Condoleezza Rice is a solid foreign-policy thinker who ought to make a fine secretary of state

National Review, Dec 13, 2004

* Condoleezza Rice is a solid foreign-policy thinker who ought to make a fine secretary of state. She is an admirable combination of what might be called realism and idealism (though the terms are too crude): The Reagan experience, as she said in a 1999 interview with NR, modified the straight balance-of-power Kissingerianism she had previously espoused.

In a 2002 interview with us, she spoke of "power" and "values," "inseparable" to her. Among her duties as secretary of state will be that of managing the department--which has not exactly been a friend to President Bush and his policies. When Rice was national security adviser, her managerial skills were called into question; they will have to be sharp as tacks for State. The man she replaces, Colin Powell, is one of the most popular men in America, and for some good reasons. But he did a weak job of explaining and defending U.S. policies around the globe, and he spent too much time signaling to the press his disapproval of some of those policies. Rice will be on the same wavelength as the president. It is almost an afterthought that she is a black woman. Rest assured that, if the president and new SecState were liberal Democrats, the press would be making a big deal out of color and sex. Bush seems incapable of appointing secretaries of state who are not black. But he doesn't think of it that way, and neither should anybody else. From Condi Rice, we hope to see competence, strength, and perhaps a little flair, in a critical time for the world.