When it comes to aides, staffers, and high-ranking officials, the Bush White House has had a reverse Midas touch. People who have reasonably good reputations before working for Bush, tend to leave humiliated. It’s as if the president’s inner circle is some kind of credibility-sapping black hole.
Condoleezza Rice, for example, left Stanford with at least some stature in professional circles, only to become what David Kay described as “probably the worst national security adviser since the office was created.” Seven years ago, Rice was considered a fairly credible foreign policy expert, particularly on Russian policy. Today, Rice is best known for helping sell a disastrous war and losing turf wars to Donald Rumsfeld.
As Secretary of State, she has had little success improving U.S. relations with much of anyone. Rice’s biggest diplomatic victory was a breakthrough deal with North Korea, in which she triumphantly accepted the same deal the Clinton administration struck years earlier.
But, never fear, Rice has a comeback plan.
… Ms. Rice is working hard to reshape her legacy in her remaining 16 months in office. She is cooperating with a range of authors who have lined up to write books about her…. Although both the Kessler and the Bumiller books are expected to be critical of Ms. Rice on many points, State Department officials say that it is unusual for a sitting secretary of state to cooperate with so many biographies. But then again, few of her predecessors had multiple authors jostling to write books about them.
Beyond trying to influence the historical record, Ms. Rice is trying hard to rewrite her legacy to include something more than Iraq. Her colleagues and friends say that she has accepted that Iraq is a stain that she probably cannot remove before she leaves office.
At the risk of sounding uncharitable, that’s probably a good conclusion to accept. Rice, like her boss, has a legacy that is based entirely on the war she helped sell.
For that matter, Rice tied her fate to the president, with whom she has chosen to be inextricably linked.
By the time Rice met Bush, he had become a Christian teetotaler and a devoted family man. The two shared a strong religious faith, a belief in American power, similar senses of humor, and a conviction that sports was a metaphor for life. He admired her brains. She valued his instincts. […]
“There was this connective stuff — that was really fully under way by the summer of 1999,” said Rice’s friend Coit “Chip” Blacker. “There’s a funny kind of transfer of energy and ideas that’s almost — not random, but unstructured. It’s as though they’re Siamese twins joined at the frontal lobe.”
The president reportedly refers to Rice as his “sister,” while Rice’s stepmother said she “just can’t say no to that man.”
I’m afraid it’s a little late for Rice to start wondering how history will perceive her.