Politically Corrected
Chavez, Linda
The call inviting me to Austin came on New Year's Eve 2000. Clay Johnson, the head of president-elect George W. Bush's transition office, reached me at my Washington office, where I was dutifully...
...We've found our candidate," I announced...
...By 1993, when Zoe Baird, President Clinton's first nominee for attorney general, revealed that she employed an illegal alien couple as a nanny and driver, the anti-immigrant backlash had reached fever pitch, and the revelation doomed her nomination...
...At nine-thirty the following morning, January 2, I wentdownstairs to meet the driver who would take me to the governor's mansion...
...Jenna, one of the Bushes' eighteen-year-old twins, had undergone an emergency appendectomy on Christmas and was recuperating in Texas...
...So who got Transportation...
...It was only about seven-thirty...
...Marta had come to me needing a place to live, and I'd obliged, assuming it would be for a short time...
...he interrupted before I could get out the rest of my thanks...
...Johnson was busy on his daily conference call with Rove and other staffers in Austin, so I waited about half an hour before his secretary, Brooke Vosburgh, who had worked with me in the Reagan White House, ushered me in...
...No, actually, Energy," Abraham beamed back...
...I drew a blank...
...He moved on to more questions, now turning to the politics of appointments...
...But allowing an illegal alien to live in my home was a potential political problem...
...Well, I don't have to volunteer anything...
...Does that mean you accept...
...And indeed I was...
...How's your daughter doing...
...Gore's behavior had been objectionable during the election—inciting class hatred, race baiting, and scaring seniors into thinking that Bush would take away Social Security...
...On top of that my seventy-nine-year-old mother was due in from Albuquerque, arriving at Baltimore-Washington International Airport...
...She was eager to help and called Dave Hoppe, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's chief of staff...
...I had given Vietnamese refugees, out-of-work friends and relatives, and neglected children a place to live, sometimes for several weeks or months, much as I had been helped by friends and relatives as a child...
...We pulled into the underground parking lot next to the hotel, where another young man with a walkie-talkie pointed to an empty lane...
...Fielding's office was right next to mine on the second floor of the West Wing when I was President Reagan's director of public liaison...
...Bush signaled that the interview was over by telling me he was going to appoint three additional cabinet members in a few hours: Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson as secretary of health and human services, Houston school superintendent Rod Paige as secretary of education, and Gale Norton, former attorney general of Colorado, to be secretary of the interior...
...If I don't tell them, they're likely to find out anyway," I said...
...But for the moment, I was on top of the world...
...Can you come to Austin tomorrow evening...
...Two staunch conservatives and a moderate Democrat...
...If you felt it necessary to go public about Marta, I probably won't pursue the job...
...Now he was part of the driving pool, hoping to end up in the administration come January 20...
...But it would be helpful if you'd send me copies of all your articles...
...When Fielding asked me directly about any "nanny problems," I explained that my oldest son, born in 1968, didn't have a nanny...
...None of this constituted a violation of the law...
...You go ahead...
...I'm just a couple of blocks from the Madison," I told her...
...Before joining the Reagan administration, however, I had worked in the labor movement for nine years...
...Nonetheless, in my mind the Baird situation—and that of another Clinton nominee, Kimba Woods—was not analogous to mine...
...The Associated Press carried the first story naming me in a list of candidates for labor secretary, and the story bore a Texas dateline...
...So who's your likely opposition, and what will they say about you...
...If anything could foil my nomination, surely it was hidden somewhere in the hundreds of articles I'd written over the past decade and a half...
...What are you going to wear...
...How about H-2As—is that a Labor Department program...
...I was genuinely surprised at the Norton nomination...
...Indeed I did...
...On the following Monday, December 18, I flew to San Francisco for a board of directors meeting for ABM Industries, where I serve as a director...
...Yeah, the vice president-elect used to belong to one of those unions, as I recall," Bush smiled...
...As I was cooking dinner Thursday evening, the phone rang...
...Bush was clearly genuine in his efforts to break down barriers, a trait that he carried over to his new job as president...
...And what better position existed to accomplish these objectives than secretary of labor...
...For most of that time, I was editor of the quarterly magazine of the American Federation of Teachers, American Educator, where I had been given almost free rein by AFT president Albert Shanker to produce a journal of ideas...
...I did all the household cooking, but she chipped in to help around the house, as any long-term guest would, especially when I went out of town...
...I went back to my office and sent Rove a brief note...
