom night.” Jenna wrote quirky features for the student newspaper, The Maroon. She was senior class vice president and a member of student council. A high school classmate, Valerie Turullois, described her as nice, smart and ambitious. Jenna is “a blue-jeans-and-T-shirt kind of gal,” according to designer Susan Dell. “She likes clean and simple elegance.” Jenna, you may recall, is the twin who had an appendectomy on Christmas night and wasn't able to attend the family's December vacation in Florida. Now, Jenna is enrolled at the University of Texas.

        In his autobiography, A Charge to Keep, the president jokes that “because my dad was vice president, there was a lot of interest in the new granddaughters; they held their first press conference two hours after they were born.”

        That's probably the last press conference they gave.

        “We have not ever used them in any of our political ads,” Laura Bush said in an interview published last month in Good Housekeeping magazine. “They've never had to go to any political events. We felt like if we protected them from that, it was more likely they would have a normal life.”

        Given the choice by their parents, the twins have opted out of interviews, press conferences and most photo opportunities. They even decided against going to the polls to vote with their parents in November — the first presidential election in which they were old enough to vote — because they heard the polling place would be swamped with news cameras.

        “It's an informed decision on the girls' part,” Andrew Malcolm, Mrs. Bush's spokesman told USA Today about their avoidance of publicity. They've had plenty of exposure to politics and campaigning - from the very beginning.

        “I think it's just privacy,” their high school principal Tina Juarez told Cox News Service.“They don't want to be recognized everywhere they go.”

        If 19-year-olds can gain information from their parents' experiences, there was a lot these girls could have learned from Dub-yah. After all, his father was the president too.

        When he was beginning to orchestrate his run for Texas governor, George W. Bush wanted to know what voters and the media thought about the children of presidents. Political adviser Douglas Mead prepared a 44-page study on children of presidents that included some grim findings: higher- than-average divorce rates and alcohol problems. The study also detected a poignant yearning of the children to strike out on their own.

        Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University, said that the professional wandering and excessive drinking that marked the years before George W. Bush turned 40 were the difficult part of being the child of a president.

        “If you look at George W., part of the wandering, the youthful indiscretion, the lack of locking in seriousness is because the mountain looked so high,” Mr. Jillson told Cox News Service. “What are you going to do? The guy who has your name has been ambassador to China, head of the CIA. I think some of that early wandering had to do with the pressure.”

        So now that they're in the White House, George and Laura Bush have made it clear they hope reporters will take the same hands-off approach to their children that they have with Chelsea Clinton.

        The press seems to be obliging, except for one glaring exception to the muted coverage: a Dec. 19 photo of Jenna Bush, cigarette in hand, horsing around with another girl who was holding a cigarette and a beer. Headlined, “Get Ready America: Here Comes George W. Bush's Wild Daughter,” it ran in the National Enquirer, a tabloid.

        If the press can keep a distance, Barbara and Jenna can expect to live the next few years in relative anonymity, says Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas.

        “They were given an extraordinary free pass by the media down here,” Mr. Buchanan says. “They have not been the subject of a great lot of attention and neither, for that matter, was Chelsea at the national level. At least recently there's a move toward respecting the privacy of children. If they behave in an appropriately anonymous way, I think at least recent practice suggests they can expect to be left alone.”

        In the Good Housekeeping article, Mrs. Bush talked about her hopes for her girls futures.

        “I hope they will be happy and have loving relationships,” the First Lady says in the story. “There are different types of relationships: with friends, with spouses, with your own children. I want them to have all of those. And I hope they find some sort of job or profession or service they like. I had jobs that were traditionally "women's jobs' — librarian, teacher — but that's really what I had always wanted to do. I hope they have the opportunity to have whatever job they want.”
       This story is a compilation of reports from Enquirer news services — The New York Times, USA Today and Cox News Service — as well as the Web site, www.TwinStuff.com. Other sources are referenced in the article.

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