In The Eye Of The Storm
Why President Bush's closest aide has just become a lightning rod
But if Rice has been unwilling to act the disciplinarian professionally, the same cannot be said for her personal life. Rice, who has never married, is, like Bush, a borderline fanatic about fitness; she exercises on a treadmill every morning and often lifts weights. She practices piano with a chamber music group on weekends. (Her parents based her name on the Italian musical notation con dolcezza--to play "with sweetness.") She enjoys sports, especially pro football, and has said her dream job would be National Football League commissioner. She is a devout Christian. Aboard Air Force One from El Salvador to Washington on Palm Sunday 2002, she inspired the president and other officials when she led them in hymns and religious songs.
Sounding board. Rice spends weekends with Bush and the first lady at Camp David, taking walks with them and assembling jigsaw puzzles, and she accompanies the couple to their ranch at Crawford, Texas. "She's always there with the president," says an associate. "She's always someone he can talk to." Yet she does refuse to join the president in the outdoor activities he loves, such as chopping cedar and clearing brush. "Southern ladies don't do cedar," says Rice, who was raised in Alabama.
The Clarke furor may have marked Rice's low point, but she has been in hot water before. Just after Bush took office, in the spring of 2001, she told European Union envoys at the home of the Swedish ambassador that the Kyoto climate-change treaty was "dead on arrival" because Bush opposed it. The diplomats expected a more conciliatory approach. To this day, they still talk about that moment as emblematic of the administration's arrogance.
She has been widely faulted for promoting a false report that Saddam Hussein had sought "yellowcake" uranium in Niger in order to build nuclear weapons. Bush included the claim in his State of the Union speech in January 2003, just prior to the Iraq war. Rice has since admitted the report was not credible.
In the past week, she has raised more questions about the administration's credibility. Rice said Bush told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that "Iraq is to the side" in setting priorities for the war on terrorism, but this is contradicted by an order signed by the president on September 17 ordering the Pentagon to start formulating military options for invading Iraq. Rice said the White House had a strategy before 9/11 for military operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban. But Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage appeared to contradict that in testimony before the commission. He said military options were not included in the planning before September 11.
Retractions. Perhaps most important, Rice has backed away from her previous statement that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center . . . that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." Rice told the investigative commission that she erred. The commission, in fact, has been informed that U.S. intelligence agencies and Clarke had issued warnings prior to 9/11 that terrorists could use airplanes as missiles.
Rice has long been considered a reasonable bet to become the first African-American woman named as secretary of state if Bush wins a second term and Powell leaves. Now that bet is uncertain. For her part, Rice in private takes the criticism hard, partly because she isn't used to it; she has always enjoyed adulation and positive media coverage and has seemed to enjoy the work. "I told her she would love it at the White House," said Scowcroft, "and she's come to me again and again and said I was right." Now friends describe her as weary and unsettled but stoic, believing she can recover. "Her poise almost seems to be a gift from God that she has developed through deep faith," says Kiron Skinner, a longtime Rice friend and historian at Carnegie Mellon University. Rice says that when she needs strength, she reads Romans 5 in the Bible, which advises the righteous to "glory in tribulations" because suffering breeds patience and hope. For the foreseeable future, Condoleezza Rice will have no end of tribulations to glory in.
With Kevin Whitelaw, Mark Mazzetti, Angie C. Marek and Thomas Omestad
advertisement