...But she was regarded as "soft" on affirmative action, so I was pleasantly surprised when she seemed ready to help...
...And the FBI will do a background check...
...I'm thrilled...
...I'd like you to help me fill in the blanks...
...Hey, Bill," I yelled...
...I pulled into the parking lot of the transition team's nondescript suburban office building around six-thirtyan hour and a half late...
...He will be president legally...
...We talked briefly about his political ambitions too...
...We need you to do this as quickly as possible...
...He had dearly been putting in sixteen-hour days...
...Why was I so acerbic...
...I noticed that Bush's cabinet announcements were following a pattern...
...You're going to fight labor on policy...
...We talked for nearly an hour, and then I looked at my watch...
...And will that give us enough time...
...The television was tuned to one of the morning shows...
...Portman asked...
...Held a union card for years," Cheney noted...
...I knew the book well, since both Magnet and I had worked at the Manhattan Institute, a libertarian-leaning New York think tank, in the early 1990s...
...he asked...
...It's cold out there...
...I've got to pick up my mother at the airport," I apologized...
...I think I may have a problem," I told Chris, as we lay awake talking about my conversation with Clay Johnson...
...As we stopped at a traffic light at Connecticut and H Streets, just a couple of blocks from the White House, Bill Bennett crossed the intersection...
...Your meeting with the president-elect and vice president-elect tomorrow morning has to be pushed back to nine o'clock...
...Bush's question seemed a little out of left field, but perhaps with the civil rights, feminist, and labor lobbies against me, he figured he didn't need yet another interest group riled up to oppose me...
...Over the next few days, I continued to talk to labor officials, including the presidents of the bricklayers and operating engineers unions, who were more receptive to my views on affirmative action and other social issues, if not on economic issues...
...But he does not have moral authority, because his crown did not come from the people...
...He also spoke of the power of the bully pulpit, the need for clear moral direction, and the failure of leadership from Washington during the Clinton years...
...We've got a way to whisk folks into the garage and up the service entrance so the press doesn't get a look at who's coming in...
...He discussed with passion the plight of the black family in America and the problem of rising out-of-wedlock birthrates among all racial groups, voicing concern about the growing number of births to Hispanic teenagers as well...
...Portman suggested that I e-mail him instead and gave me Rove's private e-mail address...
...His first questions were general, similar to Johnson's...
...When Sweeney called back a few minutes later, the conversation was brief but congenial, at least on Bush's end...
...my mother asked...
...By grouping nominees in this way, he gave the press less ammunition to pigeonhole him as a right-winger...
...It sounded almost as if she considered Marta a commodity, but I went on anyway...
...I decided not to stick around my deserted office, which was closed for the holidays...
...Within a week, we would both break our promises...
...And my failure to raise the issue with Fielding would later prove my undoing...
...But I didn't bring up Marta...
...Within hours he wrote back: "Some folks have raised questions about things you've written, and I've answered them as best I could...
...This guy's a genius with numbers," he told me after Hawkins left...
...His tone of voice was more respectful than friendly...
...A big snowstorm hit Washington that afternoon, my flight was late, and the drive to the transition office in McLean was torturously slow...
...fs...
...I don't favor including gays under the federal civil rights laws, but not because I have any problems with hiring gays," I added...
...She certainly didn't fit the category of nanny...
...It's time to move to the next step," he said...
...Bush reached out and gave me a quick hug and peck on the cheek...
...I combined a tough-minded, free-market attitude on labor issues with an insider's understanding of how unions operate...
...I'm going to announce three more appointments this afternoon...
...But I think you're going to be the hard one...
...Her breakneck speed took my breath away...
...And I promise not to give up, no matter how hard it gets," I answered, feeling emotion welling up inside me...
...Why don't you get Sweeney on the phone right now...
...You haven't done any gay bashing in your column, have you...
...I outlined a brief history, trying to include relevant facts without overloading him with details he probably didn't want to hear...
...No one had called me about any meeting, but I decided not to let on that I had no idea what she was talking about...
...It wasn't just Gore and the Democratic Party that infuriated me, however...
...I've already booked your return...
...Where will you be at eight-thirty...
...she asked...
...My younger sons were teenagers when Marta began living with us, and I worked exclusively at home at the time, so I had no need of a nanny...
...resident, but I'd lost track of her again when she changed phone numbers...
...I first met George W. Bush in the Texas governor's office in June 1998...
...David dropped me off and waited at Border's Books nearby...
