OUTREACH: Rice visits a camp for displaced people in Darfur, Sudan, last month. She says she has taken a hard line with Sudanese leaders to get them to end the violence
Posted on 08/07/2005 10:10:17 PM PDT by STARWISE
After six months as Secretary of State, she has seized control over U.S. foreign policy. Now comes her toughest test--finding a way out of Iraq. An intimate look at Rice's world
When visitors arrive to see Condoleezza Rice on the seventh floor of the State Department, they are seated down the corridor from Rice's office, in a drawing room decorated with patterned carpets, Georgian furniture and a grandfather clock.
Above one sofa hangs a framed, four-page document, typewritten and signed with the initials "GM." It is the original copy of the most famous speech ever made by a U.S. Secretary of State: George Marshall's commencement address at Harvard in 1947, the speech that led to the passage of the European Recovery Act, later known as the Marshall Plan. By today's standards, the speech is notable both for its brevity--you can get through most of it if Rice is running late--and its ambition. "Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine," Marshall said, "but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos." Hanging outside the Secretary's door, the document is meant to remind guests of a moment when America's top diplomat managed to change the world.
Rice believes this is her moment. In pep talks to State Department colleagues, she compares the Administration's drive to implant democracy in the Middle East to the policies devised by Marshall's generation to combat communism in Europe after World War II. She delivers major speeches on university campuses, rather than in ministerial chancelleries, and seeks out audiences receptive to her declarations of moral purpose.
"Our greatest achievements are yet to come," she told French students in Paris. "We must provide greater prosperity to people all over the world," she said in Tokyo. "We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people," she announced at the American University in Cairo. She is on her way to becoming the most traveled Secretary of State ever: she has visited 38 countries and logged 170,390 miles, according to her staff, which tallies such numbers like baseball stats. When she met TIME at the State Department for an interview, Rice didn't hide her confidence about making history--in part because she knows she already has. "If somebody had looked at the United States in 1789--or for that matter 1864, or for that matter 1954," she says, her smile widening, "and said the Secretary of State will be a black woman--and by the way, that will be after the last Secretary of State was a black man and the Secretary of State before that was a woman--people would have said, 'No, really--are you kidding me?'"
(snip)
But she can also play tough: in Sudan last month, Rice demanded an apology from the Khartoum government after members of her traveling party were manhandled by Sudanese security agents; she got one within an hour.
At home, Rice has wrested control over the tone and direction of U.S. foreign policy away from war-cabinet hard-liners, curbing their unilateralist bluster. She persuaded President George W. Bush to support negotiations with North Korea and Iran over their nuclear programs, though both countries have balked at offers from the U.S. and its allies.
In the process, she has cemented her status as the President's most trusted lieutenant, a relationship that makes her the most influential Secretary of State in more than a decade. "In foreign policy, you've got everybody involved, and so unless you have that degree of confidence with the President, you can't be effective and activist," says Rice's deputy, Robert Zoellick. "That is the critical prerequisite, whether you're Henry Kissinger, whether you're Jim Baker, whether you're Condi Rice. She has that."
(snip)
She doesn't e-mail because it is impersonal and indelible, communicating mainly through person-to-person calls. If she has a bone to pick with a U.S. or foreign official, she will order everyone out of the room and remonstrate in private. "She's not afraid to pick up the phone and trust her own instincts,"
(snip)
Her biggest achievement has been at home: Administration officials say Rice has seized the policymaking initiative from hawks close to Cheney and Rumsfeld. "She has recentered American foreign policy in the State Department," says Burns.
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Rest at link.
Stupid Time. A way out is not what is needed. A way to hurry the Iraqi take over the task of governing, so we can move our boys to the sure to be offered permanant bases in the country side, away from the City.
Nice try Time but this is malarky. Rice is on board right down the line.
Condi ping!
Thanks for the *ping* Starwise! Very interesting to know a little more about a woman who is very private! She is going to do great things....and how cool that Karen Hughes will be there with her. Does W know how to pick 'em or what!
I worry about the Bush admin and Condi's focus on democracy. Equal protection under the law and property proptection are more important.
Freedom and Democracy are not synonymous. <.> The idea of a constitutional government is deceptively simple: the government cannot legitimately infringe upon our rights, even if the majority votes to do so. <.> Individual liberty cannot be preserved if the majority's will must always triumph.
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown
Remarks at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris - Sciences Po
Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Paris, France
February 8, 2005
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/41973.htm
Blogs for Condi (Many great links):
http://condoleezza.blogspot.com/
I've had a lot of respect for her for many years and it grows by leaps and bounds the more I read.
In how many other of the world's countries could someone from her humble but decent origins rise so far so fast (by peaceful means LOL) ?
Only in the US is the answer I believe, something for all to be proud of indeed.
Something I've noticed recently (over about the past 2 months) is that the mainstream liberal blame America media a.k.a. "friends of Hillary" have not been covering Condi Rice hardly at all even though she has been on just about every continent in that timeframe. They all know that a Condi - Hillary matchup in 2008 = a serious ass whoopin' for Hillary. You can bet that the MSM's game plan is to minimize Condi Rice by not covering any of her accomplishments whenever possible over the next few years.
BTTT.
I agree ... though Shrillery has been hiding in the shadows, she's just starting to emerge and that will happen more and more, in very calculated and prescribed ways. There was a segment on my local (Chicago) news tonight about a speech she gave here. Condi's accomplishments will have to be trumpeted by us and the conservative and reasonable cable and radio hosts ... it ain't gonna be by the MSM. She'll be demonized, too, as you see in subtle digs and Bush bashing .. just as in this article.
Shouldn't be long now before some Jackson/Sharpton/Farrakhan clone to say she's 'not black enough'.
...like the article quoting Billery as saying that Mrs. Blair should follow in her husband's footsteps and run for PM. Shrillery must be writing all of his scripts for public appearances now. Just watch, every time he's quoted from now to the next election, there'll be a subtle reference to his wife and the next election. The MSM is making sure of that.
Reading entrails.
Here's a good one on Condi!
Agree with you about the article -- it was a typical liberal media hit piece on Bush. Wherever possible, it tried to drive a wedge between Condi and the President. But it also gave her some hits by implying she doesn't have a policy on Iraq and other areas, and downplaying her idealism which favors democracy in the middle east. If she was a liberal SOS, however, the article would praise her idealism even though liberals don't often follow through on it with action.
They taught us very well ... we've earned PhD's in The Clinton Control Syndrome and can predict their agenda and scheming path with fairly good accuracy.
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