The savvy secretaries don't take any of this seriously. They know that eventually every secretary gets dealt a poker hand - and you never know when it'll come or what sort of cards it'll contain: the 1973 Middle East war (Henry Kissinger), the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev (George Shultz), the fall of the Berlin Wall (James Baker), Kosovo (Madeleine Albright), Iraq (Colin Powell). And this poker hand is seven-card stud, no-limit Texas Hold 'Em. How well you play this high-stakes hand usually determines your legacy as secretary of state.
Secretary Rice may get dealt other big hands, but there is one already waiting for her on the table. It is the four fragile democratizations unfolding in the Middle East: Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine-Israel. Whether any of these come to fruition will certainly form a crucial part of the Rice legacy.
For the last month or so, the Bush team has been doing a victory lap, taking credit for the outbreak of democracy in the Arab world. While I disagree with many Bush policies, I think the president does deserve credit for unleashing something very important in the politically moribund Arab East. Many of the necessary elements for democratization are now in place in Iraq (free and fair elections), in Lebanon (a Syrian withdrawal from Beirut), in Egypt (President Mubarak's commitment to multicandidate presidential elections) and in Gaza (an Israeli commitment to withdraw and Palestinian elections).
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