The universal condemnation of Chamberlain sometimes gets lost in the context of what was going on. Due the the “10 year plan” that some schmuck had put into place after WWI, the UK was in no position to go to war in 1938 and it was policy to stall for time while they readied themselves. Chamberlain did just that.
The 10 year plan was an assumption that the UK could disarm and spend a lot less on defense under the assumption that if others were rearming in Europe, they would have about 10 years lead time. Politics being what it was, they did not have 10 years between Hitler’s 1933 rise to power and the opening of hostilities in Sept 1939. Extra credit for knowing the name of the author of the 10 year plan.
And someone has asked me to define brilliant. Sorry, read my posts, I’ve spent enough time describing it. I’ve frequently said that it is an achievement of some sort, or a policy that has turned out wonderfully well. For example (this’ll piss 'em off), Al Gore sponsored the legislation that enabled the arpanet to take off and become the internet, apparently with full understanding at the time of the implications. That, in my opinion, is evidence of brilliance.
Some others have been repeatedly describing Dr. Rice as a concert level pianist. Has anyone ever heard her play in concert? I suspect this is more public relations claptrap. A concert level pianist is one who can make a living playing piano for an audience. The people who do this practice a minimum of four hours a day. I seriously doubt that Dr. Rice is a concert level pianist. Amazon.com lists no references to her published works as a pianist.
People who post things as foolish as “Condoleeza Rice could have prevented 9/11 if she were really smart” or “We never landed on the moon” are beyond influence.
I am suspicious of people with no military experience who urge war, undeclared or otherwise.
I am also suspicious of people with military backgrounds who do the same (thanks to elucidator for mentioning General Curtis “Nuke 'Em” LeMay, one-time VP running mate with George Wallace).
As to intelligence, remember the vastly talented Kennedy Administration brain trust that was so responsible for miring us in Vietnam?
And here’s hoping that with all that snipping, Henry B is using blunt-edged scissors for safety reasons.
Sparticus: Rice is not a concert pianist, but she is very, very close. She is classicly trained. Her initial ambition in life was to become a concert pianist; when she realized she wasn’t quite fit for that role, she turned to foriegn affairs.
In April of this year, Rice and renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma played a sonata together at the National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal Ceremony. Ma spoke very highly of Ms. Rice’s skills. He described their initial meeting as thus:
Most of the reviews I read at the time described the performance in glittering terms.
Yeah, yeah, and Bill Clinton played the sax for Arsenio. Performing with Yo-Yo Ma is a little different. When Ma says you can play, it means you’re good. It’s like Michael Jordan telling you you’ve “got game.”
Wow, Sam, you’ve sure got one heckuva wrongheaded assumption here. You have NO clue as to my political affiliations.
More unwarranted assumptions about politics. :rolleyes: Okay, well, never mind that. “Brilliant” means that many different people from many different arenas are forced to acknowledge, even sometimes against their will, that the person in question is “brilliant”. Do you find this a “ridiculous” definition?
The dictionary definition of “brilliant”, courtesy of Merriam Webster online.
Is this a “ridiculous” definition? The key word here is “unusual”. Nothing that I’ve read about Rice indicates that when people meet her, they’re blown away by her unusual intelligence, her unusual insight, her unusual mental keenness.
Dunno how many people on the SDMB did, but Rice sure didn’t. She entered the University of Denver at age 15, got her bachelor’s there at age 19. Her master’s was from Notre Dame. And her doctorate is from the University of Denver. If you’re going to use someone’s resume to argue that she’s brilliant, you ought to at least get the resume right.
I might also point out that the University of Denver is, sorry, hardly a “prestigious” college on the order of Princeton or Harvard. It’s a good school, but tell someone you’ve got a doctorate from the University of Denver, and he’s likely to respond, “Oh, yeah? Well, that plus 50 cents’ll get you a ride on the subway…” Tell someone you’ve got a doctorate from Harvard and he’s likely to respond, “Oh, really?” and start wondering how much money you make a year. http://www.alumni.utah.edu/continuum/winter00/rankings.htm
I don’t see the PoliSci department mentioned, and in any case, the rankings for 2003 don’t interest us–what we’d need to know would be the rankings for way back in 1970-1974, which I don’t see on the Web offhand. But somehow I doubt that it was a prestigious “Top 50” college back then.
