“I don’t want to be, don’t intend to be, won’t be on the ticket.”

Pretty final words on the VP speculation from Condoleezza.

And scene…

I find this poll quite surprising. While Rice is certainly qualified for the position, I’m not sure what she adds to McCain’s campaign. She has no domestic policy experience and she’s closely tied to the foreign policy failures of the George W. Bush administration. My only guess is that the poll is bad or people are assuming her to be a moderate on everything except Iraq. Her race and gender may play a role too, although it’s hard to say to what extent.

Rice, for her part, continues to deny interest in the slot but any more polls like this one will certainly give McCain reason to seriously consider the Secretary of State.

The guy who was famously quoted saying, “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub,” has given Condi a thumbs up.

Maybe she’s not a big fan of government either?

From Wash Post:

No speaker goes to conservative activist Grover Norquist’s Wednesday breakfast meeting without a purpose. And so it was with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice two weeks ago when she convinced a rapt audience — without even raising the possibility — that she should be the next vice president.

“If her goal was to convince everyone she would be a good president and, therefore, a good vice president — she hit it out of the ballpark,” Norquist tells The Sleuth.

Personally, Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, believes Condi “would be a great president.” And, yes, a “great vice president.”

There are a whole host of reasons why she wouldn’t be good for the job, but why would she be good? Can anybody put together a compelling case? You’ve got your work cut out for you.

Looks like my April Fools joke may not be a joke after all.

From ABC News:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is actively courting the Vice Presidential nomination, according to Republican Strategist Dan Senor. “Condi Rice has been actively, actually in recent weeks, campaigning for this,” Senor said this morning on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

According to Senor, Rice has been cozying up to the Republican elite. “There’s this ritual in Washington, the Americans for Tax Reform, which is headed by Grover Norquist, he holds a weekly meeting of conservative leaders, about 100, 150 people, sort of inside, chattering, class types,” Senor explained. “They all typically get briefings from political conservative leaders. Ten days ago, they had an interesting visit. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The first time a Secretary of State has visited the Wednesday Meeting.”

Question: does anybody think she’s ready to lead the free world? Anybody think she has displayed the type of judgment need to be the POTUS? Anybody think she’d be in her current position if she didn’t simply fall lockstep in line with everything Bush wants?

No, neither do I.

MSNBC has scoop:

BREAKING – Soon after word leaked that Secretary Rice spoke in a closed session to Grover Norquist’s Amercians for Tax Reform yesterday morning in Washington, the blogosphere began to speculate that Rice must be floating the idea of running on a ticket with John McCain.

Today, McCain’s spokesman confirmed the rumors and announced Rice has accepted an offer from the campaign. The move comes as a surprise to party insiders since Rice had insisted her talk to Norquist’s group was all about U.S. foreign policy and Rice herself dismissed the idea last month when asked at a press conference if she would consider running as Vice President.

My question: does Rice really help McCain? I thought he’d need more of an economy hawk, not a war hawk. And doesn’t she carry a lot of foreign policy baggage from the Bush administration? Consider me a bit puzzled by this.

Still, it’s a shrewd move in more ways than one. Because now it doesn’t really matter if Obama or Hillary gets the nomination. Rice blunts any identity politicking in one fell swoop.

More as it develops…

UPDATE:
Got ya. ;-)

“Black Americans were a founding population. Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That’s not a very pretty reality of our founding. That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for us to realize that it has continuing relevance for who we are today.”
- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice putting race in a historical perspective.

Here’s more from Wash Times:

Race has become an issue in this year’s presidential campaign, which prompted a much-discussed speech last week by Sen. Barack Obama, one of the two remaining contenders for the Democratic nomination.

Miss Rice declined to comment on the campaign, saying only that it was “important” that Mr. Obama “gave it for a whole host of reasons.” [...]

“America doesn’t have an easy time dealing with race,” Miss Rice said, adding that members of her family have “endured terrible humiliations.”

“What I would like understood as a black American is that black Americans loved and had faith in this country even when this country didn’t love and have faith in them — and that’s our legacy,” she said.

Very well said.

Maybe some on the right who’ve been criticizing Obama for his speech will back down a bit after these comments from one of their own?