The new reporter-blogger on Talking Points Memo, Andrew Tilghman, wrote a very interesting piece today on Condi Rice in which he quotes her ridiculous statement to AIPAC
The real question isn't why won't the Bush administration talk to Iran. The real question is why won't Iran talk to us.
This became the jumping-off point for Andrew to discuss Scott McClellan's assessment (in his book) that Rice has the ability to somehow evade any responsibility for the disasters in this administration that she was directly responsible for.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...
And that got me thinking about who she really is and how she ended up in a position that is both powerful and shielded from censure.
I can't speak to her early history, or her family, or even her weird name, but I do have a tidbit of gossip that gives me some insight.
We had a family friend (now deceased), a foreign policy expert who met Rice, had lunch with her, and just loved her. He was pretty liberal, certainly didn't agree with our invasion of Iraq and yet defended Rice strenuously. It was the only real argument I ever remember having with him. He said she was very smart about foreign policy. I asked why, if she was so smart, did she stay with the disastrous Bush Admin. He claimed that she felt she could do more good by staying and working behind the scenes then by leaving. He had no answer to my point that her "doing good" sure didn't seem to have had any effect, because things couldn't get much worse.
After trying to figure out what it was about her that impressed him so, I decided that she must be tremendously personable and that she knows just what to say and how to behave to make older men feel powerful, admired and appreciated.
And I recalled that she was supposedly an outstanding student. I know there was at least one of her former professors who thought she was one of his smartest students. And I started thinking: "smartest or smarmiest?"
And then I remembered a fellow student in my own graduate academic program. While she was as bright as anyone else in our program, she was also incredibly skilled at avoiding doing any real studying. Her ability to make vague but impressive sounding statements based on the first page of an article (the most she ever read), and her ability to suck up to the egos of the faculty, made her a favorite student. This woman was allowed to audit all the required courses instead of having to take them for credit, never took a test or wrote a paper for those classes, never did more than about 5 minutes of work in preparation for a class. And yet I bet every faculty member in my program would give her rave reviews. Meanwhile, all her fellow students knew she was a complete fraud.
People like this seem to have some sort of combination of a syrupy personality which attracts useful others and keeps them stuck, with a teflon surface that sheds any negative events or responses. These people are not biodegradable. Like the most environmentally polluting plastic, they endure no matter what the conditions.
And now, enough of mixed metaphors (syrup, teflon, and plastic) and on to celebrating our victory last night.