Look, you’re not listening to me. I’m not saying, “She’s a plodder, she’s stupid.” I’m saying that she’s obviously a sharp cookie, bright enough to be able to hold up her end of the Foreign Policy discussion, but she’s not brilliant. Brilliant means that all sorts of people from many different arenas are forced to acknowledge her intelligence and insight, especially where foreign policy is concerned, since that is her chosen field. I have yet to see this. I see someone who is bright, and a hard worker, and who did it Her Way, and props to her for all of that, but I don’t see “brilliance”. What I see are comments like, ‘well, yeah, she’s usually the smartest person in the room’." Geez, Sam, you could probably say that about a lot of the Great Debaters here on the boards, and–sorry–I probably wouldn’t characterize many of them as “brilliant”.
Kissinger’s “brilliance” was eventually acknowledged by the world in the form of a Nobel Prize. I can’t visualize Rice, for all her admitted accomplishments, even being put on the short list for that. She’s a political appointee with brains and a handful of higher education degrees, but Washington is full of political appointees with brains and higher education degrees. And when the Bush Years are over and Dubya goes back to his ranch, in all likelihood she’ll probably just go back to Stanford.
You seem to have an exaggerated sense of the amount of intelligence it takes to be a university professor, or to “hang out” at the White House. My dad’s got a Ph.D., he’s a retired university professor, he’s probably the smartest person in the room, too, but he’s not “brilliant”. When he was still teaching, people didn’t flock around and marvel at his brilliance. And, how about people like John Dean, H.R. Haldeman, John Erlichman? They were “hanging out” at the White House, John Dean’s got a law degree, but “brilliant”? Hardly.
The Better Half, consulted just now as to Haldeman’s first name (“Bob”), and wanting to know why I wanted to know, says, “If you want an example of someone who was a political appointee with a degree who was a complete moron, try Jocelyn Elders.”
So, she’s got an M.D. plus a Master’s in biochemistry. She lasted 15 months in the position of Clinton’s Surgeon General. She was the one who said we should teach kids to masturbate in junior high. Then she went back to Arkansas.
Right, that’s Kyla Campbell’s opinion, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. Also, a “phenomenon” isn’t necessarily “brilliant”. Nadia Comaneci was a “phenomenon”, but that didn’t make her “brilliant”. A piano prodigy is a “phenomenon” but that doesn’t mean she’s intellectually “brilliant”.
Geez, piano prodigies all over the Web. But I don’t see anything anywhere that says they’re any more intelligent than anybody else.
Um, what? Huh? Where’dja get that? Cite?
Then Dizzy Gillespie was a Rhodes scholar?
Criminently, Sam, she was a friggin’ piano player. Why in the world does that impress you so much? Give me a cite that shows any kind of proven scientific correlation between playing the piano–indeed, any talent for performing on any musical instrument–and intelligence, and I’ll post a “Sam Stone Was Right and I Was Wrong And He Is A Genius Even Though He Doesn’t Play The Piano” appreciation thread. Seriously
Um, yeah, that’s http://afgen.com/ 's opinion. That doesn’t make it true. And as already noted, being the smartest person in the room doesn’t necessarily equal “brilliance”.
Okay, for, what, the fourth time? I’m not saying she’s not smart–I’m saying she’s not “brilliant”. I notice Senior didn’t say, “She’s brilliant”. He didn’t even say, “She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met.” No, all he said was, “She’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.” I mean, big whoop.
Oh, so it’s time to start painting with the broad brush again, is it? For you, it has to be “either/or”, does it? She either has to be “brilliant”–or “stupid”? There’s no middle ground for, “she’s a smart cookie and knows what she’s doing, but without being brilliant”?
And are you giving her some extra points for being black and female? “Gee, she made it all the way to Washington, in spite of her twin handicaps, that of being black, and of being female…” 'Cause that’s sure what it sounds like to me. And you make it sound like she’s done something truly extraordinary, which she hasn’t. There are other females in the “highest levels” of government, there are other blacks, there are even other black females. After 30 years of affirmative action and women’s lib, it’s not that big a deal any more.
And you sound like you think that most people rise to the highest levels of government by using “family connections to power”, which is just silly. You make it sound like Washington is full of the scions of Kennedy-type political dynasties. What “family connections” did Colin Powell use? How about Dick Cheney? Tom Daschle? All those people rose to the highest levels of government without using “family connections”. As a matter of fact, by far the vast majority of people at the “highest levels” of American government did it with their own two hands, without any “family connections” whatsoever. I’d challenge you to name anybody besides George Bush Junior, and any of the Kennedys, and that Johnson son-in-law, whatsisname, Chuck Robb, who got where they are today by using “family connections”. Go on, make a list, I can’t think of any others myself, offhand.
