The Chavez Debacle: A personal account - onetime Secretary of Labor appointee Linda Chavez

National Review, Feb 5, 2001 by John J. Miller

Chavez has been gracious since her withdrawal, blaming herself in a round of interviews for failing to mention Mercado before her nomination. Yet it's hard not to conclude that a different media strategy from the Bush camp might have resulted in another outcome. At the very least, it would have forced the Left to split its resources between defeating Chavez and Ashcroft. It might also have led to the spectacle of Ted Kennedy, who sits on the Senate Labor Committee, having to explain during Chavez's hearings what, exactly, was wrong with helping a woman in need. In the long term, Chavez might have become an unexpectedly strong tool of Hispanic outreach, and a symbol for a Bush administration that wants to smooth off the hard edges of Republicanism. Imagine Chavez, as labor secretary, touring a battered women's shelter in the barrio every time she visited a city.

Now it won't happen. Bush never bothered to call Chavez about her withdrawal, but he wasted no time in replacing her with Elaine Chao, who immediately won praise from the AFL-CIO and Senate Democrats. Chavez, for her part, will return to the life she had been enjoying as president of the Center for Equal Opportunity and a newspaper columnist. She is disappointed with her experience, but some good may come of it. Chavez thought the rigors of confirmation would wind up demonizing her. Now she has exited looking fully human, and generous to a fault. For two years, people have wondered what it really means to be a compassionate conservative. In her brief, brutish time in the spotlight, Linda Chavez perhaps has succeeded in providing us with an answer.