In Ireland the term "Kitchen Cabinet" is used synonymously with "inner circle" and denotes people who are very close to and influential with the Prime Minister/President but who are not part of the formal Cabinet of Government Ministers.  It does not have any derogatory or sexist connotations.  I presume Cat knew this and was just trying to be provocative.  In any case I do not find this approach "entices" me to read his sources further or continue this conversation.

notes from no w here

Because the latter would not make any sense.

Oh, it does, when speaking metaphorically of the functionality of certains persons engaged informally to act as the president's agents, ex post or <ex ante</i> and during ... meals.

Clifford is a funny (peculiar) example, a Cuisine art "food processor" perhaps.

The Nation called Truman "inept" and Walter Lippman declared Churchill's speech and Truman's obvious approval of it --the president applauded several times during its delivery-- were an "almost catastrophic blunder." Although Truman bobbed and weaved through these volleys of criticism in a style FDR would have approved, he was reassured by the polls of what American people were thinking about the Soviet Union. ....

In 1948 Henry Wallace ran for president as the candidate of the Progressive Party.

By '44 Boss Kelly, FDR appliance sine qua non, had concluded Wallace was a liability no matter how much praise the Nation and New Republic heaped on his anti-isolationist rhetoric and spectacular fights with Jesse Jones, corporate rustler. Truman was more suave.

His chief plank was a call for reconcilliation with Russia. In the campaign, all Wallace's flaws and past failures returned to haunt him. The Hearst newspapers got their hand on the Roerich letters and had them authenticated by a handwriting expert. Unable to call them foregeries, Wallace simply refused to discuss them, dismaying even his supporters in the press. He defended the Soviet seizure of Czechoslovakia in early 1948 and sent an open letter to Stalin with a six-point program for peace that the Soviet dictator accepted, all but smacking his lips over such an easy propaganda victory. ...Even his original sponsor, Eleanor Roosevelt, deserted him and declared for Truman. On election day, Wallace got 1,157,140 votes --2.37 percent of the national total-- and failed to prevent Truman's victory, the real purpose of his bizarre campaign. [Fleming, 554-555]

Clifford was in the kitch for the MIC, I think, history has concluded.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.