The world in their hands

摘要

If George Bush had nominated Nelson Mandela as his secretary of state and Joan of Arc as his national security adviser, he could hardly have been more widely lauded. The personal histories of retired General Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice were recounted and admired almost everywhere: he, the son of Jamaican immigrants, escaping from the South Bronx to run the Gulf war; she, the daughter of a minister, getting out of race-torn Alabama (where a childhood friend had been killed in an infamous church bombing) to become the Russian-speaking expert on the National Security Council at the time of the Soviet collapse. "An American hero and a great American story," Mr Bush called General Powell; "brilliant" was his term for Ms Rice. These encomia were repeated and embellished almost everywhere.