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Rice May be Succeeding Because She Doesn't Have a Condi Rice Shutting Her Down
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Monday, Dec 26 2005, 8:37AM
Anne Gearan's interesting piece on Condi Rice yesterday got me thinking about what structurally is enhancing or constraining the Secretary of State's success.
Gearan writes:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has become the most popular member of the Bush administration and a potential candidate to succeed her boss in the White House, even as Americans lose confidence in the president she serves and patience with the Iraq war she helped launch.Entering her second year as the country's senior diplomat and foreign policy spokeswoman, Rice has improbably shed much of her image as the hawkish "warrior princess" at President Bush's side. The nickname was reportedly bestowed by her staff at the White House National Security Council, where Rice was an intimate member of Bush's first-term war council.
Rice resolutely defends the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism and the expansive executive powers that Bush claims came with it. She has lately sounded more optimistic than Bush about the progress of the Iraq war and the future for that country.
Yet, it is unusual to hear anyone talk about Rice as an architect of either of those two defining undertakings of the Bush presidency.
By a mix of charm, luck and physical distance from the White House, Rice has managed to escape the fate of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who saw their public approval ratings fall to historic lows before rebounding slightly recently.
Kurt Campbell, director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, credits Rice's heavy travel schedule, an approach to diplomacy that is more pragmatic than other Bush advisers, and a measure of personal pluck.
"She appears to have sort of skated away" from controversies over U.S. intelligence failures and aggressive U.S. tactics in the hunt for terrorists, Campbell said, and from the perception that the United States is "slogging" along in Iraq.
"She appears at once to be close to the president but separate and detached from some of the foibles of the administration, and that's a very hard thing to pull off," he said.
Rice has been busy putting together small victories. For a while -- and perhaps still -- there looked like there was a breakthrough in negotiations with North Korea. She got the Gaza-Egypt border crossing open, and has been putting constant and regular pressure on Israel to follow through with commitments made when she pushed forward a post-Gaza framework deal. She has had other successes as well -- but frankly, without taking anything away from the way she is performing as Secretary of State, she is cutting a work agenda that is very Colin Powell-like.
Many are ready to call anything "realism" that doesn't look like 'Borg-ian assimilate or annihilate neoconservatism.'
Condi Rice was never a neoconservative. She just bent their way after 9/11. In fact, before then, she was trying to tutor George W. Bush in what "neo-realism" would look like in a world of America as the ascendant power -- in contrast to the Nixon/Kissingerian realism that managed American interests as America was in decline. In March 2001, she even arranged private tutorial sessions with America's most influential Machiavellian realist, Robert Kaplan, who was then my colleague as a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
At the time, there were three camps in the White House: neo-realists who had Rice at their helm; neoconservatives who had Paul Wolfowitz as their in-government high priest with many others inside the administration and a well-organized band of ideology officers embedded in civil society; and Colin Powell -- who was neither realist, liberal internationalist, or neoconservative -- but who was the cautious incrementalist who felt that America need to be far more careful with its political and military capital than these other camps called for.
Powell was apparently the guy in the room who mattered when he was there because he would usually bring up the part of the picture that others had conveniently neglected as they tried to sell their plans to the President. The problem was that Powell had to be in the room. If he wasn't there, his ability to influence the process was seriously diminished. Powell didn't have an "ism" he was championing.
Rice does not look like a doctrinaire realist today. She looks like a Colin Powell cautious incrementalist -- doing what she can here and there, nearly in an ad hoc fashion to promote global stability, encourage and nudge forward self-determination, and doing deals with some of the world's real bad guys -- particularly in North Korea and Syria.
If she embodies a new realism, then it is realism super-lite. Nonetheless, Condi's stock is rising in the eyes of many.
But she needs to be aware of a few things. First, she has the "latitude" to do what she is doing both because she has a personal relationship with the President that lets her call many of her own shots and because she does not have a Condi Rice at the National Security Council shutting her down.
Rice's biggest failure as NSC Advisor to the President is that she got swept up in the strong Cheney-Rumsfeld current following 9/11 and tilted the President and the national security decision-making process away from judicious analysis and consideration of all options and all consequences. Rice deferred to "the cabal" and made Bush's decision making easier and less complex than it should have been because she filtered out much of what should have been before the President.
In the past, Rice shut down Powell and his team. Today, Stephen Hadley -- though while a close devotee of Vice President Cheney -- is not taking on his former boss on any front whatsoever. Condi Rice is succeeding as Secretary of State because she doesn't have her clone shutting her down.
The other reason she is successful is because the President is weak. When Bush was at the height of his power, he chose to bully the world -- on everything from America's disdain for renewal of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to climate change remediation efforts and negotiations. When Bush was strong, America walked away from a deal that Colin Powell's team had assembled with North Korea, which had great continuity with the Clinton team's work in this arena, and which looks a lot like the deal that Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Christopher Hill put together earlier this year. The cost for Bush's arrogance and failure to move forward with North Korea: about 8-12 nuclear warheads that the North Koreans probably have today.
Bush negotiates when he is weak, not when he is strong -- and thus he is a miserable investor in global stability -- because he has taught the world that as he sees it, the powerful make all the rules, make all their own weather, and decide right and wrong. This is not what one would call a "democratic message."
So, Rice is succeeding because the President is weaker and because she has no Condi Rice to shut her down. But she still has to worry about Cheney and his torture-obsessed thugs.
For one, we still have the story that her own Ambassador to the United Nations, the recess-appointed and Cheney-vassal John Bolton, leaked the news of her diplomatically fragile effort to offer Syria a "Libya-like" makeover track. Bolton sabotaged Rice -- and thus far has gotten away with it.
