When funds were low, she found unorthodox ways of making money, engaging in businesses as diverse as dispatching maids to doctors' offices in an attempt to gain access to their drug cabinets, and running an illegal abortion referral service.

The former governor of Guanajuato and Coca-Cola executive with a populist touch has wisely used the transition period to assemble a diverse and pluralistic cabinet.

It gives Mr. Bush credit for some things - like promoting programs that help people with disabilities, enhancing the economic power of women and assembling a diverse cabinet - but the draft gives him lower marks on many other issues.

President-elect George W. Bush won praise in recent weeks for the speed with which he assembled an ethnically diverse and ideologically cohesive cabinet of well-tested administrators and politicians.

After the election, several aides said Mr. Bush was more concerned than ever about assembling a diverse cabinet.

Led by a new prime minister, Iyad Allawi, a diverse cabinet of 33 Iraqis accepted their appointments in a ceremony marked by extraordinary security, a somber tone and measured promises of better days.

If Clinton really wanted a diverse cabinet, shouldn't he include a welfare mother, somebody living in a homeless shelter, a high school dropout and at least one of the 40 million Americans who don't have health insurance?

I think this is an energetic, diverse idea-oriented cabinet.

In naming Mr. Brown, Mr. Clinton was simultaneously paying off a big political debt and working to fulfill a campaign vow to have a racially diverse cabinet.