JOE KLEIN: ‘THE BENETTON-AD PRESIDENCY’

New York, NY -- “In this honeymoon season, give credit where credit is due: George W. Bush has not only appointed the two most diverse Cabinets in U.S. history, he has also raised the possibility that the Republican Party—long a pale-male refuge—could become a more attractive option for traditionally Democratic constituencies like women and the rapidly growing nonwhite electorate,” writes TIME’s Joe Klein in his column in this year’s Person of the Year issue. George W. Bush was named TIME’s 2004 Person of the Year.

“In a way,” explains Klein, “President Bush is the beneficiary of 40 years of Democratic policy—not just affirmative action, which helped create a broader, deeper pool of successful nonwhite college graduates, but also the Democratic Party’s historic support for civil rights legislation, the feminist revolution and the easing of strict immigration policies in the 1960s, policies long opposed by many Republicans. But the Bush Cabinets have also been very much a reflection of who George W. Bush is and always has been,” he writes.

He has always been a gutbucket populist egalitarian. That was, in part, a Texas rebellion against the starchy Greenwich, Conn., aristocracy of his family, but it was also hardwired, a consequence of Bush’s native predilection for studying people rather than books,” he writes.

“He thinks in terms of personal stories,” says Karl Rove. “When we learned (that Commerce Secretary) Don Evans wanted to leave, the President mentioned Gutierrez—not because the guy is Hispanic but because the President loves the story: a guy who starts at the bottom at Kellogg’s (as a truck driver delivering Frosted Flakes in Mexico) and rises all the way to CEO of the company.”

“He was influenced by growing up where he did, too,” says Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. “We have a tradition of strong women who ran big ranches and businesses.”

“In the end, the President’s success is personal, not philosophical,” adds Klein. “It is something people feel rather than think about. Rod Paige, the outgoing Secretary of Education, felt it the first time he met Bush. ‘It was at an African-American fund raiser for his father in 1988. There were about 700 of us, and he was about the only white guy there. Now, we had seen white Republicans in a room full of black folks before, and you could usually count on a fair amount of, well, discomfort. There was none of that with W. I don’t remember a thing he said. I just remember he was hanging out, easy, with the rest of us,’” Paige says.

Full story on TIME.com.

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