The Mystery of Condi RiceWhere did she learn how to play the game?
Posted Monday, Dec. 17, 2007, at 7:37 AM ET
Way back when George W. Bush was still a candidate and "Condi" was not yet an internationally recognized nickname, someone who had observed the present secretary of state in a previous incarnation told me to watch her carefully. "Everyone underestimates her, because they think she's a token. Condi's not a token. Condi plays the game better than anyone else."
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StumbleUponNo, Condi is not a token, and yes, Condi played the game better than anyone else—so much so that Condi has now dispensed with pretty much everyone who underestimated her to begin with, most notably Donald Rumsfeld, but for all practical purposes Dick Cheney, too. At this point it is she, the small, athletic black woman, and not one of them, the older, gray-haired white men, who is commonly understood to be the most influential foreign-policy figure in this administration. Condi has the president's ear, Condi calls the shots, and Condi's particular form of pragmatism has triumphed too. Step away from questions of substance (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan), examine the results of seven long years of infighting, and it's hard not to conclude that she is this administration's star player.
But where did she learn how to do it? Elisabeth Bumiller's new book, Condoleezza Rice: An American Life, is at its best when its author is dealing with precisely that question, since the answers aren't entirely what you'd expect. Much has been made (not least by Rice herself) of Condi's origins in 1960s Birmingham, of her friendship with a child who died in the infamous, racially motivated, bombing of a Baptist church, of the shotgun her father kept at home to protect his family from nightriders. But this "Mississippi Burning" Birmingham was not really the city that Rice herself experienced. Carefully dressed and coiffed, taught French, ballet, ice skating, and piano, Rice in fact grew up in an aspirational middle-class household which seems to have been a lot more Scarsdale than Watts.
Later in life, Rice found that she had much in common with president-to-be George W. Bush, according to Bumiller, partly because both thought of themselves as coming from elite backgrounds. Weird though that sounds, this has the ring of truth about it: Take a look at one of Bumiller's photographs, the one that shows Soviet expert Condi, age 35 but looking 20, briefing the senior President Bush, Secretary of State Baker, Marlin Fitzwater, Brent Scowcroft, and others during a 1990 Bush-Gorbachev summit, and ask yourself if this is a woman who looks even remotely uncomfortable or out of place.
But Rice shares other things with the current president. Like him, she has always had zero interest in ideology—zero interest in "big ideas" at all, in fact. Because she's a black woman Republican from Alabama, and because she works for George W., Condi has sometimes been mischaracterized as an ideologue: Surely she couldn't have gotten where she is, braving all that male chauvinism and all that racism, without some fervent belief in neoconservatism, or neorealism, or whatever kind of "ism" is currently in vogue. But that completely misses the point about Rice, who is a consummate pragmatist. Sure she talks about spreading democracy—but not because she's on some kind of crusade. She has simply judged that the United States has more stable relationships with countries which, as she often puts it, "share our values." But that doesn't mean she'll drop the Saudis just because their female population is subjected to serious human rights abuse.
This sort of pragmatism—people who don't like it call it opportunism, though I don't think that's quite right—has also been visible from early on. Though Soviet studies was a field that once routinely attracted zealots of the left as well as the right, Condi fell into it because, having abandoned the idea of a professional musical career, she "wandered into" a course on international relations at the University of Denver and, portentously, was captivated by a lecture on the political maneuvering that brought Stalin to power.
The lecturer was Joseph Korbel, Madeleine Albright's father, a coincidence that Bumiller (like others) makes much of. I make more of the fact that her subsequent Ph.D. topic was Czech-Soviet military relations, a subject even more boring and idea-free than that of most political-science Ph.Ds. But it would have appealed to Korbel, a Czech, and it would set her up to enter "strategic studies"—the Cold War science of missile-counting—which was then the fast track into foreign affairs. She moved quickly from academia proper into university administration, then into the first and second Bush administrations. And no wonder: For a person who feels at home in elite settings, who is captivated by political maneuvering, and who isn't bound to an ideology, the White House is an ideal working environment.
