She Has the President’s Ear, as a Loyalist and Alter Ego

When George W. Bush was preparing to make the most important speech of his young presidency, Karen Hughes took a knife to the work of the White House wordsmiths.

Hughes, the ultimate arbiter of this president’s public persona, turned the speech to Congress upside-down so that Bush first proposed some new programs--and then got to his controversial tax cuts.

The former Texas television reporter who served as Bush’s ferociously on-script spokeswoman during the election and recount now wields immense influence in the Oval Office. More than a mere political packager--far more essential than any press secretary or speech writer--Hughes is key to Bush’s ability to convey conservative views and values in a mainstream way.

She has become the backstage alter ego to the 43rd president. Like radar, Hughes tunes into Bush’s thoughts and turns them into message.

If Bush’s instinct is to speak in simple assertions, repeating them over and over, Hughes translates them into real-world ideas. Tax cut jargon becomes family budget talk; a worn metaphor is milked to produce a laugh.

Hughes is so close to Bush that she can tell him things he has to do, things he emphatically does not want to do--things he does anyway because he trusts her to be right when he is not.

Shortly after an earthquake shook the Seattle area, the president briefly referred to the disaster while he worked a rope line in another city. But Hughes told him that he had to say more, really to be more presidential. Later in the day, he made a formal statement expressing sympathy, explaining how his administration could help.

So strong is the mind-meld between Bush and Hughes that when he speaks, so the legend goes, her lips move.

“I don’t know that I have a voice different from his anymore,” said Hughes, who is perpetually hoarse from talking for two.

Men with names like Sorensen, Moyers, Rafshoon and Stephanopoulos have held similar posts. When Michael K. Deaver was giving cues to President Reagan, they called him “the keeper of the body.” Bush long ago dubbed Hughes “High Prophet,” both a takeoff on her maiden name, Parfitt, and a compliment.

As counselor to the president, the 44-year-old Hughes is the most powerful woman ever to work on a White House staff. But so far nobody--including Hughes herself--believes that her gender makes a difference in how she does her job. She would prefer to focus on Bush’s role in history than on her own.

She also seems indifferent to her media image as hard-edged and unforgiving. During the campaign, she alienated many people. Her blunt defense of his policies and relentless adherence to his message soured people who had never even met her.

In her new White House role, she is less visible but no less powerful. Along with consiglieri Karl Rove, Vice President Dick Cheney and Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., Hughes is a member of the president’s innermost circle. Rove handles strategy and politics, Card manages the administration and Cheney serves as prime minister. Officially, Hughes directs communication, but she also stands astride it all because she owns the president’s ear.

“She provides a sort of backboard for Bush to bounce off ideas,” said Bush ad man Mark McKinnon.

But there is more to it than that.

It is possible that Hughes has more individual face time with this president than any other advisor. It is certain that she has come to embody his ultimate accolade, “the good man.” Since she went to work for him in 1994, the dynamic between Hughes and Bush has centered on her directness and his appreciation of her judgment.

Days after becoming press secretary for his first gubernatorial race, Hughes went on a campaign trip with a stack of phone messages from reporters. She wanted to discuss what to say on her callbacks.

“Don’t return them,” she said Bush told her.

For a minute, Hughes said, she thought, “I’ve made this huge mistake.” Worried about her credibility, she told him she had to return the calls, even if only to talk about what she was not going to talk about.

“I realized after an hour that was his personality. He was teasing and testing me,” she said. “He knows I’ll tell him what I really think.”

She also noticed early on that they had a similar staccato style: “He works fast; so do I.” And she liked how he included her when his family was around and that he took an interest in her husband and son.

Despite Closeness, Boundaries Exist

But as close as Hughes and Bush have grown, there are still boundaries prescribed by the Bush code of behavior with subordinates and her own military background.

During one of three interviews in her West Wing office, this daughter of an Army general excused herself to take a call from the president. One side of the conversation went like this:

“Yes, SIR!”

“Yes, sir, the way to do that is to be forthcoming.

“Yes, sir, I’ll be on top of it!”

Click.

Just as quickly as she pounced to take the call, Hughes returned to discuss a job whose duties are both paramount and amorphous.

When there is bad news, Hughes brings it to Bush; when she suspects an aide is leaking to the media, she reports him to the boss; when Mr. President wears a hideous green tie, she tells him it’s hideous. She is known as someone with no cause, no ideology, no significant political history that is not simply Bush.

“Karen has no agenda separate from George Bush’s success, and that is rare in any staff in the capital, especially inside a White House,” said Margaret D. Tutwiler, a senior White House advisor who also worked for Reagan and for Bush’s father.

That unbending loyalty and single-mindedness have carried Hughes throughout her career.

At her first job after college, at a Fort Worth television station, Hughes would charge purposefully into the newsroom and immediately bang out copy. Once, she recalls, her colleagues attached a firecracker to her typewriter. She didn’t even notice until she hit the carriage return and it exploded--KABOOM!

Hughes kept typing.

She cannot imagine where that depth of focus came from. By nature, Hughes is not introspective. It is not her style to probe her motivations.

“I guess it’s just my personality,” she says. “If you ask people who work for me, I probably bug them because I ask them about the thing I think is really important--until it’s done.”

She Can Be Menacing, in Defense of Bush

This persistent approach does not always serve her well.

