Word: sununu
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Some associates say, however, it wasn't really a love of perks that sent Sununu by ground but fear of getting snickers from fellow passengers. Silly man: the unspoken code of the New York shuttle dictates that no one pays the famous -- or the infamous -- any attention...
...money that keeps Sununu from flying commercial. Though he often complained about being underpaid as Governor, he and his wife, who works for the Republican Governors Association, earned combined salaries of more than $150,000 last year. Moreover, Sununu has access to $250,000 in leftover New Hampshire campaign funds...
Already this year, he has dipped into the fund to pay for catering, printing and taxes. Now that two more of his eight children have finished college, he finally has, an aide remarked, "some discretionary income." What ails Sununu is a bad case of a strange complex that overcomes people who are enamored of perks: once they become used to expense-account living, they don't want to pay for anything, no matter how deep their pockets...
...Sununu's addiction to perks is proved by his insistence that he needs to get out of Washington in order to talk with what he calls real people. As he said in Des Moines last week, "There are some folks who keep asking why I have to travel. The fact is that the Bush Administration really does love to spend time with folks who make up the heart and soul of the nation . . . Frankly, we'd rather listen to you than the self-styled experts in Washington." However, his definition of real people is curious: beyond the weekly Republican fund...
...easy to mistake Sununu's value to Bush as merely that of an unshakable link to the G.O.P.'s right wing. In fact, Sununu's real value is the role he plays as the President's enforcer, the "abominable no man," who acts as a lightning rod for the well-liked Commander in Chief. But Sununu's ethical lapses are now backfiring on Bush, causing the President such embarrassment that Sununu's future is in doubt. Some officials who never liked Sununu but balked at criticizing him feel less restrained now that he is under fire. Several of them suggested...