The attacks of September 11 occurred on a serene and beautiful Tuesday, and it was one of my new friend’s birthday. I had baked a cake for her so that the entire DPC staff could celebrate. I got the moniker Ellie Mae cake-baker for that cake and others I brought in over the years. September 11 was the second worst day of my entire life, as confusion from the first plane hitting the Twin Towers, to seeing the second plane hit, to hearing rumors that the Pentagon was on fire. It later occurred to us that we were, in fact, a target. We quickly evacuated and had to help a staffer who was confined to a wheelchair use the very slow moving elevators and go outside to seeming safety. We stood loitering on 17th Street outside the gates of the White House compound not knowing exactly what to do. Eventually a few of us from the DPC staff walked up to Dupont Circle and we found refuge in a bar where we watched the Twin Towers collapse on television. With tears dripping down our cheeks we sat in stunned silence. Not having a cellular phone, I tried to use the pay phone to let my family in Tennessee know that I was okay but all of the phone lines were jammed as the system was completely overloaded. I did not know if it was safe to use the Metro, DC’s subway, to make my way back to the house I shared with my roommates. Eventually, I heard on the news that the subway was running, and I took the Red Line up to my neighborhood. The next day, on September 12, I rode the subway with a DPC colleague as all of us were rattled. I was not prepared to see tanks and army soldiers with big guns greet me as I exited the subway on Farragut North. Access to the White House and the EEOB was even more restricted and the soldier with whom I interacted in order to get into the EEOB made sure that my badge picture matched my appearance. It was a sobering and scary time.
Shortly after the attacks, a position came available in the West Wing for me to work directly for the president’s domestic policy advisor, who was, at the time, Margaret Spellings. I could not believe that I would have the opportunity to work in the West Wing. The office was directly above the Oval Office, called “the Oval” for short, and I had the opportunity to interact with and meet all of the president’s most senior staff. Though I had no real “power” so to speak, I performed my job diligently and became very good friends with many of my colleagues, who I still consider some of my closest friends. The workday started early, as the senior staff meeting began at 7:30 a.m., and we would work until the work was done. I was lucky in that my boss, Margaret, had two school-age children at home so she did not work at the office until late into the night unlike other people. One of my very best friends in the West Wing worked in the chief of staff’s office and she routinely worked fifteen hours a day and on weekends. The grueling pace and the adrenaline of the job not only was deeply exhausting but also very rewarding. As a junior aide, I witnessed incredible dedication from so many staff members, and our work, for the most part, was part of a huge team effort. Those are the types of crucibles where loyalties are forged, and life-long friendships are made.
One of the most interesting aspects of working in the West Wing, for me, was learning about how governing actually occurs in real time. Presidential briefings were the culmination of long policy processes and only staff who were critical to the briefing would be allowed in the Oval. I was not at that level at that point in my career, but I was fascinated to see how policy memos were written and the types of decisions presidents are asked to make. For instance, should Bush finish the work of President Clinton and the Congress and complete the budget doubling for the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s budget? There were differing opinions on the subject. Bush enjoyed when staff disagreed as he liked to hear different sides of an argument. He did end up deciding to carry through with the doubling. It was also exciting to see topics that the DPC was working on appear in the national news and to know that I had insider knowledge about the state of several different policy areas. The papers were guessing about Bush’s decision on stem cell research, for instance. It was a thrilling experience to work on that sticky and morally fraught issue. I always marveled at getting a phone call for my boss from Air Force One, or when the caller ID would show that the President was calling (actually his secretary, Ashley Estes, until my boss was on the phone). I loved walking down to the White House Mess and collecting my lunch and seeing the Situation Room. I wanted to pinch myself as I thought how unthinkable it was that I was working in the West Wing of the White House. It was a goal I had never dreamed, and a situation I had never expected.
After Bush’s re-election in 2004, Margaret Spellings assumed leadership at the U.S. Department of Education. She asked me to come with her to the Department. It was my second foray into agency operations, as I had a very brief stint at the Department of Health and Human Services in their legislative affairs division. Working at the Department of Education made me think very deeply about the relationship between political appointees and the career civil servants. I was a Schedule-C, which was a lower level political appointee not requiring Senate confirmation, which was the bulk of political appointees across all of government. The Department fascinated me in how it operated and that policy questions were framed through the prism of politics. I was also interested in perspectives of the career civil servants. For the most part, they were incredibly dedicated professionals who were deeply committed to the mission of the Department of Education. Working in government is indeed a public service, and I often felt a sense of gratitude for the privilege of serving my country through work in government. I often wonder what my career in Washington and at the Department might have been had I stayed, but life often takes us in different directions.
When I began my graduate work, I was surprised and even chuckled a bit when faculty in my department would discount my government service as not being in any way relevant to studying American political institutions. Political scientists, as scientists, they argued look at the governing institutions from a scholarly perspective and will look at voting patterns in Congress, for instance, from a quantitative and seasoned academic perspective. Just because I had spent the beginning of my career inside of government, it did not give me any advantage in scholarship. I respectfully disagreed on those points and many others when working in the Ivory Tower, but I did not see the point in arguing with people who stood between me and my PhD. Luckily my advisor, David Lowery, who himself had worked in state government, always encouraged me to think about scholarly questions informed by my experiences in DC.
The reason I discuss the arc of my early career in government is to say that it deeply affected my perspective toward studying American government. When teaching my own students about the delegate or trustee model of representation in Congress I always give examples from when I worked for Senator Frist. The inspiration for this book stemmed from my work inside of government, and the realization that political appointees paid attention to a selective agenda, from my perspective. The work of the American people is carried out by the dedicated men and women serving in agencies implementing policy about which they may have a lot of discretion. Serving in government also made me think a lot about what a president can and cannot accomplish, as often fulfilling his agenda depends on the bureaucracy following his executive orders or other policy directives.