...Although she had returned to Guatemala after living with me, I knew she was back in the United States—she had come by to visit a few years later, with a new baby boy...
...He wants to meet with you one more time...
...But no one in the transition office could find a record of the call, so I got Sandy Feldman's assistant to give me the date, which I passed on to Rove...
...In addition to Labor, I'm naming Spence Abraham as secretary of energy and Norm Mineta to head Transportation:' An Arab American, a Japanese American, and a Mexican American...
...I got out and waited in the cold for several minutes before someone led me into the mansion...
...Waiting for a taxi outside the state capitol, I called my husband, Chris Gersten, from my cell phone...
...I left Fielding's office a little uneasy, but quickly put it out of my mind...
...But much had changed in the labor movement in the years since...
...Television satellite dishes surrounded the building, as journalists tried to get a glimpse of who was coming and going...
...he asked...
...I also became enraged at the AFL-CIO's role in the Florida mess...
...I guess you probably know Fred from the Reagan White House...
...Don't know," Abraham answered, none too convincingly...
...he asked, referring to a program that allows some 100,000 immigrants with specialized skills to obtain temporary visas through their employers...
...Then Bush threw out a totally unexpected question...
...I was more nervous than I realized...
...Bush had already spent an hour interviewing me a few days earlier at the Madison Hotel in Washington, and his parting words were, "I'm going to think about this over the weekend...
...As I watched events unfold in Florida, I became convinced that Republicans needed to take on the unions if they were to have any hope of winning future presidential elections or retaining control of Congress...
...I spent the rest of the afternoon copying hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles I'd written over the previous decade...
...In typical Washington fashion, people who wouldn't have given me the time of day a few weeks earlier were now ready to declare me their long-lost bosom buddy...
...Clay Johnson, the head of president-elect George W. Bush's transition office, reached me at my Washington office, where I was dutifully filling out reams of paperwork I'd been asked to complete in the event that the president-elect nominated me to become his secretary of labor...
...He acted as if we were old friends, though I had met him only a few times and had spoken with him at any length just once...
...We talked for nearly an hour, with Bush's press secretary, Karen Hughes, and Rove the only others present...
...I pulled together a group of like-minded immigration experts, all of whom were on record favoring generous immigration levels and opposing the onerous restrictions popular among some conservatives...
...Sweeney himself joined Jackson for a massive protest in Tallahassee the day after the U.S...
...Cheney and Johnson sat at some distance, with their backs to the windows, while Andy Card, Bush's newly announced White House chief of staff, sat on the couch opposite...
...Turns out I returned the wrong John Sweeney's call...
...Sweeney also dispensed hundreds of union staffers to Florida to monitor the recount and generate guerrilla street theater...
...Instead I encountered someone who could talk seriously about ideas...
...Upstairs, I was ushered into a holding room, really just a regular hotel room with a couch in place of a bed and trays of half-eaten fruit, croissants, and coffee...
...There may be one problem...
...I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that he was headed back into the new administration...
...I hadn't gone out looking to hire a nanny or housekeeper...
...Congratulations;' she said...
...Marta was a Guatemalan woman who had lived with us for about a year nearly a decade earlier...
...She offered to talk to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, whom she'd be meeting with in a few days...
...But the weeks turned into months, and I became increasingly involved in her life, typing up advertisements for her to hand out in the neighborhood so that she could find work, helping her enroll in English classes, giving her clothes, books, and occasionally money...
...At the time, Marta was living with a woman who worked for Peter and his wife, but the situation was becoming untenable...
...As I walked through the terminal, I heard my name paged over the intercom...
...At the elevator, I ran into Spence Abraham, who had lost his Senate seat and was rumored to be Bush's choice to head the Transportation Department...
...You remember Marta...
...Why hadn't I pulled my punches, at least occasionally...
...We entered the larger, crowded room next door while Bush and half a dozen others were pouring themselves coffee...
...We chatted about family, mostly his, for several minutes before Bush launched into the matter at hand...
...You ready...
...They'll be entering college, and that's a very special time for any young person:' I left the meeting impressed not only with the future presidential candidate but with the man...
...I agreed to take her in, as I had several other people over the years...
...You've got to get back here right away," my assistant, Amanda Butler, told me...
...I checked into the Omni Hotel and spent most of the evening rereading my own newspaper columns...
...In 1968, he led a strike in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, which lasted fifty-five days and landed him in jail...
...One of the men introduced himself, reminding me that we had met before...
...I arrived home with my mother after a harrowing drive, so exhausted that I fell into bed immediately...
