Bush's Team Texas : From Nine To One

'Imagemaker' Karen Hughes Resigns In Non-Clash With Condi Rice

President Bush's right hand gal before Condi Rice became his right hand has quit the White House. But it's not because of some kind of tension or clash with Rice that Karen Hughes, the second to last member of Bush's Team Texas who remained in the White House, has up and quit.

How do we know this? Because the mainstream media has ruled this out, before anybody asked. Weird :

While Hughes’ record as head of public diplomacy is very mixed — her aides insist this decision is not about any disagreement with Rice or the White House – rather Hughes wants to return to her husband and her family, who she has been regularly commuting to see in Texas. Rice and Hughes are very close, and Hughes still advises Bush, aides say.

Rice told the assembled State Department staff that Hughes carried out her public diplomacy work in “spectacular fashion.” She listed her efforts toward Muslim outreach and other public diplomacy programs like a rapid response unit to counter negative stories about America and setting up regional media hubs around the world that deployed Foreign Service officers into local communities, as successes.

Hughes called Rice “a great friend” and “a great role model,” and she said, “I feel that I’ve done what Secretary Rice and President Bush asked me to do by transforming public diplomacy and making it a national security priority central to everything we do in government.”

That's right. The two women who who clambered most for the attention of Bush had absolutely no problem with each other.

A short description of Hughes' recent mission in the Bush Team :

President Bush had asked Karen Hughes to go to the State Department and help sell America’s ideas about democracy and the war on terror around the world. Polls show that there has been no improvement in the way the world views the United States since Hughes took over.

She has apparently told friends that task will outlast the Bush White House. Really?

Here's an excellent graphic from The Seminal showing the true extent of just how far Bush's Team Texas has come since they all relocated and moved to Washington to be with their leader back in early 2001. None of those who've quit have gone on to achieve anything of true note. After the White House, every career move is a step down.


Image From The Seminal

Everybody Overboard! Bailing On The Bushtanic