Colin Powell WAS a disaster. He knew about Richard Armitage outing Valerie Plame, too, but helped cover it up.
As for Condi Rice, I liked her very much. She started out well, but IMHO she has steadily gone downhill, and pretty well become a puppet of the State Department.
She can still slap down a Democrat, but her record over the past couple of years has been pretty disappointing.
Agree, Colin Powell was a disaster.
Re Condi, considering limitations of what she can say and, more importantly, DO in State, I'd say she's doing pretty good job. In State, the best one can do, is "first and foremost, do no harm". She handled ME pretty well, buying Olmert plenty of time for him to do what he needed to do in Lebanon (if he had the stomach for it), letting Hamas and Fatah fight it out amongst themselves, and pointing Sunni Arab states against bigger danger of their fellow Shiite Muslims in Iran and Lebanon and Gaza (forgetting for awhile "Death to Israel" and "Death to America").
Not bad for a SoS, she's been more proactive and successful than any SoS in decades (including Baker). Don't expect SoS to be a miracle worker, but she has State speaking tough AND in one voice on Iran, which is just about near miracle.
And she's a historian, which helps her see a long-term strategy and consequences of actions and, more importantly, non-actions.