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The Biden White House Is Better Off Without Susan Rice

As the Biden administration attempted to forge a new path for the Democratic White House, Rice represented the old guard.

BY ALEXANDER SAMMON

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/202 ... shift.html

APRIL 25, 2023


Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by 3000ad/iStock/Getty Images Plus and Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

It was far from the highest-profile departure announced on Monday—what with the hasty exits of Tucker Carlson https://slate.com/business/2023/04/tuck ... -news.html from Fox News and Don Lemon https://slate.com/business/2023/04/don- ... rlson.html from CNN—but the announcement of domestic policy adviser Susan Rice’s departure from the Biden White House marks a major changing of the guard in Democratic politics. Her last day will be May 26.

Rice was one of the most influential people in the White House, head of Biden’s newly empowered Domestic Policy Council. She worked on everything from immigration to student debt to racial equity in her two-plus years at the helm, winning a very mixed record on the first two issues in particular. For a woman once rumored to be a finalist https://prospect.org/politics/will-susa ... en-ticket/ for vice president, and then top choice for chief of staff, her quiet and unexpected exodus looks like a fairly precipitous fall.

Just last week, the New York Times placed Rice at the heart of Biden administration failures https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/us/p ... biden.html to act on reports that children arriving at the border unaccompanied were being funneled into grueling factory jobs after being discharged by the federal government into the hands of dubious “sponsors.” Rice was dismissive about the government’s role in responding to the crisis. In internal notes, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/us/p ... biden.html published in the Times story, she said that the children were taking advantage of “our generosity” by traveling in record numbers without parents from COVID-ravaged, poverty-stricken countries.

Less than a week later, Rice announced she would be gone—strange, coming in the middle of debt ceiling deliberations, the day before the reelection campaign relaunch, and well after top staffing changes in similar corners of the White House had been announced and implemented. One Beltway shop claimed that the departure had been planned for months, suggesting perhaps that Rice left after being passed over for chief of staff. But that chief of staff decision was made in January, and it’s hard not to suspect that the Times reporting contributed to her decision.

President Biden and Rice were known to be close pals, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/24/us/p ... biden.html and the end of the Rice era could usher in a concerted change in the way the administration operates as Bidenworld prepares for reelection.

Rice was arguably best known for her work on immigration, for which she won a reputation as a hard-liner. https://newrepublic.com/article/172164/ ... tion-reset

She was reportedly https://prospect.org/politics/susan-ric ... workplace/ furious when deportation flights, booked under the Title 42 health code policy, which used pandemic health concerns to justify the expulsion of border crossers, had empty seats. The administration adamantly defended the Trump-era program and used deportation flights “aggressively,” sending thousands of migrants back to destitute regions in Guatemala and Haiti, per the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... story.html

The paper also reported that it was Rice who strongly opposed https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... story.html a program that would have vaccinated migrants at the border against COVID-19.

She was also known to be a major hurdle in deliberations https://prospect.org/education/opposing ... y-history/ over the blanket student debt cancellation proposal, though the White House eventually went forward with broad $10,000 cancellation lightly means-tested ($20,000 for Pell grant recipients). Her office repeatedly insisted that she was an advocate for some form of financial relief for borrowers, but activist groups pushing for the loan debt cancellation program found her to be an impediment, not an ally.

Immigrant rights and student debt relief advocacy groups represent core constituencies that Biden will absolutely need in the fold to have any shot at reelection in 2024, given his weaknesses with young people and Latino voters. Rice alienated both. Meanwhile, the hard-line immigration stance didn’t even benefit the Biden administration politically—Republicans have continued to attack its border policy regardless.

Now Rice will exit the White House altogether, as the Biden administration lifts the Trump-era public health rule that empowered it to expel thousands of migrants and expands https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/23/us/b ... arole.html its use of humanitarian parole.

Running DPC was always a strange fit for Rice. She had a background in foreign policy, having served as national security adviser for President Obama. But Biden wanted to elevate the DPC, which had fallen in stature behind the National Security Council in recent administrations, and the choice to make a former national security adviser head of domestic policy was meant, in some sense, to signal that important change.

Her workplace reputation also made her a strange fit. Biden put a premium on workplace behavior in his swearing-in speech.

If you’re ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect or talk down to someone, I promise you, I will fire you on the spot. On the spot, no ifs, ands, or buts,

he said.