David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, is no fan of Condi Rice's and has fought her efforts vigorously inside the White House. So far, Rice is winning -- but if Cheney's power resurges which may occur, Rice could be chewed up in a tug-of-war over foreign policy. To this writer, Cheney appears to have successfully tossed off the negatives from the Libby indictment.
The other risk that Rice has is that if she covers up and flacks for White House misdeeds on illegal wiretaps, detention centers, and torture -- these will eventually undermine her with an American public that won't tolerate institutionalized dishonesty in the Oval Office.
But as things look today, Rice may not be readying herself for President as much as getting ready to be John McCain's vice presidential running mate.
That ticket -- if the Republicans were smart enough to put it together -- would be tough for any Democrat, Hillary included, to beat.
-- Steve Clemons
P.S. TWN is on the move again. Had a great Christmas yesterday and am enjoying "Boxing Day" in Claremont, California. Tomorrow, TWN will be in Las Vegas. Wednesday and Thursday in St. George, Utah. Friday in D.C. Saturday and Sunday in Philadelphia. Look for me on the running trails and say hello. To all the rest -- have a great week!
And one more thing, when some of you are doing your year-end financial planning, check out the PayPal donation site above if this blog is something you think you might be able to support.
Be back soon, Steve Clemons
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I really don't think that Rice is more than a cipher. She was chosen to be Bush's National Security Advisor not because of her wealth of knowledge and experience, but because she functioned as Bush's tutor in his remedial classes on foreign policy. I'm not ever sure she "sided" with Rumsfeld-Cheney, as much as she accurately "explained" the positions of the cabal vs Powell, and the because the explanation of Powell's position required more thought and nuance that Bush is capable of, the Cabal won out. Once Bush made his decision, Condi was just a Bush apologist that would be dragged out in front of the cameras because she is a shameless liar.
BTW, I think that this statement Bush negotiates when he is weak, not when he is strong could serve as an all purpose explanation for US foreign policy problems on every front. Our allies are extremely reluctant to be effective in addressing the various problems that confront the "free world" at this time, because every "success" will result in only new problems created by Bush. As a result, for the next three years, we can expect little progress on creating a more stable and peaceful international environment -- the goal of the international community will be maintaining the status quo --- even if that means more nukes for NK, and Iran making further progress on their own nuclear programs.
Steve, thanks for all of your hard work. I'm not a fan of Condi Rice's, but I am of your fair and balanced analysis of things political. I hope the Democrats get their act together and figure out a way to make you political and policy advisor number one.
But on the McCain-Rice possibility, that would be a challenge, but fortunately, idiocy runs deep among the Republican right and most would see that pairing as a Democratic plant.
Just made a donation. Thanks, and have a great new year.
I find the talk of Rice being a candidate for Prez, VP or even Governor of CA, hilarious. Have you seen the woman under tough questioning? Like her recent trip to Europe? She's not quick on her feet, and she immediately gets defensive and whiney. Whatever her talents are, she does not possess the gifts that are needed in a major campaign.
condi's popularity...? don't wanna hear about it... in any event, it's a pretty dubious (dubya-ous?) distinction being the "most popular member" of a gang of criminals and, besides, she's just as guilty and as full of shit as the rest of them... whatever honor, values, principles, ethics, and/or morality she might have had have long since been sold down the river... and, god, please save us from a condi rice presidential candidacy in 2008... as much as i'd like to see a woman and an african-american become president, she definitely ain't the one... (and, as long as we're talking about members of the female persuasion, hillary definitely ain't the one either...)
http://takeitpersonally.blogspot.com/
p.s. enjoy your travels, steve, and thanks once again for all your hard work bringing news and insights to those of us out there in the grassroots...
This piece is very similar to one written by David Ignatius a couple of weeks ago. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/29/AR2005112901502.html In fact, Gearan's AP headline was virtually identical to Ignatius's the first time the story came through on my RSS feed yesterday. It was quickly revised from "star rising" to "stock rising" and reissued. I have a feeling that there is someone in DC who is feeding this meme of Condi's future presidential possibilities, and these journalists have kindly accommodated.
Realistically, I think Condi has too many liabilities. She was practically glued at the hip to Bush during his first term. In any run for future office, those issues that Gearan says she has managed to "skate away from" will inevitably skate right back at her. The August 6 PDB and her confirmation testimony would be just the beginning. Inevitably, when the full import of the NSA data mining operations finally emerges, it's hard to imagine how Condi escapes accountability one way or another for at least some of the misdeeds of this WH. She was an intimate player, despite the fact that "she is not a lawyer" (as she reinterated in her interviews re the NSA last weekend) and held a position that didn't require Senate confirmation, which she seemed to imply gets her off the hook somehow. She was too close to the president. If and when there are hearings, she may find herself called to testify.
Someone seems to be deliberately trying to clean up and pre-treat her image so that any further tarnish she acquires over the next three years can be easily wiped off. I don't see how it's going to work.
Beyond all that, it's very hard to see how she would be acceptable to the religious right. Whoever is promoting Condi's "star" may not be adequately in touch with reality.
"Rice's biggest failure as NSC Advisor ..."
Caught up in the current is incredibly charitable, and frankly implies lack of responsibility. If she was so weak, so lacking in her own bearings, or intellectually lost that the "got caught up," then she didn't belong there to begin with.
Her biggest failure as NSC Advisor was in failing to discharge the duties of her job pre-9/11. Had she done effectively, in all likelihood there would have been no 9-11.
The kid gloves with which she's been treated amaze me.
She's a dim bulb, who was put in WAY over her head from day 1. In reality, she's a mediocre intellect whose credentials essentially boil down to an extremely narrow, semi-impressive knowledge of Sino-Soviet political history. She couldn't advise Bush on the neo-con misinformation because she was ignorant. She didn't have the requisite minimum skill set to be in the job -- namely being able to decode the spin of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies imparted on what's passed to her.
