Magnificent Condi
John L. Perry
Saturday, Apr. 10, 2004
Roger Miller used to sing, “You can’t roller skate in a buffalo herd.” Well, Condoleezza Rice just did, and came out a giant among pygmies.
This remarkable woman, who occupies a position of greater power than any other in this nation’s history, is the brightest light from the darkest chapter of America’s unparalleled, often shameful, but more often magnificent, history.
There she sat alone, in calm bas-relief before a hunched panel of used-up, bereft-of-fresh-idea, narcissistic whites, all males but for one, who was just as vacuous.
They presumed – with unspeakable arrogance – to corrupt the occasion into a mass-comm show trial, to prattle on in blind hypocrisy about their window-dressing “bipartisanship,” to magnify a warped image of their own assumed importance, to speechify at tedious length on matters not within their purview, to condescend with cynical mock courtesy, to carp, to try to trip up for petty partisan advantage or otherwise to “put in her place” the president’s national security advisor.
Against All Odds
If anyone on the face of America had good cause to be resentful of such supercilious sophistry, it was she. Consider her origins, and the many, many times she must have, in the dark of lonely nights, sobbed out whether it was worth the candle.
But she hung in there, suffering with dignity their indignities, with patience their impatience, never once giving ground to their transparent attempts to choke off the full and truthful answers they had demanded she appear before them under oath at pain of perjury to provide. And this nation – the Free World – is in her debt for her ordeal.
This young woman has the credentials to put to shame any that her inquisitors on the 9/11 putative “independent” commission may hold, individually or collectively.
In layman’s terms, they couldn’t hold a candle to her. This skirt split their pants for them. And did they ever have it coming.
Unprecedented in History
To understand properly this farce – this theater of the politically absurd self-indulgence – one needs to understand what this president of the United States has done in creating this particular position of national security advisor.
Never before in the history of the United States of America has a president invested in one individual so much power – and accountable responsibility.
No one else in this administration – not the secretaries of state or defense, the attorney general, the director of central intelligence, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, nobody – has been entrusted with such awesome responsibilities.
Name One Other
This astounding woman, a descendant of slaves shipped captive across a vast ocean to live in servitude to white masters a continent away, this product of a society once racially segregated by enforced state statutes, was now revealed before the whole world, if it paid attention, to be the second-most-powerful individual in the entire world.
And the beautiful thing about it is that it is equally obvious she deserves it, has earned it, every bit of it.
Since when has that ever been achieved in the chronicles of history, by either male or female?
Just Refutation
How ‘bout them apples, you racists, white or black, who say a person of color cannot make it on merit in these United States?
The secretary of state is responsible for this nation’s relationships with foreign countries, and that’s it. The secretary of defense is responsible for maintaining and directing the nation’s armed forces, and that’s it. The CIA and FBI directors are responsible for their kettles of fish, and that’s it. Same for all those from vice president on down the line of Cabinet succession.
Not a one of them comes close to rivaling the powers vested in this woman.
Who Else Does This?
Think about this. Condi Rice has the sole responsibility for pulling all of it together, for giving the president the clearest possible picture of the overall national security and – this is not universally known – for issuing, and overseeing, the president’s marching orders in the province of his most-important constitutional duties: protecting and defending the United States and its citizens.
It is not an exaggeration to state that more American lives depend today on Condoleezza Rice than any other person than the president, who in the final analysis must depend on her and her alone.
Gracious God, what a burden for her to have to bear!
And how well this speaks for George W. Bush!
With Ladylike Restraint
Condoleezza Rice could have any number of times during her televised show-trial inquisition lost her temper and put those posturing politicians – Democrats and Republicans alike – in their place.
She was above all that, even when they sank beneath common dignity.
She refused, naturally and with grace, not to stoop. And America – the whole world – was shown what class is really like.
Those who, like Dr. Rice, were raised in the South have a single word for this. It is “quality.”
What’s at Stake
Without coming right out and saying so, Condoleezza Rice made it clear, forcefully but civilly, to her interrogators, who deserved humiliation, that all their pettifogging nitpicking aside, what really matters is that this nation, this blessed nation that, as she gently reminded them, did not have her in mind when the Founding Fathers mentioned “we, the people,” is now confronted by a broad, not a narrow, war for its very survival.
She kept their fogged, tunnel-vision eyes focused on the perilous conflict ahead. She was doing them a service, if they only knew it, though they little deserved it, so rapt were they in hugging “my limited time” on national television.
She was telling them, without making them look greater buffoons than they are, that this nation is now at war with terror. Until she and this remarkable president – who had the laudable judgment to pluck her from the flock – came along, this nation was asleep at the switch, high-balling toward catastrophe.
An Unexpected Phoenix
The issue is still in doubt, but if America survives this War on Terror, which it did not seek but was brought upon it, it will be able to thank no one more than Condoleezza Rice.
This brilliant black woman, whose enviable understanding of and love for her country is so bursting, so manifest, has made every man, woman and child, of whatever social origin, proud this day to be American.
This lady deserves, unencumbered, some day to lead America.
Thank you, Abraham Lincoln.
John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.
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