Bush-Rice 2004? | The rise and rise of Condi

Her presence is not obtrusive but it is constant. President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is rarely that far away from the president. Her office is a few doors down the corridor from the Oval Office, she's a weekend guest at Camp David almost all the time, she's central to Russia policy, a fixture at war counsels, and reliable crisis-avoider and manager in all types of emergencies. When Bush, for example, realized that he would face embarrassment at this weekend's Monterrey summit on foreign aid, it was a "Get me Condi" moment. The negotiations that significantly increased Washington's foreign aid budget last week were conducted with the World Bank president, James D. Wolfensohn, by Condoleezza Rice. This was too critical a matter to be left to the usual point-man, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

Rice isn't the first National Security Adviser to exercise enormous influence on a president. Kissinger was Nixon's, after all. But Rice's widely acknowledged role as closest confidant to Bush is particularly striking given the stature of her colleagues. Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell, are not exactly foreign policy light-weights. They are of course critical members of the inner circle, but it's Condi who tends to get the last, confidential word. As Bob Woodward has reported, Bush would often ask Rice, during the tensest moments of the post-September 11 crisis, to attend meetings but not to speak. This wasn't because he didn't want her advice. It was because he wanted her to be a second, silent arbiter of the discussion. He wanted her not to advance a position, but to act as an alternate set of eyes and ears, to check her gut against his in weighing the options. And quite regularly, the last conference Bush has about many foreign policy decisions is with Condi.

The relationship started with the campaign, when Rice was essentially appointed as Bush's foreign policy guru. She has all the Establishment credentials. Educated at the University of Denver and Notre Dame, Rice became a professor of political science at Stanford, then special assistant to the first president Bush, then senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institute, before becoming provost of Stanford. This impeccable conservative pedigree comes with what are clearly formidable schmoozing skills. Her name gives it away. It's from the Italian musical notation con 'dolcezza' - to play "with sweetness" - and Rice deploys that low-key, unruffled timbre throughout her work. It's partly what Bush likes about her. Not just the expertise and collegiality - but the ordered precision and politesse that helps him keep private order amid public mayhem.

And of course she's a black woman. I've kept this till last, since it's not the most important thing about her. But it's still, it seems to me, an amazing fact that one of the most important members of Washington's inner circle, currently among the most powerful inner circles the world has ever seen, is a member of a classically marginalized group. If this were a Democratic administration, you could be sure that the press would have hailed her as a breakthrough in civil rights, and touted her gender and ethnicity as a central part of her appeal. The Bush style eschews that kind of identity-mongering. But her presence sends an unmistakable signal about what conservatism should mean now: completely comfortable with minorities, eager to incorporate them into the heart of culture and government, but never crudely exploitative or racially obsessed, like parts of the left.

Her presence in the administration is also, I think, medicine for the abuse of women that occurred under Clinton. Don't get me wrong. Many Clinton policies were friendlier to the agenda of various feminist groups than Bush's. Clinton deserves credit for greatly increasing the number of women in government, and for appointing many minorities and women to cabinet rank. Clinton appointed the first female secretary of state and the first female attorney-general, for example. But the role of those two women, Madeleine Albright and Janet Reno, shows something less admirable about Clinton's personal relations with female colleagues. They were never really part of the loop. Reno was an attorney-general more estranged from her president than any in recent history. Albright was a cipher. When real foreign policy work needed to be accomplished, Clinton turned to men with whom he was more comfortable - Sandy Berger, for example, or Richard Holbrooke. No American president has ever had such a key, close political relationship with a female equal than Bush with Rice. It's very striking, very modern and barely noticed by a press that prefers the archetype of Bush as a macho cowboy than a yuppie, multicultural businessman of the 21st Century.

What's more this woman is black. And by black, I mean much more like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas than Colin Powell. Powell is from a family of Caribbean immigrants. His lineage doesn't fuse him with the scar of slavery, segregation and Southern unrest that attaches itself to most African-Americans. Rice was born in 1954, the year that racial segregation in America's high-schools was finally ruled unconstitutional. But Rice, like many others, saw little change at first, and was in segregated schools in the South until a teenager. A nursery school class-mate of hers was one of four girls killed when white extremists bombed a church in Alabama in 1963. But she had a classic middle-class success story. The grand-daughter of a devout share-cropper, she lived to see her own father become vice-chancellor of the University of Denver and graduate from the college herself at the tender age of 19. Driven by hard-working parents, Rice could play concert piano, speak four languages, and earn a doctorate in her early twenties. She is perhaps an almost painful example of what opportunities do actually exist for black Americans with stable families and middle-class values in America today. That's surely part of why Bush picked her. She's not just an advisor; she's an emblem.

All of which has led some in Washington to wonder what's next for her. It can surely only be more. Most believe that Dick Cheney may well decide to bow out of running for vice-president again for health or family reasons. Could Bush-Rice be the potential Republican ticket in 2004? The attractions are obvious. Rice does several things for Bush. She helps eradicate the gender gap, the biggest liability for Republican candidates. She could also help Bush to achieve his dream of winning more than the paltry ten percent of black votes he did in 2000, a demographic group Democrats desperately need to keep locked up to keep an edge in presidential politics. Rice - coming from the South and Mountain West, but also provost of one of California's greatest universities - makes geographic sense as well. And, best of all, she's a trusted conservative. Her instincts are Bush's: realist, uncompromising but flexible in a pinch. And he trusts her deeply. When you think about it, it's hard to think of any rival in the cabinet with the same credentials for a future vice-presidential nomination. And what it would do for the image of the Republican party as a whole would be momentous.

