WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has become the most popular member of the Bush administration and a potential candidate to succeed her boss in the White House, even as Americans lose confidence in the president she serves and patience with the Iraq war she helped launch.
Entering her second year as the country's senior diplomat and foreign policy spokeswoman, Rice has improbably shed much of her image as the hawkish "warrior princess" at President Bush's side. The nickname was reportedly bestowed by her staff at the White House National Security Council, where Rice was an intimate member of Bush's first-term war council.
Rice resolutely defends the post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism and the expansive executive powers that Bush claims came with it. She has lately sounded more optimistic than Bush about the progress of the Iraq war and the future for that country.
Yet, it is unusual to hear anyone talk about Rice as an architect of either of those two defining undertakings of the Bush presidency.
By a mix of charm, luck and physical distance from the White House, Rice has managed to escape the fate of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who saw their public approval ratings fall to historic lows before rebounding slightly recently.
Buried near the end of the article are Rice's actual numbers:
A Pew Research survey in October found that 60 percent of respondents held either a very favorable or mostly favorable view of Rice, while 25 percent had a very or mostly unfavorable view — numbers others in the Bush administration can only envy.
I think this is a commentary on just how misleading the poll numbers of President Bush can be, at least as far as how they represent America's opinion of him. As far as foreign policy goes Secretary Rice is every bit the "war hawk" President Bush is. Calling Rice one of the "architects" of the war in Iraq is very much a correct statement, yet she enjoys approval numbers far and above President Bush's. My guess would be that Rice's approval is higher because the media really doesn't focus a lot of attention on her.
So what does the fact that someone with almost the exact same foreign policy philosophy as our President enjoys approval numbers far higher than his? Maybe that the nation's opinion of the President is shaped more by the constant barrage of negative media attention than an actual consideration of his policies? I think that's a good theory.
Certainly there are other factors to consider when rating the President's job as opposed to the Sec. of State's performance, but this does make one wonder what the political landscape would look like if the media's coverage of this President and the war in Iraq was anything approaching fair and balanced.