CONDI

It’s hard to know what her actual foreign policy instincts will be once she comes out from under the pincer movement of Powell, Rumsfeld and Cheney. Will her Scowcroftian background re-emerge? I doubt it. If Rumsfeld leaves, we might get a better idea. But my guess is that he won’t. Now that Powell has gone, Rummy will see it as a matter of cojones that he stay for a while, if only to prevent sufficient manpower being deployed to win the war in Iraq, and to let memories of Abu Ghraib fade. (Sorry, Rummy, but mine won’t.) So: no change with the appearance of real change. In fact, the likelihood of any new tack in foreign affairs just collapsed. But the real genius of the Rice appointment is domestic. She will become the second most powerful African-American woman in America. And she will become that as a Republican icon. That has to have an impact on the way at least a small minority of black voters will view Bush (and not a few other minority voters). Add in Clarence Thomas as Supreme Court Chief Justice, and you have a diversity record in top appointments that puts every previous Democrat to shame. That’s partly what Bush is doing. He won’t admit it, of course. But then it only works if he doesn’t.