Sniff.....Sniff....at the "W" and "Condi" close relationship . By now, we have some idea of how
close these relationships can develop... Look at Clinton, Condit, Hyde, Newt....The list rolls on.....
Mephisto
Rice on Front Lines as Adviser to Bush
"Unlike Secretary Powell, she (CONDI) is a frequent weekend visitor to Camp David where, in addition to talking policy, she watches movies with the Bush family. Like her boss, Ms. Rice is an avid sports fan and a fitness buff. Where Mr. Bush once owned a baseball team, Ms. Rice says she would like to be commissioner of the National Football League.
"She is clearly a person with a close personal relationship with the president
--that's not always the case with national security advisers," said Zbigniew
Brzezinski, who was national security adviser under President Carter. "Some have had close relations with the president, but even more have not."
August 19, 2001
By JANE PERLEZ
From The New York Times
WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 — As
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's
blue and white aircraft taxied onto the
runway at Andrews Air Force Base last
month to fly west on a five- nation swing
through Asia, another Air Force Boeing 757
was being readied to head east with the
national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.
Secretary Powell's trip was important but
relatively routine for someone in his post, the
high point being a meeting with the Chinese
leadership on issues ranging from security to
human rights to an upcoming visit by
President Bush.
Ms. Rice's mission was important, too, but
exceptional for a national security adviser.
She traveled to Moscow to meet with the
Russian president to discuss the foreign
policy issue that the Bush administration
singularly cares about: missile defense.
The trip meant that Ms. Rice, and not the secretary of state, was the first top
Bush foreign policy official to visit Moscow, whose opposition to a missile
shield is a critical obstacle to be navigated.
"Her mission to Moscow was unprecedented," said Ivo Daalder, a fellow at
the Brookings Institution, who is writing a history of national security
advisers. No national security adviser since Henry A. Kissinger "has gone on
a routine diplomatic mission to Moscow," Mr. Daadler said.
The contrasting missions illustrated the differing, and surprising, roles that
President Bush's two top foreign policy officials have adopted in the opening
chapter of his administration.
Ms. Rice, 46, came to the capital signaling that she would play the traditional
role of national security adviser: a broker between competing views, a
manager of options but not an operating officer in the manner of her
predecessor, Samuel R. Berger, or Mr. Kissinger, decades before.
Instead, she has quickly amassed power and turned out to be a very active
and very public foreign policy maker, administration officials and outside
experts say.
In particular, she has insinuated herself as an aggressive advocate and top
thinker on missile defense — the keystone of the administration's foreign
policy and the one area where the White House believes that it can make
discernible progress by the 2004 elections.
In contrast, Secretary Powell has been engaged in a host of foreign policy
issues, from the Middle East to Asia, but he has been less bullish than many
others in the administration on missile defense, the one foreign policy priority
that the White House had made clear that it holds above all others.
Ms. Rice's ascendancy, administration officials say, comes as she has aligned
herself with the more conservative members of President Bush's foreign
policy team, leaving the State Department feeling "outnumbered," said one of
its senior officials.
So, on some issues like missile defense, Ms. Rice, who was thought in the
beginning to be fairly neutral, has joined Vice President Dick Cheney and
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, officials from both camps said.
While foreign policy makers and cabinet members always vie for a
president's ear, these shifting alliances among the Bush team may prove even
more critical than in other administrations, given Mr. Bush's acknowledged
inexperience in foreign policy matters.
The emergence of Ms. Rice, who served as a virtual tutor to Mr. Bush on
foreign policy during his election campaign, was most visible last month
during the preparations for the president's second trip to Europe. Notably, it
was Ms. Rice who was at Mr. Bush's side during that entire journey.
Secretary Powell again played a side role, attending the session for foreign
ministers in Rome several days before the Genoa summit meeting, but not
staying on for the main event.
The contrast does not end there. Prior to Mr. Bush's departure for Europe,
Ms. Rice gave the public rationale for the trip in a speech to the National
Press Club, a general overview of the Bush foreign policy. Secretary Powell
has yet to give a major address laying out his vision for America's role in the
world.
While Ms. Rice has held direct talks with the Russian president, Vladmir V.
