Continue on the topic left from yesterday.  Rice became what her parents wanted her to be — succeed no matter what. She also turned out to be the exact product of their education — single-minded pursuit of success.

Her parents saw education as being instrumental to achieve what you aimed. “… you can achieve anything, you can do whatever you want to do, if only you get an education, …” p. 23  Rice was made sure to receive the best and highest education that could be obtain, music and French from very young, started learning to read at age 3, till she got Ph.D at the end.  Her French teacher was “struck … by John Rice’s full-time focus on the betterment of Condoleezza Rice.” p. 20.  Yet her parents did not have the intellectual ability to see education as being essential in developing a full-person, heart and soul, not simply an instrument to success.

As Rice put it, “I never developed the fine art of recreational reading.” p. 17,  whatever that might mean.  I would think she was saying she has not developed a love of reading for the pure joy, wisdom, insight and the mind-cultivating that reading is supposed to offer.

The result is Rice did have Ph.D, yet she does not have the intellectual depth to think and reflect.  “She may not have been an intellectual secretary of state like Kissinger or a master strategist like Baker, but she probably had more drive than either of them. The disciplined blaze of her life — … — suggested that she would throw everything she had into trying to triumph in the twilight of the Bush presidency.  It was obvious from Rice’s many metamorphoses that her real ideology was not idealism or realism or defending the citadels of freedom, … Her real ideology was succeeding.” p. 311

“Rice was never especially self-reflective, but she was always optimistic, and in June 2007, when she was asked to assess how she had performed as national security adviser, she gave an odd answer. ‘I don’t know. I think I did okay.’”  p. 310  These words are so revealing of her character, void of higher order of philosophical thinking.

Unlike former president Clinton and many other great persons, Rice has no enduring belief, no ideal. She has single-mindedly pursued one thing — success.  And she has succeeded for the sake of succes.

I strongly feel that there is something missing in her as I was reading her biography, something at first I cannot catch. By the time I read about her response to Hurricane Katrina, I came to realize the weak link in her education.  Yes, the kind of education is what I am interested in most when I read about Rice.  Blame me for being a parent all the time.

I will talk about this tomorrow.