In a speech at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, where students are deformed into diplomats, Condi cancelled the tea party. Her message was revolutionary and essential. As a result, she may go down in history as the SecState most hated by Foggy Bottom bureaucrats.
Here's what "Killjoy Condi" had to say:
* Diplomats can no longer build careers by hiding behind desks in comfy capitals. They'll have to accept dangerous assignments and serve in hardship posts; develop regional expertise in at least two areas; and speak at least two relevant foreign languages (French waiters need not apply). That ain't going to make Rice popular with diplos accustomed to rotating between Rome and Northwest D.C. on their way to ambassadorships. Yet, it's vital if we're going to convert our failed, 19th-century- model State Department into a useful tool for the 21st century.
* Ouch! Condi really put Paris and Berlin in their places — pointedly noting that "we have nearly the same number of State Department personnel in Germany, a country of 82 million people, that we have in India, a country of 1 billion people." Cancel that order for the big schnitzel, Mr. Ambassador. You're going to be eating some development vindaloo. (Delicious, too, that la Rice smacked down Old Europe just as Jacques Chirac threatened to hurl nukes at terrorists to prove that France remains relevant.)
Read it all. Maybe when Condi is done at State, she can swing over and help whip the CIA into shape too.
In other news on the Condi front, Shelby Steele has a blistering takedown of Hillary, who is very afraid of Rice, and hence has started to pander to the Black vote:
When political pandering goes awry, it calls you a name. On an emotional level, many blacks will hear Hillary's remark as follows: "I say Republicans run the House like a plantation because I am speaking to Negroes--the wretched of the earth, a slave people--who will surely know all about plantations." Is this a tin ear or a Freudian slip, blacks will wonder? Does she really see us as she projects us--as a people so backward that our support can be won with a simple plantation reference, and the implication that Republicans are racist? Quite possibly so, since no apology has been forthcoming.
Steele contends that blacks should consider this simple fact:
[...]because Republicans cannot easily pander to black grievance, they have no need to value blacks only for their sense of grievance. Unlike Democrats, they can celebrate what is positive and constructive in minority life without losing power. The dilemma for Democrats, liberals and the civil rights establishment is that they become redundant and lose power the instant blacks move beyond grievance and begin to succeed by dint of their own hard work. So they persecute such blacks, attack their credibility as blacks, just as they pander to blacks who define their political relationship to America through grievance. Republicans are generally freer of the political bigotry by which the left either panders to or persecutes black Americans.
No one on the current political scene better embodies this Republican advantage than the current secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. The archetype that Ms. Rice represents is "overcoming" rather than grievance.
Steele calls it "valuing blacks only for their sense of grievance." I have phrased it differently in previous posts as actively being invested in promoting the victimhood of blacks (as well as other groups).
The nurturing of black victimhood grievances requires that blacks remain helpless victims so that the Democrats (the party of the "oppressed") can continue to be their champions. It explains why Democrats (and the Left in general) are actively hostile to successful blacks like Rice, Powell, and Thomas and have no problem whatsoever in demeaning and insulting them.
For the Left, every successful black person who does not buy into their victimhood cult is a serious threat.
Condi is definitely a serious threat to Hillary and to every Democrat with his or her sights on the White House-- especially if blacks open their eyes and realize which party really symbolizes "the plantation."
UPDATE: Gates of Vienna has more on the subject of Hillary's pandering.
Imagine Dr. Rice using “the plantation” metaphor in a speech. Won’t compute, will it? No grievances, just accomplishments. Thus, if Dr. Rice wanted to serve her party, but didn’t want to run for office, all she would need to do is dog Hillary on the campaign trail. She is the anti-Hillary, and there is no worse fate for a politician than to have his or her antithesis following along behind her.
But I think it is the other way around--Hillary is really the "anti-Rice". Dr. Rice has something positive to offer this country and she is the original--not the derivative.
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