The former First Lady and mother of the President, Barbara Bush, made a campaign stop in Iowa Wednesday. Barbara Bush said the trip to Des Moines gave her nostalgic feelings back to 1978 when her husband first campaigned for the Iowa caucuses.

She says this is her last visit to the state for a presidential campaign, but promised she wouldn’t “go into a Howard Dean rant or anything.” Bush says though she sometimes would like to go into a rant because of all the bad things that’re said in the newspapers and on tv about her son. She says her husband watches everything and gets made and throws things at the TV. She says she doesn’t watch anything, she just sits back and does her needlepoint and listens to books on tape.

She says parents especially know how really hard it is when someone says something “mean and ugly and very untrue about people you love. Especially when it goes across the air waves and around the world. Sometimes I just want to give people a piece of my mind.” Bush told the audience of several hundred people they shouldn’t believe the bad things that’re said. She says, “most Americans know the president is a strong leader and a honest man. They see how deeply he cares about our country and all the people who live here. They know he’s tough and resolute when he has to be, when he’s dealing with terrorists and people around the world, who I guess hate us. He speaks his mind and sticks to his convictions, but they also know he’s a compansionate person with real empathy for people who’e suffering or need a helping hand. ”

Bush never mention democrat John Kerry by name, but did indirectly refer to the claim that Kerry flip-flops on issues. She says her son tells it like it is. “You can be sure when he tells you something today, he’s not going to tell someone else something else tomorrow.” Bush says that’s what we need in a president, “someone who will stay true to his principals and values, especially in these very troubled times.” Bush says things will get worse in the final days of the campaign. She says as a fellow senior citizen she wants to warn people that they’ll “hear a lot of outrageous things about our son.” She says they’ll be told that the President wants to wreck social security and Medicare. Bush says that’s simply untrue.