Transformed By Her Bond With Bush

'She Is Speaking for Me'

When Rice was national security adviser, she and Bush developed a near-vaudeville routine for the White House staff as they planned meetings with foreign leaders. The president would petulantly ask why the meeting was needed. Rice would patiently explain its importance. Then Bush would propose saying something undiplomatic, and Rice would say it could pose a problem. Ultimately, Bush, half in jest, would say, "Miss Rice won't let me do that."

In his first term, Bush enhanced Rice's global clout by stressing their closeness. "Miss Rice is like my sister," he told foreign politicians. And in late 2006, the president told a private gathering of U.S. diplomats at the United Nations that the president and the secretary of state must always be on the same page. "We are completely in sync," Bush declared, with Rice standing at his side, according to an official present. "When she speaks, you know that she is speaking for me."

During Rice's years in the White House, in fact, it was not always clear who spoke for whom. People who worked for Rice often describe her relationship with the president as the "Rice-Bush black box." She would go behind closed doors with Bush, standing by his desk while he sat, and then emerge with the president's decision. It was impossible to tell whether the idea had come from Bush or from Rice.

As secretary of state, Rice strives to keep up that connection. If a meeting is not planned that day, she calls Bush in the morning. She usually phones him on Saturday or Sunday to discuss the past week, and every night she sends him a private note, describing the diplomatic issues she faced that day -- in effect, a foreign policy version of Bush's daily intelligence briefings.

Despite such public and private closeness with Bush, however, Rice has remained relatively immune from the public disapproval over the war in Iraq. As national security adviser, Rice was at the center of the decision-making and was a key voice in selling the invasion. But when she moved to the State Department, the blame for the unfolding disaster didn't seem to follow her.

A Washington Post poll in summer 2006 asked Americans how much responsibility Rice bore for the way the war in Iraq had gone. Only 10 percent answered that she had "a lot" of responsibility, and 32 percent said "some." But 26 percent said "only a little," and 17 percent said "none at all." As national security adviser, Rice was responsible for the administration's failure to properly plan the occupation, and as secretary she has defended the administration's war policies, yet close to half of Americans gave her a pass on Iraq.

Rice's ability to insulate herself from the president's plummeting approval ratings was not accidental -- it followed a careful effort to reshape her image, launched early in her tenure as secretary of state.

'No Wasted Motion!'

During the transition to Bush's second term, Rice invited her closest advisers to her apartment in the Watergate building, where they munched on cheese -- Rice's favorite finger food -- and pondered how she could make an immediate splash in her new role. With the U.S. image in the world battered by Iraq, Rice believed it would be difficult to score achievements in the second term if they didn't move quickly and show that the secretary of state was working hard.

Rice assigned a key role to Jim Wilkinson, a hyperactive, media-savvy young aide. He put together a color-coded calendar for her first 100 days, noting when she would travel and with whom she would meet. No detail was too small for Wilkinson, whose slogan was "No wasted motion!" He asked the State Department historian for studies on what made secretaries of state successful. (Proximity to the president, the historian responded.)

Wilkinson wrote a list of negative questions about Rice and sought ways to counter them. Hadn't she been a bad national security adviser? Didn't she have disdain for the Foreign Service? Isn't she part of the neoconservative cabal that dismisses diplomacy? Isn't she cold and unfriendly?

To offset the notion that Rice was cold, Wilkinson decreed that almost no pictures should be allowed of Rice alone. On Rice's first day on the job, for example, he arranged for a crowd to stand around her when she addressed State Department workers. And to show that Rice cared about diplomacy, Wilkinson made sure Americans saw her traveling. He arranged cultural expeditions -- such as a visit to a Paris conservatory during Rice's first overseas trip, where she could highlight her musical training -- each chosen to showcase Rice's appreciation for local cultures.

Wilkinson moved Rice's news conferences with foreign leaders to the ornate rooms of the top floors of the State Department. She would be photographed sitting in front of a fireplace or taking a long, almost presidential walk toward a microphone. Powell had escorted visitors to the front door of the State Department and spoken to reporters in front of the glass doors as others mingled about. It seemed undignified, Wilkinson recalled.