1115.org

I’ve been harping on this for a while now, so I’m glad to see the mainstream media finally starting to focus attention on what an unholy mess Condi Rice has made of managing the Department of State.

Glenn Kessler had an article in WaPo on Saturday titled “Rice’s Management at Issue”:

Shortly after Condoleezza Rice took charge of the 57,000-person State Department in 2005, she said she relished the challenge of “line responsibility” in leading a large organization. “I really enjoy that,” she said in an interview. “Some of my favorite times here have been my budget and high-level management reviews.”

Nearly three years later, Rice is under fire from inside and outside the State Department for a range of crises that are largely managerial in nature — the failure to monitor private security guards in Iraq, the delays in opening the huge U.S. Embassy under construction in Baghdad and the resistance of some Foreign Service officers to being forced to serve there. Over the summer, the department also fell woefully short in processing passport applications, resulting in ruined vacation plans for many Americans.

There’s a fair degree of the bastardized version of “fair and balanced” in Kessler’s story. And he unaccountably left out some very good stuff—the allegations that the Baghdad embassy was built using slave labor, for instance, or the unbelievable conduct of the State Department’s Inspector General, who systematically tried to cover up the misconduct he was supposed to investigate. There’s also the theater-of-the-absurd situation whereby the top official responsible for oversight of the Baghdad embassy construction contract is barred from entering Iraq by Ambassador Ryan Crocker (due to previous acts of commission by said official), but continues in that oversight role anyway.

But Kessler did at least include Rice’s priceless remark to Waxman’s committee:

At a contentious hearing before the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee last month, Democrats aggressively questioned Rice over what one lawmaker labeled “seriously deficient” management. Asked to explain her oversight of State’s private security contractors, Rice offered an answer that, to some lawmakers, seemed to deflect responsibility: “I certainly regret that we did not have the kind of oversight that I would have insisted upon.”

To some bloggers too, I guess. I would have loved to hear the complete thought. The kind of oversight she would have insisted upon if what? If she were in charge? If she had any idea how to run things? If she wasn’t too busy fantasizing about her “husband”?

And perhaps Kessler’s omissions will simply lead to another article by someone else very soon. Maybe in the NYT this time?

Regardless, it’s still a welcome development that the media is starting to hold Condi’s feet to the fire over some of the garbage that’s gone down in the State Dept. on her watch. If nothing else, it may establish Condi as the biggest beneficiary of the Bush administration policy that the buck never stops anywhere.