Marcus Mabry: Hi. I’m Marcus Mabry, Newsweek’s chief of correspondents and the author of TWICE AS GOOD: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power, which is excerpted in this week’s magazine. Welcome to today’s newsweek.com Live Chat.
San Francisco, CA: Has Condoleezza found it challenging as a woman to work with leaders from countries where women are not considered equal to men?
Marcus Mabry: Great question. I would say the leaders have found it harder to work with her. She sees it as their problem, and just motors through, ignoring their slights or discomfort and making her points.
Seattle, WA: While watching Ms. Rice speakto the 9/11 Congressional inquiry committee last year, I couldn’t believe that I had heard her right. She was talking about the memo that was shown to the president in the summer before 9/11, and I heard her say……“my husband – ah – the President………….” I was shocked, expected to hear lots about it, kept watching for the reporters reactions, etc – but never heard or read any reference to the slip. Days later I went to Google, to see what I could find. I found the story of her slip at a party (which you reference) - which I had never heard of - but nothing about her slip at the hearing. Perhaps the party story was just a retelling of the actual fact? I think a careful review of the hearing tapes would be very interesting.
I can’t believe that I was the only one who heard this, but I know that I did - and called others to see if they had heard it. Maybe it was just some speech pattern that sounds like “husband”, by isn’t, and that would explain both incidents. Does she really call him that?
Marcus Mabry: Perhaps you misheard during the hearings. I’ve never heard anyone else say they heard that at the hearing.
In fact, Rice denied to me having said “my husb—” at the dinner party too, and many of the guests say they never heard her say that–though others swear she did.
Cleveland, OH: After speaking with Rice do you think she is driven more by her type-A need to succeed or the genuine desire to make the world a better place?
Marcus Mabry: I think she sees them as one in the same. But for most of her life she was a “realist” on foreign policy, and realists are about power, they believe it’s naive to be an idealist and think you can reshape the world. Since joining the Bush administration, she’s been much more idealist. But in the end, as I argue in the book, that transformation too, is actually about Power.
Washington, D.C.: How well does Condi get along with Laura Bush?
Marcus Mabry: Very well.
Evanston, IL: What did Condoleezza Rice do before she was recruited by the White House?
Marcus Mabry: She was the provost of Stanford University, the number in charge, and the person who really runs the university. She’s spent her whole life as a professor at Stanford, starting in 1982.
Princeton, NJ: Did you get a sense that Rice’s loyalty to Bush was in conflict with her intellect–with what her scholarship about the Middle East was telling her ought to be done in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Marcus Mabry: No I didn’t. Perhaps it would be for many of us. But Rice has an amazing ability to comparmentalize. So when she’s on a job–and her job is being Bush’s confidente and consigliere right now–she’s all about the discipline of accomplishing the agenda of that job, and that boss. It was amazing to see that over time, every boss she’s ever worked for was certain that he agreed with her, even though the bosses have been so ideologically different, one from the other.
Vancouver, BC: What surprised you the most about Condi when you interviewed her in person?
Marcus Mabry: What surprised me most was that she’s very warm and gracious. In that, she’s a Southern lady, like her mother was.
In two years of research for the book what surprised me most was that she likes “bad boys” and dated mostly athletes.
San Marino, CA: Will negotiations with Iran and Syria go well today? Do you think Pelosi visit smoothed the way or made this difficult? In implementing in any way the recommendation of the Iraq Study Group, should negotiations with these regimes go forward from a position of strength or weakness? Which is our present position? What part of presenting weakness do the Dems and media such as you play???
Marcus Mabry: Rice has said she will only talk about Iraq if she meets with her Syrian or Iranian counterparts, which is a contradication from what she said when the ISG report came out, which was that you can neatly seperate Iraq and the other issues we have with Iran, like nuclear enrichment. So I can’t know if the negotiations will go well. I think Rice has moved a lot of this issue since the ISG came out and she said that Iran and Syria would cooperate with us on Iraq if they saw it to be in their interests, regardless of whether or not we talked to them. I think the situation on the ground since then has made her believe we have to do something, anything to get the neighbors more actively involved. Can’t answer the rest right now—I type too slowly.
