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Condi Rice is a moral crusader, not a military one PHILADELPHIA - Move over Madeleine Albright. Tuesday night W unveiled another member of his increasingly impressive team, a slim and pretty 45-year-old black woman named, improbably, Condoleezza Rice, who despite her relative youth has racked up accomplishments difficult to match by anyone three times her age. In one 15-minute speech, by turns intensely visionary, hopeful and stern, this realpolitik, balance-of-power pragmatist expanded the definition of what it means to be black, a woman and a thinker. As she spoke the Convention Hall hushed. Ageing crackers stared in wonder, disbelief and bemusement as Condi Rice, descendant of slaves and slave owners, daughter of the segregated south, put them in their place, gave tribute to the America some of them had helped create, and outlined a clear-eyed American foreign policy for the new millennium. The former provost of Stanford University, Condoleezza -- named by her mother for the musical term con dolcezza, "to perform with sweetness" -- helped craft the strategy that brought the Cold War to its peaceful end as a National Security Council member and special advisor to President Bush. Under W, a presidency that seems increasingly likely as the steamy Philly days roll by, Rice is crafting the administration's Russia policy, bringing to it a sense of moral purpose, something this deeply religious daughter and granddaughter of Presbyterian ministers believes is critical. In a recent interview with Time, Rice chided the Clinton Administration for continuing to support economic assistance to the Russian government despite widespread evidence of graft. "The last thing you wanted to do was accept the rhetoric of reform ... when there's no evidence that the Russians were undertaking any of the difficult steps," she said. But despite her obvious and many accomplishments, past and yet to come, Condoleezza's finest gift to us may be her thinking on race and the undeniable proof she represents that hard work, discipline and purpose can dominate adversity. In most everything she says and writes, Rice makes clear that she is an unabashed believer in the American experiment, in the United States as a model and force for good in the world. During her speech on Tuesday night, shining eyes narrowed, she emphasized, "America is a democratic work in progress. Not a finished masterpiece." During her bravura six-year tenure as Stanford provost, her aversion to identity politics at times unsettled some faculty and students. Once, when an African-American student complained that Rice was inattentive to campus minorities, she shot back: "You don't have the standing to question my commitment. I've been black all my life." Condi grew up as the adored only daughter of a Presbyterian evangelical preacher and his teacher wife, who gave her the best that segregated Birmingham had to offer. In 1963, her friend Denise McNair was killed in the church bombing that helped ignite the civil rights movement. Condi still remembers her father's church "rocking like an earthquake" when that bomb exploded more than two miles away, and the painful sight of "the little caskets going down Sixth Avenue." The family moved out of Alabama, eventually relocating to Colorado, where her father became vice-chancellor at the University of Denver. From the beginning, Condi was the absolute centre of her parents' world. She had lessons in everything and took college classes to supplement her high school work, which helped her skip two years of high school. Perhaps most important, a cocoon of family, church, teachers, and neighbors, all fiercely devoted to protecting and nurturing their young. She dreamed of being a concert pianist, still plays every day and gave concerts at Stanford, but in her second year at university, she realized she would never be good enough, and cast around for something else to study. "I was attracted to the byzantine nature of Soviet politics," she says, "and by power: how it operates, how it's used." Her mentor, ironically, was Joseph Korbel, Madeleine Albright's father, and her ideas are more akin to Korbel's tough-minded views. Living under Jim Crow instilled in Rice an astonishing resilience. "I came out of that not bitter but with a sense of entitlement," she says, "to do whatever I wanted to do, to be whoever I wanted to be." Why then choose the Bush who spoke at Bob Jones University and who supported the flying of the Confederate flag? As is usual with Condi, higher purpose dominates. After gabbing on neighbouring treadmills in the gym of the Bush's Kennebunkport family compound, Rice says, they "clicked" during a conversation last fall at the home of former secretary of state George Shultz. "We discussed it and agreed that if he decided to do this, he had to lead from his own instincts, not from someone else's. It's important for anybody who is going to be president to have a foreign policy that is organic to one's self." And, indeed, Bush's "core principles" haven't been dictated by his advisors, Rice says. "He is very much his own person." America, she said on Tuesday night, "has got to figure out what it's going to do with its military dominance. We can easily become the world's 911. We have immense military power and no clear sense of how to use it." She expressed disquiet at seeing the U.S. military mobilized for far-flung humanitarian interventions. Rice's questions about when to use force are fair. To some liberals, this might seem contradictory -- pulling back from commitments abroad while beefing up the military -- but to Rice it's pure realism. The United States needs to husband its power, and even build it up, to deter potential foes. But getting involved in messy conflicts abroad is a sure recipe for sapping American strength. Thus, Rice has attacked Secretary of State Albright's characterization of the United States as the "indispensable nation." Once the decision to intervene in Kosovo was made, she and Bush supported it but believed it should have been carried out more forcefully. Her father told George magazine in June of a trip the family took to Washington, D.C., when Condi was 10. They stood outside the White House, and this child of segregated Birmingham pressed her soft brown cheeks against the cold iron gates. "Daddy, I'm barred out of there now because of the colour of my skin," her father recalled her saying. "But one day, I'll be in that house." Seems like there'd be no better resident.

© 2004 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.