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Remarks from the Fray:
These occasional paeans to the brilliant and talented Condoleezza Rice never cease to amaze me. Among some in the ranks of political commentary, Rice somehow is perceived as a strong and independent voice in the Bush administration, or even as held back by the manifest limitations of that administration, against her own better judgment. You'd think that after seven years of observing this bunch, people would know better. But apparently not. In this latest version by Applebaum, the line is that Rice lacked a strong position within the administration to be able to persuade the president of her superior judgment on, well you name it: the doomed plans for the Iraq War, the dysfunction between the Defense and State Depts., the horrendous detainee policies, and so on. As Applebaum puts it, "Until she had the staff and the prestige of the Department of State behind her, [Rice] implies, all she could do was mediate." I suppose when you're just a measly National Security Advisor, no one is going to give a hoot what you think.
Of course this whole line of thinking is utter nonsense, and to the extent that Rice fosters it, very underhanded, craven and self-serving revisionism. In reality, Rice's tenure as Secretary of State is right in keeping with Colin Powell's ineffectiveness in that role. Her only role in the administration – her singular talent – has been to sit safely on the sidelines of substantive discussions, then wheedle her way into the president's granite-encased brain, figure out what he wants (i.e., what Cheney, and until last year Rumsfeld, have connived to convince him of), and communicate that back to the president in a way that assures him that "yeah, that's what I want," and then to the outside world with more of an academic and PR gloss than Bush is able to muster. In short, she has no substantive role, never has, in this administration. As another Frayster once succinctly put it, she "flips the pancakes."
Rice strikes me as very similar to Alberto Gonzales in her place in the administration, and in the political landscape. Regardless of whatever talents she may possess, she got where she is by hitching her wagon squarely onto Bush in the only way that is possible, by sucking up to him and ignoring/camouflaging his deficiencies. And when the Bush administration rides off next January, she'll ride off with them (if she doesn't take an earlier train out), most likely never to amount to much of anything in national politics or government again. She'll write a dull and loyal book, again to be chock full of revisionist history no doubt, and take a professorship somewhere.
Unlike Gonzales, though, Rice has done comparatively well in the PR department, at least on her own behalf. Indeed, that has been her only thing that comes close to success. But try as she may to keep her finely manicured hands clean of the mess created by this administration, all the blood and dirt from that mess can't be avoided or powdered over. She has been the chief apologist for a horrendous foreign policy, and I suspect her story in the end is one of talent squandered by weakness of character and seduction of power.
--Steve-R
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Applebaum assures us that "Condi has now dispensed with pretty much everyone who underestimated her to begin with, most notably Donald Rumsfeld, but for all practical purposes Dick Cheney, too."
And yet when it came time to replace Phil Zelikow as her State Dept. advisor, Condi chose the devout neocon Elliot Cohen. And yet when it became necessary to find another job for Wolfowitz after his World Bank debacle, Condi offered him the chairmanship of the International Security Advisory Board, an influential State Dept. advisory panel.
Are these the actions of someone who has aced out Dick Cheney? Unlikely, unless Condi has elected to out-dick Dick and carry the banner of neocon aggression.
Condi remains a token, the calming and ostensibly reasonable face of a radical Bush foreign policy that has scared the crap out of our allies and is increasingly scaring the crap out of the American people. Until Condi can make a State Dept. appointment that isn't straight out of the neocon handbook, one can only conclude that we are still watching an episode of Cheney In Charge.
--Thomas Cassidy
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A politician, not a pragmatist. I suppose I should read this book, because my perception of Condi has been that she as been nothing other than a mouthpiece and enabler for the administration, more specifically, for Bush himself. The State department was excluded in the run-up to Iraq? Ok. But did Condi have an opinion on the war? A differing opinion? She's no Colin Powell.
When the strategy shifted from democratic rollover to realist negotiations, she was right there, never batting an eye to the policy 180. What is the Rice doctrine? What are her policy guidelines? Listen to the boss, play the game.
--jwschmidt
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(12/20)