Brass Rings & Sliding Doors

What happens when you pick the wrong door? See Condoleezza Rice

Better three hours too soon than a minute too late-William Shakespeare

One can understand why strivers and high achievers might take this line from The Merry Wives of Windsor to heart. One never truly knows how long or short your life will be; if opportunity will only knock once. But one has to wonder what Condoleezza Rice would have thought about those words in the context of her life on February 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. It’s hard to think of another public person so trained for this moment, and now so outside the arena. What must she be thinking now about her professional life-or more to the point, her life as an academic. That life was a life devoted to be ready and able to serve for just this moment in history. 

The education section of her Wikipedia page brings the point home clearly:

She obtained an M.A. degree in political science from the University of Notre Dame in 1975. She first worked in the State Department in 1977, during the Carter administration, as an intern in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. She also studied Russian at Moscow State University in the summer of 1979, and interned with the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California.] In 1981, at age 26, she received her Ph.D. in political science from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. Her dissertation centered on military policy and politics in what was then the communist state of Czechoslovakia.

From 1980 to 1981, she was a fellow at Stanford University’s Arms Control and Disarmament Program, having won a Ford Foundation Dual Expertise Fellowship in Soviet Studies and International Security.

We all need to nurture our hobbies and personal interests, but remember all of the fuss about her being on the College Football Playoff selection committee? With the world in the state that it’s in today…I know she loves the sport, but I can’t help but think there is a part of her that wonders about the road that got her to that point. 

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Of course that road was the Iraq War. And unlike Robert McNamara, she wouldn’t leave early with a medal and a desk at the World Bank (history, rhyming like it so often does, we would see Paul Wolfowitz get that job). She would stay the course and serve out all 8 years of the Bush administration. She would not entirely escape the type of public abuse McNamara faced; her shoe shopping and Broadway show attendance during Hurricane Katrina became part of the narrative about Bush’s poor initial response to the disaster. She would admit to being “tone-deaf” in her memoir. But again, looking at her background could she blamed for not seeing FEMA as part of her remit? 

 Sliding doors…how much of this is truly fate, luck, or blurry vision due to ambition and over confidence? McNamara we know expressed deep reservations about leaving Ford Motor Company. “What do I know about the application of force,” he recalled thinking, “and what do I know about the strategy required to defend the West against what was a generally accepted threat … [and] the force structure necessary to effectively counter the threat?” But he took the position. Rice was clearly more qualified for her position as NSA than McNamara was; these types very rarely say no when asked to serve. But I wonder if she had reservations-did someone in the Bush camp mollify her doubts with an assurance similar to Kennedy’s to McNamara: "we’ll learn our jobs together.” Considering her pedigree, probably not. Sometimes it only comes around once. 

So what must she think now-maybe when she is sitting in a living room, with plaques and honors on walls and bookshelves that remind her of her past life, while watching football on television. I suspect the games may evoke a metaphor about being on the bench, that gives her pause about what her life was and where it might be today.

Published on Substack January 22, 2026