...But this is the process—if we proceed to the next step...
...Why would anybody ask me about Marta...
...After giving me a big bear hug, he handed me a three-inch-thick black binder...
...Just as Bill Clinton and Al Gore, two Southerners, had made conscious efforts to include black agents in their personal retinues, I thought Bush, a Texan, would likely make a similar statement by including Hispanics...
...President-elect," the title sounded awkward...
...However, most of the officials I called were hedging their bets until the outcome of the election was determined by the legal battle taking place in the U.S...
...You've been through this drill before," he said, as I had in 1983 and 1986 when my positions in the Reagan administration required full FBI field investigations...
...I provided advice to the campaign, attended the Republican Convention in Philadelphia, and made a few campaign appearances on television and around the country, describing Bush's virtues and Al Gore's failings...
...Hetook a seat in a large, upholstered chair facing the windows overlooking 15th Street and the Washington Post building...
...I was to proceed to the front of my building where a black SUV was waiting to drive me to the Madison...
...You're scheduled to be interviewed tomorrow afternoon...
...A friend and professional colleague, Peter Skerry, had asked me whether I might give her a place to live temporarily...
...The book's central thesis—that the counterculture values of the sixties had helped to create and perpetuate the underclass—was one widely shared by neoconservatives, like me, who had come of age during that period and had crossed the political Rubicon from Left to Right during the Reagan era...
...I will never know whether Bush would have nominated me had I told Fielding about Marta...
...Of course, if they ask you about Marta, you'll have to tell them the truth," I added...
...Past Republican presidents had had some support from organized labor—both Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon had won the endorsement of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters...
...Why did I have to take on so many controversial topics...
...Shanker's refusal to back down at a time when university presidents and others were capitulating to the often-racist demands of black radicals earned Shanker a national reputation as a staunch opponent of race-based hiring...
...The Labor Department runs the biggest federal affirmative action program—administered by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs—and my appointment would be viewed as a huge threat...
...Give Fred Fielding a call...
...This was not the dimwitted Bush of Saturday Night Live caricatures...
...I was now officially a candidate for secretary of labor...
...I hung up and told my husband and mother, who were standing in the kitchen...
...Two men and one woman...
...You could tell he was speaking to someone older...
...I expected the question, knowing he'd raised the same issue when my name first came up at the meeting with Trent Lott in Texas a few weeks earlier...
...The delay in determining the outcome of the election made it difficult to launch a campaign for a cabinet appointment...
...I wondered, silently, whether Sweeney had placed the call before or after he had stood by Jesse Jackson's side to declare the Bush presidency illegitimate...
...I mentioned a student loan I'd paid back late and a few other minor issues, none of which were likely to cause any problems...
...Always?' I beamed...
...Bush had already nominated Christine Todd Whitman for a cabinet-level position, despite her having hired and failed to pay taxes on two illegal aliens in the early 1990s, about the same time Marta was living with me...
...I don't know that anyone will, but the liberal interest groups will be trying to dig up anything they can about me...
...I later learned that someone—Lott or Hoppe—mentioned my name for labor secretary in the meeting...
...I had not seen Fielding in years, but he looked remarkably the same, pink-cheeked and jolly...
...Many of my views, most notably on affirmative action and bilingual education, were formed during that period and were profoundly influenced by Shanker, who was not afraid to take principled but unorthodox stands...
...In fact, one of my longtime employees is a gay man with AIDS, who also happens to be a staunch conservative, and he agrees with me on the issue...
...My candidacy was suddenly real, if still a long shot...
...I can be at my downtown office by eight-thirty...
...I'd like you to be my secretary of labor," Bush said, wasting no time...
...Thankfully, a group of military personnel crowded into the room before I could say something even more inane...
...Bush listened as much as he spoke, asking questions, venturing opinions with an easy, open manner, much like his mother, Barbara...
...What about the unions...
...I can't imagine it will come up," she added...
...Apparently the e-mail to Rove had worked...
...And we've got Fred Fielding handling the sensitive stuff...
...But with Whitman, his most prominent moderate, now onboard, and only three cabinet nominations left to make—Energy, Transportation, and Labor—it might be harder to fit me into the mix...
...We want to pick you up and drive you to the Madison Hotel...
...If I tell them about Marta, they're not likely to pick me...
...I was in fact a frequent and vocal critic of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, writing later that the law "succeeded only in penalizing employers like Zoe Baird while having no discernible impact on reducing illegal immigration...
