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NYT Opinion on Sept 8 2001
Washington is aflutter with speculation about the rising and falling fortunes of President Bush's quartet of top national security aides. According to the latest buzz, Vice President Dick Cheney is losing influence, Secretary of State Colin Powell is a disappointment, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has cratered at the Pentagon and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, is ascendant.
A moment like this comes early in the life of every new administration as the innermost circle of policy makers sort out their relationships and maneuver to extend their influence. The public handicapping can be misleading, but it usually captures some truths about the leading actors and can, fairly or unfairly, define them for an entire presidency.
In the case of the Bush team, speculation aside, these facts seem self-evident: Secretary Powell has not moved into the commanding leadership position on foreign policy that most people expected, Mr. Rumsfeld has struggled to advance his reform agenda for the military services, Mr. Cheney has been less visible in recent weeks and Ms. Rice has emerged as a formidable power broker.
This is all the more piquant because it defies initial expectations in Washington, a city that loves to create and then shatter its own myths. Mr. Cheney, a former White House chief of staff and defense secretary, was forecast to be the equivalent of a prime minister. Secretary Powell, once chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and an architect of the victory in the Persian Gulf war, was expected to be the foreign policy vicar of the Bush administration.
Mr. Rumsfeld, who is making his second tour at the Pentagon, was considered one of Washington's most cunning operators. He even outmaneuvered Henry Kissinger the master of bureaucratic jujitsu on at least one occasion when the two men served in high posts in the Ford administration. Few people gave Ms. Rice, with her limited experience as a White House staff aide on Soviet affairs, much chance of competing with these titans.
With such grandiose predictions in place, it has not taken much change to create the impression of a tectonic shift in the balance of power. Mr. Cheney's heart problems, and his ardent embrace of the coal, oil and gas industries, seem to have hobbled him. Mr. Rumsfeld has done a lousy job of selling his military reform plans to the generals and admirals, not to mention to Congress.
Their image problems look minor compared with General Powell's. As secretary of state, he has not acted like the prime shaper of Washington's foreign policy or even as its leading diplomat on some important fronts, including relations with Moscow. That led Time magazine to picture him on its cover this week with the humiliating headline Where Have You Gone, Colin Powell?
Ms. Rice, for her part, has clearly exercised more influence, and done so more visibly, than predicted. She has benefited from her role as Mr. Bush's foreign policy guide during the presidential campaign and her frequent access to the president at the White House, Camp David and Mr. Bush's Texas ranch. Ms. Rice, a former Stanford professor and provost, also gave Mr. Bush's foreign policy some of its core themes, including the emphasis on missile defense. She then went to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin, a diplomatic mission usually reserved for the secretary of state.
It is premature to pick winners and losers. In the Nixon administration it was clear from the outset that Mr. Kissinger, the national security adviser, would eclipse Secretary of State William Rogers. In the Reagan years, however, Secretary of State George Shultz initially looked overmatched by ideologues like Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, but eventually managed to help turn American policy toward the Soviet Union from confrontation to negotiation. At this stage, we wouldn't bet against Secretary Powell.