Sparticus, you need to work on your reading comprehension skills a little bit:
Um, if you think I’m one of Rice’s apologists, and that that was the point that I was making, then you sure weren’t reading very carefully. I was making the point that it’s “stupid and meaningless” to compare her to Kissinger, the same way it’s “stupid and meaningless” to compare Jennifer Aniston to Katharine Hepburn. Like, “Oh, gee, let’s compare dinner at McDonalds with dinner at Le Tour Argent…” :rolleyes:
Um, no, she really did enter the University of Denver music program at age 15 as a piano prodigy.
She wouldn’t be playing backup on the Brahms for Yo-Yo Ma if she couldn’t deliver the goods.
Wow, this sets some kind of record for amazing pointlessness. Nobody ever said she was a recording artist, just that she’s a really good piano player who could have had a career as a concert pianist. Geez. Pay attention.
*Duck Duck Goose: I’m not sure what I would have to provide then as evidence that she is ‘brilliant’. I give you a spectacular record in every field she has entered, a meteoric rise to the pinnacle of politics at a young age, prodigy status as a musician, accolades and awards she received when teaching at Stanford, and descriptions of her as being the smartest person in a field of extremely smart people, and you counter by looking up a bunch of people who describe her as brilliant, but use them as counter-examples because you don’t know who they are?
And other example of her not being ‘brilliant’ is that the head of the council of foreign relations ‘only’ described her mind as ‘stupendous’?
When I asked you to define brilliance, this is what you said:
Why yes, I do. That’s a circular definition.
Then, as further evidence of your position, you offer the dictionary definition of brilliance:
Are you saying that she DOESN’T have an unusual mental keenness or alertness?
Frankly, your argument is baffling me. I’m not sure what you’re looking for as an example of her brilliance. Just what is she lacking? What, specifically, would she have to do for you to recognize that she is brilliant?
Because to me, it looks like you’re picking nits because you want to reserve the word ‘brilliant’ for some condition that you think she doesn’t meet. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out what it is.
I’m also not sure why you’re working so hard to try to pick nits with what I said. Like your two-paragraph ‘rebuttal’ of my saying, “She entered the University of Denver at age 15 and graduated from that college at 21 with a Masters”. Now, since I had already said that she got her Masters at Notre Dame, clearly it was just a slip of the keyboard. Yet you spent a lot of effort trying to show that this meant I didn’t know her record. In any event, the fact that she went from the University of Denver, and at age 19 managed to get a Masters from Notre Dame in a year helps my case, not yours.
She is undeniably intelligent; her competence is at issue. I wrote in a column a few months ago a little challenge to see if anyone had ever heard her say anything non-obvious in regards to foriegn policy - no takers.
As far as I can tell, the NSA’s main job is to brief the President on security issues, not enact policy, and be telegenic when necessary. She is certainly the latter, but the impression I get (and if there is anyone with evidence to the contrary, be my guest) is that she’s an unusually young Cold Warrior from her Reagan/Bush years.
I blame Bush for his dumb FP decisions, not her, though I can’t help but assume she’s giving him bad advice. The security of the nation and the mood of the world politic is more uncertain than it was in 2000, and I see no improvement soon.
My “nitpicking” is called “debating”. You are arguing one position: “Rice is brilliant.” I am arguing the opposite: “Rice is not brilliant”.
I want to reserve the word “brilliant” for persons of truly outstanding intellectual capabilities, like Stephen Hawking and Einstein, not a political appointee with a Ph.D. in PoliSci.
John Nash, okay? You Google “john nash brilliant -madness” (because otherwise all you’ll get will be hits for the book) and you’ll be swamped. There is a consensus that John Nash was brilliant. There is no such consensus for Condaleezza Rice.
My point in looking up those people who called her “brilliant” was intended to demonstrate that there is hardly a universal consensus that Rice is brilliant, that actually very few people, at least on the Web, are using the term. And the point of me not knowing who they were was that–I never heard of them. William F. Buckley, I’ve heard of. William Safire, Ann Coulter, Clarence Page, I’ve heard of. There are lots of op-ed writers and columnists and pundits and commentators that I have heard of, and I didn’t turn up any quotes by any of these people–famous people–who thought Rice was “brilliant”. All the folks who use the term “brilliant” in regards to C. Rice are, so far, either anonymous (like the About.com interview) or folks I have never heard of. That was the point.
For the last time, lots of “bright” people get masters degrees in a year or two, or by age 21. It doesn’t take “brilliance” to accomplish this, and in any case, as I’ve already said, any early “brilliance” she may have demonstrated, piano-playing ability aside (why do you keep bringing that up as though it proved something?), hasn’t been borne out.
