Q: By 2004, you had known — worked closely with President Bush for what, six years, maybe longer?
SPELLINGS: Let’s see, I had worked for him in the entirety of his gubernatorial — well, I’d worked in the gubernatorial campaigns, and when was that? ’94.
Q: Ninety-four? [00:33:00]
SPELLINGS: I worked for him since ’94.
Q: So ten years.
SPELLINGS: Yes.
Q: How was he different in 2004 from how he’d been at other stages of your acquaintance with him, working with him?
SPELLINGS: Oh, well in many ways different, you know, more sophisticated, more, you know, breadth of issue — you know, much larger management talent in terms of building a team with the right kind of capabilities, and the oversight systems, more complicated apparatus. But in many ways, you know, exactly the same. And this is why, and frankly why I came back to work for him, even now, to lead the Bush Center just a few months ago, is, you know, (inaudible) find a good boss, and stick with him. And I’ve done that in President Bush. He’s someone who, you know, isn’t going to micromanage the details, understands who he is, what the principles are, what his expectations are, and wants capable people to go chart the way forward, [00:34:00] and you know, obviously he’s an active boss, but you know, somebody who I’ve very much enjoyed working for.
Q: He described you in his book as “smart and feisty.”
SPELLINGS: I’ll take that. (laughter)
Q: “Feisty,” what do you think he meant by that?
SPELLINGS: Well, you know, I’m kind of a persistent Texas gal, and you know, if you’re trying to get something done in Washington, you have to be patient and persistent, and a little bit wily. (laughter) But yeah — thank you for the compliment, but maybe I was born that way, like Lady Gaga. (laughter)
Q: After the election, I mean right after the election, President Bush gave a press conference in which he said, you know, I’ve earned political capital, and I intend to spend it, words to that effect.
SPELLINGS: Yes.
Q: Had he earned political [00:35:00] capital in that reelect? In other words, had he talked about what he would do during the second term?
SPELLINGS: He did; he absolutely did. And I remember in the early days, you know, after the election — of course, I was about to disembark for the US Department of Education, and you know, another one of the issues that I had worked on in the very, very early days of the Bush administration the first term was immigration reform. And he had talked about that, again, different kind of a Republican, much to the dismay — although not to the extent that it’s playing out here and now in the Republican side of the aisle — but still, you know, a little bit of a third rail. Social Security and immigration were the two things he said he was going to tackle early on in the second term. And of course — and he observes this in his book, that you know, he wishes he’d led on immigration. Again, we had that same kind of coalition, John McCain, Ted Kennedy, Mel Martinez, you know, among others, Democrats of course as well, and we were not able to get [00:36:00] that done. He spent the first year instead, you know, working on, you know, Social Security reform again with his own partisans, you know, blanching at the — you know, at the prospects, and so we knew when the — in Texas, we say, “when the horse dies, get off,” and it did, and we did, and then moved on to immigration, which of course, was not successful.
Q: After the election, there seems to be a decision by President Bush that he’s going to take people from the White House staff and move them into the departments, you to Education, Condaleezza Rice to State, Alberto Gonzalez to Justice. Why then, and what do you think that was about? Why move you, and them from the White House into the departments?
SPELLINGS: Yeah, no, I think it was actually — there’s a great rationale for it, it made a lot of sense, and it’s this, so if [00:37:00] somebody like me has been involved with, you know, the development and the legislative passage of key priorities of the president, then the second phase is implementational, and making sure that, you know, the structures and the undergirding is within the US government to make them longstanding and long-lasting policies, and you know, I’m proud to this day — obviously, I wish that No Child Left Behind had been reauthorized, but as a law that stands on the books, when I went to the Department of Education, I reorganized it. It’s my understanding that that’s the same structure that Secretary [Arne] Duncan uses to this day, you know, that, so that the extension and whether these policies are going to live long after, you know, the president serves officially, you know, is informed by the kind of work that’s done [00:38:00], you know, in that last four years, I believe, and why he wanted us to be in that — worried about this, that kind of work.
Q: Back in 2004, were there things you heard sort of either by the Democrats or by the media that you thought, “That’s not the President Bush I know.”
SPELLINGS: In 2004?
Q: Yeah.
SPELLINGS: Yeah, I — I’m sure there were. I can’t remember, you know, specifically. I mean, the thing that always bothered me the most was, you know, how underestimated his intellect was, that he was seen to be cavalier, cocky, hair-trigger, you know, those — you know, words like that. You know, I’ve worked for him for a long time to that point, and since, and I don’t find him to be that way, and you know, often people would say things about President Bush, and I would say, “Well, do you know him?” [00:39:00] (laughter) Because I do.
Q: And are there any other things about 2004 that I haven’t asked you about that I should have, or that you’d like to get on the record?
SPELLINGS: You know, the other thing I would just say, and this is — it’s also a time that people are thinking about themselves individually in their careers, and you know, I’ve done the first four years. You know, it’s a long, hard run. It is hard work, as you know, in every White House. And so, it’s a natural kind of pivot point for people to think, well am I going to suit up again? And if so, in what role? Am I going home? What about my family? And so, you know, there’s the management of anxiety, professional anxiety, and of course, it’s also a distinct possibility that everyone will be out of a job. And so, just, you know, keeping your eye on the ball, and understanding that there’s going to be personal consequences, professional consequences [00:40:00], and in particular, and you know Bush has been heralded with this, kind of — the people that had been around him were long-standing. We did not have a lot of coming and going. People had been there; they were steady and solid, and yet it was that natural pivot point, so putting all of that into the mix as well, was kind of interesting management.
Q: Along the way, you’ve talked about the value of working No Child Left Behind in a bipartisan way, and that was at a time when the Senate was — had a Democratic majority. For the rest of his term, after the midterm, he had a Republican majority, and then for the first two years of the second term, a Republican majority. Was he better off when he didn’t have a Republican majority in Congress, when the Democrats controlled one house?
SPELLINGS: Oh gosh. Well — I mean, they’re — that — I think would — I’d have to answer that as a case-by-case kind of situation depending on the piece of legislation. I would say for [00:41:00] education, as it turns out, it — you know, having Senator Kennedy in the chair was a very good thing for enactment of the law.
Q: Thank you, Secretary Spellings.
SPELLINGS: Thank you, Mike.
Citation
Margaret Spellings Interview, Center for Presidential History, Southern Methodist University, The Election of 2004 Collective Memory Project, 6 May 2014, accessed at http://cphcmp.smu.edu/2004election/margaret-spellings/.
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