Rice Star on Rise As Public Sours on Bush

AP on Yahoo ^ | 12/25/05 | Anne Gearan - ap

[NormsRevenge]

WASHINGTON - 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 was as strong a public voice as any for going to war in Iraq. She once famously warned of Saddam Hussein's presumed weapons of mass destruction: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Although Rice's first-term record on Iraq, terrorism and other subjects made for a contentious Senate confirmation hearing last January, most Americans apparently do not hold her personally responsible.

A Pew Research survey in October found that 60 percent of respondents held either a very favorable or mostly favorable view of Rice, while 25 percent had a very or mostly unfavorable view — numbers others in the Bush administration can only envy.

Two years after ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was captured, 64 percent of respondents said the Iraq war was the right thing to do. An AP-Ipsos poll this month showed that only 42 percent now say it was the right decision, and support has also dropped for staying in Iraq until the country is stabilized.

As for Bush, 42 percent said in this month's AP poll that they approve of his job performance, while 57 percent disapproved. That was up from a 37 percent approval rating in November, but well below his stratospheric numbers after Sept. 11.

Rice still has a long way to go to convince skeptics overseas that the United States is not pursuing a misadventure in Iraq, and she will always be the public face abroad of an administration that many in Europe and the Arab world distrust, said Nathan Brown, visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"She may present a slightly softer image, a slightly friendlier image, one that is not knee-jerk defensive" on issues like the mistreatment of terrorism detainees, Brown said. "But there are limits to what she can do so long as the policy is unpopular."

There is a glamour factor to Rice's appeal, and curiosity about the first black woman to hold the nation's top diplomatic post.

Rice, 51, grew up in the segregated South. She tries to soften the brash image the United States often projects abroad by telling audiences the discrimination she faced is proof that America isn't perfect.

Rice has never married. She works long hours and keeps fit with a rigorous daily exercise regimen. A clotheshorse, Rice has posed for Vogue magazine in a couture ball gown.

She is fiercely loyal to Bush, and tries to downplay her own rising stock and his public slide. Although mentioned as a possible Republican candidate for president in 2008, Rice says she has never wanted to run for elected office.

"I've got my hands full and I know what my skills, I think, are," Rice said in an Associated Press interview this month.

She declined to point to any specific accomplishments for which she takes personal credit, although she said she is pleased by developments including warmer US-European relations after a chill over the Iraq invasion.

"I'm a historian," Rice said in the interview. "I tend to see things in the big sweep of history and hope that at some point somebody is going to look back and say, oh, something that she did then mattered."

___

Editors Anne Gearan covers foreign affairs in Washington for The Associated Press

[NormsRevenge]

It never stops.

AP absolutely pathetic

[NormsRevenge]

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice takes questions on the Bush Administration's war on terrorism and her role as the nation's top diplomat, during an interview with the Associated Press, at the State Department in Washington in this Dec. 16, 2005 file photo. Rice has become the most popular member of the Bush administration and a potential candidate to replace her boss in the White House, even as Americans lose confidence in the administration she serves and patience with the Iraq war she helped to launch. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

[Jeff Head]

Sours on Bush?

Despite the difference I have with him on some issues...Bush will go down in history as one of the great liberators and bringers of peace and prosperity amongst mortal men. He is ushering in a change and potential for transformation into the middle east and elsewhere that very few could scaresly comprehend, much less set in motion and achieve.

That is why they hate him so.

[NormsRevenge]

U.S. President George W. Bush and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice smile during the swearing-in ceremony of John Danilovich as the Chief Executive Officer of Millennium Challenge Corporation at the State Department in Washington December 20, 2005. The Millennium Challenge Corporation oversees funds aimed at helping justly governed developing nations overcome poverty through economic growth. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

[highlander_UW]

Last I read the poll numbers have been on the increase for president Bush...guess the facts don't interest the AP.

[NormsRevenge]

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks to invited guests at the Heritage Foundation in Washington December 13, 2005. Congress rejected Rice's impassioned appeal to provide $50 million for African troops trying to keep peace in Sudan's Darfur region, the State Department said on Monday. (Larry Downing/Reuters)

[mainepatsfan]

And they claim Bush is the one in a bubble.

[NormsRevenge]

article also on yahoo ap wire as

Analysis: Rice Sees Political Star on Rise

[GraniteStateConservative]

There are a couple of pictures in the past year that show her interacting with some world leader overseas and one of her walking across the White House lawn that look exactly presidential. It was surreal.

[NormsRevenge]

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks during a taping of NBC's 'Meet the Press' at the NBC studios Sunday, Dec. 18, 2005, in Washington. Rice spoke about the Iraqi elections and U.S. troops in Iraq, and said Sunday that public disclosure of surveillance programs used to wage the war on terror damages those efforts. (AP Photo/NBC Meet the Press, Mark Wilson)

[NormsRevenge]

Russian President Vladimir Putin(R) looks at US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during their meeting at his Novo-Ogaryovo country residence, west of Moscow, October 2005. As Washington ratchets up its rhetoric against Iran, US officials are scrounging for workable options to rein in an Islamic regime they still consider part of an 'axis of evil.'(AFP/POOL/Sergey Ilnitski)

[bray]

The Stone Age Press Service never believes in Peace, even on Christmas. Go Condi!

Merry Christ's Day

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

It never stops.

No kidding. They have the nerve to print this drek...even in the face of The President's rising approval numbers? Pathetic.

[highlander_UW]

And they claim Bush is the one in a bubble.

Like most liberals, they are projecting their own condition on others.

[marron]

I'll vote for Rice, gladly.

But the notion that people support Rice because they are "sour" on Bush is clueless. She was his right had during the crafting and execution of his policy, and still is, for better and for worse. There isn't an inch of daylight between the two, and people know it.

It astounds me that writers like this are able to draw a paycheck, they actually get paid to write stuff like this.

[Fintan]

Associated Press Water Cooler.

 

[NormsRevenge]

Good for him and US. ;-)

I heard mention of a good jump but haven't seen specifics yet, I hope someone can pass any info on here.

He's been working overtime for our country for a long time as is and now with the lamebrain media and talking heads squawking away more than ever, has had to mount his trusty steed, Cheney, and kick some butt on the political battlefield.

[marron]

"right had" = "right hand"

Still working on that spelling stuff.

[prairiebreeze]

It's the AyePee that's sour. And bitter.

[mainepatsfan]

They ignore the facts of the past to suit their own needs so I guess we shouldn't be surprised when ignore the facts of the present as well.