Twice as Good - Condolezza Rice and her Path to Power

It is an interesting commentary on the differences of attitudes across of the Atlantic that the subtitle for Marcus Mabry’s book for sale in Europe is “Naked Ambition”, whereas that on the American edition is “Twice as Good”. “Naked Ambition” is unfair and is not justified by the content of the book, but was presumably chosen to attract readers among European critics of US policy, whereas the title “Twice as Good” suggests to American readers that to succeed, as Condoleezza Rice undoubtedly has done, an African American woman had to be twice as good as her competition.

Mabry’s book is a psychological portrait, delving deeply into the subject’s family background, in particular her status as the only child of protective, upwardly mobile, middle class parents in segregationist Alabama. Mabry was given access to her family, some of whom spoke very freely indeed.

What comes through is that Condoleezza Rice has consistently believed that individual effort, particularly educational effort, would enable anybody who wanted to do so, to succeed as she has done.

She accepted no excuses for herself, and would not concede them to others. This was a philosophy imbued in her by her father, a clergyman who knew Martin Luther King well, but avoided joining the Civil Rights agitation raging all around him in Birmingham, Alabama.

Mabry portrays Dr. Rice as exceptionally disciplined and always well prepared. But Kessler claims that she has “failed to provide him (President Bush) with a coherent foreign policy vision. The President appears to be the idea generator. After all, he shifted Rice from her roots in foreign policy realism and infused her with a desire to spread democracy”, Kessler says.

Many of the problems that Dr. Rice is now tackling as Secretary of State arose, or became more difficult, during her time as National Security Advisor up to 2004 – Iraq, the Iranian nuclear issue, Darfur, North Korea, Afghanistan and the Israel/Palestine conflict. The huge focus on Iraq squeezed out the other issues.

In the US system, the National Security Advisor has a dual rôle – advising the President on foreign policy, and coordinating the major Departments of Government as chairperson of the National Security Council. Between 2000 and 2004, both authors suggest that Dr. Rice concentrated on the first part of the job. Mabry says she is “far better suited to running a department than trying to coordinate many”.

As Secretary of State, she is now pulling all the pieces together. She has recognized that progress and momentum on the Arab-Israeli dispute is a sine que non for international cooperation on a lot of other issues. The recent Annapolis Conference and its commitment to intensive US support for timelined negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis is very much Condoleezza’s Rice’s personal achievement and a recognition by her of this fundamental reality.

These two books complement one another. Whereas Mabry deals with his subject’s whole life up to the beginning of this year, Glenn Kessler concentrates on the two first years of her service as Secretary of State – 2005 and 2006.

Neither book allows the reader to reach a final conclusion about her record. Kessler’s book has come out too soon. Most of the subjects he covers are still works in progress. Mabry’s book has the greater human interest, but it is rather repetitive and seems to dwell overlong on Dr. Rice’s supposed attitudes towards her African American heritage.