National Security Advisor Condi Rice must have unique delegating abilities because she seems to be using her time in highly questionable ways.
Take last Tuesday (Election Day), for example. It had been just four days since Osama bin Laden had released another video, one day since some administration officials considered raising the terrorist threat level to “orange,” and four days before Iraq declared martial law as a major new offensive was launched in Fallujah. So, what was Rice up to? She was monitoring campaign exit polls with Karl Rove.
It was about 2 p.m. Election Day, and White House political chief Karl Rove was steaming mad. Crummy media exit polls were all over the Internet, claiming a Kerry blowout and possibly depressing the GOP vote, as well as Bushies around the nation. “Karl was furious,” we’re told. So he went to work in a White House dining room, laying out electoral spreadsheets, scrolling through GOP exit polls, and watching TV. “Karl knows every single precinct,” says a friend. “We were never behind.”
But how would he get the word out? Enter Chief of Staff Andy Card and national security adviser Condi Rice. “She was into it,” said the friend. Card shouted out vote counts from the computer, Rice scribbled them down, and Rove compared them with old statistics. When it looked as if the media polls were wrong, Rove’s team blasted E-mails to gloomy Bushies in the field, reporting that their man was winning.
More emphasis on keeping her job than doing her job. It’s part of a pattern.
Rice spent the fall on the campaign trail, a historic first for an NSA. She should have been busy elsewhere:
* On the same day Rice gave a political speech in Ohio, U.S. military conducted operations against Zarqawi.
* On the same day Rice gave a political speech in Ohio, Poland Announced it would be pulling troops from Iraq.
* On the same day Rice gave a political speech in North Carolina, U.S. was accused of doling out hundreds of millions in unaccountable Iraqi projects.
* On the same day Rice gave a political speech in Ohio, Europeans negotiated with Iran to end nuclear program.
All the while, Rice is presumably the head of the Iraq Stabilization Group, which is supposed to be chiefly responsible coordinating national security policy in the country.
No wonder the Bush White House is so inept when it comes to national security — the president’s NSA wants to be Karl Rove’s sidekick.