IF GEORGE W. BUSH CAN’T get his own Toy-Safety Czar confirmed by the new Democratic Senate, what chance does he stand when he nominates someone who is actually controversial, for a position that actually affects American life? By a party line vote last Thursday, the Senate Commerce Committee spurned Mary Sheila Gall, Bush’s nominee to chair the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Though former President Bush had made Gall a commissioner in 1991 and she’d been reconfirmed without incident in 1999, Democrats—egged on by the Senate’s self-appointed patron saint of children, Hillary Rodham Clinton—sent the single working mother of two packing instead of giving her the $8,000 raise and management duties she’d earned by 10 years of service to the commission. (She is, after all, the only Republican on a three-person commission whose chairman serves at the pleasure of the president, now also a Republican.) Why? Gall’s chief Senate defender, John McCain, gave this unvarnished view of her reception by the committee: "What she faced was a group of senators with rope in their hands. For partisan reasons, Ms. Gall was going to be hanged regardless of what she said." Votes she cast on baby bath seats, bunk beds, and infant walkers during her decade on the commission proved Gall too lenient for the committee’s new Democratic majority. She also occasionally blamed negligent parents instead of manufacturers, they said. No matter that Gall cast those votes against mandatory regulations before 1999, when she was supported by many of the same Democrats who voted against her Thursday. No matter that she voted with the two other commissioners—both Democrats and Clinton appointees—93 percent of the time. Democrats have control of the Senate again and are flexing their muscles. The only person who could have helped Mary Gall was George W. Bush. But where was he when his handpicked chairman was being unfairly labeled—get this—soft on toys before a media craving another confirmation battle? Far from being nonchalant about the welfare of children, Gall has demonstrably invested her personal, educational, and professional energies in its pursuit. Her own son was severely disfigured by fire—caused by a toppled candle—before she adopted him from a Guatemalan orphanage some two decades ago. But the public didn’t hear this from the White House. The public didn’t learn that Gall had toiled as a Health and Human Services employee with the Head Start program, or that she had worked with special needs children while pursuing her master’s degree. The only peep the White House made was a statement from spokesman Ari Fleischer saying the president stood "proudly and tall" behind his nominee. Though Democrats raised objections to Gall as early as April, Fleischer’s statement appeared in the press on Wednesday, one day after we inquired why the White House hadn’t spoken up yet and one day before Mary Sheila Gall’s nomination was scheduled for a vote. But by then, after months of demonization, Gall was as confirmable as Irvin Mainway, the character on Saturday Night Live who sold children’s toys such as the Bag of Broken Glass and Halloween costumes like Invisible Pedestrian (a black jumpsuit and mask to be worn in nighttime traffic). Perhaps the White House is choosing its battles with the Democratic Senate carefully, and that’s why it let Mary Gall twist in the wind. But this was a battle it could easily have won by disseminating the facts. Besides, doesn’t it embarrass President Bush that his first nominee to face official Senate rejection is someone whose 30-year government career clearly qualifies her to chair this obscure agency? The more likely conclusion is that George W. Bush—like Mary Gall—was snookered by one Ann Winkelman Brown. A Clinton appointee to the CPSC, Ann Brown now holds the job for which Gall was nominated. Chairman Brown is a high-dollar donor to the Democratic National Committee and frequent contributor to Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee. She is also an old ally of Hillary’s from the board of the Children’s Defense Fund and former agitator for Americans for Democratic Action. A savvy political operator, Brown is perhaps the figure most responsible for Mary Gall’s undoing. At least that’s what all of Gall’s supporters are whispering but refuse to say on the record. And that’s certainly what Senator McCain, ranking member of the Commerce Committee, implied Thursday in his prepared statement: "It concerns me deeply that the former Executive Director of the CPSC who was appointed by the current Chairman was on the dais for a short time during the hearing, just as the poisonous comment that the current Chairman made after last week’s hearing about her long-time colleague, Commissioner Gall, whom she had previously praised, concerns me." Poisonous. An appropriate word to describe the Clintonian turnaround Ann Brown pulled on Mary Gall. "I always knew it would be you, and I think you’d be good for the Commission," Brown reportedly told Gall when her nomination was announced. "You’ve been here a lot longer than I have, so there will be no transition," a Gall staffer recalls Brown saying. Gall cited Brown’s support when she came under fire at her July 25 hearing. After all, Clinton appointee Thomas Moore—the third CPSC commissioner—publicly supported Gall and was present at the hearing, despite their disagreements over baby seats and other particular votes. Brown was conspicuously absent from that hearing—traveling in Italy. Yet despite her remote location, she managed to rebut Gall’s claim the same day: "I told Commissioner Gall that I expected her to be nominated and confirmed, but I would not support her. I do not support her because I disagree with her philosophy, which I think would put children and families in danger," Brown told the Washington Post. Pamela Gilbert, the former CPSC executive director to whom McCain referred, irked senators by lingering behind them at Gall’s confirmation hearing. This Brown ally was in regular enough contact with Democrats on the committee that she felt comfortable invading a space on the dais reserved for their staffs. The Washington Post reported on Gilbert’s actions August1, and Gilbert responded, "I wasn’t there as a Democrat. I was there to lend my expertise." To Democrats. On the day of the vote, Gilbert took a cue from her former boss and went on vacation. But her PR flack, Sean Crowley of M&R Strategic Services, made the rounds at the press table to hand out Gilbert’s business card and cell phone number for immediate comment on Gall’s demise. "Did you see even Mary McGrory came out against Gall?" Crowley whispered to reporters at the committee meeting. Brown’s footprints are all over Mary Gall’s neck. But why would Brown want to hang on to a job that pays her only $133,000 a year? (This is a pittance for a woman who is listed in the Social Register as having homes in Little Washington, Virginia; Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts; Palm Beach, Florida; and a tony Northwest neighborhood in Washington, D.C.) Possibly the public spotlight. On December 18, after the presidency was decided and it became clear Gall would be nominated to replace Brown, Brown told Bureau of National Affairs reporter John Whalen that these things take a long time. Brown’s own appointment to the commission had come only two years after Clinton was elected, she reasoned. Until Bush moved on a replacement, said Brown, it would be "business as usual—plus." "It was such an unusual and funny quote we used it as a headline," recalls Whalen, who writes for BNA’s trade publication Product Safety & Liability Reporter. What could "plus" possibly entail? Sources close to Brown and Gall believe it meant pouring all the perks of her incumbency into a high-powered job hunt. Such as appearing twice last week on NBC’s Today show. "I’ve never met a microphone I didn’t like, and I plan to use this agency as a bully pulpit," Brown said at a 1994 press conference. Whose microphone is she after? One friendly acquaintance of Brown’s thinks she is following the "Liddy Dole" model—hoping to land a high-profile position at the American Red Cross or United Way. Other people who know Brown think she is trying to land a network job as a consumer affairs reporter, which would explain the increasing frequency of her television appearances in recent weeks. Whatever happens, Ann Brown is an old Washington hand who will land on her feet. One may speculate whether it was her cunning that derailed Mary Gall’s nomination and short-circuited her career, or President Bush’s timidity. If responsibility belongs at Brown’s feet, then the next nominee to chair the CPSC ought to be on guard. If the responsibility is Bush’s, then anyone nominated by the White House in the next three years should beware. Bernadette Malone is the editorial page editor of the Union Leader and New Hampshire Sunday News.