Friends assert that Hadley plays the piano well, but that he never mentions it because Rice, his alter ego, is known as a classical pianist. When asked, he says he played in his youth but no longer does. Hadley, a Rachmaninoff fan, and his wife, an opera buff, are often seen at Kennedy Center performances with Rice.
Hadley is not often in the Washington dinner party circuit. "My wife's and my view of a successful Saturday night is to have dinner with our children," he said in a recent interview.
Then, he spoke about how the real public servants are the spouses of public officials, whose workloads are doubled. Hadley's wife is a Justice Department attorney; they have two daughters, ages 16 and 18.
Wearing horn-rimmed glasses and looking like the top corporate lawyer he once was, Hadley blushed when asked whether it was true that he had no enemies.
"This is an impossible question," Hadley said, laughing in embarrassment. "I've had a great time. And I've been privileged to work with a remarkable bunch of people."
He said years of debate among "foreign policy types" of his generation had forged mutual respect among Democrats and Republicans that had "given some continuity to our foreign policy over decades, in the Cold War period."
Some say Hadley has the gift of being so focused on problem-solving that he seems unaware of or unaffected by political and ideological undercurrents.
He became national security advisor at an especially partisan moment in U.S. foreign policy.
During Bush's first term, Hadley was part of the team whose job it was to convince the American public of the need for the Iraq war.
Later, he took the blame for allowing the erroneous claim that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from Niger to be included in Bush's 2003 State of the Union address despite warnings from the CIA that the intelligence was unreliable. Many thought Hadley was the loyal soldier taking the fall for Rice, who was his boss at the time.
But Ivo H. Daalder, a Brookings Institution scholar who opposed the Iraq war, said the real failure of Hadley and Rice in their National Security Council roles was allowing the Pentagon to oversee the planning for postwar Iraq stabilization.
"This is a humongous NSC failure, and Hadley and Rice were directly responsible," Daalder said.
Since taking over as national security advisor, Hadley briefs the president each morning.