Look, it just wasn’t a “meteoric rise” for someone of “a very young age”. Her first big political appointment was that Soviet Advisor thing in 1989, when she was 35. That’s actually about an average age for the first really big career move in Washington politics. Minimum age for the Presidency is 35.
Now, if she’d been only 25, that would have been “meteoric”. But her career path just looks perfectly normal to me. That’s about how long it takes to pay some dues and work your way up the ladder to something like that.
Al Gore was elected to the House at age 28, and to the U.S. Senate at age 36.
Dick Cheney joined the Nixon adminstration in various positions on the Cost of Living Council and at the Office of Economic Opportunity, and around the White House, at age 28, and then became Gerald Ford’s Chief of Staff when he was 34.
Tom Daschle was 31 when he was elected to the House, and 39 when he was elected to the House.
That’s about how long it takes to get a political career off the ground. You persist in seeing her as some kind of young genius, but 35 is not “young”. In Washington politics, 35 is “average”.
She’s a powerhouse, too–but nobody on the Web is calling her brilliant, either. “Brilliant” is a word that’s reserved for people like John Nash.
Right, I’m saying that I don’t see a consensus in either the political or intellectual community that she has any unusual mental keenness or awareness. Everybody agrees she’s bright, but I don’t see everybody using the word “brilliant”.
I explained it. Twice, actually.
I explained this, too. Twice, actually.
For the last time: Brilliance means that she has an unusual intelligence and insight that is universally acknowledged by many people, even sometimes against their will, in many different arenas besides that of American Beltway politics.
This would mean, for one thing, that at least some of the higher-ranking Democrats would have to publicly acknowledge that she’s brilliant, which I haven’t seen yet.
It would mean that writers who were doing profiles on her for magazines like Harper’s or Atlantic Monthly or the New Yorker would have to acknowledge that she’s brilliant. I haven’t seen that yet, either.
It would mean that reviewers who were reviewing her books and articles would have to acknowledge that she’s brilliant–and not just one or two reviewers, but at least the majority of them. And I haven’t seen that, either.
We’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this, I guess, although I’ll be happy to meet you back here in 6 years or so and see what she does when Bush is out of office and the party is over and all the political appointees have to get real jobs.
I read a long article about her recently, and I have to say that I came away from it thinking that she is one very intelligent, focused, and disciplined person.
Tom Daschle, of course, was elected to the House and then the Senate, not to the House twice sequentially.
the deja vu election
Right, I’m not quibbling with that. But “intelligent, focused, and disciplined” isn’t the same thing as “brilliant”. Brilliant implies the ability to make sudden insightful leaps of logic, that make everybody exclaim, “Wow, I dunno how she does that, but boy, ain’t it somethin’…”
Okay, I’m going to just stop debating this. If you want to reserve the word ‘brilliant’ for the top handful of great minds in history, then that’s fine. I wouldn’t make the claim that Rice qualifies to be in leagues with Einstein and Hawking, at least not until she does something world shaking.
But the rest of us tend to use ‘Brilliant’ a little more casually than that. Go do a search for “Brilliant politician”, or “Brilliant thinker”, or “Brilliant Writer”, or “Brilliant Actor”, or any other combination of the word “Brilliant” along with any job description, to see how the rest of the world uses the term.
DDG, I think you’re too focused on the “universally acknowledged by many people…in many different arenas” part of your definition.
Case in point: the late Charles Alan Wright, who I was fortunate to study under in law school before he passed away. I’ll bet dollars to donuts you’ve never heard of him. But if you’re a lawyer who tries cases before federal courts, you’ve damn sure heard of him; his crowning work, Federal Practice and Procedure, fills multiple bookshelves and is recognized as the authoritative work on the topic. A complete list of his works runs for sixteen single-spaced typed pages. I’ve read at least one Supreme Court case where the Court comes just short of saying Wright’s views on some aspects of federal practice should be considered definitive.
Charles Alan Wright was, undeniably, brilliant. But few outside of the legal profession would have heard of him.
You cite to Einstein and Nash. Well, fine. But how many people outside the mathematics world would be singing Nash’s hosannas if Ron Howard hadn’t made a movie about him?
I also detect a bias in favor of science and mathematics. That makes sense to a degree because results in those fields are so much more quantifiable than in others. It’s easy to look at a J. Robert Oppenheimer or a Wernher von Braun or a Robert Hutchings Goddard and objectively state the contribution they made to their fields. But that bias does a disservice to other fields.
