This book reminded me of something. I missed 9/11.
As I read about Condoleezza Rice and the clues that were missed, the warnings that were ignored, the hearings after 9/11, her testimony, the outrage, the invasion of Iraq, the question of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
I missed all of it. I left for Brazil on 8/28/2001 and returned 2 years later. I missed it all.
Prior to reading this book I knew very little about Ms. Rice. I knew she was a black female who had worked at Stanford, been in the NSC and was the Secretary of State. I also knew she was an accomplished Pianist.
That was about it.
I never knew she was born in Birmingham, Alabama. Her childhood friend was killed in an act of racist terrorism when the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed. Rice lived in Birmingham when Martin Luther King Jr. came and led his marches and wrote his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." Her family moved to Denver when she was 13. She was quite the figure skater, fairly fluent in French, and she became a very accomplished pianist. (She later played a concert with Yo-Yo Ma.)
At the University of Denver she was mentored by Josef Korbel (the father of Madeleine Albright). Rice decided that rather than pursue Piano as a profession, she would study the Soviet Union. In 1977 she was an intern in the Carter administration. In 1981 she earned her Ph.D. in Political Science.
She was 28 years old, educated, accomplished... and a democrat.
Why did she become a Republican? Two reasons in the beginning.
1. She didn't like Carter's foreign policy
2. Her dad was a Republican. (He had to be, when he registered in 1952 the democrats in Alabama refused to register blacks, so he registered as a Republican.)
Funny how things work out.
The book then takes us through Affirmative Action which helped her get hired at Stanford. She was initially loved as an energetic young minority professor. She made fast and powerful connections, and by 1989 she was asked to be the Soviet expert for President Bush 1. She as back at Stanford in less than 2 years, and decided it was time to expand her expertise to the corporate world. She joined the Board of Chevron, Transamerica Corporation, and Hewlett-Packard. By 1993 she had tenure and was made the Provost of Stanford. (the first female, first minority, and youngest Provost in Stanford history)
She was also resented. Many thought she didn't deserve it. She hadn't done enough, published enough, or been at Stanford nearly long enough.
Then she dug in and started changing things, which made her even more unpopular. She was asked to balance the budget (Stanford was running a $20 million deficit per year) She cut and slashed people and programs, even firing the highest ranking Hispanic woman at the University. (This led to hunger strikes by many students.) In two years she reported a $14.5 million surplus. She did her job, the administrators loved her, and many faculty resented and defied her.
In 2000 she took a one year leave of absence from Stanford to be George W. Bush's foreign policy adviser. When he won the nomination she was asked to speak at the GOP national convention. That's when she uttered the famous line: "America's armed forces are not a global police force." How soon that would change.
When he won the election she resigned from Stanford and was appointed National Security Adviser. (The first woman ever to hold that position.)
How did she get there? She was smart, she was savvy. When she was getting to know George Bush 2 they would often workout together. He was impressed that she could be in the gym chatting about college football, and in the next sentence discuss the viewpoints of foreign governments. She put people at ease, but could match wits at any moment. She and Bush would become so close she was basically family. She went on their family vacations, and was like a sister to both Bush and his wife.
When Bush 2 was inaugurated they were excited at their opportunities. They could spend 2001 making policy, mostly domestic. The world was good, the US was powerful, and they could really get some things done.
Then 9/11 happened, and it was discovered that Rice had ignored the warning signs, even a specific warning in July that al Qaeda was planning an attack on US soil.
She would spend years defending and questioning her actions.
As this biographer tells it, she then became almost a "Yes Man" for Bush. Whatever he wanted, she propelled him in that direction. She wasn't a curbing or correcting force, she was a jump start and full throttle engine going whichever direction he wanted. When he received reports of Iraq's possible involvement in the attacks, or the risk of WMDs, she told him to believe it, and to go to war.
She did many good things, but her time as NSA would always be tainted by her failure to prevent or
even acknowledge the risk of the 9/11 attacks before they occurred.
When Bush 2 won re-election she was appointed Secretary of State. She had the most "no" votes of any secretary of state in this century. Democrats made their viewpoint clear - she had screwed up, and everyone knew it.
Rice worked hard to help Iraq establish it's own government. She battled Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and many others. They tried to push her one way, circumvent her when possible, and completely disregard and ignore her oft times. She stood her ground, and eventually Rumsfeld resigned as the Secretary of Defense.
She did well as Secretary of State, but didn't seem to realize what a public figure she was, and that politics is perception.
When Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans, she didn't figure she really had a role to play as Secretary of State, she was supposed to deal with foreign matters.
She seemed to forget the fact that she was the highest ranking black official in the country, and New Orleans would cause a racial outcry against the Bush administration. When she spent the days after Katrina going to see Monty Python's "Spam-a-lot" on Broadway and shopping at expensive shoe stores - she was destroyed by the media.
She tried to help Bush with his race problem, but it would all come too late. The Katrina response was terrible, and it was seen as white people ignoring the needs of blacks who were in crisis. She was an outsider. She was a Republican. She was Bush's subordinate.
This biographer really works hard to show all sides of Condoleezza Rice. The book details her work, her personal life, her relationship with the Bush family, and her battles with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Stanford faculty and others. She was not always right, but she was always attempting to do the right thing. She worked hard, made tough decisions, and tried to fulfill her roll as she saw it.
The book ends with the end of the Bush administration - and Rice saying she's never running for National Office.
Will she be Romney's VP? She says no.
We'll see...
No comments:
Post a Comment