Watch Out

At this and other times the presence of the Foreign Secretary seemed almost superfluous. He was referred to as Mr Snow and Mr Shaw, or the British Secretary of State. Without him as “cover”, some US observers remarked, Dr Rice would not have been able to justify such a visit.

Every time she is asked, she says that she does not want to run. But still the question keeps coming back, even from a nine-year-old girl at her old school.

“I like what I am doing,” Dr Rice told the starstruck children at Brunetta C. Hill Elementary. “I don’t want to run for office — but it doesn’t mean you can’t.”

Asked if America was ready for an unmarried black woman president, Bubba Wingo, a 52-year-old white devotee of the Alabama Crimson Tide, said: “That can be overcome. Being from the South, I think a lot of that is behind us now. At one time it would have been a big obstacle, but not any more.”

His friend Karl Wright, 50, added: “Being AfricanAmerican, I think she would get a mix of Republican and Democrat votes. She definitely appeals to both parties.”

When the BBC Politics Show pushed for an even more categoric answer to the same old question yesterday, Mr Straw came to her rescue. “It is just a parlour game and they [the media] always win,” he said, helpfully.

In another sign of their new bond, the pair agreed on the way into the interview not to let themselves appear divided over Iran, even though President Bush has kept the option of using force on the table while Europe has ruled it out.

But the Foreign Secretary’s aides say that he has gained much more from the South than a new baseball cap, a taste for catfish and a walk-on part in the Condi Show.

He was at the side of the most powerful woman in the world virtually non-stop for three days, sharing four meals including dinner at her Aunt Connie’s, four hour-long motorcade drives and ten other public and private engagements.

“Too often foreign policy is about a connection between two capitals, between the political elite. This just feels like there has been a connection between two countries,” an aide said.

“You cannot do too much to deepen relationships at this level. We need to do more of these really long visits where we learn more about each other.”

What America has yet to learn is, what does Condi do next?

RISE AND RISE OF DR RICE

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