Ms. Rice has held important posts in both government and academia; has written influential books on various topics of foriegn affairs; is proficient at piano in a way that most only dream about; and rocketed her way through her academic studies. My God, what more is needed?
Oh yes. Universal acclamation. From “some of the higher-ranking Democrats,” no less. Good luck with that one. (One wonders: how many Dems acknowledged Kissinger as brilliant when he was serving under Nixon?)
I’m also left wondering why so many people were hailing Bill Clinton as “brilliant” a decade ago when the case seemed to boil down to this: went to some good schools, ran a backwater state, and is a really smooth talker. Oh, and plays the sax reasonably well.
She is not a concert pianist. Period. She could not make a living doing it, except to trade off her political name as some kind of freak. I’m glad that Yo-Yo may said she “could play”. Lots of people can play. You are not a conert pianist unless you are a concert pianist. Nor are you a concert “level” pianist, unless you are as good as a concert pianist. From the quotes of others above attributed to Rice, even she doesn’t think she is that good. That does not mean I would not enjoy listening to her. But being a very good piano player is not brilliance. And even if she were a concert level pianist, which she most certainly never has been according to the historical record, how does that make her a brilliant stateswoman? Why is this even brought into the debate? And repeatedly arising? Don’t the Rice supporters know the difference between a relevant point and a non-relevant one?
And comparing her to Henry Kissinger is fine in my book. If others are offended or whooshed by it, too bad. They both held the same job. That Kissinger later became Sec of State too is fine and dandy, Bush may ask Rice to do the same, he may not. IIRC my timelines, Kissinger had secret meetings leading to the opening of China while holding only the relevant portfolio. Sec of State William Rogers was quite unhappy with being kept out of the loop.
And no, one does not have to be a member of my political party to be a brilliant politician. As evil as Kissinger was, he was brilliant, and a Republican. Same with Nixon. Despite their fascism and stupidity in many things, they also had what can only fairly be described as some brilliant successes with them. Just because a few of those brilliant successes are also evil doesn’t make them less brilliant. Like gumming up the Paris peace talks in 1968. A brilliant political move. Pure evil. Opening China. Brilliant. Not evil. Detangling the Sinai. Brilliant.
And I was not aware that Dr. Rice’s degrees were all from podunk colleges as someone above indicated most of them being from the U of Denver. Is that right? Never heard of the school until now. That doesn’t mean she is not brilliant, or that she is. Does having a PhD in the poly sciences make one brilliant? Most assuredly not. I know a lot of poli sci professors. A small percentage are brilliant conversationalists. None of them generally brilliant. They are in fact some of the dullest people on the planet, and in most cases vastly under accomplished as compared to the quality of education wasted on them or as compared to their own self image.
How has Dr. Rice done at protecting our national security? Pretty poorly in my opinion. The missing twin towers from the New York skyline are a huge indictment. It is the job of the President, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the military and the National Security Council to prevent this sort of thing. In my opinion, after reading many news reports from only the information available, and not the information that we know is being withheld as still classified, and more information that has not yet been shown to Congress by a reluctant White House, that is, only information from leaks that have been confirmed, hijacked airplanes used as bombs against vulnerable targets was known to the government years in advance, and we knew that in August that the White House was informed of an especially elaborate attack being planned.
While the responsibility for the crimes remains with the perpetrators, the failure to prevent it rests with the Administration. The whole attitude that nobody could have put two and two together is despicable. The attitude that there should be no independent commission to review the failure of intelligence is despicable. While it may not have been appropriate to have cast these stones immediately after the attacks, in my opinion, only fools would fail to have outside experts analyze the failure of intelligence to minimize future losses. The stonewalling that the Bush administration continues to throw up in the face of an independent investigation tells me that they believe their own political future would be endangered by such a review, and that they place their own political fortunes ahead of the security of American citizens.
I’m tired of talking about this, too, Sam, but I just wanna add that this–
–imperiled the cleanliness of my keyboard. LOL, Dewey!
And…I also want to remind Sparticus to work on those reading comprehension skills.
Um, no, nobody said that. What I said (and what I provided not one but two links saying) was that the UD is actually a good school, in the top 100 colleges in the U.S. It’s just not a “fabulous” school on the order of Harvard or Princeton. But evidently you are another one of those people for whom everything has to be in black and white. There’s no middle ground between “fabulous” and “podunk”. Okay, well, whatever.
Clearly Sparticus isn’t here to debate, since he isn’t really paying attention to what anybody else says. He’s just skimming quickly, and then going ahead and posting more 9/11 conspiracy theory rants.
