The Confidante Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy
At the end of President George W. Bush’s first term, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was prepared to leave politics and return to an academic post at Stanford University before she was drafted by Bush to be secretary of state. Two years later, polls showed American voters regarded her as the most powerful woman in the country. In this gripping and intelligent account, Washington Post correspondent Kessler chronicles those two years, drawing on his firsthand experiences traveling with Rice as well as an impressive array of documents and interviews. Kessler organizes the book by region, vividly dramatizing Rice’s travels and negotiations overseas—the chapter including her visits to Khartoum and Darfur is a standout—while providing thoughtful analysis and historical background to put these vignettes in context. Kessler praises Rice for a number of successes, including her role in weakening a secret CIA prison system in Europe, but he also criticizes her failure to provide a coherent foreign policy vision and her weakness at implementation and follow-up. This balanced, detailed text offers invaluable insight into Rice’s rise to power, though its exclusive focus on foreign policy may limit its appeal. (Sept.)
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User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Five Stars
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I’d say it’s essential reading for anyone who follows current events on any level. The writing is both direct and engaging and the author provides background and context in each chapter without overcomplicating. I really felt like a Washington insider with access to fascinating accounts of behind-the-scenes negotiations. Kessler’s treatment of Rice is even-handed; he highlights her dedication, drive, poise and intelligence but also holds her accountable for failed outcomes and missteps. Reading the New York Times is a whole new experience now – I have a much deeper understanding of the issues and people in the news. Highly recommended!
4 Stars The Diplomatic Fashion Runway
No one denies that Condi Rice is a talented and hard-working diplomat, but Kessler’s excellent book chronicles a series of missed diplomatic opportunities during her tenure, inviting one to consider how effective Rice has been as Secretary of State during Bush’s second term. Rice initially built a strong and brilliant team under deputy secretary Robert Zoellick, and some of the success stories Kessler describes took place while Zoellick was at the helm.
Rice had a public profile and was popular with the public during her time on the NSC, but once she ascended to role of Secretary of State, she sought systematically to raise her public profile, and to do so largely through a series of media splashes accompanied by high fashion statements. Rice focused heavily on image. Perhaps the most salient example of a woman in power who used fashion to great effect is Margaret Thatcher, who was a relentless implementer; Kessler demonstrates that once Rice launched initiatives, her execution and implementation were weak, and apparently style trumped substance. Rice does dress the part, carries it off well, and clearly enjoys being a leading fashionista. Dean Acheson also dressed extremely well, but this was probably secondary to his diplomatic skill, and in any case his sartorial statements were not on prominent media display during his trips abroad, although I imagine had he appeared for dinner in Saudi Arabia, as Rice did, wearing flowing white silk with gold pinstripes threaded through the fabric, that would have changed quickly. But if the most innovative fashion statement conservatives can muster is the adoption the solid-color necktie look pioneered by James Baker, then we should welcome Rice’s attempts to raise the bar.
While Rice is known to be extremely bright, she appears to compensate for a lack of strategic intellectual firepower with a highly developed sense of performance. Splendid performances can go a long way in diplomacy, it seems, but Rice’s tenure has been marked by unlucky breaks and wrong-footed initiatives which Kessler does an outstanding job of covering, while simultaneously guiding us through some of the major foreign policy challenges of the last few years with skill and brevity. The book’s title, however, suggests that a more detailed examination of the Rice-Bush relationship would be on offer, with insight into how she became so influential with Bush. Here the book falls short, but is nonetheless an essential read for anyone seeking to understand Rice’s leadership, or lack of it, during a few turbulent years. Interestingly, as she was provost of a highly complex university and managed a stable of world-class talent, she seems to have brought no managerial skill at all to the running of the Department of State, neglecting to tap the vast resources available there and demonstrating her tacit acceptance of the Bush style of a closed inner circle that doesn’t look beyond its own resources or mental models.
Rice brings to the table an outstanding set of personal and intellectual qualities, but if Kessler’s book is accurate, she may not have the chops to take on a future leadership role in electoral politics. One can only wish her well in the remaining months of her term, but Kessler provides little comfort that major breakthroughs are to be expected, particularly in the mid-east, where Rice has declared her intent to bring peace and stability, and realize the President’s stated goal of fostering a Palestinian state. Even now, her role in managing other issues, such as those presented by Iran, seems less than significant.
3 Stars Correct Title
“In the spirit of Yom Kippur, the United States will not hold Israel to any agreements obligating them to accept Dollars as payment for their foreign aid. We will translate our obligations into Euros or whatever currency that best fits Israel’s needs. We need to place our Israeli obligations at the top of our national priority list. Israel should not suffer any inconvenience due to currency fluctuations” -Condoleezza Rice 09/21/2007
Soon OPEC and others will demand equal consideration and there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth all across this once great country.
5 Stars A fascinating read!
Never much one for politics, I began reading this book only because my father was reading it and had vehemently recommended it to me. However, upon picking it up and reading just a few short pages, I was hooked. The book provides a riveting portrait of one of the most important women, no, one of the most important people in our country. Rice was once believed to have had a substantial chance of becoming the first female president, but lost that chance through foolish political choices. This book shows Rice’s weaknesses and her strengths, and portrays her admirable if not greatly successful attempts to fix her mistakes. The insider point of view Kessler offers as a journalist who followed Rice closely provides a wonderful personal touch to the examination of her character, and, in some ways, despite her controversial choices, one cannot help but admire her core of steel and her keen intelligence and sarcastic wit.
5 Stars A Seat at the Diplomatic Table
Kessler’s thesis is two-fold: (1) Rice has spent her years as Secretary of State saddled with the impossible task of trying to undo the damage that she did in Bush’s first term as a National Security Advisor who fell under the sway of the administration’s neoconservative ideologues. (2) Despite keeping up the most frenetic travel schedule of any Secretary of State since Kissinger, Rice’s performance has been a series of missed opportunities attributable to a lack of any coherent strategic vision. As a reporter “on the plane” with Rice, Kessler is able to give you a detailed and psychologically nuanced look at Rice and the other players, foreign and domestic. It is a finely observed rendition of a disaster in the making, made all the more poignant by the fact that Rice herself is portrayed as a brilliant, talented, strong, energetic, attractive, and even charismatic person who might have played a constructive role in the world had she attached herself to a more competent mentor. As a reporter, Kessler stops short of articulating what he thinks an appropriate foreign-policy agenda might have looked like and tends to judge Rice’s performance in relation to the goals that the she and the Administration set for themselves. But the book’s agnosticism is part of its attraction, as it gets you thinking about your own foreign-policy values and commitments. What would a good response to the Hezbollah-Israeli war have looked like? What role should democracy and human rights play in foreign policy–and does an excessive focus on those values make a country end up looking hypocritical as idealism comes into contact with reality and inevitably becomes compromised? When is refusing to negotiate directly with a dangerous outlaw state like North Korea a useful tool, and when does it become an impediment to achieving important goals, like nuclear nonproliferation? Kessler’s book doesn’t answer these questions, but raises them in such an intriguing way as to ensure that it will still be attracting readers long after Rice has left the public stage–whenever that may be.
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