The Many Lives Of Madeleine Albright
The Many Lives Of Madeleine Albright
Viewpoint: Presidential Whining
More political coverage from TIME magazine.
Tap into AllPolitics' archive of TIME articles from the days before the internet.
First Among Equals
By Nancy Gibbs
"My mind-set is Munich," Albright has often explained. "Most of my generation's was Vietnam." Albright's orientation is used to explain her willingness to confront bullies with force. But the Munich Conference in 1938 that gave Hitler the green light to annex one-third of Czechoslovakia carried many lessons beyond the dangers of appeasement, and one was surely that it is never wise to play from a position of weakness. Albright knew early on that you can't do a thing in foreign policy without power. So she didn't waste any time "establishing her presence," as an observer puts it.
Pentagon officials were politely told by the State Department that the traditional Monday meeting among the national security principals would not be acronymed on memos as the "BAC lunch," for National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, Albright and Defense chief William Cohen. It would now be called the "ABC lunch," for Albright, Berger, Cohen. The pecking order didn't go unnoticed in the Pentagon.
As she worked to put her team together, she went after top draft picks but made sure they knew who was in charge. "Tell him I am the one appointing him to the job, not the President," she instructed an aide who was acting as go-between. "And I am the one to whom he will report." Next she launched something of a counterstrike at the Commerce Department, which had grabbed much of State's control over international trade and economic sanctions during the first term. Recruiting Commerce Under Secretary Stuart Eizenstat as her Under Secretary for Economic Affairs meant that he could stuff those issues in his briefcase and bring them back to State. Likewise, by tapping Thomas Pickering, considered the five-star general of the diplomatic corps, as her No. 3, she signaled that she would surround herself with high-powered people "to move the center of gravity on foreign affairs back to the State Department," as a senior White House aide explained.
As familiar as she was with the ways of Foggy Bottom, she was also going where no woman had gone before: into an office with its own gray marble bathroom outfitted "for the boys," she says, with suit racks and a long column of small, thin sock drawers. Her time is treated as a precious commodity, and she is learning shortcuts. Did Warren Christopher have any tips on how to save time with her personal routine? "He can't help me," Albright says. "I wear makeup." She brought from her U.N. office her pictures and awards, her Harlem Globetrotters jersey and signed basketball. She took down the formal portraits of Dean Acheson and Cyrus Vance, symbols of the soft-spoken diplomacy Christopher cherished. In their place she hung portraits of Thomas Jefferson, General George Marshall and her mentor, the late Senator Edmund Muskie.
The day after her swearing in, she ate lunch in the State Department cafeteria, then gave a press conference that yielded a conspicuously high turnout. She announced that within a month she would go around the world; it would be both a global victory lap and a stamping of her authority on the struggles upcoming, such as NATO expansion and the transfer of Hong Kong to China. Later that evening she was host at a reception for family, friends, political colleagues, diplomatic officials, office seekers and the media elite. They showed up in two shifts because the guest list was so long. And everyone showed up.
The Albright style would be different, foreign policy hands soon discovered. Christopher opened his day with a stiff-necked senior-staff meeting of just a few top aides in his personal office, which aides say always felt a little like church. Albright immediately opened the doors and moved the meeting into the larger conference room next to her office. Each place around the big oval table bears a small brass plaque to mark the world leaders who sat at the table for the 1983 G-7 summit. At the first meeting she took her place at the head of the table, at the seat bearing Ronald Reagan's name.
"You might find that it takes a while getting used to me," she told the powerful regional barons around the table. "I have to warn you I have a way of disregarding the bureaucratic structure and going to people directly. So I apologize in advance." Then she paused with a look on her face that said, according to officials who were present, "but get used to it."
There were nervous smiles around the room. Albright's reputation for ignoring bureaucratic protocol preceded her. As U.N. ambassador, she became famous for bypassing assistant secretaries back in Washington and telephoning desk officers to get expert advice on a foreign country. She could reach up through the power structure too; when she found herself at odds with fellow Security Council members, she was known to slip out to the nearest phone booth, call their foreign ministers back home directly and argue for a change of instructions.
Not a week passed before Albright began to "kick butt," as a stunned senior State Department official put it. Two of her first important policy meetings dealt with China, and someone leaked the sensitive debate to the press. She gathered the senior officials together and read them the riot act. "You have a choice," she said, looking each official in the eye. "You can have a good and trusting relationship with me. Or you can have an undisciplined relationship with the press." She was a master at working the media, after all, and no one was going to make an end run around the master. Within an hour, the phones were ringing throughout the building. Don't mess with her.
--Reported by Ann Blackman and Douglas Waller/Washington
| back |  page 3 | forward |