Molly Bordonaro has a running joke with President Bush. Because the ages of her children are spaced two years apart, it works out that her pregnancies coincide with election cycles. When President Bush arrived in Portland last August, he greeted Bordonaro, his veteran Oregon campaign manager, with a smile: “Not pregnant again, are you?” he said.

“Actually, Mr. President, I am,” she replied.

Five months later, the desk phone rang in Bordonaro’s 12th floor office at Portland public affairs agency The Gallatin Group. It was presidential adviser Karl Rove requesting her presence at a White House dinner, where she and the president could discuss the latest role he had picked for her: U.S. Ambassador to Malta.

“I was surprised and humbled,” Bordonaro says. Seven months pregnant, she flew to Washington. At the dinner, the president took her aside and asked whether such a post would be a hardship to Bordonaro and her young family. She assured him it would be OK.

“Then I kept telling him how excited I was about it,” she says, laughing. “I didn't want him to change his mind!”

Bordonaro’s smooth intimacy with the president results from her status as a rising Republican protegee. She quickly recites a list of politically calibrated goals she’ll pursue in Malta. She plans to advocate for several treaties, all having to do with the global fight against terrorism and Malta’s role as a tiny but strategically located country with a busy Mediterranean port. She’ll also oversee the construction of a new and more secure U.S. Embassy in Malta. And Bordonaro talks up U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s program of “transformational diplomacy,” which involves pushing economic growth, freedom and democracy in host countries as an antidote to global terrorism.

For an annual salary in the neighborhood of $140,000, she’ll manage a staff of some 90 employees, half of them Maltese. As the head of President Bush’s Oregon election campaign in 2000 and 2004 Bordonaro has led large teams before. But it’s different when you’re overseas, she explains. You’re more involved with your staff members’ personal lives, their family lives — you’re responsible for their safety and security in a building that’s an attractive terrorist target. “Hopefully I will do a good job,” she says. “But there’s a sense of gravity to it.”

In some ways it’s a natural role for a mother, which Bordonaro, a blonde-streaked 36-year-old will tell you, she is first and foremost.

Each of the Bordonaros has reason to look forward to the mid-August departure for Malta following the swearing-in ceremony in Washington, D.C. Her husband, Matt, a stay-at-home dad for two years, has extended family in nearby Sicily. Their oldest daughter, 4-year-old Brooke, is convinced they’re moving to that fictitious European country from The Princess Diaries and will insist on wearing a crown to the Marine Corps ball scheduled for September. The youngest children, Colt (age 2) and Skyler (4 months), will be along for the beach trips and afternoons spent at the ambassador’s residence pool.

“My children are the most interesting people in the world to me right now,” Bordonaro says. “They truly fascinate me.” Bordonaro’s colleagues describe her as “fearless” — here’s someone who first ran in an Oregon congressional primary at age 28 against an experienced field of Republican candidates. She lost, but two years later she moderated her stances on issues such as abortion and school vouchers and won the primary for the same seat before losing the 1998 race in Oregon’s 1st Congressional District to Democrat David Wu.

Bordonaro’s political career began in Washington, D.C. Fresh out of college (she majored in English at the University of Colorado), she worked at a conservative think tank, the American Legislative Exchange Council, where she led the charge against the Clinton Health Plan.

“She speaks her mind and she’s charismatic,” says Dan Lavey, manager of the Gallatin Group’s Portland office and longtime political adviser to Republican Sen. Gordon Smith. “Those are uncommon traits in politics, and as a young woman she stands out even more.”

Bordonaro’s father, Clayton Hering, a former Marine and president of Portland commercial real estate firm Norris Beggs and Simpson, says there’s a touch of the military directness in his middle daughter. “I used to march my kids around the house,” Hering says. “Molly’s my marine of the three. She does care about her country. And she’s motivated to serve. She takes this very seriously.”

Being in Washington, D.C., during the Clinton years was good practice for being in the political minority. But Portland’s leftward tendencies have posed challenges. What’s it like being red in such a blue town? Bordonaro laughs and then leans forward across her desk. “Frustrating,” she cries, her eyes flashing.

Then she quickly recovers. “I like debate. And I get plenty of it in Portland. Good ideas are born out of the tension between differing points of view.” Bordonaro says she often comes down on the left side of her party on environmental issues — a function of being an Oregonian and a mom who’s concerned about protecting the environment. “I'm more passionate about policy than party.”

Her term in Malta — part resume builder, part family adventure — will stretch through the balance of the Bush Administration, and after that she says she'll eagerly come home to Oregon. She shies from saying whether she'll run for office again. But her colleague Lavey puts it this way: “Oregon voters haven’t seen the last of Molly Bordonaro.”