Of all the members of the outgoing Bush administration, the one who is probably most respected and simultaneously least well known is Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. In his book, Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power, Marcus Mabry (chief of correspondents and senior editor at Newsweek) delves into her past to discover who she is and how she has risen to such power and influence in such a short period of time.
This book is by far the most detailed and thorough biography of Secretary Rice to date. With the Secretary's cooperation, Mr. Mabry was able to interview numerous friends and family members. To his credit, Mr. Mabry devotes the large majority of the book to Ms. Rice's upbringing and education.
Her father was a Presbyterian minister and her mother was a teacher. But the most important thing that they taught their daughter was to not think of herself as less of a person than whites. It was that philosophy, according to Mr. Mabry, that helped Ms. Rice to be successful later in life.
Mr. Mabry tries to paint a fair and balanced portrait by including interviews from both Ms. Rice's supporters and critics. Overall, he strives to be as fair as possible.
It's clear Mr. Mabry in one sense admires Ms. Rice and at the same time sides with those critical with her foreign policy. He is quick to characterize the Bush policies as a disaster. However, history may end up vindicating the President.
In summary, this is a fine portrait of Secretary Rice. Mr. Mabry is to be commended for his fine efforts in determining who she is even if he does disagree with what she stands for. He is, however, correct to assume that Ms. Rice has a role to play in politics in the future.
Article comments
1 - Jeff Lockman
As Condoleezza Rice is in the last lap of her term as Secretary of State, the quagmire in the Middle East merits asking if Ms. Rice ever had a clear-cut plan to further the American interests of stabilising the situation in the region surrounding the volatile Iraq? Or was all this just a part of treadmill diplomacy where you jog at one place without covering any distances at all? Has Ms. Rice been running in a rut as a regular feature of her diplomacy tourism during her periodic trips to the Middle East?
This question become even more pertinent on the heels of the third anniversary since she launched her "transformational diplomacy" on 18 January 2006 declaring:
"America needs equally bold diplomacy, a diplomacy that not only reports about the world as it is, but seeks to change the world itself. I and others have called this mission
transformational diplomacy.
The above pronouncement begs another question: In seeking to change the whole world, how well did the State Department adapt itself to keep pace with the dynamics of change? In retrospective, was all those dashes to the Middle East a diplomacy tourism road show featuring?