...I'm going to fight for you...
...Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount...
...That's not right, Linda...
...There were some old-timers around here who didn't think a black man could do the job...
...You couldn't get much more diverse than that...
...The incident caused some snide press attention when Bush decided not to cancel a short Florida fishing vacation with his parents and brother Jeb, leaving Laura Bush to stay home with their daughter...
...The president-elect will be impressed when I tell him," he said...
...Fred will ask you whether there's anything in your background that might embarrass the president...
...And if there is, we'll deal with it...
...Gee, that's great...
...Clay Johnson was trying to reach me...
...He told me that he hadn't decided whether to run for president and that he worried about what a presidential campaign would mean for his twin teenage daughters...
...A majority of Americans-65 percent according to polls at the time—were skeptical of legal immigration and were overwhelmingly opposed to illegal immigration...
...His office was filled with old toys, brightly colored antique cars and trucks that gave the room a festive air...
...But if you keep anything back and it comes out, you're on your own:' I took it all in casually, but Johnson's words were later to come back to haunt me as I replayed the mental tape of our conversation in the weeks to come...
...But, unlike the others I'd helped, Marta was an illegal alien...
...I can't say I'm surprised to see you," I grinned...
...Governor Bush mentioned having been greatly influenced by the book The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass by Myron Magna...
...When the ruling finally came on December 12, a number of union presidents wanted to be helpful...
...Maybe we could win a cloture vote," he offered, none too reassuringly...
...He seemed startled at the question...
...I was equally sure that the party was not prepared to do so...
...Have you talked to anyone in Austin or at the transition office...
...My only problem was convincing Bush that he needed me...
...Bush was nervous about appearing to move too quickly to vet candidates, especially after the media criticized him for behaving, briefly, as president-elect, although two official recounts had given him Florida...
...What I did not know was that Peggy was a partner in the same law firm as W. Neil Eggleston, Bill Clinton's former White House lawyer, or that her brother was Terry Moran, White House correspondent for ABC News...
...The young man who drove me was a volunteer out of the Texas campaign headquarters...
...They were ready and waiting for me...
...They usually talk to the neighbors...
...The president-elect will want to meet with you personally, either here or in Austin...
...I was struck most by Bush's modesty...
...My husband and I took turns caring for him while we were in school, and he attended private preschool after we moved to Washington...
...I paid Social Security taxes on her wages, as I did on the dozen or so other women who worked for me doing part-time housework off and on over the years...
...With Republicans in control, union influence in Washington was about to plummet...
...Like most conservatives, I was skeptical of the benefits of minimum wage laws, believing that they were more likely to lead to fewer entry-level jobs, and had written several columns to that effect...
...I had once been a union official, but the labor movement had veered toward the Left since then—and sharply so when John Sweeney became president of the AFL-CIO in 1995...
...A Mexican American man about my age said hello on his way out the door...
...One of the first people I called was my old friend Kate O'Beirne, the Washington editor of National Review...
...She was now married to an American and, as far as I knew, was a legal U.S...
...It's on its way here from Texas in a box, along with the rest of my entire household?' His tone softened...
...I asked...
...They're going to come after you with everything they've got...
...Card left the room to place the call, returning quickly to inform Bush that Sweeney was in a meeting but would call back shortly...
...He wished me well, and I headed out to the van waiting to take me to the mansion...
...Morning, Linda...
...I asked...
...I didn't expect that anything would happen the week between Christmas and New Year's, but I knew from the nightly news that Bush was scheduled to come to Washington at the end of the holiday week...
...Such things don't happen by accident in Washington...
...One person who might be able to help was my former neighbor, Margaret Zwisler, for whom Marta had worked when she was living with me...
...Linda, this is Kathleen Shanahan, vice president-elect Cheney's assistant...
...T he trip back to Washington proved more complicated than expected...
...He and I could talk, while he could monitor the others' reactions and I could not...
...Johnson looked exhausted...
...Where's your overcoat...
...By one estimate, unions spent $800 million in support of Democrats, much of it hidden, with Al Gore's campaign the chief beneficiary...
...I just don't know what the department does, and I expect you do," he insisted...
...With the nightly television news programs showing potential cabinet members going in and out of the new Bush-Cheney transition office in the Virginia suburbs, I interpreted the lack of contact as an ominous sign...
...Fielding and I chatted about the old days in the Reagan White House, recalling mutual friends, including some who were now headed back into the new administration, such as Mitch Daniels, tapped to be the new Office of Management and Budget director...
