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March 14, 2005

I Will If You Will

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7181496/site/newsweek/MSNBC.com

Condoleezza Dreamin'
The secretary of State says she’s not planning to run for president in 2008. Will she change her mind?

March 14 - I heard a loud screeching crash on Sunday morning, followed by 24 hours of wailing. Did you hear it, too? It was the sound of the Condi Rice bandwagon getting a flat tire and flying into the drainage ditch—and millions of Republicans going into spontaneous apoplexy.

There it was, for all to hear, on NBC's "Meet the Press": Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice destroying the hopes of her party by vehemently denying that she will run for president in 2008.

Or did she? "I don't have any desire or intention of running for president," she said, by way of opening. That was too much wiggle room for host Tim Russert. So he persisted. "Desire or intention?" Russert asked.

"Both," Rice replied. Then Russert asked her to issue a Shermanesque refusal to run—as in, "If nominated, I will not accept. If elected, I will not serve." She wouldn't do it.

"Tim, I don't want to run for president of the United States," she said. Under more pressing, she tried, "I will not run for president of the United States. How is that? I don't know how many ways to say 'no' in this town."

"You're done? You're out?" Russert pressed. "I'm done," she said. They danced back and forth a little while longer, with Rice continuing to say, "I don't intend to run," and Russert asking for her to be more definitive. Finally, she said it again: "I won't run." And Russert had his scoop—and every Republican in the country suddenly got a kick in the teeth.

I mean, we're talking about Condi Rice here—a woman who has never expressed even the slightest desire to be president of anything except the National Football League, yet finds herself on the top of every GOP poll and every Republican political consultant's wish list.

To assess just how depressed my Republican counterparts are about the news of Condi's refusal to run, I called my father. Loyal readers of this column know that Dad is a true conservative—a believer in low taxes, balanced budgets, limited government regulations, pre-emptive war and public display of the Ten Commandments (as long as all 10 are "Defeat Hillary Clinton").

I assumed he would be distraught after the "Meet the Press" interview, but I found him upbeat. In fact, he had the audacity to claim that Rice had not ruled out a run for the presidency, despite the fact that she had used almost those very words (except for the "not").

"She said she wouldn't run," my father said. "But that doesn't mean she won't allow herself to be drafted!" He then proceeded to review the "Meet the Press" transcript and promptly affirmed that Rice remained the front-runner.

My father was merely echoing other Republican voices. The "Americans for Rice" Web site, one of a handful of rather unprofessional-looking blogs devoted to giving Rice the impression that millions of Americans are dying for her to run, hedged on behalf of their great black hope: She only told Russert she wasn't running because "she is our secretary of State and cannot be constantly hounded by questions of a possible presidential bid." The Web site then offered its conspiracy theories as to why it remains certain that Rice is running: "We find the recent position of Karen Hughes, one of the president's closest campaign confidants, within Dr. Rice's State Department very telling,” said the blog in a reference to Hughes’ nomination as Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Perhaps actions speak louder than words in this case. With the memory of Eisenhower's being 'drafted' for the nomination, we are not deterred."

It was amazing to hear the people who once complained that Bill Clinton didn't know the definition of "is" now parsing Rice's statement for any evidence that she's still in the running (the prevailing theory, for instance, is that in three years, Rice will merely claim that "circumstances have changed" or that she must allow herself to be "drafted" so that Hillary Clinton doesn't roll back eight years of triumphs by President Bush).

What is driving these Condinistas? Certainly, every American has a soupcon of respect for Dr. Rice's achievements—from alarmist Cold War Kremlinologist to Stanford provost to national security adviser to secretary of State—but all the lofty talk soon evaporates into basic Republican hatred of Hillary Clinton (apparently eight solid years of hating her husband didn't get all the bile out of some people's systems).

If you listen to Republicans, there are only three candidates who can defeat Hillary in 2008 and save the Republic from inevitable demise: John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Condi Rice. With Rice gone, Democrats like me are obviously gloating. Suddenly, the chances have increased that the Republican Party will do in 2008 what my party has done for almost every election since 1960: bruise itself silly in the primaries, nominate a standard bearer who has no chance of winning, and lose. The only exceptions to this rule, of course, were Bill Clinton's consecutive victories (but we all know he wasn't a real Democrat anyway).

In other words, if the Republicans do what the Democrats typically do—pick the man who represents what the party actually believes rather than the candidate who can actually win—they'll pick Sen. Bill Frist or Sen. Rick Santorum. And if they do that, the most hated woman since Imelda Marcos will win 55-45.

It's not entirely clear to me why Republicans like Rice so much. Beyond her foreign policy pronouncements—I prefer the word "lies," but I'll be generous (for now)—she has offered no opinions on the issues of the day, from welfare reform to the president's judicial nominees to the environment to Social Security reform. Clearly what is motivating the "Draft Condi" movement is that she is an electable black woman in a party that will need every vote against Clinton. (If asked to choose among other black women who have never offered positions on the issues, however, I'd choose Janet Jackson. Granted, her position on nipple exposure probably renders her unelectable, but at least Janet Jackson never went on TV and said that Saddam Hussein had aluminum tubes that were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs" when, in fact, the opposite was true).

And the dream of defeating Hillary Clinton (who has never said she's running either, but that's a topic for another column) is what stokes the Republican fire. As the Americans for Rice Web site put it, "Do you really believe that the girl that was nurtured by her parents to believe that she could become president (even if she couldn't have a hamburger at Woolworth's) and who told her parents that one day she would live in the White House, and who has been at the right hand of the three Bush administrations is simply going to return to California to watch football on Sundays, play the piano and write her memoirs while Hillary moves back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? We don't think so either!" In other words, they're hoping that Rice lacks the very integrity that they admire: They're hoping that she lied to Russert the same way she lied about Saddam's aluminum tubes.

Posted by Mark at March 14, 2005 10:54 PM

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