WASHINGTON — One of the most talked-about jobs in Washington might not register with most Americans. But as President Bush rebuilds his Cabinet for his second term, Beltway cognoscenti are focusing on the unfilled No. 2 job at the State Department for clues about the direction of foreign policy.
To those who study the frequently secretive Bush administration's moves in the hope of divining its intentions, Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice's choice for her top deputy will be crucial.
"It's a Washington exercise, but not an unimportant Washington exercise," said Morton Abramowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Thailand now with the Council on Foreign Relations. "The fact that the country doesn't pay attention to it doesn't mean it's not important."
If Rice picks a neoconservative as her deputy, Washington insiders predict business as usual: a hard-nosed foreign policy with President Bush continuing to wage the war on terrorism on his own terms. Conservatives would hail a hawkish appointee as a person who "recognizes that we are living in a post-Sept. 11 world," while liberals would rant about "four more wars."
If the No. 2 job goes to someone considered to be a pragmatic realist -- especially one who served under the president's father -- then liberals will hail a kinder, more multilateral foreign policy, while conservatives will hyperventilate about the danger that the president's policies won't be carried out by weak-kneed State Department bureaucrats.
Few Washingtonians, let alone most other Americans, can even name the last five people to hold the post of deputy secretary of State. And not all deputies have been power players. "Who remembers Kissinger's deputy?" asked Gary Schmitt, executive director of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century.
Nevertheless, under the most recent No. 2s -- current deputy Richard L. Armitage and Clinton-era deputy Strobe Talbott -- the job has been one of the most powerful in Washington. The deputy secretary manages the vast State Department bureaucracy and all of its embassies and consulates, keeps global problems from becoming global crises, puts policy stamp on all but the most crucial issues and is supposed to be the secretary's most trusted advisor.
Because Bush's foreign policies have been so controversial -- and because Rice in her tenure as White House national security advisor appears to have sided sometimes with the neoconservatives and sometimes with the realist camp -- the deputy's post is topic A of diplomatic speculation.
