Reply #2: There might have been a time when Condoleezza Rice represented the

[saltpoint]

ascent of her political party and its future prospects, with herself at the helm. Cheney might have stepped aside in summer of 2004, say, and Dubya appointed Dr. Rice as veep for the Republican ticket, a strategic ploy to lure Afro-American and female votes from the Democratic Party, to weaken the Democrats by draining two definitional components of their base coalition. In a tight race -- and both of Dubya's have been so tight he had to cheat to win them -- Dr. Rice might have tilted the demographics just enough to secure a more comfortable margin of victory for her Cowboy and establish herself as the future power to be reckoned with in GOP ranks.

That scenario seems long ago and far away -- and that's even as a speculative projection. Even further as a reality then, nevermind now.

I'm left with the sturdy, steady impression that she's in over her head, that her Russian studies did not prepare her for a post-Cold War world, that she is pointlessly willful, isolative, and bruises easily, and is scordnfully grudge-holding.

Dr. Rice smiles less than almost any public figure I can think of.

Her role at State appears to have been custodial at best.

I'll remember her for her abandonment of Brahms -- who in some ways is the perfect composer for an isolative personality -- all those intricate chromatics and byzantine fingerings -- and as a power-driven flibbityjibbit whose lies were circuitous and contemptous before Foreign Relation Committee and 9/11 committees -- panels comprised of men and women with less star power than Condi but more experience and insight.