The other real power in the Oval Office
Artykuł pochodzi z pisma "Guardian"
The other real power in the Oval Office
Condoleezza Rice takes the softly softly approach but it belies a gritty determination
Matthew Engel in Washington
Saturday January 25, 2003
The Guardian
There is a standard conversation in Washington, at every level of the power structure except the very top, and it always goes something like: "Powell thinks this; Rumsfeld thinks that; Cheney thinks that, only more so. And Condy? Well, she's, um, somewhere in the middle."
Everyone now knows who Condy is. As President George Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice is, beyond any question, the most talked-about woman in Washington.
Everyone knows where she is, too: American foreign policy is entering a crucial phase, and she is right there in the Oval Office as every decision on Iraq is made. But what is she? And where does she stand on the central dilemma of this administration: to bend to world opinion or to fight alone?
The glib assumption is still that she is some kind of compromiser, halfway between the instinctive alliance-builders of the state department and the to-heck-with-it hawks. But a new and more credible theory is taking shape: that she doesn't really function as an adviser in the traditional sense at all. "It's a mind-meld," said James Lindsay of the Brookings Institution, quoting Star Trek.
"There is in this relationship with the president the sense that before she tells the president something, she figures out where she thinks he's at," said Mr Lindsay. "You can read that charitably or uncharitably."
"Condy seems able to articulate Bush's instincts," according to a state department official. "She gives them substance and intellectual cohesion. It's an unusual skill, but with this president it's priceless."
It is an odd notion: the idea of the black woman intellectual as George Bush's alter ego. But it has been given impetus by Bob Woodward's quasi-official account of the Afghan crisis, Bush at War: the Rice style, Woodward notes, was "not to commit herself unless the president pressed".
This does not make her unimportant. A year ago Washington analysts would often argue that Mr Bush was a cipher, that the vice-president Dick Cheney was the president in all but name, and that Ms Rice was an ineffectual and over-promoted academic. It is now thought that in August when the vice-president made a super-hawkish speech attacking the idea of sending inspectors back to Iraq, it was Ms Rice who was despatched to tell him to back off. He did. It was an awesome demonstration of the true White House pecking order.
The post of national security adviser is a strange one, which takes on different forms under different regimes. Most famously, Henry Kissinger used the position as his initial power base to dominate policy-making in the Nixon White House. Some of his successors have been obscure functionaries. Others have acted as referees in Washington's most enduring war: between the state and defence departments.
The adviser has one huge advantage over the combatants: access. And this one has it more than most: she is the first official he sees most mornings, and the last most nights. But she is the epitome of the discreet courtier. "The president does not need to read my views in the newspaper," Ms Rice told one interviewer tartly.
The evidence we do have about her views is confusing. The real divide in Republican foreign policy is not between hawks and doves but between moralists and realists: those who believe the world needs to be changed to ensure the primacy of democracy, liberty and peanut butter, and those who favour the dogged pursuit of the US's own interests. The invasion of Iraq was cooked up in the moralists' camp. So where does Rice stand?
There are two primary sources in the incipient science of Rice-ology: firstly, there is her article in the journal Foreign Affairs in January 2000, written when she was adviser to the Bush presidential campaign. The title, Promoting the National Interest, is an accurate guide to the content (Iraq is barely mentioned).
In contrast, the second document, the National Security Strategy, issued over the president's name last September, is highly moralistic, with talk of "freedom's triumph".
Ms Rice marched into the public arena again on Thursday with a New York Times op-ed piece headed "Why we know Iraq is lying". This time the byline, as well as the logic and erudition, was Ms Rice's; but the sentiments were still presidential.
Yet no one has ever suggested she is feeble-minded. Condoleezza (from the musical notation, with softness) came from the self-reliant black middle class in Birmingham, Alabama. Having given up an early ambition to be a concert pianist, she "fell in love" (her phrase) with foreign affairs under the tutelage of the scholar Josef Kobel, father of Bill Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright.
But her instincts took her towards the right of American politics. After a stint as a junior official in the first Bush White House, she was made provost of Stanford, the No 2 administrator in one of the US's most prestigious universities, where she was notably brisk with proponents of affirmative action. There she was discovered by George W Bush, and they clicked instantly.
Her name is quite apt: she is softly charming and seemingly strides, rather elegantly, through the Washington snakepit without enemies. But, at 48, she is alone: her parents are dead; there are no siblings, no children, no sign of a lover, and her friends live a long way away. She eats takeaways in her flat and spends her leisure time with the Bushes, as well as her working day. It seems a rather bleak advertisement for success.
But it is a magnificently effective way to influence the destiny of the planet - if that is what she is actually doing.
to belie - ukrywać
gritty – brave and determined, zacięty
crucial - zasadniczy, kluczowy
dilemma - dylemat
glib – the easiest, but not necessarily true
assumption – suppostition, założenie
credible - wiarygodny
charitably - wyrozumiale
cohesion - jedność, spójność
notion – an idea
impetus - impet
cipher - pionek (w grze)
ineffectual – ineffective, nieskuteczny
despatch – to dispatch, to send, wysłać
pecking order - hierarchia
obscure – unknown, not very well seen, nieznany, niejasny
epitome – typical example, uosobienie
courtier – dworzanin
tartly - cierpko
dogged – very determined, zawzięty
pursuit – chase, pościg
cook up – to prepare, przygotować
incipient – just beginning, w stadium początkowym
byline – linia końcowa
feeble-minded – sb with mind weaker than average, słaby na umyśle
self-reliant – not needning any help, samodzielny
tutelage – help, advice from a teacher
stint – a period of time doing some activity
provost - rektor
brisk – active, energetic, energiczny
proponent - zwolennik
apt - trafny
snakepit - gniazdo węży
bleak – hopeless, dull, ponury
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