Russell Baker Has Condi's Number

Russell Baker has the goods on Condeleeza Rice as National Security Adviser:

She had come to the job as, in some sense, a pal who understood the young president, and while president’s pal ought to be an important job in every White House, confusing it with national security adviser is a certain route to trouble. One job calls for improving the president’s day; the other calls for spoiling by confronting him with news he would rather not hear, exposing him to ideas he would rather not think about, and presenting him with decisions he would rather not make.

—Russell Baker, Condi and the Boys, New York Review of Books,
April 3, 2008, Pp 9-11, 10

Bonus extra: I did not know that Madeleine Albright’s father had been one of Condi’s many mentors.