THE CONDI CONTEXT, PART 2

There are plenty of editorials to choose from this morning to describe Condoleezza Rice's testimony at yesterday's 9/11 hearing. (Here's the complete transcript.) We made our snap judgment about the Condi context yesterday while the hearing was still in progress: "She may well be remembered as Condoleezza ("Cover Your Ass") Rice."

Today's New York Times editorial called her "utterly unconvincing when she tried to portray Al Qaeda as anything approaching a top concern for the White House." The Washington Post editorial also says she was "unconvincing," notes that she "didn't add much to the administration's previous explanations," remarks that she was "both contradictory and implausible" and deplores the fact that Rice could not accept the idea that "mistakes were made and more could have been done. It's a shame that President Bush and his top national security aide haven't offered that honest accounting."

In his quick piece yesterday, political analyst Howard Fineman wrote in Newsweek: "Stylistically and tactically she was serviceable." He too pointed out Rice's unwillingness to take responsibility: "Asked at the hearing why she hadn't pressed the FBI more closely about what it knew, or didn't know, about domestic terrorist threats, Rice acted as though the question was an odd one: it wasn't her job."

As to our Maximum Leader's whereabouts on the day of the 9/11 attacks, Fineman writes:

Remember the picture of the president in the classroom, being told of the attack by chief of staff Andy Card? The American people thought they were seeing a man suddenly thrust into a grave challenge no one could have anticipated. That won him enormous sympathy and patience from the voters. But what if he was literally on vacation—at the ranch in Crawford—when he should have been making sure that someone was ringing alarm bells throughout the bureaucracy?

Which brings us to this morning's Times column by Bob Herbert, who comments on the fearless Leader's whereabouts yesterday: "The president called Ms. Rice from his pickup truck on the ranch to tell her she had done a great job before the panel. It doesn't get more surreal than that. Mr. President, there's a war on. You might consider hopping a plane to Washington."

How about we retire him to his ranch permanently, where he can ride around in his pickup truck to his heart's content?

Postscript: Wading in the Velvet Sea blogger Ryan McGee says he put on his "investigative hat (the one without the beer straws in it) and waded through the actual testimony transcripts." His exclusive analysis deconstructs Condi's pop-cult context.