With Rumsfeld gone, Rice now target of war anger

Story Highlights

• With Rumsfeld gone, Rice becomes a focus of frustration over war
• Secretary is grilled and criticized by both sides of aisle in Congress
• Former secretaries of state, security advisers also criticize Rice

By Elise Labott
CNN Washington Bureau

Adjust font size:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Condoleezza Rice's appearance Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was downright tame compared with the reception she got last month, when she sat before the same committee to explain President Bush's "way forward" in Iraq.

On January 11, the secretary of state got an earful from both sides of the aisle. Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, a Democrat who is running for president, called the Bush administration's Iraq policy "a fool's paradise," and Sen. Chuck Hagel, another possible White House hopeful, called Bush's plan "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder since Vietnam."

The tone this week was friendlier, but the criticism was much more pointed at Rice's diplomacy and her stewardship of the State Department. Committee Chairman Joe Biden, another Democratic contender for president, warned Rice that Iraq was sucking up the government's time, attention and resources and wondered aloud whether the secretary had the time to address the myriad other problems facing the United States. (Watch how Rice's star has dimmed )

Republican Sen. George Voinovich took Rice to task for not filling high-level vacancies at the State Department. Nobody, he said, was minding the store.

These are rough and uncharted waters for Rice, who sailed through the first six years of the Bush administration relatively unsullied as her colleagues -- particularly former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- took the heat for the quagmire in Iraq.

A perfect mix of substance and style

It wasn't always this hard.

After serving as national security adviser during President Bush's first term, Rice arrived at the State Department in 2005 a celebrity -- epitomizing that perfect mix of substance and style. She graced the pages of Vogue magazine and landed on Vanity Fair's best-dressed list.

During her first year she was praised for repairing the Bush administration's "go it alone image" by engaging Europe on the Iran nuclear issue and Asian allies on North Korea.

But it wasn't all smooth sailing. As the war in Iraq went south, so did Rice's plan to spread democracy throughout the Middle East. Her comments about sectarian tensions in the region being the result of the "birth pangs of the Middle East" were followed by a lackluster diplomatic attempt to intervene in Israel's war with Hezbollah.

As the problems in the Middle East mounted, Rice turned to old authoritarian allies, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, for help.

Lightning rod for criticism

Rice remains the most popular member of the Bush administration; her approval ratings in polls are higher than Bush's.

But the honeymoon is clearly over. Rice has inherited the role Rumsfeld played as a primary spokesman of the Iraq war -- and the primary lightning rod for criticism about it.

At a time when the American public and Congress have soured deeply on the war, they are now taking their frustrations out on the administration as a whole, and Rice in particular.

Even her predecessors are getting in on the game. During a rare series of hearings with former secretaries of state and national security advisers -- including James Baker, Henry Kissinger, Madeline Albright, Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski -- Rice was taken to task for failing to practice the art of diplomacy.

"That's what we hire a secretary of state for, not to sit there and proclaim categorical statements, but to engage in the process," former national security adviser Brzezinski said.

Baker and Albright, both former secretaries of state, were particularly critical of Rice's refusal to engage with Iran and Syria.

Rice told The Washington Post in December that the "compensation" required to strike a deal with Iran and Syria would be too high.

But Baker, co-chairman of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that recommended U.S. officials open a diplomatic front with Iran and Syria, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that when he was secretary of state "we practiced diplomacy full time, and it paid off."

Said Albright, "Talking to governments about hard problems is what diplomacy is all about."

Losing her mojo?

Now the headlines are asking whether Rice has lost her mojo.

A recent Economist editorial, entitled "The Falling Star of Condoleezza Rice," said the secretary of state "is not the woman she once was."

But there are signs Rice is trying to turn things around. Next week she will embark on a new push to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, seen as key to keeping Arab support for the war in Iraq and for a more robust policy to deal with Iran's nuclear program and its support for Islamic extremists in the region.

Beating back Tehran diplomatically may prove to be Rice's other primary challenge in her last two years in office. While the Bush administration insists it does not want a military conflict with Tehran, the rhetoric from Washington sounds very similar to that in the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq.

If she pulls off either, Rice could save the Bush administration's foreign policy legacy from being merely an indictment of the mess in Iraq. If she fails on both, she may leave the State Department with a much more dangerous world to deal with than the one she found when she arrived.