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Lloyd has already put in a plug for a profile by Nicholas Lemann of the current National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice. It all the more engaging for me because I got to hear her speak at the
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Berkeley Veritas Forum in the fall of 1999. At that point, she was touted as possibly the next Secretary of State. I was certainly impressed with her polished delivery, her unfailingly articulate answers (there was no way that the Berkeley crowd was going to get her to slip up....). I was deeply disappointed in other ways. She was a political figure, first and foremost. I wondered whether what she said was really what she believed in her heart of hearts or whether, as a loyal defender/advocate/spokeswoman for both the President Bush (father) or candidate (soon to become President) Bush (son), she could not utter any doubt or criticism of the hawkish line of the Republican Party. Did she have any doubts? Could such an intelligent, thoughtful woman like her not have doubts? (Lemann writes a lot about how absolutely confident Rice is in public -- I could see it in 1999.) In some ways, it felt like a waste of time asking her questions since her answers were so predictable.
Newspaper article on Rice
Other articles
Salon.com | Bush's night of the long knives:
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But Bush's performance princess was his favorite briefer; ever devoted, the unmarried Rice in an unguarded moment once called Bush "my husband." As incompetent as she was at her actual job, she was as agile at bureaucratic positioning. Early on she figured out how to align with the neoconservatives and to damage Powell. Her usurpation is a lesson to him in blind ambition and loyalty.
