America’s first lady, hand over heart, stands on a picture-perfect day with the U.S. flag flapping in the background and — what’s that? — the Eiffel Tower reaching into the sky. Oh, my.

A glowing Laura Bush, an arm extended, dazzles as French President Jacques Chirac kisses her hand to welcome her to the Elysee Palace. What’s she doing in “enemy” territory? Why, marking the United States’ return to UNESCO after Ronald Reagan pulled the plug on U.S. funding for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 19 years ago. My, my.

Mrs. Bush in Moscow for a book festival, with Russia’s first lady Lyudmila Putin looking on, tells Russian children that we should all be free to write what we want and read what we want. Gone unsaid but clearly understood by her hosts is her rebuttal to recent pro-censorship statements and political maneuvers by the former Soviet Union’s spy chief and now president of the “new” Russia, Vladimir Putin. My, my, my.

Laura Bush may be a librarian and a teacher by training and not some policy wonk like her predecessor, Hillary Rodham Clinton. She may seem shy and restrained, and some might even try to paint her as submissive to the Man of the White House. I’m not buying it, and obviously, Bush’s handlers know better, too.

Not since Jackie Kennedy wowed Europe in those too-few days of Camelot has there been a first lady whose grace and charms come so naturally. Nancy Reagan was glamorous in her designer red, but there was a certain defensiveness in her body language that turned off many. Laura’s mother-in-law, Barbara, could be a charmer, in her straight-talking style, but she doesn’t have the softness that Laura exudes.

Then there’s Hillary Clinton. Smart, driven, but often viewed as too hard around the edges. Where Hillary The Doormat had to stoically suffer the dirt of Monicagate after getting stepped on by her man, Laura the Chandelier shines bright in a post Sept. 11 White House too often consumed by secrecy in the name of patriotism.

And so Laura went on her charm offensive last week to Europe, to two nations that are vying to regain their standing in the world: France and Russia. All smiles and soft glow, Laura took on two nations whose leaders have slammed her husband’s pre-emptive war in Iraq and the Bush administration’s quick-draw reaction in the war on terror.

As the president watches his approval numbers go down among the American public, there’s Laura to lighten the load. She’s there to send a signal not only to cynical Europeans who oppose Bush’s sans U.N. pre-emptive Iraqi war, but to a growing skeptical American public, particularly women voters, that her husband can be open to compromise.

In a TV interview, she told the French that “we can have disagreements and remain friends. Our attachment is very emotional.” She talked about her visit with the president to the graves of American soldiers in Normandy last year, and the “intimate and intense” friendship that the two countries have built since World War II.

None of this surprises me. When I met Laura during the 2000 campaign, spending time on one of Bush’s bus tours through Florida, she was comfortable in her skin. No pretense. No jagged edges. She talked about her twin daughters entering college and what that separation would mean. She rolled her eyes as W. mish-mashed his Spanish with a Texas twang. She was, in sum, a real person.

Since The Reckoning of Sept. 11, it’s clear her role as first lady has grown beyond her advocacy for reading. Laura may not know the intricacies of health-care policy or foreign policy, but right now she’s the best diplomatic weapon Bush has — abroad and at home.