Presidential girls enter White House race

UNIVERSITY’S over, their degrees are in the bag and most students in their shoes would be demob-happy at the prospect of a long, lazy summer.

Instead, First Daughters Barbara and Jenna Bush are preparing to enlist for duty with their father’s re-election campaign as he faces off against his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry.

Over on the enemy lines, however, Kerry has already wheeled out two similarly lustrous weapons; daughters Alexandra, 30, and Vanessa, 27. The 2004 US presidential battle, it seems, has finally got glamour - and a touch of female rivalry.

For the 22-year-old Bush twins, it could be an uncomfortable move. Since their father came to power in 2001, they have generally preferred to stay out of the limelight, more often than not only straying into it by default when youthful misadventures and run-ins with the law captured public attention.

But having fiercely defended his girls from the media glare since coming to office, US president George Bush is now looking forward to making his quest for re-election a family affair, perhaps hoping that they will prove as adept at capturing positive headlines for his political drive over the coming months as they have at attracting negative ones during their student years.

First Lady Laura Bush, who has already been out crusading for her husband, has confirmed that Barbara and Jenna will "probably work at campaign headquarters in the Washington suburbs but may go out a bit and campaign for their father if they have the confidence".

"While they’re not very political people, they do want to do something to help their dad out," her spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, added. "Barbara and Jenna have not decided what role they will have on their father’s campaign yet, but they will be volunteering their time."

Mr Bush’s girls will have to fight to grab their share of the media attention. Last week, Alexandra Kerry made a red carpet appearance at the Cannes Film Festival in a revealing dress, sporting neither a bra nor any sign of the media-shyness that has beset the Bush girls.

An anthropology graduate from Brown University in Rhode Island, she is now a small-time movie producer and actress and even has something in common with the Bush twins - a talent for role-acting in bars.

Barbara and Jenna were prosecuted for under-age drinking in May 2001 after posing as over-21s in a Texas drinking establishment; Ms Kerry plays the part of a bartender in a forthcoming screen thriller called Spartan.

Striking the first serious blow in the battle for future First Daughter status, Vanessa Kerry has been doing a little filming too, hitting American televisions this week with a cameo role in a 60-second advert launched as part of a $27.5 million Kerry campaign blitz.

The advert features the blue-eyed Harvard medical student, who has put her studies on hold to work on her father’s campaign, lauding his ability to "fight for the things that matter".

But the chances of the Bush girls taking to the airwaves or the soapboxes in support of their dad are slim.

"We have not ever used them in any of our political ads," their mother told Good Housekeeping magazine the year after the 2000 election. "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."

Now, however, they are rumoured to be preparing for their first sit-down interview with Vanity Fair magazine - almost, but not quite, fulfilling a prediction by Barbara’s classmates three years ago that, of all the girls in the school, she was "the most likely to appear on the cover of Vogue".