Anywhere, ID: I’m sorry, this book and excerpt is just garbage. Either go for the juicy leering gossip or report on matters of state. You can’t have it both ways. CNN and Newsweek and others are turning into bottom feeders while still pursuing agenda journalism. Hey guys, 2008 is around the corner. Deal with the crises the world faces today and the kind of leadership we need for tomorrow.
Marcus Mabry: I’m sorry you feel that way. I assume you haven’t read the book though. I’ve never heard Hans Morgenthau called leering gossip.
Maui, HI: How does she feel she has done in comparison with past administrations?
Marcus Mabry: She won’t judge that now. She would say they’ve done some things better and some things not as well, but that history will have to judge.
Chapel Hill, NC: How does Rice feel about the way the Bush administration’s reign has turned out? Does she think they have been a success or is she disappointed with public opinion?
Marcus Mabry: She thinks they’ve done the best they could have, and that history will vindicate the unpopular war and many of Bush’s policies. But she also has a motto to life that I think will also effect what she believes when they leave office: “Move on, get over it.” Detachment and discipline, they are contradictory traits in her.
Tampa, FL: What does Rice want to do when Bush’s second term is up, does she want to go back to academia, stay in politics…?
Marcus Mabry: She’s a strong believer in predestination: that God has set a path for us and we follow it. She hasn’t made a deliberate long-term plan since her dream of being a concert pianist evaporated when she was 17. That was her last long-term goal. She doesn’t make them anymore. So, as of today, she actually hasn’t thought about what she’ll do on Jan. 21, 2009. Her friends think she’ll do something corporate: run a company and make some real money. The Republicans may have other ideas if Obama or Clinton–or both–are on the Democrats’ ‘08 ticket.
New York, NY: What do you think will come out of Condi’s meeting with the Syrian foreign minister today? Does it mean the administration is now more willing to talk to Syria?
Marcus Mabry: I think she is. And I think she has been able to move the president closer to that view, since she is firstly, I think, a pragmatist, not an ideologue. I don’t expect much to come out of the meeting though.
Anywhere, ID: Sorry to smear you as a gossip monger but that’s the way your excerpt promotes it but as a journalist I suppose you’re used to such “spin” of your work, both for reasons of notoriety or agenda to achieve the ratings and / or the accolades of the liberal elite.
Marcus Mabry: I think you should read the book. I think it’s fair.
San Antonio, TX: How does Ms. Rice explain her and the president’s curious nonresponse to the PDB of Aug. 11, 2001, warning of an Al Qaeda attack?
Marcus Mabry: She says that the PDB–“Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S.,” I believe–was an “historic” document. Two of the analysts who composed it told the 9/11 Commission that they didn’t see it as historical, though Rice is right in that it talked about bin Laden WANTING to hit the U.S. She says, and this is correct, that the threats were mostly overseas. Tenet seemed to ignore that this week. Rice says the administration was on “high alert.” That, objectively speaking, is not true. But in pre-9/11 times, America – and Bush and Rice – had a very different idea of “high alert” than now.
Waukegan, IL: How does Rice compare to other recent State Dept. secretaries?
Marcus Mabry: She is closer to her president than most. Compared to Powell, she has a lot more power inside the administration,and, because of that, outside in the world. But how will she compare to Kissenger, who reshaped US policy toward China and therefore reshaped Great Power relations, it will depend on what happens in the Middle East. Not today or next year, but in teh final analysis.
Brooklyn, NY: Last year, during the Lebanon-Israel conflict, Condoleezza Rice dismissed Lebanese dead civilians as part of the “birth pangs of the Middle East.” Do you think she regrets saying such a dumb thing? Did it hurt her standing in the Arab world?