According to a Washington Post column https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html from 2012, Rice was known during the Obama years for

shouting matches

and

insults.

Prior to that, during her time in the Clinton administration, she made a name for herself by

flipping her middle finger at Richard Holbrooke during a meeting with senior staff at the State Department, according to witnesses.

As the American Prospect reported https://prospect.org/politics/susan-ric ... workplace/ last year, that continued under Biden. Rice built an

abusive and dehumanizing environment,

according to one anonymous source.

Though that would certainly seem to rise to the level of bullying, Rice was never fired “on the spot,” as Biden had pledged.

So as the Biden administration attempted to forge a new path for the Democratic White House, Rice represented the old guard. She brought with her Obama-style policies and preferences on immigration, and Clinton-era office acrimony. Yet she remained in the White House all the same.

Rice’s rumored replacement, Neera Tanden, currently a senior advisor to the president, has her own reputation https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... eet-truth/ for fighting with progressives, especially online. But her orientation seems to be that of a mainstream left-liberal, notably to Rice’s left. Given DPC’s function as a liaison to Democratic advocacy groups, she seems a more natural fit. And she’s shown plenty more willingness to fight with Republicans.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see Rice’s next move. She has long been rumored to have ambitions for elected office; she flirted with running for the Maine Senate in 2020, while her name has been whispered as a possible candidate for D.C. mayor. And given her profile, she would have no problem raising money. But after her most recent stint in the White House, she’s also enemies of core Democratic constituencies, and it’s hard to see her as the party’s future.




_________

The longevity of Susan Rice, has never ceased to amaze me. Given her abrasiveness and her poor political and humanitarian instincts - starting with the Rwandan genocide and culminating in US immigration policy - she’s true Teflon. I’d bet, she’ll be back.

@BronwynBruton

[Zack]

Why so Susan is an excellent technocrat and a outspoken diplomat and has a great career as back as the days of clinton

Dr Zackovich

[Fiyameta]

Susan Rice is known as:
"The scourge of Africa" (a person that causes great trouble or suffering.)
"An enabler of genocide"

Rwanda Genocide

Susan Rice has been criticized for her role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that would claim over 800,000 lives. There was great pressure on Susan Rice, who was Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the Clinton Administration, to intervene. Many in the State department have commented on Susan Rice stating that "it was an election year" and that is why she did not want the U.S. involved. In Samantha Power’s study of the U.S. reaction to genocide, As an Africa expert on the NSC, she shocked an interagency conference call by interjecting domestic politics into the discussion of the administration’s policy options. “If we use the word ‘genocide,’” Rice allegedly asked her colleagues, “and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?”

[Zack]

THE ONLY people responsible for the rwandan genocide are the Hutus and the HUTU radio and the interhamwe. the US not intevening what u want more policing of the usa the people who oppose usa want sometimes the usa to intervene and then when the usa does it they hate it.

Dr Zackovich

[Zmeselo]

Susan Rice with her close friend, the late Meles Zenawi

Whitewashing Susan Rice’s culpable diplomatic blunders

By Kibreab Tesfay

http://www.shabait.com/categoryblog/308 ... c-blunders

14 June, 2020

Writing for a local US Newspaper (Orange Country Register), Professor Tom Campell crows on Susan Rice’s presumed

talents and virtues that are disappointingly rare in US diplomacy today.

The author proceeds to shower gratuitous plaudits on Rice for her laudable “initiative and role”, to end the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war.

Granted, this is an election year in the US which translates into characteristic hyperbole and media hype by campaign handlers of potential candidates to high office. But even with these extenuating circumstances and the Professor’s palpable zeal to bolster Rice’s bid for the post of VP in the Biden Presidential ticket, the narrative is patently false and utterly irresponsible.

First off, Susan Rice was not “driven” by diplomatic foresight, wisdom and courage or by empathy for the peoples of the Horn of Africa, to

nudge the US Government

to launch a peace initiative to prevent a looming Eritrea-Ethiopia border conflict.

Rice first came into the scene during the early days of the border war in May 1998, as an appointed envoy.

Indeed, the US and Rwanda became involved in the facilitation process on the initiative and express request of Eritrea.

