WONDERFUL STORIES:

Bush picks for Cabinet have shared trait: Grit (Frank James, December 4, 2004, Chicago Tribune)

On Friday, Bush said Bernard Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner, high school dropout and son of a convicted prostitute who abandoned him early in life, was his nominee to be the new secretary of the Homeland Security Department.

The president hails from an elite family and attended Yale and Harvard Universities. But he was raised in West Texas and appears drawn to people whose life stories show they achieved beyond most expectations, say experts who have studied Bush's presidency and life.

And the president sees something of himself in their stories, students of Bush say, for the president believes that, like himself, they have done better than others thought they would.

Commerce Secretary-designate Carlos Gutierrez, a Cuban immigrant who rose from a Kellogg Co. truck driver to become the company's chief executive officer in what Bush called "a great American success story," is an example.

Alberto Gonzales Jr., someone from a poor Mexican-American family who became Bush's White House counsel, is his pick to be attorney general.

Another example is National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, nominated by Bush to be the first black woman to serve as secretary of state. She was raised in segregated Birmingham, Ala., where one of her friends was killed in the infamous 1963 church-bombing by white racists that left four young girls dead.

The president seems to breaking the mold among the nation's chief executives in the importance he appears to place on the self-made aspect of Cabinet picks.

"Go back and look at the people who served in Cabinets," says Stephen Hess, a senior fellow emeritus at the Brookings Institution. "They weren't chosen this way. In some ways their stories were irrelevant. This is the first president, maybe, where the most important thing is the story."

Other presidents chose Cabinet members because they needed someone who knew how to balance the budget or who was a Catholic, said Hess. Or in the case of the Interior Department, it was long thought essential to get a governor from a Western state, he added.

"When so many have wonderful stories you start to wonder, maybe he is looking for wonderful stories," Hess said.

Experts say the president also views the triumph-over-adversity story as quintessentially American, reflecting his belief in the nation's self-image as the greatest land of opportunity ever known.