The Condi Doctrine

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Her biggest achievement has been at home: Administration officials say Rice has seized the policymaking initiative from hawks close to Cheney and Rumsfeld. "She has recentered American foreign policy in the State Department," says Burns. That shift has been most evident in the Administration's policy toward North Korea. Although Rice is known to have expressed skepticism that Kim Jong Il is prepared to give up his nuclear arsenal in exchange for promises of aid and trade, she nonetheless secured White House approval to allow Christopher Hill, the U.S. envoy to the six-party negotiations with Pyongyang, to exchange views with the North Koreans face to face--authority that was never granted to Powell. With Hill at the six-party talks in Beijing last week, Rice lobbied other members of the Bush team not to undermine Hill's efforts and phoned Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing in Beijing after North Korea balked at a proposal for future talks. Even if the talks collapse, the Administration's show of support for diplomacy may give the U.S. greater leverage in persuading allies to take tougher measures against Pyongyang. "We've made more progress in the past 30 days than we have in four years," Burns says.

For all her personal emollience, Rice's most outstanding asset remains her relationship with Bush. In private meetings, says an Israeli official, "it takes only about five minutes to see how close Rice is to the President." For months after Bush gave Rice her new job, he mocked her relentlessly, addressing her with exaggerated puffery as "MADAME SECRETARY!" whenever she entered the room. "He likes to rib her," says a senior White House official--which in Bush's world is a sign of his affection. Both rely heavily on the intimate bond forged during the first term. They see each other in weekly small-group meetings but frequently discuss policy issues in private, often over lunch or dinner. When Rice is on the road, Bush phones her at all hours. On the plane back from a surprise one-day visit to Iraq in May, she returned the favor, reaching Bush in the Oval Office to report on a meeting with Iraq's Shi'ite leaders in which she got them to agree to include more Sunnis in the drafting of a new constitution. "She was charged up," says a senior White House official.