My Favorite Government Woman

I just wanted to take a moment and focus on a woman who I personally think has made a positive impact on our nation, and maybe more importantly, our world. I really respect her. Some people have asked her if she will ever run for President, or would like to be McCain's running mate. She always responds that she is not interested in any political office that would require voting to get elected. That makes me respect her even more because I think it shows how she truly has a lack of desire for power, that what she does, she does because she believes it really will make a difference and make the world a better, happier place to live. Here are some random facts that you may or may not have known about my favorite government woman:


Condoleeza Rice is the first black woman to serve as Secretary of State. I love that!

She used to be a political science professor at Stanford.

Condoleeza also pioneered a new movement called Transformational Democracy: basically a movement to revive the role and respect and constructive participation of American diplomats serving.

She speaks 5 languages.

She served as the Soviet and East European Affairs Advisor during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and German reunification. (under George H. W. Bush)


Condoleeza grew up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama....one of her girlfriends lost her life in a church bombing. Of that incident she stated "I remember the bombing of that Sunday School at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. I did not see it happen, but I heard it happen, and I felt it happen, just a few blocks away at my father’s church. It is a sound that I will never forget, that will forever reverberate in my ears. That bomb took the lives of four young girls, including my friend and playmate, Denise McNair. The crime was calculated to suck the hope out of young lives, bury their aspirations. But those fears were not propelled forward, those terrorists failed." – Condoleezza Rice, Commencement 2004, Vanderbilt University, May 13, 2004

As Stanford's Provost, Rice was responsible for managing the university's multi-billion dollar budget. The school at that time was running a deficit of $20 million. When Rice took office, she promised that the budget deficit would be balanced within "two years." Coit Blacker, Stanford's deputy director of the Institute for International Studies, said there "was a sort of conventional wisdom that said it couldn't be done ... that [the deficit] was structural, that we just had to live with it." Two years later, Rice announced that the deficit had been eliminated and the university was holding a record surplus of over $14.5 million.

Rice drew protests when, as provost, she departed from the practice of applying affirmative action to tenure decisions and unsuccessfully sought to consolidate the university's ethnic community centers. (In other words, she recognized everything that is wrong with the country's obsession with being 'politically correct' and got criticized for suggesting that people ought to be rewarded on merit rather than ethnic/demographic descriptions.)

She has promoted peace talks between Palestine and Israel for years.

Condoleeza does not want the government to force its views on abortions on citizens, one way or the other. But she has said she is against late-term abortion.

Racial slurs have been made about her repeatedly, yet it is never a "big" enough deal in the media for public apologies to be made. For example: radio host John Sylvester called her "Aunt Jemima" and a "black trophy" of the Bush Administration. Cartoons by liberal Pat Oliphant portrayed her as President Bush's thick-lipped parrot. Nationally-syndicated commentator Ted Rall referred to Secretary Rice as President Bush's "House Nigga." Gary Trudeau showed President Bush calling her "Brown Sugar" in his Doonesbury comic strip. The fact that she doesn't make a really big deal out of these rude things that other politicians can get really strung up about shows how mature she is, and how she refuses to stoop to other people's level.

She has been listed on Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People list four times: only 3 people in the entire world have been on the list this many times.

Condoleeza refuses to deal with terrorists.

"We will not meet the challenges of the 21st century through military or any other means alone. Our national security requires the integration of our universal principles with all elements of our national power: our defense, our diplomacy, our development assistance, our democracy promotion efforts, free trade, and the good work of our private sector and society. And it is the State Department, more than any other agency of government, that is called to lead this work."