Soft Nicknames and a Leak to National Public Radio Cited
The White House has apparently fired Joyce Sprayley, the director of the Office of Nickname Development and a longtime aide who helped President Bush select nicknames for associates when he was governor of Texas.
“Mrs. Sprayley has returned to her home in Fort Worth and we wish her godspeed,” the White House Press Office said in a terse statement issued in response to inquires about Sprayley’s status. It said a search had begun for a new director of the nickname office.
Two explanations for her firing had surfaced in recent days.
One said that Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political advisor, felt the nicknames she had selected recently were too soft and lacked sufficient “bite.” Her nickname for Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, who is the new leader of Senate Democrats, was particularly singled out.
“She gave him the nickname ‘Quiet Boy’ and there was a feeling that it was way too soft for the Senate’s top Democrat,” said a Republican operative with knowledge of White House thinking.
“Karl wanted something a little stronger, like ‘Hardscrabble’ or maybe ‘Laughing Stock.’ He wanted the president to be able to offhandedly refer to ‘Old Laughing Stock’ or something similar that would be guaranteed to always get a laugh out of a crowd.”
Other Republicans said Bush was angered to learn that Sprayley revealed to a reporter for National Public Radio the top three names under consideration for Illinois freshman Democratic Senator Barack Obama, whose father was a immigrant from Kenya. Obama’s rise from humble origins to become a United States senator is widely cited as the embodiment of the American Dream.
“I don’t know what got into Joyce, revealing several possible nicknames like that,” said an aide to a senior Republican senator. “She knows that the president always wants to be the one to unveil a nickname by using it first. Apparently, the president was furious that she let the nicknames out and that NPR then made fun of them.”
A few weeks after President Bush won re-election, reports surfaced that the White House nickname office had fallen behind in assigning nicknames to presidential appointees, senior members of Congress, and major Republican party donors.
“It gets to be a real problem for us if someone has raised a million dollars or more for the Republican party and conservative causes and they still haven’t been issued a presidential nickname,” said a member of the Republican National Committee staff. “It makes it hard to go back to them and urge them to raise another million.”
He said a high priority had been placed on finding a new nickname office head who can “break up the logjam.”