Rice's Toughest Mission

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So 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 time available for the task ahead, it's admirable that Rice still exudes optimism. Asked whether this is an interesting time to be Secretary of State, she laughs. "No better moment," she says. Now she needs to seize it.