Whee Time!(on the right)(Column)

NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 16

SO it will be Condoleezza Rice. We must deny the temptation to ruffles and flourishes which, heaven knows, one might revel in for a good hour. A woman! An African-American! An academic! Who had a high post at a tough, competitive major university! And--mirabile dictu--a conservative!

Okay, slide by that and concentrate on the theoretical and historical challenges she faces. Some of these she had a role in creating; some, she just bumped into.

Begin with Iraq. Tony Blair was just in town, injecting great drafts of high-octane enthusiasm for the challenge of bringing democracy to the Arab states. In passing, we need to acknowledge Blair as a high presence on the historical scene. The stand he has taken is not popular with his own political party, but he reckons to run on his association with President Bush's crusade, and to win reelection next spring. It has to be dismaying when a major European figure makes plans which can succeed or fail according as two or three thousand insurgents do or don't succeed in aborting the democratic enterprise in Iraq. But he is surely doing the right thing.

Condoleezza Rice isn't going to win or lose in the next six months. Mr. Bush has not brought in a specialist whose credentials get validated or found spurious in 90 days. He has personal knowledge of how she winds in and out of critical decisions, and he trusts her judgment and seeks her advice.

She identifies with the optimism of Tony Blair on the general thesis that the West should encourage the growth of democracy in the Arab states. The general feeling is that we are headed in the right direction and that huge lessons have been learned from the experience of Afghanistan, where women, of all people, wound their way to the polls and registered their vote. The distance between the high-water mark of the Taliban and the democratic exercise in Afghanistan is little more than three years--a fleck ...