THAT SEWS UP THE GUN NUTS:

The rise and rise of Bush's guru: The President's former teacher now has his nomination for the top job in the State Department (Roland Watson, 11/17/04, Times of London)

November 17, 2004

The rise and rise of Bush's guru
From Roland Watson in Washington
The President's former teacher now has his nomination for the top job in the State Department

LAST Saturday night Condoleezza Rice was swept by motorcade from her apartment in the Watergate complex, up Massachusetts Avenue to the British Embassy for what she believed to be a run-of-the-mill, black-tie Washington dinner.

She arrived at Sir David Manning’s elegant residence to find it full of family and friends, gathered for a surprise 50th birthday party. The Washington elite was also out in force, filling the small embassy car park with some of the smartest limousines in town.

President Bush and his wife, Laura, topped the guest list, followed by Mr Bush’s closest aides, Cabinet members and several of Dr Rice’s predecessors as National Security Adviser.

The event went swimmingly — the band in the ballroom played past 11pm, late for this early-to-bed Administration — and spoke volumes about the tight links forged by Sir Christopher Meyer and his successor Sir David with those parts of the Bush Administration that matter.

The timing was perfect. Yesterday, just three days later — President Bush nominated Dr Rice to be his new Secretary of State after Colin Powell’s resignation on Monday.

Standing alongside her in the White House Roosevelt Room, Mr Bush lavished praise on his most trusted aide, saying: “The Secretary of State is America’s face to the world and in Dr Rice the world will see the strength, grace and decency of our country.”

Her former deputy, Stephen Hadley, a veteran of four Republican administrations, replaced her as National Security Adviser.

Over at State Richard Armitage, General Powell’s former deputy and a fellow moderate, added his resignation to that of his boss as the second Bush Administration shifted further to the Right. Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, whose job Dr Rice had coveted, is expected to stay at the Pentagon, at least in the short term.

Dr Rice’s ascent to the top of the State Department is the latest in a long line of landmark achievements: the youngest Provost of Stanford University; the first woman to be National Security Adviser; and the first black woman to be Secretary of State.

Her rise will have come as little surprise to her parents, John and Angelina, education evangelists who drummed into their only child growing up in segregated Alabama that to compete with white children she had to be twice as good as them, three times as good to beat them. It was a lesson that she took to heart. She started piano lessons aged 3, gave her first recital at 4 and plays at concert level. Her mother, also a piano player, fashioned Dr Rice’s name from the Italian score instruction “con dolcezza” (to play “with sweetness”).

She speaks French — not something to brag about in the current Administration — and is a former figure-skating champion. She also plays tennis, not quite to the same dizzying levels, but is tough to beat because of her fierce determination.

“She is very competitive,” said one diplomat who has played with her. “Very little gets past her at the net. She has a very effective backhand passing shot, but she plays with a great sense of humour.”

Black women are rare in Republican ranks. Mr Bush increased his share of the black vote from 9 per cent in 2000 to 11 per cent two weeks ago.

Dr Rice’s father was a registered Republican, but chiefly because it was easier to register with them. The Dixiecrats who ran the dominant Democratic machine in the South asked him to guess the number of beans in a jar before he was allowed to register with them.

In 1976, however, Dr Rice was a registered Democrat and backed Jimmy Carter. But she was disenchanted by what she regarded as his inept, naive and dangerously lax approach to the Soviet Union.

Ronald Reagan appealed to her because he stuck very closely to a few very clear principles, not unlike her current boss.

Her moment of intellectual discovery came at Denver University when being taught international relations by Joseph Korbel, a former Czech diplomat and refugee and, coincidentally, the father of Madeleine Albright, the first female Secretary of State.

She made her first impressions on the Bush family while serving as a Soviet expert in the National Security Council of the first President Bush. He quickly became a fan. “She has a manner and a presence that disarms the biggest of the big shots,” he later said. “Why? Because they know she knows what she is talking about.”

She became the foreign affairs tutor to the younger Bush when he was running for President. He named a hill on his ranch “Balkan Hill” after one particular tutorial during a four-mile hike.

But the pair really bonded over a shared love of sports. Dr Rice’s father was ready to immerse his baby, if it was a boy, in baseball and American football.

His influence rubbed off on his daughter just the same. During weekends at Camp David, where Dr Rice is treated as family, she and the President are as likely to be watching American football or baseball as they are discussing policy. She delights in her tenuous links to sporting greatness; her mother taught Willie Mays, one of the first great baseball players to break the colour barrier. She also knew Tiger Woods at Stanford, but is just as happy proclaiming that she used to do weight training with the golfer’s weight trainer.

Dr Rice’s domestic politics are largely unknown, but she is fervently pro-gun rights.

If her father had had to register his shotgun with the Birmingham police chief, she explains, it would almost certainly have been taken away from him, depriving him of the weapon with which he and neighbours patrolled their neighbourhood.