Putin, Secretary Powell has been in the same room as the Russian leader
only once — during an expanded session in Slovenia when Mr. Bush and
Mr. Putin first met. The secretary's main contact with the Russians on missile
defense is Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, with whom he has met six times
but who is regarded in Moscow as a minor player.
Ms. Rice's strong position also stems from her close relationship with the President — and with the Bush family.
Unlike Secretary Powell, she is a frequent weekend visitor to Camp David
where, in addition to talking policy, she watches movies with the Bush family.
Like her boss, Ms. Rice is an avid sports fan and a fitness buff. Where Mr.
Bush once owned a baseball team, Ms. Rice says she would like to be
commissioner of the National Football League.
"She is clearly a person with a close personal relationship with the president
--that's not always the case with national security advisers," said Zbigniew
Brzezinski, who was national security adviser under President Carter. "Some
have had close relations with the president, but even more have not."
And Ms. Rice works hard to maintain a close working relations with the
president. Mr. Bush's first stop his recent European trip was London, a
largely ceremonial visit that featured lunch at Buckingham Palace with the
queen. But even there, Ms. Rice insisted on staying overnight in the same
building as the president, so she could be close by if something happened in
the world and she needed to brief Mr. Bush, one of the advance officials
said. "
Philosophical affinities also bring the two together. Ms. Rice and Mr. Bush
have both staked out a position suggesting that they are prepared to scrap
the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, a cornerstone of arms control, even if
Moscow does not acquiesce.
Secretary Powell, for his part, has taken a more cautious position, stressing
that the allies need to be brought along and that a maximum effort should be
invested into bringing the Russians along.
"There's a big difference between Condi and Powell on treaties," said
Michael McFaul, an associate professor of political science at Stanford
University, who has known Ms. Rice for years. "Hers is a philosophical
notion that plays well into very 21st century Republican ideas and the right of
the individual."
In an unusual step for a national security adviser so early in the game, Ms.
Rice is making moves to enhance her public image.
The October issue of Vogue will feature an interview with Ms. Rice,
accompanied with a splashy color photo spread. She has announced plans to
hire Anna Perez, the former press secretary for President Bush's mother,
Barbara, as her chief communications adviser.
As is often the case in the Bush administration, oil helped the relationship
between Ms. Perez who was general manager of corporate communications
for the Chevron Corporation, and Ms. Rice who served on Chevron's board
of directors.
So far, Ms. Rice has not undercut Secretary Powell. Nor is there yet a
classic bureaucratic battle, officials say, between the national security adviser
and the Secretary of State of the kind that defined foreign policymaking in
the Reagan and Clinton administrations.
This is because, they say, of the unusual stature that Secretary Powell, a four
star general, brings to his office and because he has chosen to make his
points on missile defense more in private than in public.
With Secretary Powell's military background, he has a position on missile
defense that is driven less by ideology than by practical copnsiderations, said
a senior administration official familiar with his thinking.
"Everyone in this administration is committed to missile defense; that's not the
issue," the official said. "The question is, how fast do you drive it and when
does it require that you break out of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty. The
feeling at the State Department is that there is no need to drive it any faster
than the capabilities require — at the moment, missile defense is still more
virtual than actual."
The secretary, this official said, is biding his time because he believes that he
has a good chance of prevailing on missile defense.
But some officials said that if Ms. Rice continued in her public role —
presenting herself as what one official called the "go-to" person on missile
defense, as well as other issues — she ran the risk of undermining the
secretary's authority.
Senior European officials who deal with the administration on missile defense
say they enjoy dealing with Secretary Powell but remain unsure what clout he
carries within the inner circle of decision-makers.
Those officials say the allies can only give support to missile defense if Russia
is brought along and agrees to modify the ABM treaty, a position they
believe is in line with Secretary Powell's thinking.
In contrast, Ms. Rice, both before the European trip and while in Moscow
made clear that the Bush administration was not interested in arms control
negotiations and did not plan to have drawn out discussions with the
Russians on missile defense.
"We trust him, he is easy to deal with," one of these officials said of
Secretary Powell at the start of President Bush's European trip last month.
"But we are still not clear on his place in the alignment."
nytimes.com |
