U.S. President Barack Obama talks about the Fiscal Year 2014 Budget while next to acting Director of Office of Management and Budget Jeffrey Zients in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, April 10, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Larry Downing
CHILMARK, Mass. — Each morning this week, Susan E. Rice has called or come to a secluded contemporary house here, intelligence reports at hand, to brief President Obama about the chaotic world that has followed him on vacation.
On Wednesday, Ms. Rice, the national security adviser, delivered a particularly troubling report: Egypt’s military had begun a bloody operation to clear two camps of demonstrators protesting on behalf of that country’s ousted president, Mohamed Morsi. Among the options she laid out was a plan already on the table to pull the United States from joint military exercises with Egypt.
After Mr. Obama left to play golf, Ms. Rice, 48, returned to her own lodgings to consult with aides at the White House. After 5 p.m., the two spoke again, and Mr. Obama signed off on the plan.
The turmoil in Egypt, which erupted in early July just as she took up her job, has presented the toughest test yet for Ms. Rice, who in six weeks has already dealt with a terrorist scare that prompted the closing of embassies across the Middle East and the latest chapter in deteriorating relations with Russia: the saga of Edward J. Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, which led Mr. Obama to cancel a meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Given her reputation as an outspoken defender of human rights and advocate of American intervention to prevent abuses, some analysts wondered if Ms. Rice, a former United Nations ambassador, would bring a more muscular, idealistic cast to Mr. Obama’s foreign policy.
On Egypt, however, aides said her counsel has been resolutely pragmatic: signal America’s displeasure by canceling the military exercises and holding up the delivery of F-16 fighter jets, but avoid rupturing a four-decade relationship with Egypt’s military leaders.
“She has wanted to preserve the relationship,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “She’s pretty realistic on some of these issues.”
The mere fact that Ms. Rice has traveled to Martha’s Vineyard this week attests to her closeness to the president. She is the first national security adviser to make the trip, which has been staffed in the past by aides like Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser, and Denis R. McDonough, the chief of staff, whose history with Mr. Obama goes back to the campaign.
And Ms. Rice is not only working, she is also socializing with Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle. On Wednesday evening, after briefing him on Egypt, Ms. Rice attended a sunset cocktail party given for the Obamas by the cable TV mogul Brian Roberts, mingling with guests like Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; Valerie Jarrett, a close Obama adviser; and Larry David, who talked about his new HBO movie, set on Martha’s Vineyard.
Ms. Rice, who got to know Mr. Obama as a foreign policy adviser during his campaign in 2008, has brought along her husband, Ian Cameron, a TV producer, and their two children. In between the crises, aides say, she is trying to spend time with her family.
People who know Ms. Rice said she aspires to be not just a confidante and internal broker of policy options for the president — as has been the model for previous national security advisers — but also a strategic thinker and a public voice for foreign policy.
If so, Egypt may be a hard policy to sell. The administration’s reluctance to cast off the Egyptian military is exposing it to criticism that it is tolerating a brutal regime with no plans to return Egypt to democracy and no qualms about gunning down its people. Ms. Rice, officials said, will have to judge how much bloodshed the United States can stomach.
It is a familiar quandary. Ms. Rice pushed Mr. Obama to back a NATO intervention against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya and has expressed regret, as an official involved in the debate, that the Clinton administration did not do more to prevent the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
By Michael O’Brien, Political Reporter, NBC News
Hailing her longtime role as a “trusted adviser,” President Barack Obama formally named U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice as his next national security adviser on Wednesday.
Obama tapped Rice, a target of Republican criticism in recent months, to succeed Tom Donilon; the president also nominated Samantha Power, a longtime foreign policy adviser, to take over Rice’s role at the United Nations.
“I am absolutely thrilled that she’ll be back at my side leading my national security team in my second term,” Obama said of Rice, a longtime confidant whose role in publicly explaining the administration’s initial assessment of last year’s terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, has made her a lightning rod for criticism.
Charles Dharapak / AP
President Barack Obama stands with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, his choice to be his next national security adviser, right, current national security adviser Tom Donilon, who is resigning, second from right, and Samantha Power, his nominee to be the next UN Ambassador, left, Wednesday, June 5, 2013, at the White House.
“I’m deeply honored and humbled to serve our country as your national security adviser,” Rice said at a White House event to formally announce the shake-up, just the latest instance of staff turnover on Obama’s foreign policy and national security teams in his second term.
Rice also told Obama she was “deeply grateful for [his] enduring confidence,” a seeming nod toward the whirlwind of controversy around her role in the Benghazi explanation, which helped scuttle her chances of becoming secretary of State.
