Who is Condoleezza Rice?
When she sits down this week before the Senate for the confirmation hearings that will clear her for the job, the panel of aged politicians will see an enigma. She has risen to the highest ranks of Washington by being the ultimate insider who has the ear of Bush like no other power player in the capital. Yet Rice has remained firmly outside the whirl of Washington life. She lives alone and rarely, if ever, socialises on the ‘circuit’. She comes from a tradition of academic study rooted in Ivy League universities, yet is a key part of an administration which has openly disdained such elites. She is central to one of the most radical Republican governments in recent American history, yet many liberals like her. ‘I am a flaming liberal,’ laughed one of her friends, ‘but she is so bright and intelligent. I just think her views are not really represented in this administration.’ That is debatable to say the least. Rice is undoubtedly deeply conservative, but part of her genius is in persuad