Remember this is the woman who did interview after interview post-9/11 saying no one could possibly have envisioned a terrorist using an airliner as a suicide weapon. As if for the past twenty years it hadn't been standard, basic knowledge. The Olympic organizers at the 1988 Atlanta Olympics created a very large no-fly zone for the opening and closing ceremonies and U.S. law enforcement had a massive fan of feet on the pavement in every local airfield for 200 miles around Atlanta fearing the potential of small private prop planes. The Australian Olympics organizers gave interviews in advance of the 2000 games stating on record that their number one security concern was a suicide plane attack on the stadium and talked of the extraordinary precautions they'd be taking.
Then there is the 1994 attack on the Eiffel Tower that was averted, and a whole host of others, on which there were volumes of intelligence briefings.
Either Condi is the biggest, most cynical liar in the entire administration (quite a feat), or she is among the most clueless and dimmest of the dim bulbs (similarly, quite a feat).
Either way, she'd be a deer in the headlights if anyone was dumb enough to put her on a major political ticket. As other commenters have pointed out, she's defensive, whiney, has no clue what to do other than regurgitate talking points. Which is fine when the message is working, but disastrous when it needs to be fine tuned. But not for the color of her skin, she'd be getting lambasted in the media, and people would fall over laughing at the suggestion of her being on a political ticket.
A perfect ticket for these scum. Rice, who was largely instrumental in LYING us into the Iraq war, bringing us the infamous specter of a "mushroom cloud", and McCain, who capitulated and gave the Bush Administration a license to torture with the "I was only following orders" loophole.
Meanwhile, John Conyers' attempts to put the brakes on this runaway train get IGNORED, by the Democratic "leadership", by the main stream media, and by insiders such as Steve Clemons.
Standback and watch folks, Conyers is going to get swiftboated while the mewling cowards like Reid hide behind misrepresented "successes", and the mainstream press simply IGNORES efforts to impeach a president for unprecedented criminal acts against our nation and our Constitution.
And Steve??? Well, the jury is still out. But I guess if we really want to know where Steve stands on impeachment and Conyers efforts, we need to wet a finger and test the wind.
censurebush.com
I tend to agree with Anon, instinctively, even as I think Steve's analysis is really interesting. We may not know Condi as well as we thought we did. As a woman, she appears to be only half-formed and lacking in independence, grit, self-knowledge -- rigid with terror. That sad second place on a McCain ticket (and McCain strikes me as being a major sleazeball) seems realistic.
Anon-"She didn't have the requisite minimum skill set to be in the job -- namely being able to decode the spin of the Pentagon and intelligence agencies imparted on what's passed to her"
Your comment suprises me. It seems to me that the White House spun the Pentagon's and the various intelligence agencies's findings, not vice versa. In truth, one of the biggest lies of all is that the justification of the Iraq invasion was premised on "faulty intelligence" when in fact it was premised on LIES about the intelligence.
Rice said what she was told to, period. The one thing she seems to be better at than Bush is ad-libbing without straying to far from the script. Unfortunately, BOTH of them are dismal liars, and seem to have a problem thinking the script through. Some of the lies were so transparent that they were GUARANTEED exposure, such as the bullshit she cast about no one realizing commercial aircraft could pose a threat under the control of terrorists.
In honesty, the fact that a Washington insider is seriously advancing someone like Rice as a viable addition to a presidential ticket is terrifying. This country is in DEEEEEEP shit.
Greetings POAmerican: Like most of your posts, but the comment that my views blow with the wind is inaccurate. My views about Bush and his team have been quite consistent since this blog was launched -- and I have even been quite honest about misplaced beliefs (abandoned long ago) that Bush would take a centrist course.
I write and advocate issues in which I think I can make a difference -- and I don't tend to jump on bandwagons. I've written often that the failure of the Congress to challenge the White House is a huge mistake. I've argued that we should be trying to find ways to wrap the White House up in legal challenges -- as the Republicans did with Clinton from the day he entered the White House.
Bush has been challenged on Plame -- but that was just a beginning. The felling of Tom DeLay was also important.
I'm glad Conyers is making an effort, but it's just one effort among many that have not but should materialize.
I'm not going to blog or write about efforts that I think I can bring little value to -- so I hope you will take the blog in its totality, rather than questioning my stand just because I haven't written about something you want me to.
Love your posts anyway -- have a great week,
Steve Clemons
PW - to put a finer point on it ...
The Pentagon is an institution that one expects to have a bias, born of the fact any large bureaucracy is a living breathing organism with its own inertia and its own agenda arising out of natural Darwinian process (protect and insulate the organism from outside attack, and pursue a life course designed to enlarge and enrich its existence). The same can be said of any bureaucracy, including the intelligence agencies (and for that matter, the State Department, which has its own internal constituencies and unique set of self-interests).
In other words, to some degree, the Chief Executive in the White House must expect those bureacracies to act in their own self-interest and expect the information they provide to reflect that. In a fairy tale perfect world, perhaps it wouldn't be that way, but in reality, it is what it is. It is up to the President's staff, most particularly the NSC Advisor, to distill and provide him with both un-spun intelligence and data, and advice on a course of action that is free from the interests of those bureaucracies, but instead represents the interest of the Chief Executive as elected representative of the people outside the bureaucracies - the public.
The NSC Advisor, then, is THE safeguard. As a result, the NSC Advisor must be held to a higher standard. I expect the Pentagon to shape a case that's tilted toward entering armed conflict. It's the raison d'etre. The NSC Advisor, however, has no such excuse.
Condi Rice, more than any person in the U.S. government, bears primary responsibility for the failure to prevent 9-11 (see: this piece for perspective), and then for the Chief Executive making decisions of war and peace on the basis of faulty information and poor advice of the relationship between the range of potential actions and their anticipated consequences.
