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Condi the Chameleon

She’s a classic pragmatist, and like all pragmatists her views are, well, pragmatic. And that means that they change over time. ~Anne Applebaum, The Spectator (registration required) Ms. Applebaum has managed to save “Condi” from being “pigeonholed” with anything so constraining as a consistent set of principles. Why this is supposed to recommend her to […]

She’s a classic pragmatist, and like all pragmatists her views are, well, pragmatic. And that means that they change over time. ~Anne Applebaum, The Spectator (registration required)

Ms. Applebaum has managed to save “Condi” from being “pigeonholed” with anything so constraining as a consistent set of principles. Why this is supposed to recommend her to us more than if she were an ideologue escapes me. Being the Sandra Day O’Connor of foreign policy is not, from the perspective of conservatives, more desirable than being its Earl Warren. The one is simply the grinning enabler of the other. Being lackey to ideologues is in many respects just as bad, and does not even possess the esteemed excuse of conviction. And what might have once been called gross hypocrisy or “flip-flopping” in those storied days of 2004, if we were speaking of a certain morose Senator from Massachusetts, is proof of Condi’s pragmatism.

Some have even accused Dr. Rice (shocking!) of incompetence as national security advisor:

She was thought not up to the job of negotiating compromises between the administration’s two alpha males, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld.

Perhaps some thought this because of the not-so-subtle turf war that was constantly being played out in the press between the State and Defense Departments and her complete inability to corral the two men into one pen (which was, aside from explaining to Mr. Bush where Iraq is on the map and what a Sunni is, one of her primary functions).

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