WP, pg1, Condoleezza Rice's Management at Issue: "aloof, reliant on aides, out of touch"

Rice's Management at Issue
Critics Cite Blackwater, Baghdad Embassy and Passports
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 10, 2007; Page A01


Many in the State Department's rank and file see Secretary Condoleezza Rice as aloof, reliant on her closest aides and out of touch with the other employees. (Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images)

Shortly after Condoleezza Rice took charge of the 57,000-person State Department in 2005, she said she relished the challenge of "line responsibility" in leading a large organization. "I really enjoy that," she said in an interview. "Some of my favorite times here have been my budget and high-level management reviews."

Nearly three years later, Rice is under fire from inside and outside the State Department for a range of crises that are largely managerial in nature -- the failure to monitor private security guards in Iraq, the delays in opening the huge U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad and the resistance of some Foreign Service officers to being forced to serve there. Over the summer, the department also fell woefully short in processing passport applications, resulting in ruined vacation plans for many Americans.

Within the department, Rice is viewed by many rank-and-file employees as an aloof manager who relies on a tight circle of aides, leaving her out of touch with the rest of the staff, in contrast to her predecessor, Colin L. Powell, a retired Army general who won praise from workers for treating them as though they were his "troops." At her last town hall meeting with employees 2 1/2 years ago, Rice told staffers: "I consider myself the chief management officer of this department." But a poll by the American Foreign Service Association indicated that an overwhelming majority did not feel that Rice was their advocate.

The latest controversy about forced assignments to Iraq has only heightened internal resentment of Rice's management style. "I personally do not like the ultimatum-giving," said one Foreign Service officer. "It is not what State is about."...

At a contentious hearing before the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee last month, Democrats aggressively questioned Rice over what one lawmaker labeled "seriously deficient" management. Asked to explain her oversight of State's private security contractors, Rice offered an answer that, to some lawmakers, seemed to deflect responsibility: "I certainly regret that we did not have the kind of oversight that I would have insisted upon." Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said he was taken aback by Rice's responses. "She acted as if she had nothing to do with it," he said....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/09/AR2007110902450.html?nav=most_emailed

Many in the State Department's rank and file see Secretary Condoleezza Rice as aloof, reliant on her closest aides and out of touch with the other employees.

That line right there makes her seem like a match made in heaven (though one wonders if such people are really made in heaven) for the bushes...

When someone is SO grossly over her head that they can't do the job assigned, they close down their emotions so as not to let their defensiveness show.

Instead of saying:

And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.


Something on the order of:

And this is the City of Washington
The home of the miserable sods
Where the flunkies talk only to W,
And that moron talks only to God

over the past seven years. No responsibility, no accountability, no engagement.

She had so much promise. She grew up in the segregated South. She saw her friends killed by a racist's bomb. Her parents and her friends' parents marched and fought for civil rights. She had a wonderful education. She is smart.

Then she met George.

She hitched her wagon to George's star and will forever go down in history as a tragic, pathetic, sycophant.

Condolezza's future is stuff made up of Greek tragedies. She will end her days alone and playing the piano in a room somewhere humming softly and crying.