Goodbye Colin, Hello Condi
BARNES, FRED
Goodbye Colin, Hello Condi Regime change at the State Department. BY FRED BARNES PRESIDENT BUSH always believed he would be reelected. So in the weeks before November 2, he repeatedly...
...Thus, what an official calls “the Gonzales model” of dispatching White House aides or other loyalists to take over key agencies is being followed...
...Her promotion also means the dysfunctional relationship with the Pentagon and State endlessly clashing over policy will cease...
...The president hasn’t listed his priorities for 2005, but it’s not difficult to figure them out...
...The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, brought Bush and Rice even closer...
...The three prior presidents to win reelection (Nixon, Reagan, Clinton) had relatively skimpy plans for their second terms, but Bush has a breathtakingly ambitious agenda...
...And it’s why Bush can’t wait for her to take over as secretary of state...
...It’s safe to say Rice will travel...
...In any case, she’ll need a strong deputy to run the Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Some in the Cheney-Rumsfeld camp complained that she was too timid...
...That would be fine if Richard Nixon or the elder George Bush were president...
...Alberto Gonzales, the president’s legal counsel, would succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general, and Margaret Spellings, chief White House domestic adviser, would take over for Rod Paige as education secretary...
...The media assumed Powell did this, but in fact he did not...
...Number three: Social Security reform...
...One of Rice’s tasks will be to impose these policies on the State Department without touching off a revolt or clandestine efforts to undermine the president, such as occurred at the CIA and is only now being quashed by the new director, Porter Goss...
...The next day, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was named as Powell’s successor...
...Rice, however, usually acts with a light touch...
...Bush said no, and Powell’s resignation was announced the following Monday...
...After the fall of Soviet communism, America seemed to face no major threat in the world...
...department day to day, plus a crew of new assistant secretaries in sync with Bush’s policies...
...Four, tax reform...
...He expanded her authority...
...On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, several American officials traveled to Turkey in hopes of convincing the Turks to allow the 4th Infantry Division to attack Iraq from the north, from Turkey...
...Nor did Powell and State respond enthusiastically to Bush’s broadest foreign policy goal, democratization of the Arab world...
...A bill is now being drafted at the White House to create individual investment accounts and to produce savings aimed at keeping the Social Security system from insolvency...
...Presidential aides insist no one else was in the running to replace Powell...
...Another decision: Those planning to leave the administration at their leisure over the coming months would be asked to depart immediately...
...Five, tort reform...
...Another urgent task for Rice is to begin making the case for Bush’s policies around the world, especially in Europe...
...But Powell rarely visited Europe...
...Six, an energy bill that increases domestic oil and gas production...
...Or perhaps she simply followed the president’s lead in often discounting Powell’s advice and embracing tougher policies destined to divide the United States from some of its European allies...
...The Turks barred the use of the territory...
...And decisions were made, pre-Election Day...
...But 9/11 persuaded Bush and Rice that America would have to wage war against Islamic jihadists, probably for decades...
...So in the weeks before November 2, he repeatedly discussed with White House aides who should replace the departing cabinet members in his second term...
...Powell would surely have had more influence than the Americans who lobbied the Turks, but he did not go...
...But Bush didn’t think so...
...To achieve it, he wants full control over his administration...
...This has prompted criticism of her as a weak manager...
...When Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Bush on November 11, he requested to stay a few extra months to tie up loose ends at the State Department...
...Diplomacy aimed at persuading the wary or the opposed has to be carried out face to face...
...The move has many ramifications...
...This is the opposite of the realist formula...
...Then policies they and the American official prefer would be put in place...
...One example: For the Palestinians, it means democracy first, then statehood...
...A big question in Bush’s first term was where Rice would come down...
...She tilted toward the hawks...
...Would she side with the more dovish Powell or the hawkish coterie of Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz...
...Still, Rice was known for her caution...
...There’s a name for this— diplomacy...
...He’s a moralist who believes the best route to peace and security is through planting democracy in countries—Iraq, for one— where it doesn’t exist...
...Powell allowed at least one senior official to tell European counterparts they should wait for John Kerry to be elected...
...And things will change there...
...That way they’ll be ready early next year for expected struggles with Congress, recalcitrant federal bureaucracies, and opponents of America and of Bush’s drive for democracy around the world...
...The second priority, given the likelihood of as many as three or four Supreme Court vacancies, is gaining Senate confirmation of conservative justices...
...Rice, on the other hand, reflects Bush’s views on all these policies...
...Winning the war in Iraq and the battle against terrorists is number one...
...Rice, too, is a moralist...
...Within months, the answer was obvious...
...The most significant decision was to send Rice to the State Department...
...They are realists who think such goals are unattainable and a distraction from pursuing America’s national interest, narrowly construed...
...But, other than the president, who could...
...The president also believes the new cabinet officers should be installed as quickly as possible...
...If anyone thought the president would relax after an arduous campaign—I certainly did—they were wrong...
...The reaction at the State Department was not so drastic...
...This makes all the difference...
...The list goes on, but I’ll stop there...
...He wants cabinet members he knows and trusts...
...For one thing, it means the center of national security policy-making, aside from Bush himself, shifts to the State Department...
...Both were traumatized by the event and concluded the world had fundamentally changed...
...But the current President Bush is not a realist...
...After all, she didn’t ride herd on Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld...
...Powell, reflecting the State bureaucracy, was at odds with the president on Iraq, Israel and the Palestinians, the pursuit of democracy in the Middle East and Arab countries, Iran, North Korea, and who knows what else...
Vol. 10 • November 2004 • No. 11
