Condoleezza Rice -- Headed for The Hague? Like Bush and The Rest Of The Gang, It's Where They Belong!
Billary
They're called "CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY" ...
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"Life After Foggy Bottom"
By David Ignatius
Thursday, November 27, 2008; A29
She is immaculately dressed, as always, wearing a gold necklace and a
tailored suit in the fashionable color known as aubergine. And she is
relaxed, which is a change from her usual demeanor, as the week bends
toward Thanksgiving and her thoughts turn to life after Jan. 20.
Condoleezza Rice may be the most disciplined person in this town of
workaholics. She has always been the perfect young woman, pleasing and
impressing others. Her mother, Angelena, advised her, "Always
remember, if you're overdressed, it reflects badly on [other people];
if you're underdressed, it reflects badly on you," according to a 2001
interview conducted by The Post's Dale Russakoff. And she has lived by
that rule -- operating with the steely control that she learned as an
ice skater and pianist.
But in a few weeks, Rice will have only herself to please, and that
has had a liberating effect. She talks about her past and future as a
person with nothing left to prove. She's leaving Washington for real
after Inauguration Day and will return to Stanford University. If
"Meet the Press" calls, she won't be in. "I have no desire to be
shadow secretary of state," she told me.
In her desire for a real leave-taking, Rice reminds me of Dean Rusk,
another secretary of state who served during a painful and divisive
war. Rusk once described to me the immense relief he felt on the day
he left office in January 1969: The burdens of the world had come off
his shoulders at last, and he could go home to Georgia.
Rice seems to take genuine pleasure in the arrival of Barack Obama as
the first African American president. She was asleep at 11 on election
night when his victory was declared -- yes, she is that disciplined.
But she says of his election: "It is the strongest affirmation to date
that America is what it says it is. And it's a reminder that America
had to overcome a lot to get there."
Rice has been thinking a lot lately about what her parents had to
overcome to create the world in which she could dream such big dreams.
They will be the subject of one of the two books she plans to write
after she leaves, describing their role as "education evangelists" in
the racially charged world of Birmingham, Ala.
"They believed in the transforming power of education," she says. And
on this subject, of education and the American dream, the sometimes
maddeningly optimistic Rice voices concern. "If we aren't capable of
equipping students for the 21st century, we will turn inward," she
says, describing a future America that has lost its unifying myth of
mobility and success, and its self-confidence.
Talking about Obama, and what she calls "the continuum of the African
American experience," a smile comes over her face. She remembers how
her father befriended the radical activist Stokely Carmichael and
invited him to their home -- and how people might have attacked her,
as they did Obama, for her casual acquaintance with a communist
agitator.
She knows that she's a superstar now, someone who will never be able
to stroll into a grocery store unnoticed. She plans to apply this star
power to education. "I'm an educator who took a detour," she says.
Rice's other book will be about foreign policy. This one may take a
bit more time. "It's the kind of period that needs a little distance,"
she says.
[The writer is co-host of PostGlobal, an online discussion of
international issues. His e-mail address is
davidi...@washpost.com.]