Democrats Swoon for Obama's Choice for Budget Chief, Sylvia Mathews Burwell

In a 1997 Oval Office meeting with President Bill Clinton, Sylvia Mathews Burwell tried to discreetly pass a note to her boss, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Erskine Bowles, then Clinton’s chief of staff, caught her and stopped the meeting. If only he could persuade Burwell to be his deputy and pass him notes at meetings, he told Clinton, “everybody in Washington is going to think I’m as smart as Bob Rubin.” She took the job, Bowles recalls, “and that day my IQ went up about 100 points.”

On March 4, President Obama announced he wants Burwell back in the White House. He plans to nominate her as his next director of the Office of Management and Budget, filling a position currently held by acting director Jeffrey Zients and, before that, by Jacob Lew, now Treasury secretary. In the 1990s, Burwell was “part of a team that presided over three budget surpluses in a row,” Obama said in introducing her. If the Senate confirms her, Burwell will return to government after more than a decade at philanthropic organizations—she was president of the global development program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she was involved in efforts to fight malaria and lower the cost of HIV drugs, and for the past year was president of the Walmart Foundation.