Completely In Over Her Head

Cold War expert Condi Rice has had a tough week. Forced to finally do something about the Israel-Lebanon conflict, she has proven herself to be as incompetent as her boss as well as some of his previous, questionable hires ("Heckuva Job Brownie," anyone?). As Maureen Dowd recently put it:

Now the secretary of state is leaving, reluctantly and belatedly, to do some shuttle diplomacy that entails little diplomacy and no shuttling. It’s more like air-guitar diplomacy.

Condi doesn’t want to talk to Hezbollah or its sponsors, Syria and Iran — “Syria knows what it needs to do,’’ she says with asperity — and she doesn’t want a cease-fire. She wants “a sustainable cease-fire,’’ which means she wants to give the Israelis more time to decimate Hezbollah bunkers with the precision-guided bombs that the Bush administration is racing to deliver.

“I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling, and it wouldn’t have been clear what I was shuttling to do,” she said.

Keep more civilians from being killed? Or at least keep America from being even more despised in the Middle East and around the globe?

All of this air-guitar diplomacy has put Condi in a very serious mood and has forced her to display the only known skill she has. Cue the piano:

"It is not a time that is frivolous. It is a serious time. I will play something that is in accordance with my serious mood," said Rice about her planned performance for The Association of South East Asian Nations.

Yes, but if she's so serious, can she explain what the deal is with her outfit? From head to toe, she's a sartorial disaster. The only thing serious is how seriously bad her choices are.

At least her predecessor had the good sense to be ridiculous on purpose: