History Forum / General / General Topics / January 2005

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Who Is The Real Condoleezza Rice?
By Douglas C. Foyle

January 23 2005

As a former student of Condoleezza Rice's at Stanford, I was struck by
the sharp contrast between what I had seen in the classroom and her
demeanor as national security adviser. In class, her lucid analyses of
complex issues and alternative points of view stood out even at an
elite university.

The Rice I saw in Washington, however, gave the impression that her
loyalty to President Bush led her to accept rigid and one-sided views.

Which of these perceptions better captures Rice's true nature? It's a
question worth asking with the Senate vote on her confirmation as
secretary of state likely this week.

As a professor, Rice was a student's dream come true. Her 1988 course
on the role of the military in politics was the best class of my
undergraduate years. She engaged her students intellectually,
encouraged them to see old issues in a new light and respected
differing viewpoints. Her capacity for balanced presentation and
complex analysis exceeded that of most of her contemporaries. My
studies with her had an indelible impact on my choice to become a
specialist in American foreign policy.

Rice offered fascinating insights into the relationships between
military and political leaders in the Soviet Union as well as in the
United States, even though she is not an expert in American politics.
Indeed, I have found her analysis of strategic policy-making in the
United States so persuasive that I use portions of it in my courses on
American foreign policy.

When Rice moved from the Stanford campus to the Bush foreign-policy
team, she put her pedagogical skills to work as the president's
foreign-policy tutor, even bonding with the president and first lady.
Yet, her public persona has been that of a propagandist. For example,
she acted as one of the Iraq war's most strident supporters. She raised
the specter of nuclear terrorism, saying, "We don't want the smoking
gun to be a mushroom cloud," despite information held by her staff
questioning the extent of Iraq's nuclear program.

Within the government, Rice exhibited a single-minded focus in
implementing Bush's Iraq policy. For instance, when one high-level
State Department official in summer 2002 suggested a meeting to discuss
whether to prioritize an Iraq war, Rice informed him that he should not
waste his time raising the issue because the decision had already been
made.

Which Rice will emerge as secretary of state and represent America
abroad? A common view portrays her promotion as Bush's attempt to place
a like-minded policy advocate in charge of a disloyal bureaucracy.

But Rice could bring her untapped qualities as a flexible thinker to
bear as a Cabinet member and the public face of an administration
interested in restoring its diplomatic standing. If so, she might raise
unanticipated questions about policy assumptions. One hopeful sign is
the news that she's planning on naming U.S. Trade Representative Robert
Zoellick, a multilateralist, as her deputy secretary of state.

If the Professor Rice I experienced at Stanford surfaces in Foggy
Bottom, she will surprise her critics and better serve the nation.

Douglas C. Foyle is an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan
University and author of "Counting the Public In: Presidents, Public
Opinion, and Foreign Policy" (Columbia University Press, 1999).