...Some months later, Indianapolis mayor Stephen Goldsmith called and asked me to head a task force on immigration issues for the Bush campaign...
...T he next morning, decked out in my best periwinkle-blue knit, I headed for Washington, with my son David driving...
...Bush was walking down the hall with Albert Hawkins, his Texas comptroller, whom he introduced to me...
...Johnson, a no-nonsense Texas businessman, seemed surprised that I was spending the holidays at work...
...My husband Chris was snowed in at our farm in Virginia, and I had our only four-wheel-drive vehicle...
...We published articles calling for moral education in the schools, decrying the breakdown of the American family, and criticizing bilingual education and race-based preferences in college admissions, written by a host of conservative authors, many of whom were not well known at the time, including William J. Bennett, Robert Bork, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, and Thomas Sowell...
...I'm here to look at merit," he said...
...I expected that I would have no trouble garnering support among a handful of union presidents who would be eager for access to the new administration...
...What do you think we ought to do about the H-1B program...
...I admitted that despite numerous media accounts that I was under consideration, no one had yet contacted me...
...When I called, Peggy seemed surprised to hear my voice...
...A friend had suggested that I meet with Bush on one of my frequent visits to Texas and had called Karl Rove, Bush's longtime political strategist, to arrange it...
...I was thrilled...
...I knew the program provided visas for agricultural workers, but I wasn't sure which department administered it...
...In it was a letter informing me that I was under consideration for a cabinet post and requesting that I complete the enclosed forms within five days...
...I want you to know, I'm going to stick with you...
...One of the more conservative members of the Senate, Nickles understood well that I would be a lightning rod for liberal groups if nominated...
...We exchanged cell phone numbers...
...Certainly nothing in my relationship with Governor Bush during the next two years suggested that I might have a shot at a high-level appointment if he were elected...
...I know that people think Ashcroft and Norton are going to have the toughest time," he said, referring to his picks for attorney general and secretary of interior...
...He flipped through some papers in a manila folder, no doubt a briefing memo on my most controversial stands on labor issues...
...It was Chris...
...The woman who took care of my two younger boys for most of their childhood was a Salvadoran immigrant legally in the country...
...I decided it was time to place a few calls to former colleagues and friends in the labor movement...
...I explained my adversaries were likely to come from civil rights groups that didn't like my position on racial preferences...
...This is what I know about the Labor Department," he said...
...Bush directed...
...I called my office from my cell phone...
...Gale was an old friend and very conservative...
...They're not going to like what you've said on minimum wage," Bush said, bringing the conversation back to me...
...The elliptical configuration would make it difficult to include everyone in the conversation—exactly what Bush intended...
...At eight-fifteen precisely, the phone in my office rang...
...A group of black nationalists, funded by the liberal Ford Foundation, had taken over the local school board and fired the white, mostly Jewish teachers, prompting the walkout...
...Now an attorney in private practice, Fielding is one of Washington's premier power brokers...
...This isn't some kind of test...
...I had given Marta a place to live, periodically gave her money to send home to her children in Guatemala, and helped pay for her airfare when she decided to return home...
...He's got a packet of forms waiting for you to fill out...
...We'll be in touch...
...I have some support—the Operating Engineers Union, the Bricklayers, and I think the AFT will be okay and I expect I can get some more support from the building trades, maybe the Carpenters Union, and a few others...
...I put myself through college as an IBEW lineman...
...This isn't going to be easy...
...So you got Transportation...
...I was struck again by how much better looking he was in person than on television, a trait he shared with his father, who is both more handsome and bigger than he appears on camera...
...Then he realized it was me...
...Oklahoma senator Don Nickles, the Republican assistant majority leader, was supportive but pessimistic...
...Two days later, I was on a flight headed for Austin to meet with the president-elect...
...Feldman was Al Shanker's protégé, dating to the Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike...
...In the wake of "Nannygate," the question of who vacuumed a nominee's house or babysat the children was as likely to derail a nominee's approval as suspicious ties to foreign governments or financial conflicts of interest...
...I was in the pickup with my son David on my way back to Virginia when the phone rang...
...Out awfully early aren't you, Linda...
...Gore's legal challenges were a pure power grab meant to delegitimate a Bush presidency—if not usurp it altogether...
...His temporary office was sparsely furnished with the standard government-issue Formica desk and table and dark, metal blinds...
...What George W. Bush and the Republican Party needed was someone who could do two things: work to build ties to those unions, mostly in the construction trades, whose members are conservative, relatively affluent, and more likely to vote Republican...
