By Patricia Lee Sharpe
WV readers know I’ve been supporting the white woman, not the black man, in the current race for the Democratic nomination.
Now there are Hindenberg-sized trial balloons for teaming John McCain with a vice presidential candidate who can split the difference: a black woman. Condoleeza Rice. One Republican political operative even says she’s actively campaigning for the slot.
Very clever, those Republicans. Maybe.
Democrats have been haggling over whether it’s candidate Obama or candidate Clinton who has less relevant experience in foreign affairs. So Obama went to school in Indonesia. Big deal! So Clinton picked up experience as First Lady. Big deal!
I have my own thoughts re the balancing of the above considerations, but I ask you: even granting that Obama and Clinton, being only presidential aspirants, have limited direct personal experience in making and running foreign policy, are Americans really ready to exchange the under-tested for an out-and-out failure on the world stage? Rice, as National Security Advisor and then as Secretary of State, has been a key player in the project of turning a once admired country into an object of scorn. Nor can I recall a single study that has depicted her as adept in handling the bureaucracy; Rumsfeld ran circles around her. Finally, her more recent shuttle diplomacy hasn’t given us a success to brag about, so far as I can see, anywhere in the Muslim world, perhaps because she’s never had the guts to tell George W. Bush anything that didn’t already conform to his own prejudices. At this point, something rather snarky comes to mind and I am going to say it: what Rice has been is a cute little mascot for the Bush family.
Now, people are living longer and healthier these days and John McCain’s mother may be in her very sprightly nineties, but the odds of losing McCain to the infirmities of the body are greater by far than those of losing Clinton or Obama.
Condoleeza Rice as President?
Well, some American evidently have a very positive image of Condi, even though they don’t like the Bush administration’s foreign policy. How do they separate the two? So much for the wisdom of crowds!
Condi herself says she’s just watching the campaign and planning to “vote as a voter” in November. She’ll even be happy to go back to her tenured position at Stanford. That sounds like a disclaimer, until one realizes that all candidates vote as voters, too, presumably for themselves. And candidates who lose are always happy for a soft landing.
Bottom line? Do it, Republicans. Condi gets really testy when she’s attacked, and she has plenty to answer for. McCain the war hero has to be handled delicately. Condi will be fair game in a way Obama never has been. She’s never pretended to be idealistic, non-partisan, above the fray.