Ronald Reagan and Rita Rodriquez
Rita and I moved to Chicago to teach. She was happy on unpaid leave, happily taking care of our new baby and racing to do her research any time Adi was sleeping. The secretary was all excited one day, saying “The White House is calling Dr. Rodriguez!” Yeah, and 1000 people can say that, most working at the Old Executive Office building next door, many 30-somethings MBA/lawyer types, as Rita later noted. The callers had her resume. She had no idea how they’d gotten it and later learned that the head of personnel had called headhunters and asked for resumes of five people who would NEVER consider working for the government.
Asked was she a Republican? Rita said no, an independent. That’s all right, we have all kinds. Conservative? No, middle of the road. That’s all right, etc. Are you familiar with President Reagan’s views on international trade? Could you LIVE with it? Yes, in that area. They asked her to please come to interview for an unspecified job. She had no interest in Washington, which was perhaps astonishing for a professor.
I said this would be a hoot, she had to do it. She said if I wanted it, I had to pay, which I did. Her trip was awful. The last plane from Chicago diverted to Baltimore. She was bussed to an airport hotel at 3 AM, given her key but to an occupied room first, and then fought with room service. Next, to the White House, where everyone’s job was to find whom she voted for, which she said was not their business. She spent a long time with the head of personnel and Reagan’s personal secretary from California, a German refugee from WW II.
Later, she met the Republican chair of the Senate committee which would confirm her, who insulted her; she humiliated him by showing he did not know what he was talking about, a no-no when you’re in the guy’s office. At some point, after refusing to stand to greet her and the two White House staffers escorting her, the Senator emphasized supporting US exporters. Rita said yes, as long as reasonable chance of repayment existed. He said no, you support them. She demurred again. The third time, she handed him the enabling legislation from her briefcase. He started reading, murmuring as he sees it says blah blah “with reasonable assurance of repayment.” He said “I know what I meant when we passed this law, and I’m chair of the Senate Finance Committee which is in charge of your confirmation.” She says, “So, I’m supposed to GUESS what you meant?” Interview over, ashen-faced staffers said goodbye to her, assuming she was toast.
She came home. I laughed. Done. A week later, the White House called and said she was their pick of ten. She had 24 hours to agree, whereupon they’d start background checks. Someone present when Reagan was shown her resume to confirm that she was OK said the president remarked, “She’s the American dream.”
The confirmation was insane, but I was not there, being on baby care duty. Rita reverse commuted for a year, then I joined her for a sa
bbatical and a parenting leave from my job at the University of Illinois at Chicago. We assumed that we’d be done in two years as she served at the pleasure of the President, and his pleasure would change.
Her agency was the U S Export Import Bank, which had five members of the Board of Directors with no more than three from one party. She had a PhD in the field and was seen by the Office of Management and Budget, the Treasury, Congressional Budget Office, and other finance-related agencies as apolitical. She was seen by the political types as someone who might know something about the subject, never a high priority. As one of the five directors, she was both powerless and very powerful by being straight. One board chairman said she was so tone deaf politically it was an asset.
Essentially, the Ex-Im Bank could loan or guarantee loans by foreign purchasers of U.S. exports. Other countries, of course, get into this in reverse. Airbus would scream that Boeing was being subsidized to cut prices on planes sold to X, a non-major economy, and Boeing would reciprocate. Rita organized a cartel of the agencies to agree on minimum terms, all of them realizing they were being played for suckers by major exporters. So Treasury loved her. Commerce wanted to sell anything to anybody at any price, Labor weighed in on human rights, State would come in for strategic foreign policy issues. She could not finance weapons (though I had a great time at the Paris Air Show). She had a certified CIA ex-spook adjacent to her office to get information she needed. 
But we knew we were outliers in Washington. She ended up there through five administrations, reappointed by the presidents. I came along as a trailing spouse and stay-at-home dad for Adi. (I attribute successes I had with Adi to dependable advice from Diane Rusch and Marilyn Tompkins, both also raising daughters).
Rita also met Ford and Nixon, who was shorter than she was, and I met her three presidents (Reagan, GHW Bush, Clinton) plus Obama. In chatting with Obama, I noted his mother was born a year after me at Wesley Hospital in Wichita.
Upon resigning in 1999, unwilling to face another transition, in which newcomers act as if no one before knew the sun rises in the east, or was blind, reinventing the wheel, Rita thought about what to do next. She refused to consider a career in lobbying. The excellent general counsel she admired who’d left for private law practice invited us to dinner, and other guests were three representatives of various corporations. All was fine until dessert, when Ex-Im came up. Rita told me we were done, got up from the table and we left. The point was that our host was showing the other guests that he had access to influential people, although 
Rita had seen almost anyone who asked to see her. To lobby, she’d have a one year time-out before working for someone who lobbied Ex-Im. She could make money telling people what to do and how, which may be why DC has the highest proportion of lawyers in the country, many lobbying. Congress, of course, writes the rules, and there are NO time-outs for former members or staff setting up shop Monday after quitting the Friday before.
I urged her to think about corporate boards. After she’d figured out the need for the price-fixing export agency cartel, she realized the banks loaned against ExIm guarantees. If there were some standardizing of loans, then the banks could package a bunch of similar loans together and sell the bundle to a managed investment fund, whether for another country’s diversified investment, a pension fund for us, etc. The banks free up their own cash and make a fee originating the loan and originating the package of loans. So, she got that done. A banker who’d met her in that context soon pulled her onto a board, and she ended up on several New York Stock Exchange boards, where as a finance type she looked out for shareholders and others rather than CEO’s, to some irritation. She said she liked working at ExIm, but did not miss it, whereas she never liked corporate boards. They can be very lucrative of course, but when things go wrong, she remarked one doesn’t earn minimum wage.
Standardized loans? We all know them from FHA and VA housing guarantees after WW II which got so many people into homes, although home ownership was less likely if the applicant was Black, a well documented issue. What could go wrong? These are CDOs, collateralized debt obligations, and the sloppiness of sleazy originators, bungling rating agencies who wanted business, and the foolishness and/or greed of investment banks reselling the things ultimately led to the housing crisis and the 2007-08 melt down of financial markets. George W. Bush remarked to his Treasury secretary as they did TARP that he was glad it happened on his watch, rather than to the new guy. Obama later remarked that the financial mess was far worse than they’d realized when campaigning.
Even as outsiders, we received many, many invitations to this or that event. Many times, we were happy that we accepted.
Editor’s Note: Gene and Rita attended inaugural events for Reagan’s second inauguration in 1985, the first inauguration to occur during her tenure at the ExIm Bank. Gene’s story about their inaugural experiences, “Going to the Circus,” will be published here on January 20, Inauguration Day, 1985.
