Word: rice
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Adultery isn't a political disqualifier for him," Republican consultant Dan Schnur tells TIME. It has been 20 years since Gary Hart came clean about his extramarital affair with Donna Rice, he recalls, which ruined the Democratic Senator's 1988 presidential bid. Many more political sex scandals have made headlines since. "Bill Clinton rode out the Lewinsky scandal, because it was such a small percentage of the overall amount of information that voters had about him," Schnur says. "Right now, most people outside of San Francisco only know two things about Gavin Newsom: he supports same-sex marriage...
That points to the larger dilemma for Rice. For all her ambition, she is caught in a second-term Administration whose political capital is dwindling. A rise in the body count in Iraq or more overt provocations toward Iran could bring the White House into open confrontation with a hostile Congress intent on restraining Bush's range of movement. And Rice's decision to redouble her efforts in the Middle East means she will be less able to attend to other issues on which U.S. leadership could produce success--such as stopping genocide in Africa or fighting poverty...
...most optimistic diplomats, including Rice, hope that U.S. engagement on Palestine could lead to other areas of cooperation among "moderate" Middle East forces, all of whom have an interest in checking the influence of Shi'ite Iran and subduing radical Sunni groups aligned with al-Qaeda. If that happens, the U.S. may be able to build a security arrangement that could limit some of the damage done by the misadventure in Iraq. "What [the Bush team] may be stumbling toward is grand strategy by accident, that includes diplomacy, economic muscle, military force and all of your capacity to lead other...
...least some of the doubts trace back to Rice herself. At 52, she is no longer the ascending star she was at the start of the Bush presidency. Rice's influence with Bush is considerable, thanks to their personal bond and the departure of her rival, Donald Rumsfeld; but few believe she will ever usurp Vice President Dick Cheney's policymaking supremacy. Her associates say she is serious about retreating from public life at the end of Bush's term. For someone so devoted to regimen--up at 4:45 a.m. when she is in Washington, she works out, eats...
...what can Rice do? If she hopes to be remembered in the same breath as the Secretaries of State she most admires--George Marshall, Dean Acheson, George Shultz--Rice will have to shed her famous equipoise, risk failure in the Middle East and begin to deal with the world as it is, rather than how the Administration wishes it to be. Restoring U.S. prestige will involve the kind of trade-offs between interests and ideals that she and Bush have so far been reluctant to make--but that are the stock-in-trade of successful U.S. diplomacy. Given the limited...