Condoleeza Takes State By Storm

Yet another reason to love Condoleeza Rice (and to go public with my crush on her):

With Americans suffering a reputation as geographically challenged, Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) handed out pocket atlases to the U.S. press corps on her first trip abroad as Secretary of State.

"I would not want anybody to feel lost" the former university provost quipped as she handed out 18 copies of the books on her plane.

Of course, the reporter gets it wrong. This wasn't a shot at Americans' lack of geographic knowledge (why research a place until you need to liberate it, I say), it was a shot at the media and their love affair with Rice's predecessor, "Leaky" Colin Powell.

Her predecessor Colin Powell (news - web sites) was criticized for traveling too little when some more face-to-face diplomacy might have helped win over allies to radical U.S. policies.

Aside from the editorializing use of "radical", I love how the reporter here notes criticism of Colin Powell's travel schedule as though the MSM reported on it before he was retired.

The bottom line is Powell and his henchman Richard Armitage saw themselves as the world's ambassadors to the Bush administration, not the Bush administration's
ambassador's to the world. The clearest indication that Rice sees things quite differently is her racking up the frequent flyer mileage Powell avoided.