The very best possible thing for a competent Democratic campaign machine would be to have a member of the Bush administration, most particularly Condi-liar Rice on the Republican ticket in '08.
Why? Because the single biggest weapon the Republican nominee will have in defense of any weakness on the baggage of Iraq will be that he is not Bush, wasn't part of Bush's administration, didn't make the decisions Bush made, wouldn't have made the decisions Bush made. "I am not Bush" is a sizable firewall. Putting Rice on the ticket would in one fell swoop blow up that firewall and open the door to a huge achilles heel. One I would hope a competent Democratic campaign manager and communications team would exploit fully. Bob Schrum might not know how to construct the messaging and ad campaign, but I sure as hell could, and so could countless others.
Thanks for your response Steve, and your compliments. I really DO appreciate this blog, AND your efforts. At times though, our priorities are obviously at odds. Such is life.
It is my hope that Conyers' efforts snowball, but realistically, I think that possibility depends on widespread support. Unfortunately, it just doesn't appear that he will get that widespread support. Just call me fatalistic, but I believe Conyers' efforts are our ONE SHOT at dislodging these people, and that ONE SHOT has a very short shelf life. The clock is ticking, and you can rest assured the next "trifecta" will harken the end of the United States as we once knew it.
One more thing I take issue with Steve's characterization on -- the implication that the NSC Advisor's job is merely as information gatekeeper, deciding what information to pass through to the President and what information to filter out.
No, no, no. The NSC Advisor is responsible for not just for deciding what information should pass through, but for getting of his or her ass and (1) fact- and source-checking the veracity of the information, (2) offering a clear and affirmative opinion on the veracity of each and every piece of data and information, including its level of reliability, and most importantly, (3) offering clear advice on the course of action to be taken.
It is not just a pass-through job. The NSC Advisor's opinion is THE #1 and final advice to the Chief Executive -- not, "gee Mr. President, here's what each of the agencies is providing, I'll be happy to be a conduit to retrieve answers from them if you have questions, and other than that, you're on your own."
If you think of the White House as a widget manufacturing business, and the President as its CEO, then the Pentagon, State Department, intelligence agencies, etc. are all very much like trusted suppliers of components for the widgets, and the President's NSC Advisor is the Widget Project Manager. Sure, the trusted component suppliers outside the company have excellent and unique knowledge on how their components could be used to design a widget. But they have their own agendas and their own reasons for recommending whatever it is they're recommending to the Widget Company CEO he should design and build. That CEO has one and only one person who is responsible for distilling it all and making the right recommendation. The CEO himself cannot possibly know all those details. He can only trust the Widget Project Manager to have done his job well, to test and probe the recommendations of the Project Manager to be as sure as he can that they're sound, then ultimately place his faith in the recommendation and move on with it.
If the Widget is a flop, it is ultimately the responsibility of the Widget Project Manager, not the heads of the component manufacturers who work for other companies collaborating on the project.
If there is one person above all others upon whom blame rests, it is Condi Rice. I find it stunning that this basic equation is ignored by the media. In no way does it excuse the Pentagon, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz or the rest, but culpability rests first and foremost with Condi.
Condoleeza Rice, that fair-haired poster girl for wholesale political deceit and irrational crimes of the heart of war. The world should never forget her charming assertion that Iraq was an "imminent forty five minute threat to America and the world." Yes, Condo is charming to the last and stands as America's foremost Secretary of State for Wars of Aggression. What a sweetheart!
"Condoleeza Rice, that fair-haired poster girl....."
Thats not hair, its a helmet.
random notes:
Someone (Wolcott, Blumenthal, Cockburn ???) characterized Condi as a courtier in a Vanity Fair story about 2 1/2 years ago - It explains both her continuing connection to Bush and the failure of an otherwise intelligent woman to recognize the court intrigues of Cheney/Rumsfeld, et al.
McCain/Rice ? For some reason I can't shake the plausibility of a Feinstein/Zinni ticket for dems. I am not a big Feinstein fan, those further left of center can flame if you must, but think about how that ticket might play to the mulitudes in the middle
Steve, the very best to you and Oakley in the year ahead. I don't often comment, but yours is a must read, Thanks
"Someone (Wolcott, Blumenthal, Cockburn ???) characterized Condi as a courtier in a Vanity Fair story about 2 1/2 years ago........"
I am a sick puppy. My mind took me to the image of Barbara, whip in hand, as Condi and Laura.....
Oh my, never mind.
Rice's biggest failure as NSC Advisor to the President is that she got swept up in the strong Cheney-Rumsfeld current following 9/11 and tilted the President..
After, of course, her failure as NSC Advisor to take terrorism seriously prior to 9/11.
Good lord. Where to begin.
“Condi Rice most popular”…Compared to what? Rummy? The non-entities of the second term?
No way Rice wins a national GOP election. The GOP wins because of the race card. Rice, or any other black candidate would sink the GOP in the South. Maybe not a Dem but for sure a 3rd party challenge would Ross Perot enough southern white voters away from the GOP to sink the ticket.. Steve, the inside the beltway crowd underestimates just how much the GOP depends on its racist base in rural and southern areas. Obama would probably not have won IL as great a margin over a white opponent, nor would Evan Bayh have won Indiana by 60% against a white male. I live in the Midwest and know what Republicans have to say about black folk. A black GOP pres or VP candidate would cause many voters to switch to a Democrat or third party or just stay home. If they cannot work the race card in the South and rural areas, the GOP cannot win.
Warrior Princess? Transformed to what exactly? Iraq optimist? That is SO in touch with the American public!
