So who is floating the rumor that current Veep Cheney adviser
Mary Matalin could end up sitting in presidential
counselor Karen Hughes’s chair come September?
Matalin claims she isn’t behind it, and no doubt she isn’t given
her concern that she not be tied to White House leaks.
Most likely no current staffer will fill Hughes’s rather large
shoes. “Anyone who thinks that job is going to end up in the hands
of one person is nuts,” says a White House communications staffer.
“No one could fill her position.”
Some of Hughes’s duties will probably be split between senior
White House speechwriters and members of the communications shop.
More interesting will be to see how credit for future Bush
endeavors is doled out. For example, it has always been reported
that Hughes actively wrote many of Bush’s finest speeches, when in
fact she wrote almost none of them. “She’d do some editing and have
some input, but beyond that, nothing. It was all the
speechwriters,” says the communications staffer.
No one doubts that Hughes will be missed by the senior White
House staff. Hughes was more than willing to protect them from
serious media scrutiny and criticism by serving as the lightning
rod for White House correspondents angry about tight access to the
President and even more tightly controlled spin.
In some ways Hughes won’t be leaving at all. Several White House
sources say after her family moves back to Texas in August, she
will most likely spend up to a week at a time in Washington
advising the White House on everything from news management to
rolling out the Bush agenda leading into 2004. “We expect we will
be seeing her and hearing from her probably every day for months
and hopefully years to come,” says another White House staffer.
“The gossip in here is that she’s going to be gearing things up
for 2004 from Texas, doing stuff she wouldn’t have been allowed to
do as a federal employee in Washington,” says an RNC staffer. “We
assume we’ll be hearing from her a lot in the coming months.”
Rumors in Washington had Hughes returning to Texas ahead of
bombshells from the ongoing Enron investigation. “If there was
damaging stuff about her in Enron, believe me, Democrats up on the
Hill would have trotted that out weeks ago,” says a senior
Republican Senate staffer. “We haven’t seen or heard anything that
would lead us to believe there is any more bad Enron stuff out
there on current members of the White House. The fact that she’s
staying through the summer is a pretty good indication there aren’t
going to be any shoes dropping.”
But back to those Matalin rumors, which should be troubling to
conservatives everywhere, particularly those in the White House.
It’s unclear just how much access Matalin has had to the
presidential side of the West Wing. Hughes and Karl
Rove are both said by insiders to have allowed her into
the White House with trepidation and insisted that she be placed on
Cheney’s staff for fear that were she on President Bush’s staff,
there would be leaks aplenty to the press corps.
“I can’t see any way that Matalin would be brought over from
Cheney’s staff,” says a White House legislative staffer. “She seems
happy there, isn’t making any noise and she’s been playing well
with others. I think everyone’s aware of how that could change if
she was given senior adviser status to Bush. Everyone knows Bush
Senior is loyal to her and that’s why she’s here. But she isn’t
that popular with the current president’s crowd.”
The big concern would be potential leaks to the media. Matalin
has many connections to the Washington press corps, and has been
known to throw off a comment now and again. She has claimed she
isn’t interested in moving over to the president’s staff, but
insiders say someone like Matalin never tires of the opportunity to
gain a toehold on power and influence. “Otherwise, why would she
take a job with Cheney?” asks the White House political aide.
Even more troubling to conservatives than a Matalin move should
be the story floated on Wednesday in several newspapers that had
current Pentagon spokesperson Victoria Clarke
moving across the river to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in some
capacity. Word out of Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld’s shop is that he’s looking to push her out, but
is unsure where she could go. There are concerns there about
ongoing leaks and her failure to contain them.
Clarke is closely allied with Matalin, going back to her days as
press assistant to Vice President Bush and later his campaign press
secretary in the ill-fated 1992 presidential race. She also served
as a press secretary to Congressman and then Sen. John
McCain. “Who knows what would happen if those two ended up
in the same building. It’s bad enough knowing they probably talk a
lot outside of work with Matalin’s husband [Democratic consultant
and CNN “Crossfire” host James Carville] listening
in,” says a former Bush White House staffer. That scenario alone
should give conservatives nightmares.
