Margaret Spellings, Bush confidante and heartbreaker

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is shown on June 13 in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is shown on June 13 in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington. Photo: Ron Edmonds, AP Photo: Ron Edmonds, AP Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Margaret Spellings, Bush confidante and heartbreaker 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

WASHINGTON — Poor Margaret Spellings!

The secretary of education was ready to talk student loans and No Child Left Behind when interviewed by Washington Post editors and reporters last week. So maybe she was taken aback when asked why she turned down Karl Rove when he asked her out in the early '80s.

(Rove later joked it took his ego "decades to recover.")

Spellings paused, then said: "Have you met Karl Rove?

"He was so inept and so inartful," she added. "I mean, I couldn't even understand."

A reporter brought up Rove to change the subject after a journalist inadvertently made Spellings cry. When asked to describe a side of President Bush the public doesn't know, the secretary started telling an old story about how then-Gov. Bush consoled a Texas official who had broken down while eulogizing a colleague. "Oh, I'm going to cry just telling you the story," she said, removing her glasses and dabbing her eyes with a napkin. "Y'all, I can't believe you did this to me!"

She left the interview still a little weepy and mulling the potential impact of crying in front of the press. "Now you'll take sympathy on me," she said. "Maybe."