( – promoted by odum)

I’ve never had much respect for the abilities of Condoleeza Rice.  She has the reputation of being acadmically smart, based on her job as provost of Stanford and her PhD in international relations.  However, the Provost job is basically administrative.  According to Wikipedia..
”  The Provost [at Harvard] has special responsibility for fostering intellectual interactions across the University, including the five Interfaculty Initiatives (environment, ethics and the professions, schooling and children, mind/brain/behavior, and health policy). The Provost also acts to help improve the quality and efficiency of central services organized at Harvard under the aegis of the Vice Presidents. “

In other words, conflict resolution to contain academic jealousy and intercollege competition for budgets.  Maybe a reasonable job description for a National Security Advisor, who is supposed to coordinate the activities of the various agencies,  but not for Secretary of State, who has to actually create value rather than referee among those who do.  As Nora Ephron over at Huffington Post points out:
” Condoleezza Rice was once a Provost, and if there’s ever been a job description that doesn’t require humor, it’s Provost. She was an expert on the Soviet Union. I mean, what would that be like? You spend your academic life becoming an expert on something that one day just ceases to exist. Everything you once knew turns out to be outdated, irrelevant and wrong. That alone could cause you to lose your gift for humor, if you ever had one.

But what Condi is really good at is making nice, … I’ve always believed that women of my generation (and hers) were literally trained to make nice. It wasn’t really important for us to have opinions of our own; instead, we were supposed to preside over dinner parties, and when two men at the table disagreed violently with one another, we were supposed to step in and point out the remarkable similarities between their opposing positions. “

As for that PhD, she got it at the University of Denver, an institution that is well down the ranks, in a program which I can assure you is not now nor ever been world class.  It’s OK, mind you, but not the Kennedy School by a long shot.  And relevance?… See Nora about the USSR above…

Piling on,  here comes today’s Financial Times :

  Rice lying low at the Middle East crossroads
  By Guy Dinmore and Edward Luce in Washington and William Wallis in Cairo

  Published: December 14 2006
  While US policy in the Middle East has stalled at multiple crossroads in the search for a “new way forward” in Iraq, Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, has been notable only for her low visibility….

A new low was plumbed in the US’s international standing when, on the 10th day of Lebanon’s summer war, with civilian casualties mounting from Israeli attacks, Ms Rice declared the world was witnessing the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”.

Since then, the pro-western Lebanese government has been seriously weakened, the conflict in Iraq has intensified, and the Palestinian territories are close to civil war. Meanwhile, Washington’s adversaries – Iran,Syria and Sudan [not to mention North Korea:  bw]- have been emboldened…..
  “The smart thing to do would be to be working quietly behind the scenes with the Saudis [who have just had their ambassador to the US suddenly and without explanation resign: bw] 
and the Israelis to try to get the peace process on the road again,” says Dov Zakheim, a former Pentagon official….

When Ms Rice has met her Middle Eastern counterparts in recent months, Arab  officials tried to press the urgent need for momentum on the Arab-Israeli conflict to counter more radical agendas sweeping through the region.

“Our problem with people like Condoleezza Rice is they  take too long to understand the reality on the ground, which is a different reality than the one explained to them.” [said an Arab diplomat]

“They [Arab regimes] don’t believe she can change the dynamics because they see her as part of the problem,” says a well-connected Saudi commentator. “She is gung-ho on Iran and she doesn’t believe there are two sides to the Palestinian problem.” …
“The lesson for many Arabs is that the US  will always side with Israel no matter what, and that being America’s ally  does not necessarily bring substantive political benefits when most needed,”

  “America emerged as unreliable in Lebanon and incompetent in Iraq. The consequences of this for America’s image in the region are serious.”