The Foreign Service Journal, May 2008

62 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 8 An Elusive Figure The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy Glenn Kessler, St. Martin’s Press, 2007, $25.95, hardcover, 288 pages with index. R EVIEWED BY B EN J USTESEN Condoleezza Rice is an intriguing figure, as Glenn Kessler reminds readers early on in this biography: a glamorous, tough-minded African- American woman in a world dominat- ed by middle-aged white men; flawed but perhaps destined for greatness; a world-famous person about whom the world knows surprisingly little. Based largely on interviews with friends, colleagues and (unnamed) critics, and Kessler’s reporting for the Washington Post, The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy paints a mixed por- trait of the current Secretary of State. She is generous to her friends and happily vindictive toward those who cross her; unhappily trapped in Washington and wistful for escape. The book is well-written, though not exceptional — a disappointment because Kessler, described in one blurb as “a tough, independent beat reporter of the old school,” has won Pulitzer Prizes. Some call him Rice’s favorite reporter. So the book promis- es much, yet delivers somewhat less. Then again, it was written to sell, like so much of the “instant history” that passes for thoughtful journalism these days. History requires distance, per- spective, detachment. Journalism deals in relevance, timeliness, dead- lines. They are, in short, opposing disciplines. Both critics and defenders of Rice will find things to please or infuriate, if not to illuminate, for there is less news here than one would hope. What one never finds, however, is the heart of the elusive subject herself. One hears her words; one hears her friends praise her, and (unnamed) State Department snipers taking their best shots at her. One sometimes sees even the portrait Kessler tried to paint, but never the finished product — for this is, at day’s end, only a sketch. There is no flesh here, nor blood. There is only façade: steely, stubborn, glittering, opaque façade. What emerges is a hastily-assem- bled pastiche of overlong newspaper articles, stitched together by two uneven premises. First, Dr. Rice — admirer of George Shultz, imitator of James Baker, eschewer of Colin Powell — is determined to burnish the image of her friend, President George W. Bush, as a grand planner and foreign policy champion. To do so, she must atone for her previous weaknesses as his loyal but inept national security adviser. According to the author, Rice’s “options and opportunities … are lim- ited by one deeply ironic fact: She was one of the weakest national security advisers in U.S. history.” Nothing new here; intellectual brilliance aside, Rice lacks high-level managerial expe- rience and shows little aptitude for details or imagination for sweeping, long-range planning. But whose opinion is this? Kessler’s? Dare he risk Rice’s fabled, icy wrath by con- fessing? Not here. Yet Kessler is a thorough, observant reporter. He chronicles Rice’s many trips abroad — and offers vignettes, particularly amusing regarding coun- terparts Jack Straw and Tang Jiaxuan — in fact-filled style. Interesting bio- graphical details abound. But he should have omitted the fashion notes — and mystifying references to sexu- ality — as more “Style Section” than “World News.” No one will go away unrewarded from this feast, but many will be hungry again an hour later — or, worse, suffer indigestion trying to remember what they ate. Kessler intends his account to serve as “a rough guide for historians of the future as they puzzle out this period in U.S. foreign policy.” As a former journalist, I, too, view it as B OOKS No one will go away unrewarded from this feast, but many will be hungry again an hour later.