Susan Rice wants to be Joe Biden’s running mate. The question is whether the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee wants her on his ticket, Washington Examiner writes.
“I certainly would say yes,” Rice told PBS late Thursday. “I know Joe Biden well. I’ve worked with him very closely. I know he’ll be a great president of the United States. And from my vantage point, I’m committed to doing all I can to help him win and to help him govern.”
She added, “If that were the role in which he felt I could best serve, then I’m not going to say no.”
Rice, 55, was former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser from 2013 to 2017, aligning herself with him early in his 2008 White House campaign over his then-rival Hillary Clinton.
Before that, she was Obama’s U.N. ambassador from 2009 to 2013, using her experience as a foreign policy aide to former President Bill Clinton during his second term and to Michael Dukakis and John Kerry on their 1988 and 2004 White House bids.
The daughter of the Federal Reserve System’s second black governor and the education wonk behind the Pell Grant program, she also has a top-tier academic pedigree. She’s a Stanford University graduate and was an Oxford University Rhodes Scholar who worked as a McKinsey & Company management consultant and Brookings Institution fellow.
Even though Rice, who is of Jamaican descent, ticks the boxes of being both a woman and a person of color, her record is both a help and hindrance if she hopes to become Biden’s understudy.
The Clinton administration’s stance on Rwanda and Sudan, as well as the Obama counterpart’s approach to Iran, Israel, and Syria, will be scrutinized if she’s chosen. But the most politically damaging line on her resume is her response to the deadly 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya.
Her insistence, based on a CIA memo, that the attack was part of a boiled-over protest led to accusations that she had “acted in bad faith or intentionally misled the American people.” The Republican-led House Intelligence Committee’s investigation, however, failed to dredge up any evidence supporting those claims. She withdrew her name from consideration as a replacement for Hillary Clinton as secretary of state in 2012, fearing Senate Republicans wouldn’t confirm her over the Benghazi furor.
Her other political handicap is her “unmasking” of Trump campaign officials Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, and Jared Kushner in intel reports about their undisclosed December 2016 meeting with United Arab Emirates Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan.
Flynn’s unmasking is being relitigated after the Justice Department last week announced it was going to drop the charges against him. Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts during the Trump transition, but he now claims he’s innocent and that the government entrapped him. Rice was at a January 2017 Oval Office meeting with Obama regarding the FBI’s plan to interview Flynn about his intercepted conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Biden has also indicated that he’s looking for someone who can complement him, and he and Rice’s expertise overlap significantly.
“I’ve had significant foreign policy experience and significant crisis management experience,” he told Snapchat’s Good Luck America this week. “I’m looking for someone who has strengths that I don’t have.”
Tom Cochran, a partner with public relations firm 720 Strategies and a fellow Obama White House alum, agreed, suggesting she’d be better suited to a different Cabinet-level position.
“She’s a solid candidate to put on the list. All the requisite qualifications. I don’t think she’s near the top of the list precisely because she doesn’t add as much as other candidates. Biden has the foreign policy experience, and that’s her strongest trait,” he told the Washington Examiner.
University of Wisconsin-Madison professor and Elections Research Center Director Barry Burden also pointed out how Biden had promised to be a “transitional” nominee, with one foot in Obamaworld and the other beyond the Trump era.
“Rice is so closely tied to Obama that it would not seem to be the connection to the future of the party and the country that Biden and others want to see,” he said. “She is also a polarizing figure to conservatives and would work against Biden’s strength a candidate who hopes to have more appeal across party lines than Hillary Clinton did four years ago.”
For Burden, despite being a recognizable political figure, Rice is still untested and could be questioned on any topic, including her Trump-supporting son.
“Rice never won elective office, so her campaign chops and potential as a future presidential candidate are uncertain,” Burden continued. “She seems much more likely to play a role inside the Biden administration if the Democrats manage to win the election.”
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