Al's Opinions

Last Sunday I watched an interview with Dr. Condoleezza Rice on the 60 MINUTES show on CBS. Dr. Rice is a person who has had a distinguished academic career. You can read all about her at Google by typing her name in the box. It's enough for me to say that she is a well-educated person. She is also an accomplished musician, as she demonstrated in the 60 MINUTES interview.

The more I find out about her the more I wonder why she is so loyal to and supportive of George Bush. I wonder the same about many of his other supporters in his administration. Surely they can see that he is out of his depth in foreign affairs. Surely they can see that he has managed, or allowed others to manage his War in Iraq. Either he is a bungler or he has delegated decisions to other bunglers. What are these people thinking?

I wish I had a good answer to my own question. There are several possible answers. I pose them as possible reasons for Dr. Rice to give up academia and positions of influence in industry to serve George W. Bush:

• Having tasted power at Stanford University and at the corporation where she was a VIP, she decided to achieve power in government, and associated herself with Bush whom she saw as a probable future President.
  
• In spite of her learning, especially as she obtained her doctorate in International Studies at the University of Denver, she truly believes in Bush's stated program. (In fact, it seemed that she adopted the program as her own in the 60 MINUTES interview.)
• In spite of her scholarly accomplishments, she is really as dim-witted as Mr. Bush.
• George Bush has a powerful spiritual and psychological influence on persons close to him. He is like Svengali, or like Rasputin.

You choose. I think these four possible answers apply also to other seemingly intelligent and sensible people in the Bush administration.