“it is unusual to hear anyone talk about Rice as an architect of either” WOT or Iraq- Maybe this is because she is a lightweight? How is this in any sense an endorsement? How is being an “enabler” of a failed policy any better than being an architect?
“skated away from controversies”.. Is this a demonstration of leadership?
“Close to president…detached form …foibles….hard to pull off” Not if you possess extreme cognitive dissonance.
At best this piece could be described as damning with faint praise. Other than her personal charm, there is nothing in this piece that should be construed as qualifications to be president.
“Rice putting together small victories…Colin Powell-like” What you really means is she is staying out of the way and allowing the staff to do their job and put together the small victories that are achieved by the State Dept Staff everyday.
“Gaza-Egypt border crossing”.. This is hardly great shakes. Of course Israel wants an open border crossing so they can monitor the traffic rather than having all traffic legit and illigit crossing surreptitiously.
“Doing what she can here and there in …an ad hoc fashion.” This is because the Bush doctrine of pre-emption has been torpedoed and about to sink. Rice is not enough of a heavyweight to come up with a new foreign policy framework. I doubt we will ever hear about the “Rice” doctrine. She is too lightweight to pull it off and Bush would never let himself be upstaged in that way.
“She has the latitude to do what she is doing…”because there are no other good options left. Mostly she deals with issues Bush is little concerned about and she is housekeeping and keeping the lid on things.
Next we hear that Rice is too weak to prevent Bolton from undermining her.
We have a picture of a weak Secretary of State, who had serious shortcomings in her previous post as NSA, who cannot control her UN ambassador, is stuck with trying to achieve small victories, lacks the gravitas or heavyweight to put her own stamp of American foreign policy, but she is still a credible candidate for VP because she is a charming black woman? Cognizant dissonance reigns.
Make no mistake, we are cheering for Rice to succeed because we see no other hope of achieving a reasonable foreign policy from the Bush administration. By default, we expect a foreign policy driven by Rice to be an improvement over Cheney and the neo-cons (It could not possilbly be worse). I would love to see her get Iraq policy and so many others turned around. Cheering for Rice to succeed does not mean she should be a candidate for higher office (failing upward) or is not in over her head already.
Happy Holidays
the only "luck" that Rice has is the "luck" that certain public figures are treated, by beltway insiders who shape our discourse, as above criticism. She's one of them.
In fact, she's a liar who only looks adequate as secretary of state in comparison to the abysmal job she did as national security adviser.
of course, in contemporary gop circles, that constitutes an impressive resume....
"the only "luck" that Rice has is the "luck" that certain public figures are treated, by beltway insiders who shape our discourse, as above criticism. She's one of them."
"In fact, she's a liar who only looks adequate as secretary of state in comparison to the abysmal job she did as national security adviser."
"of course, in contemporary gop circles, that constitutes an impressive resume...."
Posted by howard
Has anyone considered the fact that her hair-do would explode if it came in too close a proximity to an open flame? That there alone oughta disqualify her. Good thing she doesn't smoke.
If a Presidential Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In US" didn't get her attention, why in blazes would anyone consider her presidential material?
If she even thinks about a place on a national ticket, I hope she likes that outfit she wore during her Congressional testimony because she'll be seeing a lot of it.
Did anyone mention that she sat on the BoD at Exxon? Or was that neglected when the trolls were braying "its not about the oil!"
That Condi Rice was "never a neo-con, she just leaned that way" - jezzz. (And that's my putting it nicely).
Huh? Let me get this straight... Steve brings us Larry Wilkerson the foremost authority on the National Security Act who says that the the NeoCons have made a mockery of that act.
Now he is promoting a piece of propaganda that pathological liar Condi Rice the NSC at the time of the NeoCon's butchering of the safeguards built into the National Security Act would make a good VP?
WTF?
Damn I knew Alice's loins were wet for the Cheshire Cat but that is no reason to gobble the Mad Hatter's little red pill - the one that makes you spin higher than a NSA satellite - when you know damn well the pill in a distillate of the NeoCon Koolaid laced with meth LSD and horse tranquilizer. Alice you better cop some good thorazine from John "white rabbit" Conyers and come back to the tea party before Queen Condi and her court jester pass sentence. While it could be argued that anyone who promotes Rice as a serious VP candidate no longer uses a head I can say with authority that heads without bodies will only roll further down the rabbit hole. Trust me Alice take the blue pill and join the rebellion. While reality feeds you gruel most of the time it is still tastier than the demon blood and dead flesh bullshit the Matrix calls caviar and feeds to the somnambulistic fetal beings who provide their soulless empire with power.
RE: . . . an American public that won't tolerate institutionalized dishonesty in the Oval Office.Hunhhh???
Hard to imagine a statement more directly in conflict with the preponderance of the evidence of the past 5 yrs, most particularly the '04 election!
Republicans would never have a black woman on their national ticket, period. There are just too many bigots in the party. Rice is a sniveling liar who is allergic to answering most questions straight on. Her credibility is pretty shaky.
Right on gary1!! That's the sentence that struck me as well. Condi"Mushroom Clouds" is touted as a person of enormous intellect and capabilities by MSM so how did the two biggest "Intelligence Failures" in Americas history happen on her watch as NSA. The answer of course is that they weren't intelligence failures but gross manipulations and distortions of available information and she was directly complicit in this deceit rather than being a victim of the Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal. This woman is the very symbol of "Institutionalized dishonesty".
Bob,
In my worst depths of cynicism, I sometimes have the impression that MSM political reporters/pundits are mostly just bored, shallow people looking to flog whatever script will entertain them and relieve their boredom the most.
No way is McCain tying himself to a Bush loyalist. And no way is the Republican base nominating McCain.
How can Rice affect the threat from Richard the Terrible and his cabal of "Fucking Crazies" ??
The premise of the post is that Powell failed but Rice is succeeding.
