A Pilgrim’s Digression

Yesterday, I listened to a podcast of Katie Couric’s CBS 60 Minutes interview [link will open iTunes] with Condoleeza Rice. Usually, listening to an interview with a Bush Administration official is like listening to a record in which the needle gets stuck in the same groove every time. Or to make a cruder analogy, usually Administration officials just hand us the same brown paper bag full of Dick Cheney’s crap.

“Stay the course”…”We’re making good progress”…”Last throes”… and the latest catch phrase “Safer, but not yet safe.”

Rice repeated some of the formulaic responses, particularly the “safer but not yet safe” oxymoron, but she also intelligently articulated why she believes in the President’s so-called “democracy agenda.” As with Tony Blair, the President’s allies often make the best case for his policies.

In particular, I found it bold and fascinating that she compared the war on terror to the struggle for Civil Rights for African Americans. A partial transcript is available on the 60 Minutes website, in which she makes the comparison. Four of Rice’s schoolmates were killed in a church bombing in Birmingham in 1964. The Baptist church was just four blocks from her house, and she says she “felt the earth shake” from the explosion. Rice calls such bombings “homegrown terrorism.”

It certainly was terrorism, no matter how one defines the word. However, the overall comparison of the Civil Rights struggle to Middle Eastern terrorism, and our response to it, is problematic. I wonder what African Americans think of the comparison, because I find it a little disingenuous. For the analogy to work, Iraqis and Afghans have to be equated with Blacks in 1960’s America, and right away the analogy falls flat. No foreign power invaded America in order to bring democracy and human rights to the oppressed Black populace of this country. African Americans chose their own destiny and fought for it, often to the death, and largely unassisted by the United States government.

Rice returns again and again to her opinion that we are not “forcing” democracy on Iraq and Afghanistan, but are merely “assisting” them in achieving their desired dream of freedom and democracy. I can’t help but ask, if they want it so badly, why do we have to assist them? No one “assisted” us by invading America in 1776. No foreign power “assisted” Eastern Europe in liberating itself from Soviet domination in the 1980’s and ’90’s.

Besides that, spreading democracy was always a goal that was secondary to achieving an ephemeral “security” for the American homeland. Our motives never were pure, and are not now pure, in the war on terror. First and foremost, the war on terror is about securing America and only secondarily about freedom for Iraqis and Afghans. If the Bush Administration now chooses to emphasize our altruism in invading foreign countries, that is the basest of political spin resulting from the fact that they have nothing else, at this point.

Rice’s comments on when democracy will come to Iraq perfectly illustrate the degree to which Bush Administration policy is based on wishful thinking and false hope.  She said, “And I know that I’m not going to see the final outcome of the Middle East that we described as democratic and prosperous and, in that way, truly stable. But all that I can do on my watch is to try to lay a foundation so that that will become the Middle East of the future.”

I found that to be a truly stunning remark. She basically admits that there will not be a positive outcome to the Bush Administration Middle East policy. Whether she meant “in her lifetime” or “in her tenure as Secretary of State” is ambiguous, but I take her comment to mean that she does not expect to see results in her lifetime. If she does not expect to see “the final outcome,” she must mean that she will be dead before peace comes to the Middle East. Historically, has there ever been an administration that has taken credit 40 or 50 years in advance for the achievements of its successors?

This is really quite astonishing. At the very least, it proves what I’ve said all along: this Administration has no policy for success. They are banking on being credited for laying a “foundation” for the future, and they presume, or rather hope with fingers crossed, that the future turns out better than expected so that they can then take credit for it.

To use Rice’s foundation metaphor, it’s rather like a contractor who is hired to build a house. The contractor says, “Oh yeah, this will be a cakewalk.” The contractor does no surveying before beginning work. He doesn’t hire enough men for the job. When the prospective homeowner asks difficult questions about the soil on which the house is going to be built, and about cost overruns, and about manpower, the contractor says, ‘Don’t worry, it’s all going to work out.”

Three years later, the contractor isn’t even finished laying the foundation.  The soil turns out to be too sandy and the contractor isn’t expert enough to know how to shore it up, or whether it can be shored up.  Thieves and criminal elements keep sabotaging the project, and the contractor won’t hire enough guards to keep the site secure.  Millions of dollars is embezzled by sub-contractors.  The homeowner is livid, but he doesn’t fire the contractor because he keeps getting these promises and assurances that everything is going to work out fine.

Finally, the original contract is about to expire.  The homeowner still doesn’t actually own a home.  And the contractor says, “Well, I’ve laid a foundation for you.  The next contractor you hire to actually build the house will utilize our foundation, and we will take full credit for the nice home he builds you.  If he is able to build one.  If not, hey, it’s not our fault.  The next contractor will have screwed it up, especially if he or she is a Democrat.”

As a chief architect of this weak “foundation” for Middle East peace, I believe Secretary of State Rice is a long shot for the Presidency in 2008.  If she runs, she will be belled like a cat by Iraq’s fortunes and misfortunes.  Ultimately, I think she will refuse to run for personal rather than political reasons, however.  As sexist as this sounds, her unmarried state  presents certain problems for the political hacks in the GOP who will have to make her a viable candidate for the office.

Social conservatives will want to be reassured she’s not a lesbian, so a full-time male companion will have to be found to be seen vacationing with her and accompanying her to dinner.  She may have only one companion, mind you.  She can’t really date multiple men, which will be seen as inappropriate for a Christian woman.  As a result, we will be treated to all manner of vapid speculation in the media about whether she is going to get married or not.

Whether Rice can maintain this front remains to be seen.  Rather, she will probably end up like Hillary, whose marriage is a marriage only so far as everyone closes their eyes and plays make believe.  In the 60 Minutes interview, Couric gave us a taste of the kind of reporting we can expect on Rice’s Presidential candidacy:

“How does one go about asking the Secretary of State out on a date?” Couric asked, giggling.

Rice looked uncomfortable and refused to answer, prompting Katie to ask another ridiculous question, “Do you want to be married some day?”

I wonder if reporters ever ask a single, male politician that question?

Rice’s response was carefully worded, almost weird: “Oh. Wouldn’t we all love to find somebody that you’d want to live the rest of your life with? Sure. But I never thought you’d want to get married in the abstract.  You wanna get married to someone. And so I’ve just never particularly want to get married to someone. But who knows? Maybe one of these days.”

“Somebody that you’d want to live the rest of your life with” is a rather too precise way of saying “a spouse” without actually saying “spouse” or mentioning “marriage.”  It would hardly satisfy Jerry Falwell, for whom even the word “partner” undoubtedly invokes the spectre of gay marriage.

Part of Rice’s problem as a potential Presidential candidate is that she seems too intellectual.  Her abilities as a concert pianist are renowned, but there is something cold and remote about a Presidential aspirant sitting alone at a piano playing Brahms.  how does a political consultant warm her up?  That’s a difficult task, and incidentally it’s the same task before the Democratic consultants who will package Hillary for us in ‘08.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a country where a female politician can be single, uninterested in marriage, and an intellectual, and still win election.  Likely, if Rice runs we will see a stiff, taciturn copy of herself standing on a stage beside some hired “friend” who is supposed to be her Ken, attempting to justify her belief that Iraq will turn out OK even though five years have passed and Iraqis still aren’t “standing up” so that we can “stand down.”

It’s a sorry thing to see a beautiful, intelligent woman become merely another tool in the GOP arsenal against rampant, evil “liberalism.”  Or as a former Professor of mine once said, “I’ll never understand how she can work for that man [George Bush].”  It is indeed a mystery, as enigmatic as Rice herself.  Unfortunately, enigmas never win Presidential elections.