...But it seemed more dangerous in the weeks the Florida debacle dragged on...
...In the 2000 campaign, unions contributed $75 million in direct contributions to political candidates—almost all of them Democrats—plus additional millions in so-called soft money...
...there's no point ticking them off over some perceived personal slight," I had told them both...
...The strike was prompted not by the usual demand for better wages or working conditions but by a racial power play...
...I can't tell you how honored I am, Mr...
...He took notes on a yellow legal pad as I talked, saying almost nothing...
...Johnson asked...
...I thought that was an odd way of putting it...
...He had just come back from Florida, where he worked around the clock in the recount fight...
...I hadn't heard his name mentioned for a cabinet position, and certainly his endorsement of John McCain in the primaries hadn't helped his cause...
...Gee, I forgot we shared Marta," she said...
...He told me a little about himself, that he had known George Bush since their days at Andover, that he had come out of the business world, that he had handled political appointments when Bush first became governor...
...Then Fred got down to the tough questions...
...Let's make it eight-fifteen, just in case...
...Staffers probably spent considerable time rearranging the furniture until they got it right...
...The timing couldn't have been better...
...We might get a filibuster over your nomination...
...I imagined him to be a moderate in the mold of his father, whom I admired for his personal qualities but whose policies had been a disappointment...
...Under Sweeney's helm, organized labor had become more immersed in partisan politics than ever before...
...But unlike Clay, Bush interrupted my answers to ask rapid-fire additional questions...
...Like most Americans, I found the long delay in determining the outcome of the election maddening, and I blamed Gore entirely...
...Sweeney"—a nice touch, I thought, though it was probably wasted on Sweeney, who was implacably hostile to Republicans...
...I had complained to both Clay Johnson and Karl Rove that Sweeney was offended when Bush didn't return his phone call a few weeks earlier...
...A week later, Sandy called me from the Washington-New York Metroliner to report on her conversation with Sweeney...
...Whenever he announced a genuinely conservative pick for one department, he coupled it with the announcement of a moderate to head another agency, for example, naming John Ashcroft to be attorney general on the same day he announced Christine Todd Whitman to head the Environmental Protection Agency...
...They had obviously just completed Bush's daily national security briefing...
...Goldsmith—a brainy, innovative two-term mayor—had been assigned the role of issues coordinator for the campaign...
...I went into the first meeting with Governor Bush with low expectations...
...I'm not their favorite person...
...and block unions from using their members' dues for illegal political activities...
...Yes, sir, it does...
...I proceeded to describe the various functions of the department and map out the challenges, including how the department could be used as both a carrot and a stick to deal with the troublesome labor movement...
...I came into the meeting with Governor Bush expecting to meet an affable politician...
...Clay Johnson's office called...
...I had spent about forty-five minutes thus far with Bush, and we had covered most of the territory I expected: my ideas for transforming the department, my positions on various labor issues, some controversial columns I'd written over the years...
...I asked...
...Bush's response, as reported back to me, was surprising: "What will the AFL-CIO think...
...I told her that I expected opposition from some of the civil rights leaders—Jesse Jackson in particular—but that I hoped I would get a fair hearing from the AFL-CIO...
...When we got out of the vehicle, other young men directed us up a service elevator, past food trolleys loaded with dirty dishes and laundry bins filled with soiled pink tablecloths...
...Elaine Chao...
...Nonetheless, I decided to consult a few close friends and some political allies, soliciting their advice...
...I thanked him and called Fielding's K Street office...
...She spent most of her time in her room, depressed and unhappy...
...I handed him a folder containing my resume and a few columns I'd written...
...He had the kind of avuncular persona that perfectly suited his line of work, inspiring instant trust from perfect strangers who would have to pour out their guts to him...
...His deep voice fit his six-foot-three-inch frame and gave away his Texas roots...
...Good morning," Clay Johnson greeted me...
...He signaled one of the other men in the room to pour me a cup as we wove our way through the maze of chairs...
...Many Americans know me from my years in the Reagan administration, as director of the U.S...
...With Shanker's blessing, the magazine took on a decidedly neoconservative point of view...
...Johnson wasn't exactly telling me I'd been picked for the post, but I couldn't imagine that the president-elect would send for me on a holiday just to ask a few more questions...
...I donned my heavy, black sheepskin coat, turning up the collar, and put on a blue cowboy hat—if anyone did see me, they'd think I was some big-haired Texas matron...
