Condoleezza Rice began her relationship with George W. Bush as the foreign policy tutor who educated the little-traveled 2000 presidential candidate in the complexities of a world more dangerous than either of them knew. Now, three years, two wars and countless crises later, the relationship between the president and Ms. Rice has evolved into a partnership that has shaped one of the most assertive foreign policies in recent American history.
Like a number of earlier relationships between national security advisers and their bosses, including Henry Kissinger's association with Richard Nixon and Zbigniew Brzezinski's work with Jimmy Carter, Ms. Rice's interactions with Mr. Bush have developed into a fulcrum for the development of foreign policy. But even more than those earlier collaborations, Ms. Rice's relationship with Mr. Bush has been closely guarded.
Now, as Ms. Rice heads into what she insists will be her last year of service in the White House, she and other top Bush advisers have begun to lift the veil of secrecy about her relationship with the president, with whom she spends an extraordinary amount of time — long days at the White House, summer walks at the president's Texas ranch, weekends of gym workouts, football games on television and jigsaw puzzles with the president and first lady at Camp David. There, Ms. Rice has a cabin to herself on the wooded grounds.
"I sit with my reading and my cup of coffee, and especially if it's winter, I make a fire," Ms. Rice said in one of two recent interviews in her spacious West Wing office. "It's really not tough duty. But, of course, I look forward to having control of my life."
Continue Elizabeth Bumiller's New York Times article "A Partner in Shaping an Assertive Foreign Policy"
posted in articles on January 8, 2004 2:07 AM | t (0)
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