Humoring Condi

"Nathan Brown, a Mideast expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, 'What's remarkable is the extent to which he's been disengaged, with only episodic parachuting in with absolutely no follow-up.' . . .

"Bush has met and talked many times with the pivotal Mideast players. But everyone from White House officials to outside observers, when asked about the highlights of his involvement, cites speeches: one on June 24, 2002, when he pledged support for an independent Palestinian state, becoming the first president to do so publicly; and one this past July 16, when he called for the U.S.-sponsored conference set for Washington and Annapolis, Md., this week."

Rice's Legacy So Far

Warren P. Strobel writes for McClatchy Newspapers that "Rice comes to Middle East peace negotiations relatively late, having downplayed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while she was national security adviser and spent her first years as secretary of state pushing Arab democracy as the cure to the region's woes."

How did that work out for her? Not so well.

In an excerpt from her new Rice biography, New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller describes how the radical Islamic movement Hamas's sweeping victory in Palestinian elections in January 2006 caught Rice flat-footed.

"Ms. Rice, who had heralded the election as a symbol of the new stirrings of democracy in the Middle East, was so blindsided by the victory that she was startled when she saw a crawl of words on her television screen while exercising on her elliptical trainer the morning after the election: 'In wake of Hamas victory, Palestinian cabinet resigns.'

"'I thought, "Well, that's not right," Ms. Rice recalled. When the crawl continued, she got off the elliptical trainer and called the State Department.

"'I said, "What happened in the Palestinian elections?"' Ms. Rice recalled. 'And they said, "Oh, Hamas won." And I thought, "Oh my goodness, Hamas won?"'

"Ms. Rice's credibility was further damaged when she delayed calling for a cease-fire as Israel plunged into a two-front war in Lebanon and Gaza that summer."

Rice's boss shared her naïveté. Kessler and Abramowitz write: "Leverett recalled that, in 2002, Bush said in the White House situation room that once a Palestinian leadership was democratically elected, it would concentrate on providing services to its constituents and 'you would get a Palestinian leadership less hung up' on such issues as borders and Jerusalem.

"Leverett, who has become a fierce Bush critic, said he was shocked at Bush's comment at the time. 'It was one of the most profoundly ignorant statements anyone has ever uttered on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,' he said."

Rice's Turnaround

Early in the administration, Rice enthusiastically carried water for Cheney and others who had no interest in trying to bring peace to the region. Bumiller describes how Rice even went so far as undermining then-secretary of state Colin Powell's efforts to set up a peace conference in 2002.