Mar 25, 2004

Wicked Witch Of The White House

Last January, Condoleezza Rice sat down with a NYTimes reporter to talk, for the first time, about her job as National Security Adviser.

Near the end of the conversation, throughout which Rice seemed to swing between an aggressive and defensive stance, she offered an interesting metaphor about her role in the White House. She said she would look back on her job as that of a pianist in a chamber music group.

"The pianist is always facing the fact that this beast that is the grand piano can just overwhelm in sound and volume and drama any string, or all of the strings together," she said. "So you want your playing to have personality, but you don't want it to be front and center, overwhelming. It has to be part of the team."

As someone as guarded and concerned with appearance as Ms. Rice is, the disclosures made by her former subordinate, Dick Clark, regarding the Bush Administration's disregard for the terrorist threat, has obviously unleashed the beast.

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