USC Center on Public Diplomacy | John Brown's PD Review

Direct link to this article: http://uscpublicdiplomacy.com/index.php/newsroom/johnbrown_detail/2339/

Published: JUN 9, 2007 - 7:48AM PDT

John Brown's Public Diplomacy Review
John Brown aggregates all the most recent public diplomacy related news, including current issues in U.S. foreign policy, international broadcasting and media, propaganda, cultural diplomacy, educational exchanges, anti-Americanism, and the reception of American popular culture abroad.

FORGET KAREN HUGHES—WHERE’S CONDI? PRESENTED WITH THANKS
by John H. Brown

Forget Karen Hughes—where’s Condi?

Anon (June 7)

How ‘bout that “G-8” Summit? (Or, as I prefer to call it, the G-7 + Russia.) It’s the biggest foreign policy event of the year so far—the heads of state of the world’s 7 largest industrial powers are there, along with Putin. Think of the huddling going on behind the scenes as the presidents and prime ministers consult with their foreign ministers, float trial balloons, cook up deals, etc. Condi and her advisers must be swamped as they fine-tune scenarios, prepare last-minute demarches and hand the POTUS [President of the United States] the final, final version of his briefing notes. Then there are all those photo ops she has to look her best for! Except—except where’s Condi? Turns out she’s right here in Washington, DC! Foreign policy questions of the highest importance are being discussed in Heiligendamm, but the Secretary of State has stayed behind to attend to such earth-shattering matters as (former Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs) Dina Powell’s goodbye party on Wednesday. Instead it’s her deputy, John Negroponte, who’s at the POTUS’ side in Germany. W. and Pooty-Poot are practically throwing rocks at each other, but the nation’s top-ranking kremlinologist is sitting this one out back in the dugout.

So what’s the deal? Can this be just an innocent coincidence? Or is it all part of a larger plot? Consider the following:

Scenario #1. She’s about to be fired. She’s seen the writing on the wall and is frantically trying to find a pro football team to run. Probability: most unlikely. The closer you get to the POTUS, the happier he is to tolerate your incompetence. Cf. Rumsfeld and Gonzales.

Scenario #2. Maybe she’s trying to ease her way out—completely of her own free will—as she lines up her next gig, perhaps as a university president somewhere. She’s still young and ambitious—why not discretely slip into a lifeboat before the sinking Titanic sucks everything around it down to the bottom of the Atlantic?

Scenario #3. It’s actually all about Cheney—he’s the one who’s on his way out (no doubt of his own choosing as well). W’s legacy is doomed; now the main concern is The Plutocracy and its Party. No doubt Cheney and Rove understand full well that the better the public gets to know the current joker crop of Republican contenders (especially that hideous buffoon, Fred Thompson), the more the GOP is doomed in ‘08. But what if they were to run their first African-American nominee? How to stage it? To fill her job at State, you’d need someone rock-solid to take over, hence Negroponte (as if his life-long dream was to quit being DNI in favor of playing second fiddle at State...). To raise Condi’s profile, what better way than to make her Veep (after Cheney conveniently resigns)? That way she’d have the bully pulpit and become the favored daughter at the Republican Convention in St. Paul.

Say what you will, but it’s most bizarre that Condi has suddenly vanished from the public eye.

P.S. Cheney’s going in for a “routine heart exam” tomorrow. http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=2007-06-07T164609Z_01_N07210285_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHENEY.xml

Anon is a valued PDPBR subscriber.