Tug of War, Part 3

Ten Minutes from Normal
by Karen Hughes

(Page 4 of 4)

Jerry, always objective, even argued the positive. "Another year at this school and Robert will have the foundation to go to any college he wants to," he said, referring to St. Albans, the top Episcopal all-boys school our son had chosen to attend in Washington. "I would really like him to have another year of these academics, and then he would have a foundation for life," he said. Jerry is a former school board member who worries that the public schools too often direct more effort toward creating an inflated sense of self-esteem than they do requiring genuine academic achievement from their students.

"But at the price of being happy?" I asked. "Robert is a good student; he'll succeed anywhere. His school in Texas was pretty good. We both went to public schools; we didn't go to Ivy League colleges. Remember what you always say: you went to Texas; I went to SMU; and we've done all right in life. We know he isn't happy, and I don't think another year will make it any better. Maybe we should just move home this summer," I said, becoming more and more convinced each time I said it out loud.

I was, of course, the only one who could really make the decision to leave. We had moved to Washington because of me, or more accurately, because my boss had been elected president of the United States. As my son had so plaintively put it on one of the rare occasions when he expressed his unhappiness in words: "I don't like it here; Dad doesn't like it here; even the dog -doesn't like it here . . . and it's all because of you."

We had talked about it in advance, of course. After the nightmare of the Florida recount, after it was finally, painstakingly clear that George W. Bush was going to become the president, Jerry, Robert and I had had a family discussion and agreed to move to Washington. But the conversation had been perfunctory. We had all realized long before that if the campaign was successful, our life would change dramatically, and I would have to go to Washington. After traveling around the country with him for two years, after being an instrumental part of his team, I couldn't just wish the president well and send him off with a "So long; it's been fun. Good luck." I could have left my family in Texas and commuted, but I didn't think I could stand seeing them only every other weekend.

Jerry had been unequivocal: commuting was not an option. "We've been apart enough during the campaign," he said, "we're all going." Robert was cautious. I knew he didn't want to leave his friends, but he didn't really protest the move. It was exciting for a teenager to know the man who was about to become the president, and Robert had become a part of the team, too, after traveling all fall on the campaign airplane with us. He loved President and Mrs. Bush; we all did. Our friend had been elected to the hardest job in the world, and we could not conceive that our family would not do everything possible to support him.

It was hard to think about my family in a totally separate context from President and Mrs. Bush. I could trace much of our family's life and my son's growth through pictures of various special occasions with them. There's Robert, only five years old, a shy smile on his face, in front of the spring flowers at the governor's mansion after the annual Capitol 10,000 run/walk. There's Robert and a friend dressed up for Halloween - Robert in a baseball uniform, his friend Kemper wearing a President Clinton mask his mother had thought was a great joke - sitting on the front porch with Governor Bush. There's Robert with Jenna and Barbara Bush in front of the lighthouse on Matagorda Island, during the trip we took with the Bush family to encourage Texas families to visit Texas parks. Robert's changing height is measured in the annual family pictures in front of the Christmas tree in the living room of the governor's mansion. And the thoughtful invitations continued when we moved to Washington, as President and Mrs. Bush included their staff and cabinet members and all our families in so many special occasions. Robert, Jerry and I had been to private movie screenings at the White House. We had had Thanksgiving dinner with President and Mrs. Bush and Karl, Darby and Andrew Rove and Condi Rice at Camp David. We had flown to Texas after Christmas and for Easter weekend on Air Force One with President and Mrs. Bush. Yet after being so closely intertwined for so long, after fifteen months in Washington, the best interests of my family and my boss were clearly colliding.

I could no longer drive Robert to school in the mornings, as I had enjoyed doing for years, because I would miss the senior staff meeting at the White House. Jerry had to do almost all of the grocery shopping, a fate from which I had rescued him years before. When Jerry and I first met, the chore he hated most was going to the grocery store at the end of a long day, after picking up Leigh from day care. I actually enjoy shopping, but I was so busy in Washington that I only made it to the grocery store about three times. Once, I had been interrupted by a conference call. I couldn't help but wonder what my fellow shoppers would think if they knew the woman squeezing tomatoes in the produce section was on the phone with Colin Powell and Don Rumsfeld and Condi Rice, helping them prepare for the Sunday talk shows.

My work at the White House was challenging, fascinating. I was exploring a whole new world. Working for state government in Texas, I had dealt with education and criminal justice and health care and the environment, a wide range of domestic issues. But the only foreign policy we dealt with was Mexico - and Oklahoma, I used to joke. Thanks to Condi Rice, who had included me on the U.S. delegations for our foreign trips, I was meeting foreign leaders, visiting their countries, learning the nuances of American foreign policy. I had watched in Slovenia as the president of the United States met the president of Russia for the first time. I had walked on the Great Wall of China, stood at the DMZ in South Korea, and visited the palace of Their Majesties, Empress Michiko and Emperor Akihito, the 125th in an unbroken line of rulers of Japan. I had watched from inside the Kremlin as President Bush and President Putin signed an agreement dramatically reducing nuclear weapons. I had met the pope at his summer residence and had lunch with the queen at Buckingham Palace. I had worked on historic speeches about some of the most complex issues of our time, from the moral ramifications of stem cell research to advancing peace in the Middle East.

And the attacks of September 11 had given me a vast new communications challenge. Before that day, I was primarily concerned with communicating the president's policies to the American people. Now I was in charge of helping the president communicate during a global war against a diffuse and dramatically different enemy to people both at home and across the globe, many of whom clearly didn't seem to like us very much. We dispatched members of my staff to Islamabad and London to set up new information centers. I was increasingly convinced that our country would never win the war against terror as long as little boys and girls across the world grew up hating America. And the plight of the women and little girls of Afghanistan had touched me. I wanted to do everything I could to help them regain the dignity and the opportunities that had been stolen from them during the years of the Taliban. Yet as important as I thought the work ahead was to our country and our future, I also found myself longing to pick my son up from school, to make sure I was there when he needed me, which I was learning was even harder with a teenager than it had been with a toddler. I found myself longing to be rested enough to want to go out to dinner with my husband or get together with friends.

I didn't make a decision the night Jerry and I first talked about moving home; I agonized for weeks. And when I finally made up my mind, I realized the seeds had been planted long before, by parents who had taught me that faith and family matter most in life. Once again, as I had when I had left reporting for my first political campaign almost twenty years earlier, I found myself yearning for a life that was a little more normal.

© 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."