A Prime Seat at the Table
Women's Work
President Bush has appointed more women to his inner circle than almost anyone expected. After Vice President Cheney, some of the most influential power brokers in the White House are women, including eight of the 18 people who gather around the big mahogany table in the Roosevelt Room for the daily senior-staff meetings. First Lady Laura Bush told U.S. News: "Many of them also happen to bring the experience of being mothers, and I think that's important. But the fact is, they're all at the table. I'm very happy about that since I'm the mother of daughters, and I want them to have every opportunity to do whatever they want in life."
KAREN HUGHES
COUNSELOR
Karen Hughes, 44, is easily the most influential of Bush's female advisers and probably the most powerful female staffer in West Wing history. "The White House would never make a strategic decision without Karen in the room," says Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. Bush himself has one word for Hughes: "indispensable."
Hughes says she's just part of a larger machine. "We have a great blend of people who know the president well and know his method of operating and know him as a person, along with people who know Washington and the White House. I mean, I'm the first to admit I don't know Washington. . . . But I do know the president." She also knows how to defend the boss. A brass plaque on her desk quotes Winston Churchill: "I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion's roar."
CONDOLEEZZA RICE
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER
Condoleezza Rice, 46, is the first woman to hold the job of national security adviser, placing her at the head of a table once dominated by men. A Russia scholar, she was a protege of Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser of Bush's father, and served as the National Security Council's Russia expert for several years. She left Washington in March 1991 because she "wanted a life," and eventually became provost at Stanford, where she had served earlier as a professor of political science. But she kept up her contacts with the Bush family and was recruited as Bush's top foreign policy adviser for his presidential campaign.
She defines her role as the person who brings the president a menu of policy options so he makes an informed decision. Single and a devout Christian, Rice is a talented pianist who plays classical music to relax.
MARGARET LA MONTAGNE
DOMESTIC POLICY ADVISER
Margaret La Montagne, a 43-year-old single mother of two daughters who serves as Bush's chief domestic counselor, says women are thriving in the Bush White House. "This is the place we've strived to be--equal, in senior management, and at the table," she says. "But we don't take ourselves too seriously."
In 1995, La Montagne joined then Governor Bush's staff in Austin as assistant appointments director, but she became his chief education adviser. She has an encyclopedic knowledge of Bush's record on education and, more important, she shares a common trait among Bush appointees: Loyalty. "We're here to serve the president," she says. "He's the person who matters."
MARY MATALIN
CHENEY COUNSELOR
Mary Matalin, 47, became familiar to many Americans as a tough-talking conservative television commentator and foil to her husband, former Clinton adviser James Carville. But her political roots run deep with the Bush family. "I'm a real conservative. I was never a media person," Matalin said when she was named to her current job as counselor to Vice President Cheney. "This is a chance to participate in the cause that, except for my children, has been the reason I have gotten up in the morning for 20 years."
This story appears in the April 30, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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