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For pop psychologists who believe that politicians play out their inner conflicts in public, Sununu is a study in narcissism. The world revolves around him. He's O.K.; you're probably not O.K. He is smarter than you are, and he wants you to know it. Ask Sununu to name an influential teacher or a prize student, and none comes immediately to mind. He looms larger in others' lives than they do in his.
Unlike Bush, who keeps a Rolodex of his 6,000 closest "friends," Sununu reserves his warmth for a handful of close friends and his family. Once, after a Bush political dinner in Miami that ended well past midnight, a reporter saw Sununu heading out to spend three hours, round trip, on I-95, just for a brief visit with his parents, now retired in Gulf Stream, Fla.
Sununu jealously reserves most weekends for his wife Nancy, a fund raiser for the Republican Governors Association, and their children at their four- bedroom home in Oakton, Va., 17 miles northwest of the White House. Asked his greatest accomplishment, Sununu replies without hesitation, "Eight great kids." An avid softball player, he enjoys taking swings in the batting cages with the two youngest sons, Chris, 15, and Peter, 10, who still live at home. Sununu plays third base much the way he plays chief of staff: setting up almost in the batter's face to cut off the bunt and daring him to get one past.
For a time, Sununu wrote stories and poems for children. Concord lawyer Ned Helms recalls that when his wife fell ill, Sununu gave her a book of poems that he said he enjoyed, by Sylvia Plath. A voracious speed reader, Sununu keeps about three books going at a time: from a biography of Richard Nixon to a thriller by Tom Clancy to a tome called The Theory of Numbers, which his executive assistant, Ed Rogers, dryly describes as "recreational mathematics." During spare moments on Air Force One, he plays with Game Boy, a hand-held Nintendo video game.
Sununu's humor runs toward practical jokes (dressing Budget Director Darman in a gorilla suit for Bush's birthday), physical gags (suddenly flopping like a high jumper over the back of his office couch) and, of course, sarcasm. After the White House lost a major struggle on Capitol Hill, Sununu arrived at his morning senior staff session to find his chief lobbyist, Fred McClure, perusing the newspapers. "What are you reading, Fred?" Sununu rasped. "The help-wanted ads?"
In February, after cocaine lords threatened to shoot down the President's plane as it flew to a summit meeting with South American leaders in Colombia, reporters pressed for more details about security arrangements. Sununu deadpanned, "We're gonna paint the press plane to look like Air Force One, and we're gonna send it in ahead of the President." The following month, when Bush learned that critics of his AIDS policy might try to disrupt a speech he was to deliver, he peevishly told his aides, "Well, then I just won't give the speech." Sununu raised his eyebrows and said, "This, from the man who braved the drug lords of Cartagena?" Bush laughed -- and gave the speech.
Sununu's most common expression is not a scowl but a pixieish, if somewhat smug, little smile. Even his characteristic fits of trash-can-kicking fury pass quickly. Still, most White House officials have learned not to take bad news to Sununu before getting a "weather report" of his mood from his deputy, Andy Card.