Eritrea’s persistent efforts to contain TPLF’s strident territorial ambitions and illicit acts of surreptitious encroachment on sovereign Eritrean lands through bilateral frameworks, were to no avail. Hand-written amicable letters that President Isaias sent to Ethiopia’s Prime Minister when TPLF troops set camp in the Eritrean small town of Adi Murug in August 1997; various meetings of the Bilateral Boundary Committee that was subsequently established on Eritrea’s insistence did not bear any fruit. The TPLF went further to declare war against Eritrea in the first weeks of May 1998, using a minor skirmish that it provoked in the Badme area as a pretext. In the circumstances, Eritrea solicited the facilitation of two friendly countries – the US & Rwanda - to prevent the outbreak of a potential and costly war between the two neighbours.

But what Rice and her superiors, who continued to be involved in the facilitation process for the next two years, had in mind was a complex geopolitical game that had nothing to do with sincere efforts of conflict resolution. This is amply illustrated by the following sequence of events:

1. When Eritrea raised legitimate queries on a US heavy-handed, hastily worked-out and flawed initial proposal, Susan Rice, who was then US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, broke diplomatic precedence to directly address the OAU Summit in Ougadougou to lobby the OAU to adopt a resolution against Eritrea. On that same day, apparently with the tacit endorsement of Rice and company, the TPLF regime launched an air strike on Asmara; Eritrea’s capital, thus escalating minor border skirmishes into a major war. Nonetheless, US facilitation process, [deleted] by the OAU and the EU, continued after tacit admission of her missteps by her superiors.

2. In July the same year, President Clinton brokered an Agreement on the Moratorium on Air Strikes between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Eritrea’s pronounced preference was, for a comprehensive secession of hostilities. But the Clinton Administration insisted on an initial, partial arrangement for the interim period, arguing that the TPLF regime was not prepared to contemplate a comprehensive truce at that point in time. The TPLF regime abused this fragile window of truce to purchase SU-27 jet fighters and launched a new, large-scale, offensive using its new aircraft against Eritrea eight months later- on 6 February 1999. This flagrant breach of US-brokered Moratorium on Air Strikes that plunged the two countries into another, more ferocious, round of war did not elicit the requisite action, or even condemnation, by US Administration and Rice; its chief facilitator at the time.

3. This betrayal was played out again, in May 2000. This time round, the Facilitation Team included Anthony Lake, the US Director of National Security (Rice was on his team), Italian Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Serri as the EU envoy, and Algerian Justice Minister, Ahmed Yahiya, representing the OAU. The Facilitation Team submitted the “Technical Arrangements” proposal to both parties as a “take it or leave it” package, in September 1999. Both parties accepted the document and pledged to be bound by its provisions. Soon after, Eritrea learned that the TPLF regime had accepted the Agreement as a time-buying ploy to launch another large-scale offensive. This information was conveyed to the Facilitators who reassured Eritrea that the,

TPLF regime would face severe consequences should this turn out to be the case.

As predicted, the TPLF regime labeled the peace process in “terminal phase” and launched its third offensive on 12 May 2000 in blatant violation of the “Technical Arrangements”. The Facilitators reneged on their commitments again and allowed Ethiopia to indulge in yet another reckless offensive, with total impunity.

4. Rice and her superiors were thus partially culpable for pouring oil to the fire, to stoke a major war between the two countries. Furthermore, Susan Rice was responsible for imposing UNSC sanctions against Eritrea in 2009 and 2011 respectively when she served as US Ambassador to the UN during the Obama Administration.

These are, the indelible facts!

As indicated above, Susan Rice was not acting alone. In most instances, she was not the principal player; accountable as she was to Madeline Albright in the first stint and working directly under the supervision of Anthony Lake in the subsequent episodes. Furthermore, the Bush Administration followed suit when the TPLF regime rejected the EEBC “final and binding” Arbitral Award in contravention of the Algiers Agreement that the Facilitators had brokered with explicit provisions of punitive action by the UNSC against the guilty party under Article VII of the UN Charter.

In this perspective, the blame for the debacle cannot be pinned down to diplomatic misdemeanor, temperament or other fault lines of Susan Rice alone. The compelling evidence points to deliberate, bi-partisan, US policy that stemmed from its geopolitical calculus and perceived interests in those crucial years.

Still, these considerations cannot absolve Susan Rice from personal and collective culpability.