and Ashley had crossed paths early in the Bush presidency, while he was working as an associate counsel in the White House counsel’s office. She found him nice, perhaps too nice, and wasn’t sure she was interested in him. Friends encouraged her to give him a shot. Finally, on September 10, 2001, she had a late dinner with him at Cafe Deluxe in Georgetown after work. They had a nice time, but the next morning everything changed. They were evacuated from the White House after terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and it looked like another airliner was headed their way. Kavanaugh distinctly remembers watching her, in a black-and-white-checked shirt and black pants, running down West Executive Avenue, the closed street that borders the West Wing.
Amid the trauma and intense activity in the White House following 9/11, they paused their dating, but Kavanaugh, a baseball fan, eventually took her to Cal Ripken’s last game on October 6, the first of many sporting events they’d attend together. It was a busy and stressful period at the White House, but they made time for each other. They were discreet about their relationship, but after a year or so, one of Laura Bush’s personal aides let the news slip. The Bushes were immediately supportive, and the president began good-naturedly teasing them. When Kavanaugh became staff secretary in July 2003, Ashley’s work and his began to overlap. He also saw more of President Bush, who encouraged the two to get married. They were engaged by Christmas of that year and celebrated a Texas-sized wedding the next July in D.C. President and Mrs. Bush even hosted a party for them in the Rose Garden a couple of days before the wedding.
After Bush’s reelection, Ashley decided to leave her position, which required extremely long hours. When she discussed her options with President Bush, he encouraged her to consider a few different paths, including having children, telling her she’d make an excellent mother. That night, spurred on by the conversation, she went home and took a pregnancy test. She was pregnant with her and Brett’s first child, Margaret. The Bushes were thrilled by the good news. President Bush always said Ashley was a good soul, and everyone around her found her a source of cheer. She left the White House but stayed in the Bush fold for an additional six years, albeit in a less intense position, helping set up the George W. Bush Presidential Library.
The Kavanaughs genuinely loved the Bushes and admired the president’s character and how he treated his wife, friends, and employees. President Bush nominated Kavanaugh to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2003, although his confirmation took three years and two separate nomination hearings because of obstruction from Senate Democrats. They were outraged that someone who had worked on the Whitewater investigation of President Clinton and was so closely associated with President Bush would be elevated to the federal bench, but in 2006 he was finally confirmed.
Perhaps because that earlier confirmation battle had been so brutal, Ashley prayed that God would deliver them from another. They had a wonderful life with their children and with both their jobs—she was now a town manager in Chevy Chase, Maryland. She was proud he was a front-runner for the Supreme Court, but she hoped he would not be nominated.
President Trump, relying on the recommendation of his judicial advisors, saw this as Kavanaugh’s race to lose. But he sought advice from a wide variety of sources, to the consternation of many who wished he would simply go with Kavanaugh.
Part of the problem was the high quality of those from whom he had to choose. It was hard to disagree that Barrett, for instance, was an attractive pick. But she had been a judge for only a few months, which meant she had few opinions to analyze. Conservative groups usually require a track record before they endorse a nominee. In Barrett’s case, they felt the Catholic mother of seven who had defended her faith before the Senate Judiciary Committee could be counted on to stay strong in the face of liberal opposition. Part of her support came from outside groups who worried that any male nominee, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, would be accused of inappropriate sexual behavior, regardless of his merits.
As much as the president and his advisors liked Barrett and trusted that she was an originalist, they knew she would have difficulty getting through a barely Republican