Monday, September 26, 2011

Book Review: Ten Minutes from Normal

A Book You Can Buy From Me

Title: Ten Minutes from Normal


Author: Karen Hughes

Date: 2004

Publisher: Viking Penguin

ISBN: 0-670-03305-7

Length: 335 pages

Quote: "The most important thing you do in life is choose your loves and order them very carefully. I reordered mine when I came home to Texas."

While campaigning with George W. Bush, Karen Hughes visited a town called Normal. Hearing a train conductor announce that they were "ten minutes from Normal" gave her the idea for a book about campaigning, or about advising her candidate after his election. Ten Minutes from Normal is both.

Some readers might have hoped that Mrs. Hughes would tell tales on W Bush, or wither him with faint praise, in the way the Clinton staff did. Those readers will be disappointed. Mrs. Hughes is a twentieth-century-conservative wife and mother whose business relationships with men are strictly professional, and a political campaign manager who knows better than to say anything indiscreet...so you might have known that the worst story she'd tell would be about how she told W to stop using a certain line in his speeches, and he finally saw the wisdom of her suggestion (page 87). The topic of her advice is usually communication; the content discussed in the stories she tells is very "safe."

Mrs. Hughes didn't "quit," and she wasn't fired, when she left Washington. She discovered the joys of telecommuting. She didn't want to be judged by her co-workers according to how well she lobbied for one specific office space. She was embarrassed by being told that, as an assistant to the president, she now ranked "roughly equivalent to...a three-star general," when "my [D]ad had retired after thirty-six years and three wars as a two-star general." She missed a favorite chain restaurant that hadn't (yet) invaded Washington. She wanted more time with her son. She didn't like having to start work early: "I sure like to stay in bed until 8:00 to 8:30. By that time, the [former] president has run three miles, walked two more, made coffee, read the papers and had his morning intelligence briefings." And she was "horrified" that her fifteen-year-old son thought of living in Washington as "like being away at boarding school": "It's hard to imagine being fifteen years old and having where your family lives or whether you are happy make any difference whatsoever to the president of the United States."

And of course the fact that the Hughes family were in Washington during years of official near-constant alarm and despondency had nothing to do with this...Mrs. Hughes describes the autumn of 2001 as a public event during which she mourned for other people's losses, noting poignantly that Barbara Olson had been just one year older than she was. Although both the anthrax mailer, later that year, and the snipers, a year later, turned out to be troubled individuals without political motivation, anyone familiar with the Arab concept of vengeance as a duty would have been afraid for W Bush and his staff.

Possibly the staff, themselves, genuinely repressed their fear from consciousness and hid it behind tactful displays of empathy for other people. Sometimes acting with courage requires a certain amount of sublimation of natural feelings.

Left-wing readers may think Ten Minutes from Normal airbrushes too much. Well, there was a war on; information about a war is supposed to be airbrushed during the duration of the war. When Mrs. Hughes describes how glad she was to be back in a "normal" home in Texas, as a wife and mother who still occasionally went to Washington to advise the President, as of 2004, I incline to believe her. Otherwise, there's a fine line between evading ugly facts and respecting the feelings of living people; I think what Mrs. Hughes does in this book is the latter.

This does not, of course, make for the most exciting memoir you've ever read. On the other hand, it offers high-level validation to those who've chosen to simplify their lifestyles, even and especially if we've chosen to do it without bashing Washington. Karen Hughes demonstrates that you don't have to be a failure, a quitter, a coward, a fanatic, excessively (or even noticeably) introverted, or otherwise inferior to eager-beaver yuppies in any way, to appreciate telecommuting.

On behalf of all those who may never be asked to advise the President of the United States, but who hate traffic, global warming, office politics, wasted time, and schlepping things that would be safer if stored in one place or another, Ten Minutes from Normal is warmly recommended.

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