How do you define succeed? (One might also consider how victory in Iraq is defined). By success, do you mean that her initiatives were not overturned by the administration in mid-stream? If that is the definition, then all it suggests is that Rice is better at following orders or knowing what is expected than Powell? If one looks at the Rice record one year in (what record?) there is little substance? Seriously, what has she done? (Darfur) Winning the little battles is the most kudos she gets.
Has she fought a big battle and won or lost yet? Maybe she just seems successful because she has not taken on anything she cannot win? Is success just not losing?
Condi slams the competition
A new poll from Zogby International reveals just how poorly Americans view key figures in the Bush Administration, with one exception: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Rice received a 53% approval rating in the Zogby poll, released Wednesday. No one else in the administration included in the poll came close. President Bush stands at 38%; Vice President Cheney at 33%; and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has a 35% approval rating.
"...Rice's biggest failure as NSC Advisor to the President is that she..." was asleep at the wheel on 911 after repeated warnings to wake up...all those people dead at least in part because Rice wanted the power she now enjoys.
Truly, Condi's is one of the sickest creature to crawl out of Crawford.
Popular, with who, the lounge lizards that comprise Washington's MSM?
President Rice, how to describe the result? To borrow her metaphor, will it be tyranny wrapped in a "mushroom cloud"?
I saw Colin Powell on tv talking about the NSA fiasco. All I could do was one of those Louis Blacks' blblblblblb YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME! What make Colin Powell think that he has enough credibility to come out now and talk about anything that has anything to do with governing this country? I am sorry Mr. Powell "good soldier" or not you lost all credibility the day you sat in front of the United Nations and gave that speech filled with half truths and in some cases out and out lies. How many men have died because Colin Powell was the "good soldier"?
Choice quote from Rice:
“It’s not that we approve officially or even unofficially of such interrogation means, avenues, and techniques that are available to us if we so choose considering the ultimate importance of gaining information essential not only to America’s security but Europe’s as well, which in the long run is vital to our mutual long-term interests both here and elsewhere and both now and in the future and with so much at stake, but given the time constraints on us today as the Iraqi people move towards a position of self-provided security with our support and tighten their fervent embrace of democracy with each passing day, it would seem prudent to keep all options on the table at all times, for not to do so would send the wrong message to the enemy at this crucial time to both we at home and you here, so we want to assure everyone that the same rules will apply to our forces in Europe that we have employed for them at home in the States at every turn in the road and in each instance.”
What's with the boots in the picture? Are those standard issue for Gitmo?
Dear Ronny --
Love the pre-2006 passion. Because I think that the Republicans might put together a McCain-Rice ticket does not mean that I advocate that or her. Whether many readers of this blog see Rice as successful or not, most Americans do -- as Bakho has reported by noting the latest Zogby poll.
I do have agendas -- and work to achieve better public policy on many fronts. Helping to keep John Bolton from getting confirmed was one (and won). Helping where I could to focus on the Libby indictment was another -- or even making sure that people knew that Rule 21 was more than a stunt and actually changed the conversation in this country back to the issue of intelligence misuse, abuse, and distortion. But I'm not the sort that is going to distort my assessment of where Rice is in the minds of most Americans. And the fact is that despite her NSC behavior, which I point out was not up to standards, she is following a course that was largely crafted by Colin Powell.
I work as best I can in reality and then think about how to get to a public policy agenda from where we are -- rather than where we might be if our imagination was in control.
Yes, I helped give a platform to Lawrence Wilkerson and had the background and relationships to pull that off. But just because I've written that Rice is pulling off some successes in a beleaguered administration doesn't mean more than that. In fact, I outline a lot of pitfalls ahead for her which may bring her down.
So, hyperventilate if you will -- but you are trying to argue that I 'should invent' a reality that isn't the case. George W. Bush does that a lot -- but it's not my style.
Happy New Year,
Steve Clemons
"or even making sure that people knew that Rule 21 was more than a stunt and actually changed the conversation in this country back to the issue of intelligence misuse, abuse, and distortion."
Uuuhhhhm, well, gee Steve, I don't exactly see Reid hollerin' for the "Phase Two" progress report we were promised by Nov. 15th by that snake Roberts. If it wasn't a stunt, then why doesn't Reid follow through? All I see the mewling mouse doing is lauding Bush about his new "candor" about "how" we went to war, and congratulating Bush on "hearing the calls of Americans", (on pulling troops out of Iraq). Well, Reid has at least got SOMETHING right, Bush IS "hearing our calls". That is, thanks to the NSA.
I think Reid has known for a looooong time that Bush has circumvented warrants in the tapping of our phone lines, and doesn't DARE touch this issue, lest it be discovered that he had the ammo to derail Bush's 2004 hopes.
I always thought that Kerry was DESIGNED to lose, and his early concession, as well as his disinterest in pursuing investigations about the Ohio debacle, only cemented my suspicions. I view Harry Reid in the same light. Harry is just another cog in a corrupt machine, and he dare not turn over any rocks that might expose his own sins.
Ms. Rice as Benejezeret Princess in this photo, eh? Does she have mystical power behind the failed taskings' maskings, aka BoD Exxon.
And how is it Corporate USA is so tied to Israel, vis a vis censure of Deutsche Bank in 1943?
And where are Paul Wellstone, Abe Lincoln, Robert LaFollette, Lech Valesa, Vaclav Havel and their brothers and sisters in America now?
What form will Paul Revere's ride take with all this information so fast?
What is the alert? God is coming? The Constitution is under attack? Entertainment and Pro Sports are opium that keep sleepers from waking - jumping over Siddhartha's princely wall into the maelstrom before Buddhahood? Hai.
Ca ne fait rien.
Servusz.
Hari Om Tat Sat.
