DLC on Powell

The Democratic Leadership Council has its take on the Rice appointment in "Post-Powell". Basically they argue that Powell's conservative realist ideology, while not what they agree with, at least served as a dissenting voice in foreign policy deliberations within the Bush Administration:

Powell was the living embodiment of the Republican "realist" tradition. He was the author of the "Powell Doctrine" that eschewed the use of U.S. military force in all but very limited circumstances.

He participated in, and vigorously defended, the decision to leave Saddam Hussein in power after Operation Desert Storm. He opposed U.S. intervention to prevent ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. He perfectly represented the post-Vietnam consensus of both military leaders and conservative diplomats that the United States should avoid embroilment in regional conflicts, human rights causes, and "nation-building" exercises.

Republican "realism" was clearly inadequate in a post-9/11 world, but at least Powell acted as a counterweight to the equally inadequate unilateralist and "shoot first, think later" ideology represented by the vice president and the secretary of defense.

Rice, on the other hand, will be the ultimate yes-man, a bureaucratic functionary who will carry out policy rather than initiate:

For all her manifest talents, Powell's apparent replacement, Condoleezza Rice, is preeminently a Bush loyalist and "team player" who is unlikely to urge her boss to question the decisions he's made.

I have little expectation for an activist State Department under Rice.