Nearly 6 feet tall, Hughes has an imposing manner that puts some people off. When she is trying to be convincing, she leans in to her listeners, often towering inches from them.

Her rigorous defense of her boss came off so harshly at times during the campaign that some in the press corps dubbed her Nurse Ratched, after the menacing character in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Her thundering voice did not help.

“You would see people having friendly [phone] conversations with Karen and they would hold the earpiece an inch or two from their head,” said Houston Chronicle reporter R. G. Ratcliffe. Hughes stayed “extraordinarily on message” in those exchanges, Ratcliffe and others said.

“Karen just believes that if you say something often enough, it will sink in with the public and it will become the truth,” Ratcliffe added.

Even in rare background conversations with reporters, Hughes spouts a pasteurized party line. She is the primary enforcer of the Bush ethic: Never show your cards. She can be rough around the edges, her critics say, oblivious to the art and rhythm of political give and take.

Hughes sees her role as an advocate, she said, “and the press’ role is not to be an advocate.” Inevitably, “there are times when our roles would clash.”

Whenever she could, Hughes turned interviews in her corner office back to Bush, drilling away at what she considers misperceptions that Bush does not work hard, for example, or that he fumbles words because he is just not that smart.

“I’m a Phi Beta Kappa,” Hughes said with her big Texas laugh. “And I see the president and he keeps me on my toes. He went to Yale and Harvard Business School, for goodness sakes, yet he’s being made fun of on ‘The Tonight Show’ as being some sort of lightweight?”

The George W. Bush she knows works hard, has a command of a wide range of issues, a self-deprecating sense of humor and, most important to this longtime Sunday school teacher, “is a good person who wants to do good for the country.”

Describing Bush, she bubbles forth with cheerful anecdotes about the president, laughing off his doubters. When the conversation turns to her image, however, she stiffens. In this pose, the jut of her jaw and the hard set of her pout make her look a little like the boss himself, except for her arresting blue eyes.

Dan Bartlett, Hughes’ longtime top deputy, contends that her detractors either are ideologically opposed to her message or do not want the messenger to be an intense, smart woman. Another problem, he said, is that she does not smile enough on television.

Hughes also has had to carry a tough message, Bartlett added. “She wasn’t out there selling his reading program. She was . . . tackling [Al Gore aide] Bob Shrum on ‘Meet the Press’ or defending why we don’t want to count hanging chads.” She once scolded Shrum: “You bring out the mother in me. I want to wash your mouth out with soap.”

A mother-hen quality does surface in Hughes, mostly when she is hovering near Bush or when calling young staffers to tell them they’re working too late. Her friends insist that she has a sense of humor, although Tutwiler conceded that it “probably doesn’t come through with reporters.”

Bush Gives Pointers on Writing a Speech

It was a sense of mischief--telling tales on her boss--that came through as Hughes recalled the time then-Gov. Bush imparted pointers on how to write a speech that he learned at Yale.

“My Life as Governor. Tugs of Hearts Strings. Emotional Call to Arms,” he scribbled on a piece of paper that she just so happens to have saved and now plans to frame.

Already in her office is a photograph showing Hughes, as a young reporter, interviewing Bush’s father. Even then, Hughes was attracted to the Bush family aura of power and profound loyalty, friends say.

So much about the president’s elite Texas upbringing was different from hers.

Hughes was born in Paris and moved seven times before college as her father, Maj. Gen. Harold R. Parfitt, was transferred from post to post. He was the last governor of the Panama Canal Zone.

Again, she skirts introspection when asked about her parents’ influence. She offers the analysis of a Texas journalist who once wrote that her beliefs were probably formed by her “duty-honor-country upbringing.”

At Southern Methodist University, Hughes “fell in love with writing to pictures” and decided on a career in journalism. She graduated in three years and took a job at KXAS-TV in Fort Worth.

In 1981, friends introduced her to Jerry Hughes, a divorced lawyer with a young daughter. They married in 1983, and a year later she left journalism for politics, eventually running the Texas Republican Party. Her son, Robert, was born in 1987.

Even before Bush ran against then-Gov. Ann Richards, Hughes made it her mission to take down the state’s top Democrat. “What made [Hughes] effective was the sheer persistence of it,” said Chuck McDonald, Richards’ press secretary. “Every single day we woke up and Karen Hughes said we had done something wrong.”

Hughes relishes combat, once confiding to GOP power broker Fred Meyer that she would love to have done public relations for Exxon after the Valdez oil spill.

She even says that she could work for a Democrat--but without naming anyone or sounding very convincing.

“I think it would be less a matter of the party than the individual,” she said.

Before Bush declared for president, he told Hughes he would not run without her. Although “wary of Washington values,” she signed on. But she continues to be edgy about the lure of Washington.

“There are a lot of admonitions in the Bible . . . about power and about making sure if you’re in a position of influence you use it wisely,” she said, citing a lesson from Matthew.

She volunteers that she made a point of not asking, after she knew she would have an office in the West Wing, where it would be--or how large. (It’s on the second floor--not as close to the Oval Office as Rove’s but with a great view of the first family residence.)

Yet she also offers examples of how she has remained ubiquitous in Bush’s public moments--and often in private times as well.

After Bush moved into the White House, he took her on a late-night tour of the athletic facilities.

“You want to see the lap pool?” the president asked Hughes, an avid swimmer.

“Sure,” she said.

And then the two of them strolled off, talking business under the moonlight.