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Trusted Adviser's Memoir Lifts Curtain a Bit
By ELISABETH BUMILLER - NYT
WASHINGTON, March 31 — Karen P. Hughes has always been the personification of the good-news Bush White House, the presidential adviser who tried to turn every loss into political gold. In Ms. Hughes's world, George Bush's trouncing by Senator John McCain in the New Hampshire primary in 2000 showed his graciousness in defeat.
By the time Mr. Bush arrived at the White House, the happy staff never disagreed.
What is surprising, then, is that Ms. Hughes, in a new memoir and in an interview on Tuesday in Midtown Manhattan, made clear that things were not quite so smooth. The president, her adored boss, could be impatient and short tempered. She and Karl Rove, the powerful political adviser, had arguments. And she and the White House were slow to react to Democratic accusations that the president shirked some of his National Guard duty in the 1970's.
"There are comments that there's not enough disagreement in the White House," Ms. Hughes said, cheerfully as ever, over a lunch of chicken livers. "Well, there's plenty of argument. There are plenty of disagreements."
Ms. Hughes cited a dispute she had with Mr. Rove in 2002 over how the president should sign a bitterly fought bill to overhaul campaign finances. As Ms. Hughes recounts in her book, "Ten Minutes From Normal" (Viking Press), she wanted a public signing that would let Mr. Bush embrace a sponsor of the bill, Mr. McCain, and "not allow the pettiness that had dominated the debate on Capitol Hill to spill onto him."
Mr. Rove hated the bill, a ban on large soft-money donations to the parties, and he argued that signing it publicly "would be the biggest mistake we ever made," Ms. Hughes wrote. Mr. Bush ultimately sided with Mr. Rove and signed the bill without ceremony. He then immediately undermined its intent by leaving for what his critics said was a strikingly cynical fund-raising trip that collected $4 million for Republicans in two days.
Ms. Hughes continues to say she was right, at least "in terms of public perception."
Of course, no one should confuse "Ten Minutes From Normal" with another White House memoir, "Against All Enemies" by Richard A. Clarke, who says Mr. Bush ignored warnings on terrorism before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Ms. Hughes's book, which hits bookstores this week in a blaze of publicity, is an antidote for a White House reeling from Mr. Clarke's accusations.
Mr. Bush, Ms. Hughes writes in a typical passage, "was such a decent and thoughtful person, a person I would trust to make a decision for my own son or husband if I couldn't, because I knew he would listen, think it through and do the right thing."
He was also the boss. When Mr. Bush first arrived in Washington from Texas as president-elect, Ms. Hughes accompanied him on the Air Force plane with her cat and her golden retriever, who traveled in the passenger cabin because there was no pressurized hold.
"I couldn't help but think what the Air Force crew must be thinking," Ms. Hughes wrote. "These Texans, bringing along everything but the chickens and goats."
Ms. Hughes, 47, will go on a 16-city book tour, in effect a campaign trip for her boss, talking about her passage as the presidential aide who left to spend more time with her family and made it work as the woman who advised the president from home in Austin, Tex. She will begin traveling with Mr. Bush in mid-August, when she will receive a $15,000-a-month salary from his campaign.
Her base will be in Texas, not Washington, a city she never liked. Even though there is a book party for her on Thursday here at the St. Regis Hotel, she understands the nature of political fame in a crowded room two blocks from the White House.
"When people came up to me in Washington to talk to me, they would by and large talk to me and ignore my husband," Ms. Hughes said. "In Texas, if I'm in the grocery store and somebody recognizes me, they almost always introduce themselves to my husband, too."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
