Condi Rice’s Return To Stanford: You Can’t “Go Home” Again?

Can a former respected academic “go home” again to a former academic nest after serving in a controversial administration, a controversial post on that administration — and being perceived as either an implementer or enabler of controversial war and torture policies?

Former Secretary of State Condolezza Rice faced that test when she visited a dorm at Stanford University. Over the years, I’ve heard many good things about Rice and Stanford. During the 2000 campaign a former professor of mine who had known her praised her as a person and as a a thinker. I had met people who had gone to Stanford who echoed that view: a wonderful person, a solid thinker and someone who was good at dealing with and handling people.

But as Harper’s Scott Horton notes in a post titlted Condi’s Really Bad Day, the details how Rice discovered now faces a different milieu than the one that often treated her with kid gloves in Washington — and a different generation of students than she had 7 years ago. He writes:

For eight years, Condoleezza Rice dealt with the Beltway punditry and the access-craving White House press corps. The reception she got, with a handful of exceptions, was fawning. Which leaves her totally unprepared for a return to an academy populated with the Daily Show generation: bright young minds with a very critical attitude towards the last eight years. In a meeting with Stanford students at a dormitory reception on April 27, the school’s former provost got off to a shaky start and ended in a train wreck. She may in fact have her last words in the exchange quoted back to her some day in a law court.

And he provides this You Tube so you can watch it and also draw your own conclusions, which may differ from his (and mine):

Norton also offers a fact-check (go to the link) and concludes: "So I score this: Stanford student 6, Rice 0. Rice needs to do some homework before her next appearance on campus. But first perhaps she’d better hire a good lawyer."

Aside from policy specifics, what does this episode symbolize?

As we've noted here, young voters and the present generation aren't buying into much of the way politics has been communicated. Even though I'm a baby boomer, I've said the best thing that could happen to the United States is when all of the baby boomers die off (except me). In my extensive travels in and out of California I have a lot of chances to meet young people and when I talked to them I am struck by a few things.

Putting parties aside, a large number of young people are how Horton characterizes them: they've watched Jon Stewart...but not necessarily just him. And Stewart is kind of a symbol. The key point is: many young people don't have the habit of print newspaper or news magazine reading. Many of them think talk radio, particularly conservative talk, with his everything-is-an-outrage angry tone and its constant name calling sounds phoney and lame and even if not entirely like that not something from which you could draw a conclusion.

So to get their info, they'll watch cable or take in parts of cable as they multi-task. They'll watch You Tubes or other videos. Or while they surf the web they'll visit news sites and read news stories. And many read blogs.

But more than many other generations, young people on the right, left and center are now disinclined to accept an assertion just because someone celebrated, or a talk show host who becomes like a friend after listening to him/her often, or a blog, or even a Jon Stewart says it. They’ll take in more than some of the baby boomers who still busily fight Vietnam era battles under different bottle labels and ae still powered by resentments and hatreds aimed at the evil other side. And they will be very direct in their questions and point out information they have read that conflicts with prevalent cliches, tired pro-forma talking points, or partisan blather.

The unfortunate part for Rice is that she forgot that anything said can be captured and put on the Internet and become part of her permanent resume and the record. This video plays a bit like something you’d hear from a defensive official from the Johnson or Nixon administration.

Can she go home again? Yes. But this time not like a parent or respected Aunt. She’ll just be one more relative sitting at the Thanksgiving table who could be grilled — with out deference — from other blunt spoken relatives sitting at the table.

So she better be ready to be peppered with nosy questions she might not like — and be fully prepared to answer them and lay them to rest.

For some more reaction to this story, read Andrew Sullivan, Comments from Left Field, (MUST READ) SNAFU-ed, SFist, Undiplomatic, War On You, The Reality Based Community