There's a catch. Rice is single. There hasn't been an unmarried candidate for president or vice-president in modern times. This shouldn't matter, but it might. In the hideously invasive world of today's press, Rice's private life might be scrutinized in ways she would rightly find intolerable. But knowing Bush, this wouldn't stop him. He picks the people he wants - against conventional wisdom. Everyone forgets how controversial a choice Dick Cheney was. In 2004, the shock could be exponentially larger.

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What a pair of True Believers.

First off, I'm a guy.

Second, the inability of conservatives to make tactical adjustments cedes the center to the left. I'm not willing to play your game of losing nobly in a noble cause. If you don't win, you don't get to appoint Supreme Court Justices. And the Supreme Court follows the election returns. Even after turning back Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Court, the Supremes affirmed much of the New Deal. Victory: it's as simple as that.

Repealing Roe v. Wade is not something that can be done tomorrow, and if someone tried to offer a human life amendment, it would never even make it out of a Republican Senate! You'd see a tag-team filibuster by the Rats that would go down in the history books. As far as RVW is concerned, it doesn't matter who's President. You guys act as if we have ninety Republicans in the Senate. We don't. Now get a clue.

Now I don't see either of you Talebani contradicting me, now do I? That's because you can't, and if either of you are going to be honest with yourselves, you know it. Demonizing pro-choice, undecided voters is a good way to lose elections. I saw Clinton maneuver us into doing just that. And no, I didn't demonize Clinton because he played the same game then that Bush is playing now. I have a grudging admiration for the political talent of the two-bit felon: he played the American people like a violin. I wonder how many Senate races were lost because some of you went out and voted for Buchanan. And we might have lost Iowa and New Mexico's electoral votes because of absolutists like you two.

You just don't want to do the hard thing: carry out a campaign of moral suasion and propaganda on behalf of the pro-life cause. Nope, you'd rather have Congress pass a law. That's the lazy man's way. It's typical of so many on the Right and the Left: Utopia is Just Around the Corner If We'd Only Pass a Law.....

But laws don't change people's hearts. And women would keep on having abortions. And there are, unfortunately, doctors who would perform them. You want to change people's hearts about abortion? Then do the difficult thing: talk with women as if they are human beings and have some trouble coming to terms with the act of abortion. Don't treat some woman who has ever even entertained the thought of having an abortion as a social pariah. Remember, she has a vote, and she can vote against you and for the NOW gang. If Roe were overturned tomorrow, without the political and propaganda groundwork being laid, it would be the ruination of the Republican Party for the next decade. Notice that I said, "without the proper groundwork being laid". You want to kill Roe? Fine, but till the fields, first. Swing voters get really pissed off at people who tell them that they are morally wrong.

Remember, the Northerners didn't go off to fight the Civil War because of the perfidy of slavery. They went off to fight the Civil War because of the attack on Sumter and the need to preserve the Union. Slavery came later. The abolitionists NEVER got any real political traction in the North. Lincoln was smart enough to work abolition in later, and even then after a costly victory at Antietam. And remember that Lincoln was willing to compromise on slavery to keep Virginia in the Union.

You remember Lincoln? His side won the damn war.

Thankfully, the President doesn't treat female swing voters, most of whom happen to be pro-choice, as pariahs. He knows how to reach out to them and get their votes. You two do not. You're True Believers. Eric Hoffer wrote a fine book about you guys. In the end, True Believers ALWAYS lose, either by direct vote at the ballot (because normal people can't stand being preached to by some political Elmer Gantry) or by the firing squad (because they make the mistake of believing in some fascist gangster who uses them and their passions like a wet dishrag).

Thankfully, George W. Bush knows talent when he sees it, and uses it to the advantage of the American people by hiring and promoting an outstanding individual such as Condi Rice. You'd rather see the Hildebeast as President than promote a good talent within the party, an individual who just happens to be ever-so-slightly on the pro-choice side of the ledger.

"Oh no, well if the choice is between Rice and the Fuhrette, I guess I'll just have to register my protest vote by voting Howard Phillips and the straight Constitutional Party ticket!" Now there's sound, strategic thinking! That will get you a pro-life Court!

Pardon me while I get a vomit bucket!

Bush is pro-life like Reagan was pro-life. The Old Man never let the issue get in the way of building a grand coalition. Neither will Bush. And for me, I figure that there are plenty of issues out there besides abortion. Condi is on the right side of all of them, except one. And even there (she did an interview with Oprah in the latter's coffee table mag, "O"), she came out in favor of restrictions on abortion such as parental notification. Of course, she's a serious Second Amendment person, so she's got my vote right there. Anyway, I'll take that bargain: politics is about settling for most of the loaf to get the rest later.

Some people just don't understand. No wonder they lose to Democrats.

Damn silly of me, having to live in the real world and all.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

"First off, I'm a guy."

I've always thought that you must have an ego the size of Texas to post as you do....as if you have a persona. I find it odd that a guy named Chris would choose to post a cartoon of a girl at the top of each post he makes. It reminds me of SNL's "It's Pat!" sketch.

Nice of you to refer to me as the Taliban. You don't know anything about the way I live my life or my pro-life activities but you see fit to compare me to murderous torturers. Your arrogance (and ignorance) is sweeping.

Despite the fact that I gave W. my vote, (and his father too) fellow Republicans like you seem intent on driving people like me from the party so you can play footsie with pro-aborts in the big tent. Granted, anyone who can convince themselves that it's just a blob and not a baby is an easier mark, and probably won't mind all the lying as much.

BTW, I've missed that "hearts and minds" campaign you mention. Was is that "I'm pro-life......er, no I'm not" thing Laura did? Or was it that giant leap forward in communication when W. actually phoned and spoke himself (think of it!!!!) to that huge crowd of despicable True Believers at the March for Life this year? Or was it the day when he approved ESCR research on aborted babies that had already been killed for profit?

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