True Grit: Bush Style

Bush picks for Cabinet have shared trait: Grit

By Frank James
Washington Bureau
Published December 4, 2004

WASHINGTON -- If there is a pattern in President Bush's choices for key posts in his second term, it's that the people he has selected often have extraordinary personal stories of having succeeded after overcoming great obstacles.

The trend continued this week as the president announced more changes in his Cabinet.

On Friday, Bush said Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner, high school dropout and son of a convicted prostitute who abandoned him early in life, was his nominee to be the new secretary of the Homeland Security Department.

The president hails from an elite family and attended Yale and Harvard Universities. But he was raised in West Texas and appears drawn to people whose life stories show they achieved beyond most expectations, say experts who have studied Bush's presidency and life.

And the president sees something of himself in their stories, students of Bush say, for the president believes that, like himself, they have done better than others thought they would.

Commerce Secretary-designate Carlos Gutierrez, a Cuban immigrant who rose from a Kellogg Co. truck driver to become the company's chief executive officer in what Bush called "a great American success story," is an example.

Alberto Gonzales Jr., someone from a poor Mexican-American family who became Bush's White House counsel, is his pick to be attorney general.

Another example is National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, nominated by Bush to be the first black woman to serve as secretary of state. She was raised in segregated Birmingham, Ala., where one of her friends was killed in the infamous 1963 church-bombing by white racists that left four young girls dead.

A divergent path

The president seems to breaking the mold among the nation's chief executives in the importance he appears to place on the self-made aspect of Cabinet picks.

"Go back and look at the people who served in Cabinets," says Stephen Hess, a senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution. "They weren't chosen this way. In some ways their stories were irrelevant. This is the first president, maybe, where the most important thing is the story."

Other presidents chose Cabinet members because they needed someone who knew how to balance the budget or who was a Catholic, said Hess. Or in the case of the Interior Department, it was long thought essential to get a governor from a Western state, he added.

"When so many have wonderful stories you start to wonder, maybe he is looking for wonderful stories," Hess said.

Experts say the president also views the triumph-over-adversity story as quintessentially American, reflecting his belief in the nation's self-image as the greatest land of opportunity ever known.

At a news conference while still president-elect in 2000, Bush was asked if he meant to send a message by choosing numerous women, immigrants and minorities for his Cabinet, many of whom Bush described as having "wonderful stories."

"You bet," Bush said. "That people who work hard and make the right decisions in life can achieve anything they want in America."

Some who have studied Bush's life believe stories about hardships surmounted appeal to Bush's Texas spirit.

"It goes back to his entrepreneurial background in Midland, Texas, looking for oil wells and that kind of pioneering spirit they had back in Midland where you valued the American dream, and that's what this is all about," said Ronald Kessler, a journalist who wrote "A Matter of Character: Inside the White House of George W. Bush."

While many observers view Bush as a scion of wealth, Kessler says that's not accurate. Bush received about $50,000 left over from an education trust fund but didn't strike it rich until he sold his stake in the Texas Rangers baseball team for about $15 million in 1998.

"Certainly having the Bush name helped with connections and opened doors but most of it was on his own," Kessler said.

Robert Dallek, a presidential historian, said he believes Bush is drawn to people like Kerik and Gutierrez because of an antipathy toward the old guard of the Republican Party.

"He doesn't like that old Republican Party, that old Northeastern Establishment ... What he likes are people who aren't part of any fixed old-style establishment," Dallek said. "That's how he identifies himself. He's comfortable with those folks."

Peter Schweizer, who co-authored "The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty" and interviewed Bush family members for the book, says the president had the burden of having to measure up to an extremely successful father, former President George H.W. Bush.

"By no means does he equate his childhood burdens with his father with escaping Cuba," said Schweizer, "but that sense of overcoming barriers, whatever they might be, is something that he could very much identify with."

Justin Frank, a clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University, concurs. Frank also is a psychoanalyst who wrote a book called "Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President."

Change came at 40

"Until he was 40 he was not self-made at all," Frank said. "He was completely dependent on his parents, on his name ... on his alcohol. When he stopped drinking and found religion he became, in his view, self-made. He essentially admired and idealized this aspect of himself. So, in that sense it's an extremely positive feeling for him," which he recognizes in others.

The downside of this sense that one was self-made, experts said, is that it can lead to being impervious to others' opinions and a disdain for those who haven't figured out how to better their circumstances.

Americans and perhaps humans generally are impressed by up-by-the-bootstraps stories, and Bush is no exception. But he may even be more smitten with such stories than the typical politician.

In Schweizer's conversations with Bush family members, they described Bush as more a student of people than ideas.

"If you look at everything from prep school to college to his early forays into politics, he has always been a student of people, more than interested in abstract ideas or policy questions, and I think that comes through in the kind of Cabinet people he is picking," Schweizer said.