PREMIUM SEARCH Search by job title, geography and build a list of executive contacts
As a journalist who cut my teeth on Texas politics, I've known White House counselor extraordinaire Karen Hughes for two decades. Her decision to leave the White House staff surprised me, along with just about everyone else in Washington and the Lone Star State.
Oh, it didn't surprise me that she's homesick for Austin and preferred the laid-back lifestyle of that wonderful city to the phoniness and self-importance of the nation's capital. Heck, I'm still homesick for Austin, even after living inside the Beltway for 18 years now.
It also didn't surprise me that family concerns played a big part in her move. This is one time I believe a political figure who says she's leaving Washington "to spend more time with my family." Usually, that's code for "I got fired," or "I'd better hightail it out of here before the subpoena arrives."
ULTIMATE LOYALIST. Not with Hughes. Her family -- husband Jerry and teenage son Robert -- are a very important part of her life, so much so that she "home-schooled" Robert on the 2000 Bush campaign plane rather than be away from him for 18 months. She certainly wasn't a falling star in the inevitable West Wing machinations: She was at the top of her game.
The shock to people who know Hughes isn't that she would leave Washington but that she would leave the side of George W. Bush. She and Bush have been inseparable since he made the decision to reenter politics in 1993. She's the ultimate loyalist and his most-trusted adviser. He affectionately calls her "The High Prophet," a play on her maiden name, Parfitt.
She's the one person (other than First Lady Laura Bush) who could tell the President when he was full of it. But she did so with the utmost discretion. Because of her intense sense of loyalty, I had thought Hughes would be the last person to leave Bush's White House.
HER CORNERSTONES. I was wrong. But her departure gave me an insight: It sounds corny, but the cornerstones of Hughes's life really are family, faith, and loyalty. Religion was so important to her that she declined to go on the Sunday morning TV talk shows if they interfered with her church attendance.
She came to Washington promising to make the Bush White House "family friendly." She took off early on Wednesdays so she could watch her son's extracurricular activities at St. Albans School for Boys, the upscale private academy whose grads include 2000 Democratic Presidential nominee Al Gore.
I thought Hughes fit into that ambitious group. I first met her when we were young reporters in North Texas: I with the Dallas Times Herald and she with TV station KXAS in Fort Worth. As a reporter, she was intense, intelligent, disciplined, competitive -- and exceptionally good.
A BIG SWITCH. We both covered the 1984 New Hampshire primary, tramping through the snow in pursuit of astronaut-hero John Glenn's fading candidacy. Later that year, Hughes "switched sides," going to work for the Republican Party and its "coordinated campaign" that successfully helped Texas GOP candidates ride Ronald Reagan's coattails into local and state office.
The '84 campaign launched her to the top of the list of Texas consultants. Hughes ended up serving as executive director of the Texas Republican Party under state party Chairman Fred Meyer of Dallas. Meyer, a Bush loyalist from way back who was active in the same North Dallas social circles as the younger Bush, served as a sort of political matchmaker.
From the moment Hughes went to work for Bush, she used the same qualities that made her a superb reporter -- intensity, intelligence, discipline, and competitiveness -- to aid George W.'s bid to unseat popular Democratic Governor Ann W. Richards.
DUBYA'S DOUBLE. She was much more than Bush's handler. She became a close policy adviser and alter ego. At news conferences, she occasionally finished his sentences. When the candidate (and then governor) needed a fact or figure to complete a thought, Hughes, standing against the wall with notepad in hand, always seemed to have an answer handy.
Some reporters uncharitably dubbed her "Bush's brain." When he needed emergency help completing his autobiography during the 2000 campaign, Hughes flew back to Austin and spent more than a month as a ghostwriter. Indeed, she can think and speak so much like her boss that she has been accused of "channeling" him.
Hughes followed Bush to Washington and became the highest-ranking woman in the White House -- indeed in any Administration in American history. But she didn't become part of the Washington social scene. Unlike Karl Rove, her fellow member of the old Texas "Iron Triangle," Hughes only occasionally attended society events.
STUNG BY GOSSIP. She preferred to go home to her family. Really. Friends say Hughes became increasingly disenchanted with Washington's "gotcha" game. She was hurt by published reports that described her as a "control freak." Particularly painful was a story suggesting that she had decided which White House staffers would attend the White House Correspondents Assn.'s 2002 dinner with representatives of which media outlets.
The dinner is a big deal in Washington society. Immediately, Beltway gossips speculated that Hughes was punishing various news organizations for writing tough stories about the President. She said her only involvement was to ensure that the elite publications didn't monopolize all of the most prestigious guests. But, to Hughes, the episode illustrated the bizarre, unreal world she was a part of.
The final decision to return to Austin was prompted by an artificial event -- a May 1 deadline to inform St. Albans whether her son, Robert, would return for the 2002-03 school year. Robert longed to return to his Texas school pals. Husband Jerry, a lawyer who had avoided practicing in Washington to prevent conflict-of-interest accusations, longed to return to his old life -- not to mention his daughter and grandchild, who happen to live in Austin.
"IN MY INNER CIRCLE." Hughes told reporters on Apr. 23 that she, too, was "a little homesick." Watching a youth soccer game on a visit to Austin earlier this month, "I realized that I was missing seeing my friends' children grow up," Hughes said, "and that my son, likewise, was missing the opportunity to go to his friends' homes and be in touch with his friends' parents."
Like the rest of us, President Bush was surprised when his "Counselor" said she wanted to leave the White House staff. The two worked out an arrangement where she would advise him by telephone, with regular trips back to Washington. "Karen Hughes will be changing her address, but she will still be in my inner circle," Bush told the press after Hughes announced her plans. The President noted that "her husband and son will be happier in Texas, and she had put her family ahead of her service to my government."
Such an un-Washington thing to do. Maybe that's why it is so courageous and worthy of plaudits.
Dunham is a White House correspondent for BusinessWeek's Washington bureau. Follow his views every Monday in Washington Watch, only on BusinessWeek Online Edited by Douglas Harbrecht
Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.
Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed.
Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video.
To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here.
Copyright 2002 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Printer-Friendly Version
