Posted on 02/11/2005 11:50:04 AM PST by IoCaster
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's just-concluded trip to Europe signals that the United States is back in the diplomacy business in earnest again. Part of the reason is that after four years of Colin Powell, the United States now has a secretary of State in full.
A contradiction President Bush's critics have never confronted is that they spent the past four years lamenting the Bush administration's poor diplomacy at the same time they celebrated its top diplomat. They only turned on Powell when he took the administration's case against Saddam Hussein to the world with his February 2003 speech to the United Nations — never mind this is the sort of thing written in a secretary of State's job description (it wasn't Powell's fault that the prewar intelligence was so grievously flawed).
Rice was helped in Europe by having a wind at her back from Bush's reelection and the Jan. 30 vote in Iraq, and there will surely be difficult days ahead for her (can you say Pyongyang?). But her tenure, following directly on the heel's Powell's, will probably offer a tale of two secretaries of State.
Rice gets things Powell never did. For instance, that leaking to Bob Woodward and other Washington Post reporters is not the secretary of State's chief responsibility. Powell was so obviously the primary source for so many journalistic accounts of intra-administration fights that he often deserved a co-byline. Or that being known as a dissenter from administration policy only undermines your standing and your credibility as a spokesman for the United States.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
As much as I respected Powell, I never could completely trust him and had doubts about him as a good team player. There was an interview he did on one of the sunday shows a couple of years ago that always bothered me. At the end of the interview the host asked him to comment on a poll that showed he was more trusted by the public than GWB. Powell got this sh!teating grin on his face and kind of shrugged his shoulders without replying. I can't describe why but, it was a telling moment for me.
Outstanding article. Thanks very much for posting it.
;o)
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