Republicans who targeted Rice over the handling of the 2012 attacks in Benghazi reacted with the knowledge they have no role in confirming her for the post. “Obviously I disagree [with Obama’s] appointment of Susan Rice as Nat’l Security Adviser, but I’ll make every effort to work [with] her on [important] issues,” Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, one of Rice’s foremost critics on Benghazi, wrote on Twitter.
Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican with designs on seeking his party’s presidential nomination in 2016, was sharply more critical.
“I can’t imagine that we would be keeping Ambassador Rice in any significant position, much less promoting her to an important position,” he said on Fox News.
Power is not without controversy, either. She stepped down from the Obama campaign after referring to Hillary Clinton, then Obama’s opponent in the Democratic primary, as a “monster.”
NBC News’ Chuck Todd joins Morning Joe to report on the breaking news that Susan Rice has been tapped by President Obama to replace Tom Donilon as National Security Adviser.
Republicans have vocally criticized Rice for emerging on the Sunday morning talk show circuit on the weekend following the Benghazi attack, where she asserted that the attacks were the spontaneous outgrowth of protests related to an anti-Islamic video. In the months since then, senior Republicans have demanded more information about how the talking points provided to Rice were drafted; many in the GOP have suggested the talking points were motivated by electoral politics, since the attack occurred during the height of last fall’s presidential campaign.
The furor was enough to prompt Rice to withdraw her name from consideration to become Obama’s next secretary of state earlier this year.
Had the president nominated Rice to become secretary of state, she would have been forced to undergo bruising confirmation hearings; her new appointment as national security adviser does not require Senate confirmation. She complained about the “very prolonged, very politicized, very distracting and very disruptive” process of confirmation hearings.
Last month, Vice President Joe Biden praised Rice and her role in the Obama administration, saying she had “the absolute, total, complete confidence of the president.”
NBC News’ Chuck Todd, Alastair Jamieson and Ian Johnston contributed to this report.
This story was originally published on Wed Jun 5, 2013 7:21 AM EDT
NBC News’ Chuck Todd joins Morning Joe to report on the breaking news that Susan Rice has been tapped by President Obama to replace Tom Donilon as National Security Adviser.
By Chuck Todd, Chief White House Correspondent, NBC News
Susan Rice will replace Tom Donilon as national security adviser, the White House is expected to announce Wednesday.
Rice, currently the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, will be formally introduced in her new role by President Barack Obama at 2 p.m. ET. A White House official says Samantha Power, a former special assistant to the president on the National Security Council, will be nominated to replace Susan Rice as the U.N. ambassador.
Republicans who targeted Rice over the handling of the 2012 attacks in Benghazi reacted with the knowledge they have no role in confirming her for the post. “Obviously I disagree [with Obama’s] appointment of Susan Rice as Nat’l Security Adviser, but I’ll make every effort to work [with] her on [important] issues,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of Rice’s foremost critics on Benghazi, wrote on Twitter.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images file photo
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United States, will be nominated to become the new national security adviser.
The changes mark a significant reshuffle of the White House foreign policy team, which has undergone significant turnover (along with the president’s national security staff) in Obama’s second term.
Rice in particular has been at the center of a political firestorm involving the Obama administration’s early accounts for the terror attack last year against the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which later proved to be incorrect.
Power is not without controversy, either. She stepped down from the Obama campaign after referring to Hillary Clinton, then Obama’s opponent in the Democratic primary, as a “monster.”
Republicans have vocally criticized Rice for emerging on the Sunday morning talk show circuit on the weekend following the Benghazi attack, where she asserted that the attacks were the spontaneous outgrowth of protests related to an anti-Islamic video. In the months since then, senior Republicans have demanded more information about how the talking points provided to Rice were drafted; many in the GOP have suggested the talking points were motivated by electoral politics, since the attack occurred during the height of last fall’s presidential campaign.
The furor was enough to prompt Rice to withdraw her name from consideration to become Obama’s next secretary of state earlier this year.
Had the president nominated Rice to become secretary of state, she would have been forced to undergo bruising confirmation hearings; her new appointment as national security adviser does not require Senate confirmation. She complained about the “very prolonged, very politicized, very distracting and very disruptive” process of confirmation hearings.
Last month, Vice President Joe Biden praised Rice and her role in the Obama administration, saying she had “the absolute, total, complete confidence of the president.”
NBC News’ Michael O’Brien, Alastair Jamieson and Ian Johnston contributed to this report.
This story was originally published on Wed Jun 5, 2013 7:21 AM EDT