...Bush had not yet announced his presidential candidacy, but even two years out, he was already viewed as the odds-on favorite to capture the Republican nomination...
...For the first time, I shifted in my chair to look at Cheney, who joined the banter...
...He sure wasn't about to fess up that he hadn't placed the call," Andy Card piped in for the first time, his Massachusetts accent sounding oddly out of place in this room full of Westerners...
...Yeah, Congressman Sweeney got two calls from us...
...Hoppe, Lott, and a group of other Republican congressional leaders were on their way to Bush's ranch to meet with the president-to-be...
...Sweeney's actions infuriated me, but my anger was personal as well as partisan...
...It makes Sweeney look bad in front of his own executive council," she said, noting that Sweeney had reported to the fifty-member council that he had placed a call to congratulate Bush, which had not been returned...
...As ready as I'll ever be...
...Tell me about yourself," he said, "your family, where you come from...
...I asked...
...None was more solicitous than Sandra Feldman, president of the American Federation of Teachers...
...But Bennett was one of the most ambitious men I'd ever known—and one of the most talented...
...Whitman's offense sparked barely a casual mention during her nomination process, even after my relationship with Marta earned front-page coverage in every newspaper in the country...
...He looked like a Secret Service agent, probably on detail from the Texas office...
...Anything in your background that might embarrass the president...
...Albert showed 'em differently," he added...
...She also mentioned that Sweeney was miffed that the president-elect had not called him...
...I don't think so," I said, trying to remember what, if anything, I'd said over the years on gay issues—a topic I'd mostly avoided...
...We sat opposite each other in plastic chairs...
...Want some coffee...
...I also met with Representative Rob Portman of Ohio who was not only a close adviser to the Bush transition team but also an old friend from our days serving on a United Nations subcommission in Geneva in the early 1990s...
...I sat to Bush's left in a similar chair at a right angle to his...
...Chao's name had been mentioned frequently, and she had served as deputy secretary of the department in the first Bush administration...
...I believed I was that person...
...The AFL-CIO troops joined forces with civil rights leaders, including Jesse Jackson, who accused Republicans of trying to disenfranchise black and elderly voters...
...But, then, Whitman was a moderate with no serious opposition, whereas I was a conservative with lots of interest groups gunning for me...
...I'm not sure whether you've seen the news stories yet, but I may be a candidate to become secretary of labor," I told her...
...With Shanker's death in 1997 and the labor movement's leftward lurch in recent years, no union would publish such fare today...
...Then, flipping to a blank page, he turned the notepad to me...
...Today, more than a decade and a half after the law was enacted, the number of illegal aliens in the United States has increased exponentially, to an estimated ten million...
...You know, their members are pretty conservative...
...You've got more opposition there than I thought," she said...
...Part of my problem with Marta now was that I couldn't even remember what year she had lived with us and had no idea how to find her...
...I returned the call immediately...
...I also met with some key senators and congressmen to press my candidacy...
...The van drove onto the mansion driveway through a side entrance and under a plastic canopy that kept nosy camera crews at bay...
...He called the labor leader "Mr...
...No, I haven't, but that's great...
...I called the guy from New York," Bush laughed, referring to the Republican congressman from the Twenty-second District in upstate New York...
...You, too:' I smiled, wondering if he was headed to the Madison himself or perhaps had been there already...
...My function would be informal and sporadic, answering specific questions on policy as they arose and flagging hot-button issues that the candidate might be expected to address on the campaign trail...
...I was going to have a lot of explaining to do when the Senate took up my nomination...
...My coat...
...He had me stumped...
...He waved, no doubt thinking I was one of his many fans...
...At the time Marta moved into my house, the furor over illegal aliens was becoming a hot political issue...
...It came from the judges," Jackson declared, with Sweeney at his side...
...By the way, we tracked down that Sweeney call," he added...
...I'm the guy who decides if the candidates are qualified to do the job...
...Maybe I should just call Karl Rove," I said...
...Although a handful of Republican congressmen had ties to local unions, virtually no one in the Republican Party had come out of the labor movement or, I believed, truly understood how unions operate in the political arena...
...But I couldn't sleep...
...Supreme Court...
...Commission on Civil Rights and then director of the White House public liaison office...
...I was worried that someone would recognize me, but the snow must have driven away most of the veteran reporters, and I sneaked in undetected...
...Reagan won an estimated 47 percent of union households in 1984...
Vol. 36 • January 2003 • No. 1
