Rice blind to Bush’s faults, says book

Even Rice’s friends, most of whom happen to be Democrats, say her affection for Bush blinded her to his failings. “She thought he could do no wrong,” said one. “She didn’t question troop levels or the Defence Department’s rosy post-Saddam scenarios. She didn’t demand the administration devise a single, unified plan after Saddam’s statue fell,” says Mabry. Excerpts from the book have been published in the latest issue of Newsweek.

In addition, the author says, Rice’s own overconfidence, the same self-assuredness that allowed her to stand in front of the White House as a little girl from segregated Birmingham, and say, “some day, I’ll be in that house” facilitated many of the pre-war mistakes. “Condoleezza Rice had an absolute absence of self-doubt,” the author says.

While Secretary of State Rice admits the administration made mistakes, she says they had nothing to do with “dysfunction” in the inter-agency process she ran. Rice even disputes, astonishingly, Colin Powell’s claim that he held less sway with Bush than Donald Rumsfeld did.

As Secretary of State, Mabry says, Rice has persuaded Bush to shift his stance on some key issues: offering direct US-Iran talks for the first time since the 1979 hostage crisis if Tehran would end its nuclear enrichment programme (Iran demurred) and making a deal with North Korea to halt its nuclear build-up (it hasn’t stopped yet).

The author quotes some administration officials as saying Rice as national security advisor concentrated too heavily on advising the President, rather than managing the national security “process”. “They point to her remark at a Washington dinner party in 2004, when Rice inadvertently said, ‘As I was telling my husb…’, before abruptly correcting herself, ‘As I was telling President Bush’.”

Rice told Mabry she doesn’t think she ever made the comment. “I swear I don’t remember any such slip … I don’t think it happened.” Examining the close relationship between Bush and Rice, the biography says Rice had told her friend that she does not want the job in Bush’s second term. But three days later, she accepted when the President offered the job of Secretary of State to replace Colin Powell.

“Of course, her friends and her stepmother Clara Rice offered a simpler explanation for why she stayed: ‘she just can’t say no to that man’.” Mabry says. It wasn’t the first time Bush had asked Rice to do something she had decided not to do, the author says, adding, during the 2000 campaign, she had planned to advise Bush informally; instead, Rice ended up leading his foreign policy team.

“In a political sense, I think he kind of courted her. He really went after her. He’s very charming,” said one of her friends. And Rice was drawn to Bush. “First of all, I thought he was wonderful to be around,” she recalled in an interview with the author. “He was warm and funny and easy to be around. I thought he had just an incredibly inquisitive mind … You could barely finish an explanation before he was digging into it,” Rice says.

Rice’s friends, Mabry says, insisted the attraction to Bush was platonic, but Brenda Hamberry-Green, her hairdresser, who had spent years commiserating with Rice over how hard it was for successful black women to find a good man, noticed a change when Rice started working for Bush. “He fills that need,” Hamberry-Green decided. “Bush is her feed.”

Excerpts

“Some administration officials say Rice as national security advisor concentrated too heavily on advising the President. They point to her remark at a Washington dinner party in 2004, when Rice inadvertently said, ‘As I was telling my husb…’, before abruptly correcting herself, ‘As I was telling President Bush’.”

“Her friends and her stepmother offered a simpler explanation for why she stayed: ‘She just can’t say no to that man’.”

“In a political sense, I think he kind of courted her. He really went after her. He’s very charming.”

“There was this connective stuff… 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.”