Condi Rice Joins Bush Team
President-elect George W. Bush named trusted foreign policy aide Condoleezza Rice as his White House national security adviser on Sunday.
Rice, 46, was a Russian specialist on the National Security Council during the presidency of Bush's father, George Bush, and played a key advisory role during the younger Bush's presidential campaign.
"Dr. Rice is not only a brilliant person, she is an experienced person, she is a good manager, I trust her judgment, America will find that she is a wise person," Bush told a news conference in Austin.
Speaking on the CBS News Early Show Monday, Rice said the U.S. military was "overextended," but she refused to criticize President Clinton's foreign policy, and implored Americans to support her boss, saying "just give this man a chance."
"We have moved now from the Cold War, in which we had a single enemy in the Soviet Union ... to a time of uncertainty as to where the threats are going to come from. Certainly, the threat of weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, chemical, biological - in the hands of people like Saddam Hussein is a challenge for us," Rice said Monday morning.
Asked about the preparedness of the U.S. military, a source of heated campaign season arguing, Rice said, "it is clearly overextended. You hear [this] from everywhere, from captains on up, and you're seeing the overextension of the national guard and the reserves to backfill for regular forces. And so clearly, one of the things that President-elect Bush has promised to do is review our military commitments.
"I want to be clear, he understands we have important commitments to our allies and friends, and America will keep those commitments."
Rice talked about the upcoming choice for the third member of Bush's defense triad, a secretary of defense who will join her and newly chosen Secretary of State Colin Powell on Bush's armed forces team.
"[We] will all work together very well as a team," she said. "I'm quite certain whoever becomes secretary of defense will be very much a part of that team.
Rice, who is black, also touched on the fact that so few African-Americans voted for Bush; the Texas governor's showing among blacks was even lower than Bob Dole's four years ago.
"I think you've seen in his appointments that he cares about diversity and about quality and understands that equality can be found in all colors," she said. "I believe that if people will just give this man a chance, you'll see that he's someone who can lead one America."