Whether it’s headlines on the Drudge Report or speculation about her vice presidential prospects in the mainstream media, Condoleezza Rice remains a figure of endless fascination for political watchers, and as one Politico reporter put it: “the irresistible, all-too-perfect fantasy candidate of the Republican Party.”
The former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State under President George W. Bush has repeatedly insisted that she has no interest in being Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running-mate, but questions about whether she was being vetted by the Romney campaign occupied the media for weeks this summer.
Rice “has such an extraordinary personal arc to her story,” says Rick Wilson, a Republican media strategist who runs a consulting firm in Tallahassee, Florida, citing her “willingness to confront the toughest issues of the time, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. She has fierce intellectual firepower and tremendous personal discipline.”
The announcement that Rice will be among the featured speakers at the Republican Party’s nominating convention later this month essentially ended speculation that she is under serious consideration for the Romney ticket – none of the candidates thought to be on the short list have been named as convention speakers. And Rice was spotted in London watching the Olympic Games on Tuesday, while the top VP contenders were stumping for Romney stateside.
And yet, enthusiasm for Rice hasn’t waned, and talk about what Rice as running mate could do for Romney, including lending key foreign policy experience to the ticket, hasn’t completely died down.
Andrea Mitchell, NBC News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent, says the buzz about Rice as a potential running mate began with a speech she gave before a closed-door Romney fundraiser in Park City, Utah, in June. It was after that speech that conservative blogger Matt Drudge posted speculation that Rice was under consideration by the Romney team (though some believed Drudge’s real aim was to deflect attention away from negative media headlines on Romney’s time at Bain Capital).
“I think she was really impressive to the particular audience in Park City,” Mitchell said. “And that’s what started this. She gave such a strong speech – she’s a very good public speaker. There aren’t too many people with her particular portfolio.”
The Park City audience reacted enthusiastically to her speech, Mitchell said, “and that audience included Mitt and Ann Romney, so clearly that’s when this started to percolate.”
An improbable fit for the GOP
In many ways, Rice hardly seems the ideal candidate for the Republican Party of 2012. She is believed to be pro-choice, was a key member of an administration whose foreign policy is controversial at best, considered a failure at worst, including the now-unpopular war in Iraq. She is linked to the Bush administration’s widely panned response to Hurricane Katrina (she was shopping in New York at the time, and has since said she shouldn’t have left Washington following the disaster. And she is remembered by many Americans for a singular moment: a Congressional hearing at which she read the title of a national security briefing she had given then-President Bush the August before the 9/11 terror attacks. It was titled “Bin Laden determined to attack inside the United States.”
She has also made frank statements about race, and America’s history of slavery, that hardly endeared her to the party’s conservative base, which largely reacted negatively to the idea of her on the Republican ticket.
Still, Rice supporters point to her as the kind of candidate – an African-American woman, a southerner, whose childhood friend was killed in the bombings of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 — who could give the GOP a much-needed facelift.
“Without any shadow of a doubt she is a star in the party,” said Ron Christie, a Republican political strategist and former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney. “She is brilliant, she is very personable and she knows her way around the corridors of power better than most people in the world, let alone within the Republican Party.”
“Her personal story and background [would be] real value added to any ticket,” added Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. “She can articulate what it was like growing up in the south at a time of transition for America, and talk about how she overcame, and how that’s the spirit that Republicans have fought for — overcoming those obstacles put in place by government, or by others, to access the American dream. I think that’s a powerful story, and I know there’s a lot of love for Condi out there, irrespective of her views on social issues, and I think there’s a lot of genuine respect for her. I think if Romney were to pick her, there would be a tremendous rallying around her.”
But neither Christie nor Steele believes that will happen, mainly because they say Rice doesn’t want the job.
“I take Condi at everything that she’s said publicly at face value,” Christie says. “She has said she has no interest in running for elective office. One thing that she has told me and others is that her dream job is to be commissioner of the NFL.” Christie adds that “from firsthand conversations I’ve had with people at Stanford who work with her, she loves what she’s doing (as a political science professor and senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution) and she has no desire to run for office.”
Steele agrees that the job Rice wants is as the leader of the National Football League, not the free world. And he adds that she is savvy enough to understand that she is probably not what the present Republican Party is looking for.
“Condi believes very much in the idea of public service and I think that if she felt in her heart that she had something in this moment to give to the country as part of a Romney administration, then I think that if the call would come she’d take it,” Steele said. “But she’s also a very pragmatic woman and she recognizes the politics that drive a decision for good or bad, and she doesn’t want to be a part of anyone’s political narrative.”
Steele is skeptical of the idea that Republicans could improve their image with black voters by adding Rice to the ticket, even if it were on the table.
“It’s not going to get done because you slap a photograph of Condi Rice on [a] placard and black folks are going to say all is forgiven,” Steele said of the party’s past failure to do more than cosmetic outreach to the black community – something he says he tried to reverse as RNC chair. “We have to work at building this relationship back.”
Christie disagrees that the GOP has a racial problem, pointing to the election of Nikki Hailey as South Carolina governor, and Allen West and Tim Scott to Congress from Florida and South Carolina, respectively.
“The party has consistently sought to improve its standing with minority communities,” Christie said. “I honestly don’t think anyone would look at [Rice] and say she can solve our problem with women or minorities, because we don’t have a problem with women and we have been aggressive about seeking to appeal to all people, regardless of race.”
Christie says that it’s Rice’s unique qualities that are attracting attention to her as a possible vice president.
“Her personality and experience would make her a qualified candidate for any elected office,” Christie says. “I’m glad to see that people are viewing her as a viable candidate to become the next vice president, even though I don’t think it’s a job that she wants.”
On that, Christie and Steele agree.
“If the Romney people were serious and not just using her as a midsummer distraction, as some have said in the media, I’m sure they walked away saying she mixes up the conversation,” said Steele. “She’s definitely one of the smartest, best prepared people out there to be vice president.”
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