Condi: The Condoleezza Rice Story (32 page)

Writing in
The New York Times
, Richard Bernstein explained that Europe held two general views about Condi’s potential influence there. “One is that she will strengthen further the hard-line views” of the neoconservatives in the administration, and the other that “her sophisticated understanding of international affairs, particularly of Russia and Germany, will prove to be both . . . sympathetic to, or at least, cognizant of, European views.”

On November 19, three days after her nomination as the next secretary of state, Condi was admitted to Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., for minor surgery to treat non-cancerous, uterine fibroid tumors. She chose a low-invasive procedure, uterine fibroid embolisation, which is performed in about one-and-a-half hours under local anesthesia and involves an overnight stay. In this procedure, the surgeon injects tiny particles into the uterine artery, which block the blood supply to the tumors. Traditionally, most women who undergo treatment for this condition undergo a hysterectomy, a much more complex surgery that requires general anesthesia and a long recovery period. “Having someone like her choose [embolisation] means more women will hear about this option,” said a Boston surgeon.

Embolisation has been available for about ten years, but only 13,000 to 14,000 American women choose this alternative each year, as opposed to approximately 200,000 women who choose to have a hysterectomy. “Dr. Jacob Cynamon, director of interventional radiology at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, said many patients say their gynecologists did not present the option of the less invasive procedure,” reported New York
Newsday
. According to Cynamon, hysterectomies have long been the “bread and butter” of gynecologists.

Condi was released the day after the procedure and returned to work the following Monday. Her high profile brought this medical topic to the front pages of newspapers around the world, revealing the powerful effect that a world figure can have on a single issue.

Condi will have many options when she finishes her service in the White House. Some speculate that she’s got all the attributes of a successful presidential candidate. “The first viable female candidate for president, whatever her party, must demonstrate deep military knowledge to win the confidence of the electorate,” said social scientist Camille Paglia. She described a frequently repeated chorus that broke out whenever a group of women caught a glimpse of Condi on TV—“That woman should be president!”

In California, polls conducted in the summer of 2002 indicated she was a top pick as the Republican candidate for governor. Some of her closest colleagues see her in international banking or consulting, fields she toyed with when she left Stanford in 1999. There’s always the NFL, which she would love to run one day. Her former job as provost of Stanford gives her perfect entrée to the presidency of a major university. And the door to Stanford’s political science department, where she has tenure, is always open. Most of those options could also include a return to corporate boards, all of which she left when she was appointed national security advisor.

Condi will cross that bridge when she comes to it. “I am not a very good long-term planner,” she said. “I tend to take things on one at a time and worry about getting that job done and doing a good job at that.” Whatever she decides, she will undoubtedly delve into it with the same enthusiasm and drive with which she has approached everything else. “I’d like to think of myself as passionate about life,” she said. “I’m certainly passionate about music and I’m passionate about my work, passionate about family and about my faith.”

Her relatives and friends in Birmingham, including everyone at the church Granddaddy Rice founded nearly sixty years ago, are behind her every step of the way. “We look at her as one of our own who has gone on to high service because of her ability,” said Reverend Jones. “We pray for her every day.”

Condi’s appointment as NSA was a monumental stride for both women and blacks, coming nine years after Carol Moseley-Braun became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. With the scarcity of blacks in upper levels of foreign policy (Colin Powell was the first black NSA, appointed by President Reagan), her rise to this position was as important as Marian Anderson becoming the first black to become a regular member of an American opera company and Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball. The NAACP recognized her achievement in 2002 by giving her that year’s President’s Award. This honor recognizes those who, through leadership or by example, have promoted the cause of minorities. According to then-NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, Condi has been breaking new ground her entire life. “There were no role models for her to follow,” he said, “because there was no one like Condoleezza Rice.”

Condi’s career has come a long way from her first assistant professorship, in which she gave students insights into the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In the first Bush administration she stood at the front lines of policy-making, helping the president and the National Security Council staff outline new policies toward the newly mapped regions of Europe. In the first term of George W. Bush’s administration, she was at the forefront of policy-making once again, providing the president with the Security Council’s views—and her own, if asked—on the war on terrorism and other international crises. Rather than researching political history, she was creating it.

Her job as NSA was gratifying on many levels, allowing her to utilize her expertise in her chosen field in the most exciting capacity possible. As a member of the president’s staff she performed a public service, something that her parents practiced in many ways and ingrained in her as a virtue. And she traveled throughout the world, often finding common threads that bind people to each other. During a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, for example, she was moved by a photograph of a well-dressed, impeccably groomed couple who contrasted with the bleak surroundings of their Warsaw ghetto. She heard others comment that it seemed odd for the couple to pay so much attention to their appearance when their lives were at stake. “I had a different reaction,” said Condi. “I said immediately, ‘I understand that photograph. These people are saying, I’m still in control, I still have my dignity.’ They are saying, ‘You can take everything from us, including life itself. But you cannot take away our pride.’” In that couple, Condi saw the pride and dignity with which her mother always dressed in Birmingham, crisp and tailored and beautiful.

Her journeys throughout the world have given her greater appreciation for her own country, in spite of its faults and snail-paced social progress. “As I travel with [President Bush] around the world and as we meet with leaders from around the world,” she told an audience in 2002, “I see America through other people’s eyes. I see a country that still struggles with the true meaning of multiethnic democracy, that still struggles with how to accommodate, and indeed, how to celebrate diversity. But it’s a country that is admired because . . . it does struggle to become better. It is not perfect but it is a long, long way from where we were.”

She may be far from Titusville on the southwest side of Birmingham, but Condi is not a long way from who she was as an individual when she was growing up there. She is still working hard (and probably not playing enough), still taking her piano seriously (even though summer music workshops in Montana are canceled or cut short by White House obligations), still utterly self-confident and optimistic that things are always moving forward and getting better (she
did
get a job inside the White House that was closed to her when she was ten), and still strong in her faith. She did not have the same challenges as less-privileged black children of Birmingham, but she had her share of the struggle. The darkness of that time has been a springboard in her life, propelling her to the farthest reaches of her talents and intellect. Like her father before her, she understands that without a struggle there would be no incentive to grow. And like three generations of Rices and Rays before her, she finds glory in that revelation:

We do not choose our circumstances or trials, but we do choose how we respond to them. Too often when all is well, we slip into the false joy and satisfaction of the material and a complacent pride and faith in ourselves. Yet it is through struggle that we find redemption and self-knowledge. This is what the slaves of Exodus learned. And it is what slaves in America meant when they sang: “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen—Glory Hallelujah!”

When Condi’s parents instilled in her the belief that she could one day be president of the United States, they prepared her to become a person who could make a mark on the world. Did John Rice ever imagine that his “little star” would one day be dubbed “the most powerful woman in the world,” or did Angelena Rice foresee that her musical prodigy would play at the Kennedy Center, introduced by the First Lady of the United States? They may not have imagined these specific events, but John and Angelena Rice did not put limits on their own dreams, nor on those of their daughter.

In fifty years, Condi has become a Renaissance woman in the truest sense of the word, accomplished in more than one field as artist and academic, writer and university provost, foreign policy czarina and presidential advisor. There is undoubtedly much more to come from her, and the world is watching.

APPENDIX I

National Security Advisors, 1950-2005

*Executive Secretary of the National Security Council

APPENDIX II

Major Events in the Life of Condoleezza Rice