Condi, Condi

Here’s the profile of Condoleezza Rice I did for this week’s edition of European Voice newspaper. I've gone in and fixed all the little edits they do to make me sound British. In other words, I’ve put it back into modern English. I may have missed a few titbits, er, sorry tidbits...

Bush’s ‘Yes’ minister
Condoleezza Rice

By Craig Winneker

NOTHING better sets the tone for George W. Bush’s second term in the White House – after the ideological cleansing of suspected moderates from his first administration, the sudden solidifying into Orwellian irrefutability of his electoral ‘mandate’ and the seemingly unconditional surrender of his vanquished opposition – than the nomination of Condoleezza Rice to be US secretary of state.

Assuming she is confirmed by the Senate for America’s top cabinet position – its version of foreign minister – Rice will become the most powerful African-American woman in her nation’s history (not counting, of course, Oprah). From humble beginnings in the segregated South to a meteoric rise through the academic ranks to international prominence as chief spokeswoman for the Iraq war, Rice now finds herself with a new challenge: restoring international credibility to US foreign policy.

It’s tempting to expect her to be nothing more than the velvet glove sheathing an iron fist. True, she is not even close to being the most hawkish or hardline member of the new cabinet. She was not originally one of the ‘neo-cons’ who dreamed up the so-called Bush doctrine of preventive war and have worked hard to preserve it in the face of world opinion…and of reason. If anything, she is a policy chameleon. But given her background as the ultimate teacher’s pet and recent conversion from nerdy academic to slick practitioner of, yes, neo-conservatism, it would be dangerous to predict how and whether she will change the State Department after the departure of Colin Powell.

At least until his embarrassing presentation before the UN Security Council last Spring, Powell was Europe’s favourite member of the Bush administration. What will Rice’s appointment mean for Europe? If EU leaders worried when they spoke to Powell that the departing secretary of state did not have enough of a moderating influence in the administration to do much more than pay lip-service to their concerns, they have another thing coming with Rice.

What makes her so formidable is the fact that she is the president’s alter ego – his ultimate ‘yes woman’. The New York Times fretted that, after the choice of Rice for the job, “the whole world seems to be noticing that George Bush is stuffing his second-term cabinet with ‘yes’ men and women”. But it noted correctly that “when the president did have dissident voices in the top tier of his administration, he did a very thorough job of ignoring them. Optimists can regard the new team as a more efficient packaging of the status quo”.

Rice, therefore, is an improvement for Europe – even if leaders here do not agree with her brand of diplomacy – because at the very least they will know she speaks for the president. That is something they were able to believe less and less about Powell over the previous four years. She will, however, have some fence-mending to do.

“Punish France, ignore Germany and forgive Russia,” was her widely quoted remark last year as the Bush administration lashed out at allies who had not backed them on the war. Observers on both sides of the Atlantic expect her to try to repair the damage done by those kinds of comments. But it will take more than shuttle diplomacy.

Some here are already expecting the charm offensive. A European Commission official from Italy notes wryly that Rice’s first name, loosely translated into the Italian con dolcezza, means ‘with sweetness’. But, he laughs: “I don’t think the French will necessarily translate her name that way.” Probably not. Then again, they may be too flabbergasted at the idea of such a powerful position being held by ‘a woman of colour’ to have a rational reaction.

In announcing his decision to nominate Rice, Bush spoke movingly of her compelling personal background. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister, she quickly established herself as a child prodigy: a concert pianist, a trained figure skater and a star student. According to one source in Washington who went to grade school with Rice, the teacher used to preface every question to the class this way: “Does anyone except for Condoleezza know the answer to..?”

She served in the Bush senior administration as a Soviet expert, just when that job was becoming irrelevant. After Bush’s loss to Bill Clinton in 1992, she returned to academia, becoming provost at Stanford University. But she had become personally close to the Bush family and, when George W. launched his 2000 campaign, Rice was brought on board as one of a team of experts tasked with applying a patina of credibility in the international affairs arena. Translation: she was Bush’s foreign policy tutor.

She also became an attractive and seemingly moderate public face for the overwhelmingly white, middle-aged and conservative Republicans to put forward on the national stage. Young, black and female, she defied the political stereotypes.

Now, if confirmed, Rice will be third in the line of succession to the presidency (after the vice-president and speaker of the House of Representatives). Despite her impressive background, sharp intellect, and thousand-kilowatt smile, Rice does not have a strongly positive profile with the American public. She has not benefited much from her historic status. Rather, she is often seen in negative terms – perhaps a reminder of the know-it-all types everyone used to hate in grade school. She is therefore often portrayed as a Bush pet (although perhaps the critics have the caricature the wrong way round). One cartoonist for a major US newspaper last week showed Rice as a parrot perched on the finger of a baby-talking president, who asks: “How woodums wike to be Secwetawy of State?” Rice responds: “Awwrk!! OK, chief! Anything you say, chief! You bet, chief! You’re my hero, chief!”

Offensive as the characterization may be, it does not overstate how close the president and Rice are personally. The Washington Post recently reported that “Bush and Rice know each other so well they have conversations based on body language, with maybe four words exchanged”.

As national security advisor, she frequently accompanied Bush and his wife to the presidential weekend retreat at Camp David, in Maryland. Given the pressing security issues of the day, this shouldn’t be so surprising. But what to make of an incident that fired up the gossips in Washington last April after a juicy item was published in New York magazine?

At a dinner party attended by several top Washington journalists, Rice was overheard to say: “As I was telling my husb—” before stopping abruptly and correcting herself: “As I was telling President Bush…” Paging Dr Freud… It may be a testament to her schoolmarmish image that almost nobody in Washington thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item.

But Rice, who has never married, does have her admirers. American roots rocker Steve Earle this year offered up ‘Condi, Condi’, a reggae tune in which the outspoken left-winger admits a tongue-in-cheek infatuation with Rice. “Sweet and dandy pretty as can be/You be the flower and I’ll be the bumble bee/Oh she loves me oops she loves me not /People say you’re cold but I think you’re hot.” (Not since comedienne Carol Burnett’s 1957 hit ‘I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles’ has a secretary of state been so lovingly serenaded.)

What does the future hold for Condoleezza Rice? Occasionally during the first Bush term there were rumours that she’d be picked to replace Dick Cheney, who would resign as vice-president, thus positioning her advantageously for a campaign four years hence to become the first woman and first African-American president. This, of course, would most likely pit her against the former first lady and now New York Senator Hillary Clinton. Refuelling the speculation in the days following this year’s election was the sudden visit of Cheney to the hospital for ‘chest pains’.

Hillary versus Condi in 2008? As the president would say: “Bring it on.”

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