Marcus Mabry: It certainly hurt her standing in the Arab world, and in much of Europe and America too. She’s said in the past “I don’t do regret.” I think she realizes it wasn’t the smartest thing to say, or the most sensitive. But I think she really believes that the current bloodshed is the price of the moderates taking on the hardliners in the Middle East and that history, in the end, “tends toward freedom.” But it’s hard to argue such historical inevitability. A realist never would.
Grasonville, MD: Do you believe that Condi is “Presidental Material”?
Marcus Mabry: Well, I think she’s better qualified and with a better temperment for it than our current president was/is.
San Marino CA: You wrote “her job is being Bush’s confidente and consigliere right now”
I thought her job description and therefore her time and devotion to the White House significantly changes between SecState rather than NS Adviser. Please comment on what changes and compare to others who changed like Henry K.
Marcus Mabry: Well, Kissinger did both jobs simultaneously for a time. I think Rice’s relationship with Bush, whatever her job title at the time, will be to give form to his instincts. She is probably one of the two most loyal people in Washington to this president. That’s what I meant.
Vancouver, Canada: American conservatives like to criticise Bill Clinton for “inaction” toward Osama bin Laden before 9/11, but why didn’t President Bush do anything about bin Laden in his first nine months in office? He had Predator drones available to him; Mr. Clinton did not.
Marcus Mabry: There was a huge fight between the CIA and the Pentagon over the Predator. And the Bushies, despite what they said after 9/11, disdained everything Clintonian, including Clinton and outgoing NSA Sandy Berger’s advice to them that OBL and al Qaeda would be their greatest challenge. Pre-9/11, they didn’t get the threat.
Aligarh, india: Do not you think that there is conflicitng ideas in the diplomatic solution of Miss Rice? See the recent state department declaration to Iran as the biggest promotor of terrorism and other hand you are going to take support from the harbinger of terrorism on Iraq , Afghanistan and Lebnan.
Marcus Mabry: There are, without doubts, contradictions to Rice’s foreign policy, as there are to everyone’s though. But I think the most vivid example of the contradictions of Rice and Bush’s foreign policy are seen in the Middle East. During the summer war in Lebanon last year, the administration wanted to support the elected govt. in Beirut (idealism) and yet let Israel degrade Hezbollah, despite the civilian casualties (realism). It’s hard to have it both way, but this admin. is not the first to try and won’t be the last.
Colorado Springs, CO: The Neocons refuse to talk to Iran, while at the same time insisting they don’t want to go to war against them. They are following the exact same path that led to our invasion of Iraq. Do you see any chance to avert yet another disastrous U.S.-initiated war in the Middle East?
Marcus Mabry: I don’t think the adminsitration has the political capital to go to war unilaterally against Iran. I don’t think the neocons would have any problem doing it though.
Cincinnati,OH: My question is,“Why is this liar still allowed to go on national television and continue to spew her lies to the American people?? Hasn’t she done enough damage to this country and it’s people?? She is a disgrace to us all.
Marcus Mabry: She would differ, of course. And so would her closest friends, as they explain in the book, most of whom by the way are liberal Democrats.
San Diego, CA: Is it fair to say Condi Rice is a narcissistic and power-hungry opportunist whose primary goal was the glorification of her own reputation by destroying his colleague reputation and other future leaders?
This question is based on your statement:“Across the political spectrum, many of Rice?s former bosses now question whether she ever identified with them at all. Rice?s central philosophy is power?not realist or idealist or Marxist, but personal power. She does what she has to in order to achieve it in whatever situation she finds herself, and, throughout her career, some would argue, opportunistically conformed to her mentors? opinions in order to rise.”
Marcus Mabry: No, I don’t think so. I think what motivates each of us is more complicated than that. She has tried to follow her parents’ dictate that she had to be twice as good, as a black person and a woman. As her grad school prof told me in the book, she actually believes what she says, in the moment.
Chicago, IL: Why does such a smart woman hold so much esteem for such an incompetent president?
