After eight years of Hillary Clinton in the White House - eight years of a modern woman and competent lawyer who was as interested in public policy as her husband - America is preparing to meet Laura Bush as First Lady. It is not possible to imagine two more different figures.

Comparing them is impossible. "It's like oil and water," said former First Lady and mother-in-law Barbara Bush.

Historian Gil Troy, author of a book entitled Mr and Mrs President: From the Trumans to the Clintons, told the New York Times last week: "Of all the First Ladies, Laura Bush is most like Mamie Eisenhower in that she will resolutely in public refuse to be interested at all in wielding power in any way. Like Mamie, you'll get that traditional, reassuring feminine presence."

While Mrs Bush's Texas friends do not liken her to Mrs Eisenhower, a prototypical woman of 1950s America, they do describe a shy woman who pretty much follows her husband's needs and wishes. They also describe a detail-oriented perfectionist who craves order and cleans and scrubs her house in order to "release energy".

Mrs Bush's Texas-based clothes designer says she arranges her shoes, in their original boxes, according to colour. She arranges her personal library according to the Dewey Decimal System, possibly not such a strange trait for a former librarian and schoolteacher. She keeps her record collection of 33 and 45 rpm records in dust-free containers.

Last July, in an interview with the New York Times, Mrs Bush told a reporter she was most definitely not offering voters a two-for-one deal, as the Clintons often characterised themselves.

"I'm not running for office. George is. I don't really even want to talk about issues that much," said Mrs Bush. "I'm not that knowledgeable about most issues. I know about education. But, you know, most other issues I don't know that much about. And just to put in my two cents - I don't think it's really necessary."

Laura and George were in grade (primary) school in the same class when both were about 12 years old, but neither has much memory of the other at the time. Laura's father, Harold Welch, was a builder, and her mother his book-keeper. Neither parent attended university, but they were eager for their daughter to do so.

Her childhood and school years were uneventful with one exception. At 17 she drove through a stop sign and collided with another car. Its occupant was a young man who happened to be a close friend. He was killed.

No charges were ever filed against Laura. Her only public comment on the incident was that it was a "terrible, terrible thing".

In contrast to her husband, who is not known as a great reader and who is generously described as "incurious", Mrs Bush is an avid reader. She took special classes on Greek tragedies and on the writer William Faulkner.

Asked to describe her favourite book, she has cited a passage from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, the chapter entitled "Grand Inquisitor". Many have found the passage, which is a dialogue between Jesus Christ and the Inquisitor and results in two different endings, fascinating in its ambiguity. Not so Mrs Bush.

"It's about life, and it's about death, and it's about Jesus Christ,' she told the New York Times. "I find it really reassuring."

She is not entirely without spirit. For both her 40th and 50th birthdays she went white-water river rafting with her woman friends, who included a Democratic State Senator and a midwife from San Francisco.

And there is more. For those who hope for a presidency rooted in the 21st and not the 19th century, for those who hope for a First Lady able to wield at least some influence, there is this: aboard a campaign plane several months ago George, not known for his humility, began to drone on just that much too long for listeners.

Laura piped up: "Rein it in, Bubba."