Bush's top female enabler

[deminks]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/09/07/condi_rice/index.html?source=rss

Like Karen Hughes and Harriet Miers, Condi Rice dotes on her boss and shields him from critics. Meanwhile, the State Department suffers neglect.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Sept. 7, 2006 | About two weeks after the 2004 presidential election, on Nov. 13, the British Embassy in Washington held a surprise 50th birthday party for Condoleezza Rice. Upon her arrival ambassador David Manning presented her with a red Oscar de la Renta-designed gown for which the embassy staff had managed to secure the "state secret" of her size. When Rice changed into the dress and emerged like Cinderella she was met by her Prince Charming, dressed in a tuxedo, the man she once called "my husband," President Bush.

At the State Department's senior policy meeting the following Monday, an official remarked about the red dress, "It gives new meaning to 'they have your number.'" The next day Bush announced his appointment of his national security advisor as his new secretary of state.

Bush's relationship with Rice is perhaps the strangest of his many strange relationships. The mysterious attachment involves complex transactions of noblesse oblige and deference, ignorance and adulation, vulnerability and sweet talk. Like his other female enablers, Karen Hughes, his political image-maker and undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, and Harriet Miers, his legal counsel, Rice is ferociously protective. She shields him from worst-case scenarios, telling him to ignore criticism that misunderstands his greatness, and showers him with a constant stream of flattery that he is a world-historical colossus.

Rice so jealously guards her relationship that her former deputy at the State Department, Robert Zoellick, left after only about a year in his post, feeling himself excluded from playing a serious part in foreign policy decision making. Since his resignation in June, there has been no replacement or mention of one. After observing Zoellick's frustration, no serious person wishes to get between Rice and her object of affection, and as a result there is no one in charge of running the State Department on a day-to-day basis.

[agincourt]

1. The most enabled man in America

Hands down. And probably the most flattered as well.

[Spinzonner]

2. But who changes his diapers ?

[agincourt]

3. Probably Karl,

That's why he can ruin a CIA WMD tracking operation and still have a job.

[liberal N proud]

4. Are they saying that bu$h and kindasleazy are having an affair?

The story left me to wonder what kind of relationship they truly do have.