Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is "campaigning" to be John McCain's running mate:
Rice has been courting the Republican elite, Dan Senor, a political strategist and former foreign-policy adviser to President Bush, said on ABC's "This Week."
"Condi Rice has been actively, actually in recent weeks, campaigning for this," he said.
If Condi is seeking to be the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she's being too subtle about it. McCain failed to notice:
“I missed those signals,” Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign plane en route to Kansas City.
Nonetheless, Mr. McCain took a few moments to compliment Ms. Rice. “I think she’s a great American, I think there’s very little that I can say that isn’t anything but the utmost praise for a great American citizen, who served as a role model to so many millions of people in this country and around the world,” Mr. McCain said, adding that “her overall record is very, very meritorious.”
Condi, should not be McCain's running mate. She is as experienced as Hillary and Obama, except she has never campaigned for elective office.
Condi also failed to distinguish herself as the person in charge at the State Department. In February Manual Mda wrote a blistering departure assessment of the State Department's meager efforts in Iraq:
A State Department official this week issued a blistering critique of Foreign Service bureaucrats at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad for undermining civilian stability efforts in Iraq.
"After a year at the embassy, it is my general assessment that the State Department and the Foreign Service [are] not competent to do the job that they have undertaken in Iraq," said Manuel Mda, a conservative former Senate staff member who is part of the office of legislative statecraft in Baghdad.
[. . .]
Mr. Mda's most stinging accusation is that the State Department is an "albatross around the neck of the coalition command."
The department "failed to assist coalition initiatives by delaying or failing to supply the civilian expertise needed in a thoughtful and timely manner and also delaying decisions on funding and staffing vital to GOI (and our) success," he said, using the acronym for the government of Iraq.
Also, the embassy has blocked the flow of information to the White House and other policy-makers, the State Department in Washington, and the commanding general in Baghdad, fearing leaks to the press.
[. . .]
Mr. Mda said the State Department's Iraq operations, judged by private sector standards, is "willfully negligent, if not criminal."
The response from Condi's State Department consisted of supporting her team:
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Mr. Mda, as a temporary appointed employee in Iraq, "is entitled to his opinion."
"However, the president and Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice believe that Ambassador Crocker and his team at Embassy Baghdad are performing ably under incredibly difficult circumstances," he said.
And who can forget the cowardly refusal of members of Condi's State Department to accept assignments in Iraq.
Bill Kristol and Dean Barnett contrasted the State Department refusals with the heroics of the four soldiers who fought off nearly 40 al Qaeda fighters --
a magnificently told story written by RedState's Jeff Emanuel.
Finally, I think Dr. Steven Taylor has it exactly right:
Rice’s positives: black, female, not in her 70s.
Negatives: Bush’s foreign policy.
I have a hard time seeing the former overshadowing the latter.
There was a time when Rice was considered a clear up-and-comer in the party, but given her central role in the Bush foreign policy apparatus, first as National Security Advisor and then as Secretary of State, it would seem that Rice would bring only negatives to the ticket. McCain already has an Iraq problem and the only way he can even hope to try and deal with it is to say that he will be more competent than the Bush administration has been on the subject. The inclusion of Rice on the ticket would make such an argument far more difficult to make.
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