The job soon caught up with her. Albright’s plane was somewhere past Guam on its way back to Washington when word arrived of a suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed 13 Israelis. The atrocity aborted Arab-Israeli peace negotiations just as they were about to resume after a long layoff (page 36). Briefing reporters aboard her plane, Albright was asked whether the bombing would force her to get personally involved in the Middle East, a region she conspicuously has not visited since taking office last January. Albright was visibly irked. ““Let me make this clear: I am directly involved in this,’’ she snapped. ““I have been since I became secretary of state. I’ve met with every Middle Eastern leader that has anything to do with this.’’ Soon, she may have to deepen the acquaintance. Her first visit to the Mideast could come as early as this month, after a preparatory mission by the special U.S. envoy, Dennis Ross.
Six months into her job, the rap on Albright is that she shows more talent for style than for substance; critics call her a spotlight-hogger who takes a public hand in difficult issues only when there’s good news to announce. That’s unfair, but her absence from the Middle East, so far, has drawn fire. ““The Clinton administration has been missing in action in the Mideast for the past year,’’ charges Richard Haas, a Republican foreign-policy analyst.
Then again, Albright’s flair for public relations may make her a secretary ideally suited to a post-cold-war era in which many Americans seem to be tuning out world affairs. From Harvard to Hanoi, she has been the ““user-friendly face’’ of American foreign policy, as one White House admirer puts it.
With no sign of post-feminist angst, Albright is refreshingly candid about what she calls the ““woman thing.’’ How does the first female secretary of state deal with exhausting plane trips? ““The secret is makeup,’’ she says frankly. And what does she do, at an elegant diplomatic luncheon at the Elysee Palace in Paris, when she discovers two large spots on her new lavender skirt just as someone wants to take a group picture? Stand up, and turn it around. ““This is something men can never do: they can’t wear their pants backward,’’ Albright says.
Not that there haven’t been solid accomplishments, too. Albright helped to push through NATO enlargement and Senate ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention, which the White House touts as a key second-term success. Bosnia has been a constant worry - with Albright herself arguing for more pursuit of alleged war criminals. (This week the administration is sending former negotiator Richard Holbrooke back to the region in hopes of patching up his peace agreement.) Albright recognizes the emerging importance of China, and she never forgets the bad press Christopher got for making two dozen trips to Damascus and only two to Beijing. She has visited Asia three times already and will go again in the fall. The contrast is so great that some people in Washington call her ““the anti-Christopher.''
Even her critics give Albright high marks for public diplomacy. The discovery of her Jewish roots in prewar Czechoslovakia and the death of her grandparents in the Holocaust captivated many Americans. Her sound-bite skills prompt one veteran ambassador to call her ““the Great Articulator. And that’s what we need right now,’’ he adds. ““America has never succeeded in remaining engaged internationally when the world has been at peace, and we need someone to tell us why it’s important.''
The administration also needs someone to help stroke Jesse Helms, the cranky Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In an early meeting, Albright coyly presented Helms with a T shirt declaring SOMEONE AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT LOVES ME. Then she kissed him on the cheek, and when he playfully turned the other, she kissed that, too. The courtship has paid off. Last week, Helms’s committee approved 19 foreign-policy nominations, including new ambassadors for Russia, Germany, Britain and France. Later, Albright bragged about the administration’s ““excellent working relationship’’ with the Senate on foreign-policy nominations.
Except, of course, for William Weld, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts, who has locked horns with Helms over his nomination as ambassador to Mexico. Albright seems to have little appetite for defending Weld, who failed to consult the State Department before attacking Helms in public. ““Weld broke the first commandment for the new State Department: “Thou shalt not meet the press without consulting the secretary’,’’ quips a U.S. official.
Albright doesn’t like to share the spotlight with anyone she outranks. Bill Richardson, her mediagenic successor as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has to clear all television appearances with her office, and sources say his requests are often turned down. (Albright had the same arrangement with Christopher when she was in New York, but he allowed her to exploit the ““bully pulpit.’’) Behind the scenes, however, Albright is a gifted team player. She was chosen for her job, in part, because of what officials call her positive ““sandbox factor.’’ She plays well with national-security adviser Sandy Berger and Defense Secretary William Cohen, a troika known in Washington as ““ABC.’’ Recently an aide walked into Berger’s office and found her sitting on the couch with her shoes off, as though she were in a college dorm. She is relaxed enough with the president to josh him on occasion, and she is close to Hillary Clinton, her traveling companion to Beijing and Prague - a connection that goes a long way in the White House.
When Albright was appointed, some U.S. diplomats saw her as potentially ““the first star-quality secretary of state since Kissinger,’’ as one State Department official puts it. Still, even some of her staunchest supporters concede that she has not yet matched Kissinger’s strategic vision. Albright herself maintains that strategy is ““what I do for a living.’’ But another administration official argues: ““She doesn’t need it, as long as she keeps doing a spectacular job of presenting the policy. Others can do vision.’’ But Kissinger was also a skillful negotiator, as he demonstrated in his Mideast shuttles. Soon Albright may have to take a hand in a region that one of her colleagues describes as ““a Bermuda Triangle of distraction.’’ Ross was expected to make an exploratory trip to the area this week and recommend whether any useful purpose could be served by sending in Albright. Sooner or later, she will have to play a visible role in the Mideast morass. That could be a pivotal test of her diplomatic skills - and her knack for looking good.