Why is it, whenever I look at that photo, I think of Michael Jackson ?
Some "mighty messed up" [polite version] people in the District of Columbia these daze (and I`m glad to be as far away as I am...)
Very scary times we live in
"...a culture of hiring children to do work that requires experience leads to childish results." - Robert Cahn
parrot >"...she sat on the BoD at Exxon?..."
It was Chevron, NOT Exxon
"...playin with matches in a pool of gasoline..." - Swamp Mama Johnson
Steve, that was weird. Why in God's name did you REMOVE your response to my last post??? I hope it wasn't because someone ASKED you to.
Dear POAmerican: I didn't remove my response to your last post. I had someone cleaning up spam, some of it pornographic, from my site -- and I think that one of my posts was accidentally removed by someone helping me. Nothing sinister here.
If I remember what I wrote in my last post, it was something along the lines that I share a lot of your frustration with Harry Reid, but I won't go as far as you in your critique. I applauded him for the Rule 21 maneuver because it snapped the national conversation back to WMD intel from the Alito nomination, which Bush had used to try and distract from the indictment charges against Scooter Libby.
You are right that Reid has failed to follow through to do all that needed to be done to get the Phase II Intelligence Review done and out.
I am angered by the fact that the Democrats have yet to really marshall an alternative to Bush and have been muddled by lots of internal inconsistencies inside that party. Most of the debate on foreign policy has been inside the Republican camp, and that's one of the reasons -- despite that it seems to frustrate some TWN readers -- that I write so much about McCain, Hagel, and others. The Republicans have been having a tug of war internally over foreign policy -- but the Dems are still in the early stages of theirs.
So my post was something along those lines. No one asked me to remove a post. There is a troll out there -- who likes to occasionally throw a porn spam post on this. Sometimes, they are bots -- and some time real people, so when I'm traveling, I have someone occasionally check and remove anything that is disgusting.
More later,
Steve Clemons
"I am angered by the fact that the Democrats have yet to really marshall an alternative to Bush"
Quite frankly, I don't understand what you want Democrats to do that could possibly make a difference? Mr Bush is not consulting Congress at all about foreign policy. Even the Republican Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, has been complaining about being left out of the loop on Iraq since before the first shots were fired. Even Lugar has had trouble getting backing for the important Nunn-Lugar program. If Bush is not asking Senate Republicans for advice, he sure as hell is not asking Senate Democrats. Bush did not even ask advice about domestic spying. He briefed a few GOP and Dem Congressmen and then legally bound them to shut up about it.
The alternative to the Bush doctrine of "pre-emption" is Clintonian constructive engagement and building international institutions. Several prominent Democrats spoke against "pre-emption" at the time including Dean, Kerry and Clark. Outside of the 04 presidential debates that featured Kerry arguing for a return to constructive engagement what forum has there been for discussing policy in broad terms. Kerry lost the election and Bush declared that he now had the political capital to carry on with pre-emption. I don't see any prominent Democrats (except Lieberman) moving into the pre-emption camp. Democrats seem to be firmly committed to a return to constructive engagement. However, Democrats don't control the executive and don't even control the purse strings. Democrats don't control any media outlets like Fox News and struggle to deliver a message.
Since the news focus is often on individual situations, the Democrats are forced to respond to situations. Should we pull our troops out of Iraq or not? Well, whether or not that is a good idea depends on Mr Bush having a commitment to withdraw and taking the political steps necessary that withdrawal is even an option. However, because Mr Bush has no intention of withdrawing from Iraq, he has not negotiated a political settlement that could accomodate US withdrawal. Instead, Mr Bush has imposed a political process on Iraq that requires the continued presence of American troops.
Democrats can dream all day about alternatives to Bush policies, but to no effect because Bush is following his own course. It is difficult for Democrats to propose coherent alternatives to Bush Iraq policy because Bush keeps painting us further and further into the corner. The Iraq question is circular. Because Bush refuses to consider withdrawal, the requisite political steps to make withdrawal possible have not been taken. Because Bush has not taken the requisite political steps to make withdrawal possible, withdrawal does not currently look like a viable option. The obvious block is to get Bush to switch his position from permanent occupation of Iraq to withdrawal. I see a push from Democrats but little support in the media and certainly not a vocal groundswell from the public. Opinion polls do show that most disagree with Bush Iraq policy. However, building consensus for withdrawal is difficult politically, because Bush has not pursued those political steps that would make withdrawal more feasible. Bush and his administration and political machine have agressively beat down calls for withdrawal. Bush used the power of his bully pulpit to label people who opposed his policies as "defeatists" or cowards more or less. Bush is a master of political games and getting back at his political enemies. In this climate it is difficult to even bring up the subject of pursuing an alternate course, let alone having a coherent discussion. We are not having a discussion of Bush policies, because Bush does not want a discussion, the GOP supporters of Bush in Congress do not want a discussion and Bush backers in the media do not want a discussion. We only get discussion when third parties (like you) provide a forum and on the blogs.
"Whether many readers of this blog see Rice as successful or not, most Americans do -- as Bakho has reported by noting the latest Zogby poll."
Rice has never polled above 60%. Colin Powell typically polled much higher than Rice (60-90+%) Low 50s is pretty low for a SecState given that Americans are generally in agreement about foreign policy goals. Albright always polled in the 60s and left office at 69%. Kissinger with all his detractors polled higher than Rice. How many Secretaries of State barely draw positive approval? Al Haig maybe? What is the disapproval rating on Rice? I think most Americans give Rice the benefit of the doubt and only know her from TV photo ops. I suspect that Rice has very high negatives among the opponents of the Iraq War.
Faulty logic
in the now missing post, Steve concluded that b/c Condi's favorable rating was at 50+%, she'd naturally be on the short list of veep options. That's just not the way it works. the options list isn't formed on the basis of favorables in context-less environment.
