Tug of War, Part 2

Ten Minutes from Normal
by Karen Hughes

(Page 3 of 4)

I understood how torn he felt. My own feelings were mixed, and partly selfish. I thought George Bush would be a wonderful president - I also thought he was too decent a person to wish the presidency on him. National politics seemed cutthroat, meaner, more venal and self-serving than politics at the state level, even in the rough and tumble of Texas. "The process doesn't seem very Christian," I said to him once, worried about entering an environment whose values were so different from mine.

"The process isn't Christian, but it's important for Christians to be involved in the process," he retorted, making it clear he had thought about this, too, and concluded it was important for - people to get involved in the political process to serve their community or country. But the cost of the presidency, in the loss of any private life, in the strain on your family, in the punishing criticism that would inevitably come, seemed to me so high that many times, I secretly hoped he would decide not to run.

Yet my reluctance was born not just of my concern for him and his family. I was worried about my own family, and myself. I liked my life in Texas. Throughout his years as governor, I had been able to balance my roles at the office and at home. I had an interesting, challenging job, yet I took my son to school most mornings and made it home for dinner most nights. We lived in a community where we knew other families, coached youth sports and had great friends we enjoyed. Jerry loved the courses he was taking at the Presbyterian seminary; I swam laps at a neighborhood pool and taught Sunday school at church. My nice routines would be upended, and how could I possibly be a good wife and mother to Robert while traveling the country on something as intense as a presidential campaign?

You love him more than anything, don't you?" George W. Bush had asked me on that day in the fall of 1993, as he looked at Robert's picture on the credenza behind my desk at the state headquarters of the Republican Party of Texas where I was the executive director. George W. Bush had come to my office to file the formal papers to become a Republican candidate for governor of Texas. I knew quite a bit about him, but didn't really know him then. We had met a few times at Republican events, and I had worked with him briefly at the state convention several years before, but I had seen him primarily on television and in the newspaper promoting Texas Rangers baseball and the team's new ballpark.

"I do," I said, meaning that I love my son more than anything, somewhat taken aback by the sudden intimacy of the question from a relative stranger. Most people would have said something far more generic: "Is that your son? How old is he? What a good-looking boy." Not George Bush. He went straight to the heart.

"He's more important than anything else in this world," he said.

"He is," I said, nodding, feeling strangely tongue-tied, wondering if this man could read my mind or whether he was talking about his own children as much as mine.

My longtime boss, the party chairman, invited everyone to sit for a few minutes, and we talked about the campaign ahead. George W. Bush felt the way to beat then-governor Ann Richards was by articulating their profound differences on issues and philosophy.

"I will treat her with respect," he said, "but on issues from schools to welfare to juvenile crime, she is stuck in a status quo that isn't working. Too many kids are trapped in schools where they aren't learning; we're sending juveniles the wrong signal by giving them a slap on the wrist when they commit serious crimes; we're creating a culture of dependency with welfare, but she - hasn't said a thing about it even though some national Democrats are beginning to admit the need for reform. The way to win is to talk about the issues, not about her," he said.

I couldn't have agreed more. For the previous two years at the Republican Party, I had been trying to build a case with the media that although Ann Richards was personally popular, her philosophy and policies were ineffective and out of step with the views of most Texans.

I had joined George W. Bush's campaign for governor later that year, and had stayed with him for all six years in the Texas governor's office, some of the best years of my life and career. But my satisfying routines changed abruptly during the presidential campaign and at the White House. I was away from home most of the time; when I was there, I was often worn out from the incredible intensity, long hours and grueling travel. Despite the privilege and challenge of serving the president and my country, my once-vague unease about how busy I would be, and how my family might react to being uprooted from Texas, had now become a piercing, daily anguish. My colleague Mary Matalin and I talked about it almost every day, the agonizing tug-of-war between career and family. I felt trapped between what was best for my family and what was best for my boss, who now had the most difficult and demanding job in the world.

The Sunday before I first broached the possibility of moving home with my husband, our minister at National Presbyterian Church, Craig Barnes, had preached a sermon on freedom: "Our goals are good, but in the reckless pursuit of them we don't see how many people we hurt along the way. Some of us just wanted to climb up the ladder at work, but our families paid for our success with hurt." I didn't think I had recklessly pushed my way up the ladder, but I had found myself on a pretty high rung, and I knew it had put my family in a difficult place. I had been praying for guidance, and now Craig Barnes seemed to offer it: "We keep asking God to tell us His will," he said. "Should I turn left or right in life? Take this job or that job? Stay single or marry? Move or stay put? I wonder if sometimes when the risen Christ hears those prayers He -doesn't shrug His shoulders and say, 'You know, we have the big stuff taken care of now. You are forgiven and freed. So take responsibility for your freedom, make a choice, and surprise Me.'" Maybe I didn't need to be in a place where I felt trapped between my responsibilities to my job and my family, the sermon reminded me. I didn't have to feel guilty, or obligated. I was free to make a different choice.

After months of accepting my husband's reassurance that we would reassess after next year, after Robert finished tenth grade, I questioned the logic that waiting another year would somehow change our circumstances. "If we stay here for another whole school year, we will have been gone for two and a half years. Robert will be totally disconnected from his life in Texas. His friends will have changed and moved on. He won't really know anybody anymore, so he'll have a hard time fitting in back there, and I don't see much prospect of things getting better here. Maybe we should just move home this summer."

Surprise, and relief, competed for space on my husband's face. "What about the president? Can you really leave the White House this soon?" Jerry asked skeptically.

"A lot of people do," I said, my words far more certain than my emotions. Mary Matalin remembers that I had been shocked when months before in the White House gym she had first talked about leaving her job. "You mean you don't have to stay all four years?" I had asked her that day.

"I'm not going to; most people don't," she had said.

Our chief of staff, Andy Card, reinforced that observation - and caused unfounded speculation that he was perhaps leaving - when he said the same thing in an interview at about the same time.

"Remember that interview Andy Card did?" I reminded my husband. "He said the average time people serve at the White House is eighteen months. If we leave this summer, I will have been there eighteen months."

"That wasn't senior people, though, was it?" Jerry asked.

"I don't know; I think it was an average - everybody," I replied. "And Mary said she had never planned to stay the whole time."

The words, and questions, started coming faster then, my willingness to talk about walking away from my job the can opener that released the pent-up pressure into the air with a sudden rush. Was it really possible? How would the president react? Who could do my job? How could I leave while we were in the midst of a war? I reminded my husband that the president himself had said we were going to be at war against terror for the foreseeable future, throughout his presidency and probably for the next several administrations. "By that time, Robert will be gone, graduated from college, living on his own, and I will have missed his last years at home because I spent most of my time at the office."

"What about Margaret's house?" We had rented the house we were living in from my friend Margaret Tutwiler when she had moved to Morocco to serve as our ambassador there. How could we leave her stuck without a tenant when she was thousands of miles away?

© 2004 Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

About the Author

Karen Hughes has been described as "the most powerful woman ever to serve in the White House" (Dallas Morning News) and President George W. Bush's "most essential advisor" (ABC News). "The rule of thumb in any White House is that nobody is indispensable except the president," said The New York Times, But Karen Hughes has come as close to that description as any recent presidential aide."