she's not interested in being a shadow secretary of state
I guess because she's already been there, done that.
I've mentioned this elsewhere on the intertubes, but I'll never forget a dinner I had a few years ago with a professor from Stanford Univ.
The conversation turned to Condi and how she functioned as Stanford's provost. I wanted to get all the nasty stuff he had on her, so I'd just pepper him with questions. It was a real hoot, because the detail fit every preconception I had of her, and worse.
One of her duties was to lord over faculty senate meetings, which are basically gigantically huge wastes of time anyway, where a bunch of over achiever intellectual elitists with gigantic egos sit around to bitch and moan and otherwise accomplish absolutely nothing of significance.
By his account, Condi viewed running the senate proceedings as the highlights of her year. The meetings would drag on for two hours, and right before they looked to be ending, she'd raise new business straight out of the blue, and waste another 30-45 min of everybody's time. This was her audience, and she damn well wasn't going to let it go until she was done preening before them.
According to him, nobody out there in Palo Alto respected her. I don't remember all the details, but, in his mind, she was nothing more than a simple minded professor who sort of segued into the administrative apparatchik role, who simply HAD to be at the center of attention at all times.
I've seen the movie 'W' and I strongly suspect that, although they've gone a bit over the top with those characters, the portrayals are probably much closer to being accurate then we'd fear. The Condi character in the movie was particularly devastating. I couldn't help but think she seemed to be portrayed exactly like this Stanford professor had described her.