First, the far more important number is the negatives. Veep candidates don't gain you votes, they can only lose you votes. Condi on your ticket won't gain you votes, but she's guaranteed to lose you plenty.
Second, campaigns are forward-looking not context-less backward-looking. The biggest "issue" for Rs polling to determine a list of veeps, is do they have lightning rod exposure on any issues the top-of-ticket candidate wants to steer the discussion away from. The Rs #1 "avoid" issue is the exact same thing Condi will poll bottom of the barrel relative to the alternatives on.
Anon, interesting post. Do you happen to have the "Comment" that was accidentally deleted? I tried to post the spirit of what I had previously put up -- but don't have it saved anywhere. If any of you high-tech savvy types have it -- forward to me and I'll repost.
Thanks,
Steve
Maybe the Condi for Veep talk is just the media trying to be "balanced". The Democrats may have a legitimate female candidate in Hillary Clinton. Do the Republicans have a candidate of equal stature? Liddy Dole? Kay Bailey Hutchinson? Phyllis Schlafly? Condi is about as close as it gets in the party of predominantly white males. One way to drag any candidate down is to compare them "equally" to a person with lesser qualifications.
Anon, interesting post. Do you happen to have the "Comment" that was accidentally deleted? I tried to post the spirit of what I had previously put up -- but don't have it saved anywhere. If any of you high-tech savvy types have it -- forward to me and I'll repost.
Thanks,
Steve
Posted by Steve Clemons
Was there more than one post deleted?? I do not recall your response to my comment containing any percentages. In your recap, when you attempt to reconstruct the missing post, I found two parts that deviated from my recall of the content. First, in your recap you seemed to temper the degree of admonishment you were willing to apply to Reid's lack of a "follow through" on the PURPOSE of his invocation of Rule 21. You commented that he looked good for a couple of days or so, then faded. Once again, I would like to point out that absent any concrete returns on his closure of the Senate, it DOES appear, truly, to have been little more than a political stunt. The second thing I noticed about your "recap" is that it failed to recall your comment about Kerry, that was a fairly harsh appraisal of his campaign.
Really, to be honest, the deletion of the post did, and does, bother me a bit more than perhaps it should. I followed the thread fairly closely, but was gone for about 2 and 1/2 hours. But I never saw any porn links appear, and if they did they were certainly dealt with in a much more expeditious manner than I have seen in the past. This is, ABSOLUTELY, in no way intended to impugn your honesty, and I sincerely hope you will not take it that way. But I hope you will implore your helper to be very careful about the administration of your blog, for such mysterious "dissappearances" play right into the mindsets of people like myself, who have began to distrust and analyze every nuance and utterance that issues forth out of Washington DC, from the pundits, the politicians, AND the insiders.
"The other risk that Rice has is that **if** she covers up and flacks for White House misdeeds on illegal wiretaps, detention centers, and torture -- these will eventually undermine her with an American public that won't tolerate institutionalized dishonesty in the Oval Office."
OK I was hard on you. Mostly that is *your* fault for being so good normally at sifting through the chaff and providing us with not just the wheat but the wheat germ.
Yet in the quote above you use the word ***IF***. There is no IFFin' in describing Bush, the NeoCons, and their handmaidens especially Rice.
On what plane of reality has she not already participated in the deeds and the cover up? Certainly not in any of the three dimensions we live in. Perhaps in the dimensions of concocted reality the NeoCons used to justify whatever the hell they want could anyone argue otherwise. Hence my cliched rhetoric about Alice.
The piece you posted about Rice is not founded in the reality of her actions. And perception is not reality as nearly every feedback comment you have gotten about Rice has demonstrated. America's perception of Rice does not match the reality of her words and certainly not her deeds.
And the remarkable stunning dazzling effort you orchestrated to propel Larry Wilkerson onto the stage makes the comments about Rice perplexing if you believe him. (Perhaps a cognitive dissonance issue you have still to resolve?)
So while I am on the whole agog with admiration of your efforts you just plain f-d up with this one. At least that's the perception from my land of regularly adjusted reality acuity affected admittedly by the cynicism of having seen it all before. Still I can find no vision of reality in which Rice is making it with anyone who doesn't have degenerative moral astigmatism.
Anyway I could be wrong but I hope I give you a glimpse through a different set of eyes. You do that for me and I genuinely appreciate it.
an American public that won't tolerate institutionalized dishonesty in the Oval Office.
Please do tell me which American public would that be? It appears to me that the American Public that I see before me seems to have bought it hook, line and sinker. I do hope I am mistaken.
Americans expect politicians to lie. Americans will tolerate a little dishonesty if it brings good results. Americans will not tolerate incompetence and bad results. This is the problem for Bush and Rice.
Hi Steve - re: the missing post and my comment
Apologies if I in any way was mistaken in my recollection on the missing post. I thought you'd responded to someone else criticizing you on Condi by noting the Zogby poll, saying it wasn't that you personally thought Condi deserved to be high on the veep list, but was just your acknowledgment of the Zogby poll showing her popularity as much higher than many of the other names in the arena on the R side.
I thought your point was fair and reasonable, but where I took issue, was the inference that a general favorables snap poll was good grounds for assuming she'd be high on the short list, for the reasons enumerated in my post.
Keep up the great work, your blog stirs up very good discussions. And your coming Bolton watch is sure to be tremendous hit. It's this kind of detailed "watch" reporting that just doesn't get done these days.
Anon, thanks for "It is not just a pass-through job" etc.
Fact checking seems to be at issue in a lot of camps these days.
Two quotes (forget who) spring to mind:
"The best way to propagate a lie is to get an honest soul to deliver it."
"In a time of endless opinion, fact is king."
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