Marcus Mabry: I try to explain in the book that it’s based on her deep respect for his values and his vision, and her personal affection for him. It will be interesting to see how she explains the incompetence of the administration though, once she’s out of office. And maybe writes her own book.
Amarillo, TX: Is Condoleezza Rice Bush’s most influential cabinet member, or does someone else hold more sway over his actions?
Marcus Mabry: Without a doubt, she’s the most influential. She even challenges Cheney in power rankings now, as we saw with the North Korea nuclear deal she rammed through.
Denver, CO: What is the sense of the title of your book? What’s twice as good?
Marcus Mabry: Twice as Good comes from what Rice heard from black adults when she was growing up in segregated Alabama–and what many people of color, women, and minorities have been told growing up: that they had to be “twice as good” as the majority to be considered equal. That has been one of the major motivations in her life, I believe–and even moreso, in the education her parents gave her.
Henderson, NV: I get the sense she’s in over her head, including in her specialty, Russia. What do you think?
Marcus Mabry: I think in many cases, you’re right. And one of her tragic flaws is that she believes to admit that is a sign of weakness, as she believes to admit regret is a sign of weakness.
Eugene, OR: What will Condi likely do after Bush leaves office?
Marcus Mabry: A year off to reflect (and write?) at Stanford probably. Then mostly business to make, as one of her girlfriends told me “real money.” Unless the Republican presidential nominee can convince her that he needs her on his ticket to beat an Obama and/or Clinton ticket. Then, and only then, would she decide whether to pursue politics. Gov. of CA is a possible wild card at some time in the future.
Omaha, Nebraska: Does Condi see the Iraq war as a total mistake, or what? How can she think Bush is anything but an imcompetent boob?
Marcus Mabry: Definitely not. She argues that the US did the right thing, even with no WMD. She thinks that you have to change the Middle East to stop generating people able to be recruited by terrorists, and she believes that’s what they started with the invasion. She sees a very different George Bush than most of the country does–or most of her friends and family see.
Douglas, AZ: What’s your sense of Condi? Is she smart enough to know better, and just goes along with the Bush line to further her career, or does she really believe this? And does she have political ambitions of her own?
Marcus Mabry: She’s phenomenally strong, disciplined and loyal, but overconfident too. All based on the lessons of her youth and family history, as well as her term in Bush’s father’s White House, when the Cold War ended and she helped reunite Germany. She is smart enough to know better, but she believes in what they’re doing. If her next boss is ideologically, she’ll believe that too, though. Not unless God wills it, as her best friend told me.
Salt Lake City, UT: Why did you chose Condi as a subject for your book, what did you find that makes your book more than just your average political bio?
Marcus Mabry: I trace her personal life and talk to those who love her, as well as those who are ardent critics. I get to know her family and their stories. I think there’s a lot more humanity and heart in the book than most political biographies.
New York, NY: How do YOU think Condi will be remembered in history?
Marcus Mabry: I think it’s too early to know.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: My question is easy and simple: Why doesshe, with her mental abilities, pursue do and say wrong things at odd times, such as what she did during Lebanon-Isreal war?
Marcus Mabry: She’s not perfect, though her parents told her she was growing up. They willed to her a supreme self-confidence, which has led to her historic rise, but also an overconfidence that allows her to make mistakes.
San Marino: Could it be that the current opposition, both Rep and Dem, both in halls of Congress, bureaucratic offices and media, is “having it both ways” as much or more than the WH? Criticizing failure and ?quagmire? and allying with pacifist and internationalist and yet they have their own agenda that will involve the protection of American interests and using our military resources. Will Condi and W be able to turn over to Hillary a way that America can fight 2 wars declared on us, by Shia extremists over 25 years ago and by Sunni radicals 15 years ago?
Marcus Mabry: I don’t think pacifists are finding any allies in the Rep or Dem opposition these days. I think there are many internationalists in the admin, including Rice. And protecting American interests, I think, is a laudable goal for American leaders, whatever their politics. It’s the basis of realism.
Marcus Mabry: Thanks for joining us today.
