The White House is expected to provide the sumptuous setting for its first wedding in nearly 40 years, after the announcement last night that Jenna Bush was engaged to a Republican scion.

Ms Bush, one of President Bush’s 25-year-old twins, is to marry Henry Hager, 28, a Republican whom she met while they were both working on the 2004 reelection campaign.

Mr Hager’s Republican credentials are impeccable. As well as once working for Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s chief strategist who announced his resignation this week, he is the son of John H. Hager, Virginia’s former lieutenant governor and currently a US Assistant Secretary of Education. He also has the requisite good looks to become a presidential son-in-law. Barbara Bush, Jenna’s twin, is not married.

Jenna gained a wild reputation in her teens and was twice arrested for underage drinking. On April 29, 2001 she was charged with a misdemeanour of being a minor in possession of alcohol in Austin, Texas. On May 29, 2001, she was charged with another misdemeanour — attempting to use a fake identity (with the name “Barbara Pierce”, her paternal grandmother’s maiden name) to purchase alcohol. Her antics spawned the name of a new drink: a “Jenna tonic”.

She did not help matters during the 2004 reelection campaign when, at one of her first public events, she stuck her tongue out at a gaggle of press photographers — an image that was beamed around the world within minutes.

She is now a qualified teacher and her progress from party animal to committed activist appears complete with the imminent publication of her first book, Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope. The book traces the life of a 17-year-old Panamanian girl with HIV-Aids whom Miss Bush befriended while she was working with Unicef in Latin America. The book will begin selling with an initial print run of 500,000 copies.

Miss Bush and Mr Hager got engaged in Maine, and no wedding date has been set. If she wants a White House wedding, she will have to tie the knot before Mr Bush moves out on January 20, 2009.

Mr Hager is due to return to the Darden School of Business at University of Virginia to complete his master’s degree.

The other First Twin, Barbara, graduated from Yale University with a degree in humanities. She lives in Greenwich Village and works with a Smithsonian museum in New York, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Before that she worked with patients with Aids-related diseases in Tanzania, South Africa and Botswana.

The twins made several high-profile appearances on behalf of their father during his campaign in 2004, including an excruciating attempt at comedy at the Republican National Convention in New York. It was later rum-oured that Karen Hughes, a former leading White House aide for Mr Bush, had written their routine.

Mr Hager has been dating Jenna for several years, and is often seen with her at Bush family functions and formal events, such as a White House dinner in November 2005 in honour of the Prince of Wales and his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. A gossip item in the Washington Post headlined “Don’t worry Daddy, he’s a Republican” quoted a Bush adviser in 2005 as saying of Hager: “He’s a nice guy, a smart guy, an ambitious guy.”

House Weddings

— James Madison’s daughter Maria (1820)

— Ulysses S. Grant’s daughter Nellie (1874)

— Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice (1906)

— Woodrow Wilson’s daughter Eleanor (1914)

— Lyndon Johnson’s daughter Lynda (1967)

— Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia (1971)

— President Grover Cleveland, married Frances Folsom in 1886

Source: Times archive

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