Is Condi The Problem?

Top Administration officials gloss over these splits by saying they have all known one another a long time, that arguments sharpen policy and that they all just serve the President. But some observers believe the turmoil has meant that Rice has been unable to assert the traditional role of National Security Adviser. After September 2002, for example, she set up four interagency task forces, chaired by her staff members, to examine various aspects of Iraq policy. The process never got much traction. Both Defense and State had their planning operations on Iraq (looking at very different things in very different ways), and according to a participant, Pentagon officials regularly skipped meetings of Rice's group that was planning for a postwar Iraq. Rumsfeld, for one, has not always treated Rice with due deference. At a planning meeting on the war in Iraq and its aftermath, an organization chart was passed around at the top of which were the initials NSA. "What's NSA?" asked Rumsfeld. "That would be me," replied Rice. A senior Republican statesman outside the Administration thinks Defense has undermined the proper functioning of the machinery of government. Rumsfeld, says this source, is "a master of bureaucratic manipulation. He just frustrates the system until he gets his way." Cheney, defending Rice's handling of the Administration's heavyweights, insists that "she's tough and decisive when she needs to be tough and decisive."

In the past few months there have been signs that the NSC has become more central to at least one crucial area of policy. Since last fall, the council has had responsibilities for coordination between Washington and the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq--in effect supplanting the Pentagon. Rice speaks at 6:30 every morning to Paul (Jerry) Bremer, the U.S. proconsul in Baghdad, and--augmented by experienced operators like Robert Blackwill, her top staff member on Iraq--has taken the lead in working through tough issues like the Iraqi constitution draft.

It follows that as the U.S. prepares to hand power over to the Iraqis in June, even as attacks on American forces and their Iraqi supporters continue, Rice can expect to remain in the hot seat. The commission examining Sept. 11 will continue to do its work, nosing around the decisions and nondecisions of the bureaucracy before that awful Tuesday. Clarke's belief that the Administration needlessly compromised its ability to fight terrorism by invading Iraq may begin to resonate with the public. Rice's reputation, so stellar three years ago, now depends on whether, by November, voters think the terrorists are in retreat and Iraq has been stabilized. If both things happen, Rice will be back on the air, this time leading not an attack but a parade. --With reporting by John F. Dickerson/Washington