The President is Always Right

Stanford proudly welcomed home its most famous alumnus. This professor hadn’t wasted her time off, relaxing; she had been busy making the right policies. For eight years, extending over two, entire terms in office, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Professor, now 54, had stood at the side of America’s forty-third president, serving him first as security advisor and finally as secretary of state, helping propagate his ideas about the “War on Terror,” the “Axis of Evil” and his struggles against “Islamofascisism.”

Now she’ll return to her previous work site. Since March 1, Rice has been working in the arch-conservative Hoover Institute at liberal Stanford University in California. The university administration promised her a “respectful engagement”, including an honorary banquet attended by 20 students chosen by drawing lots.

The students were allowed to pose questions, which had to be submitted and cleared in advance because, after all, politicians attending public gatherings have to be assured of cutting a good figure. A few students on campus held protest demonstrations, but that hardly disturbed the party-goers inside.

In a good mood, Ms. Rice went on a walking tour through Roble Dormitory, where she encountered other students who had obviously forgotten how respectful they were supposed to be toward world-famous politicians.

Without advance warning, one student asked her about the torture she had approved in the “War on Terror.” Condolleezza Rice’s first reaction was to disagree with the term, “torture”, insisting everything that was done had been done in the name of protecting the country. And besides, she continued, she hadn’t authorized the torture; she had merely passed on to the CIA the government’s authorization.

During his time in office, George W. Bush largely ignored international and national rights, as well as human rights in general, increasingly isolating himself in the confines of the White House. Right to the end, Condoleezza Rice remained at his side like a faithful St. Bernard. Naturally, she continues to defend him. He was president, after all; how could he have done anything wrong?

“The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our legal obligations under the Convention Against Torture,” she explained. If the president ordered it, then it wasn’t illegal. That sounds as autistic and dictatorial as anything many Americans have in their worst recollections of anything that came out of the dark days of the Watergate scandal. Condoleezza Rice seems to never have heard of the separation of powers and checks and balances.