Dana Perino says a short conversation with George W. Bush changed the direction of her life after she left government and took a public relations job she knew almost immediately was wrong for her. Perino said she could tell within two hours that she did not like the work, and Bush’s blunt question about the worst that could happen if she started her own thing pushed her to quit and launch her own firm.
“What’s the worst thing that could happen if you started your own thing and it failed? Let’s talk it through honestly,” Perino recalled Bush asking her. She said the talk made the risk feel manageable because she realized she was not going to become homeless and live on the street. That decision set her on a different path, one that eventually took her to, where she became host of America’s Newsroom and The Five.
Perino’s new turn is literary. Her first novel, Purple State, is set to hit shelves on April 21 and follows a young PR professional trying to navigate both a career and a love life. The thriller draws on her years in politics and the media, giving the book a setting she knows from the inside. It is also the latest sign of how far she has moved from the narrow lane that once defined her work in Washington.
That shift fits with advice Bush was already giving publicly years ago. In a 2011 interview with AARP, he said people should be open-minded about where life takes them and warned that people who map out their lives at 18 are often surprised by what comes next. “I think you ought to be open-minded as to where life takes you,” he said, adding that life does not unfold the way people expect and will bring surprises and challenges.
For Perino, that advice did not stay abstract. She spent nearly her entire career in government before leaving the White House, then tested the private sector, then built a firm, and later found a much larger audience on television. She said, “Once I focused and stopped trying to do everything, all the other opportunities came at the right time,” a line that now sounds less like reflection than a summary of the career she actually built.
The through line is clear: the mistake was not leaving Washington, but assuming there was only one next step. Bush’s counsel gave Perino permission to move without knowing the full map, and Purple State now arrives as the latest result of that choice. With the novel due out on April 21, Perino is no longer just describing career reinvention. She is living the kind of reinvention she once had to talk herself into.
