So far, of all the top officials in the Bush administration, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has gotten away relatively unscathed in the main stream press. Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, George Tenet, the Joint Chiefs and President Bush himself have taken punishment, at least in the polls. But except for her shoe buying during the Katrina aftermath, Rice has escaped without serious bruising questions from the press even for the passport mess, which is her responsibility, let alone her failures in foreign affairs. But that may be changing..

The Washington Post’s diplomatic correspondent, Glenn Kessler, a former colleague and a solid reporter, is about to breaktheough her tailored patina with a book, “The Confidante: Condoleeza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy.” One reviewer, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, says Kessler identifies the weakness of Rice’s stewardship as the “absence of any coherent foreign policy vision.” Steve Coll said the book “provides a devastating account of how Rice’s diplomacy often rested on wish and illusion.” That’s putting it mildly, but it’s about time it’s been said, for as a former diplomatic correspondent who has followed foreign affairs, I can’t think of a single thing she’s accomplished on her watch. And it’s time for the press to catch on.

Perhaps she can take credit for giving India a deal to enhance its nuclear capability. But it’s hard to see how that will help strengthen the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. And her diplomats seem to have won an agreement to de-nuclearize North Korea, no real thanks to her or her president. But what I want to know is how she has advanced the cause of peace, especially in the Middle East, which is what secretaries of state are supposed to do? Rather, it seems to me, she’s been at the center of disaster–as a cheerleader.

Maybe I’m spoiled, for I covered the four years of James Baker’s tenure at State, during which time he helped dismantle the Soviet empire without firing a shot; he concluded two important arms reduction agreements, negotiated during the Reagan presidency but signed by George H.W. Bush; he won unprecedented international and Arab backing for the war to expel Sadam Hussein from Kuwait, and he organized and prodded Israel to the table of the Madrid peace conference which brought the Arab nations and Israel together for the first time.

Sure, he missed badly in a few places; he didn’t see the invasion of Kuwait coming. And he failed to act quickly to prevent the bloody mess of the Yugoslav break-up. But he was preoccupied with the historic and dangerous breakup of the Soviet Union. Others in the administration–at the Pentagon–were pushing for the violent overthrow of the Soviet empire.

Rice’s supporters may say that she could not have done more than she has because her president and the vice-president and Secretary of Defense didn’t let her. Baker too had to convince his skeptical boss, President George H.W. Bush, a former CIA director, (and his Soviet expert Condoleeza Rice) that Mikhail Gorbachev was a genuine reformer. Baker was good at persuading presidents. I was there when, as chief of staff, Baker successfully convinced President Reagan to pull American troops out of Lebanon after more than 200 were killed in a bombing. Baker’s advice: Don’t get drawn into the Middle East conflict by seeming to side with Israel.

Following up from Baker’s efforts to bring Palestinians, Israelis, and even Syria into negotiations, Bill Clinton and his Secretaries of State, Warren Christopher and Madeline Albright, dealt successfully with Serbia without the loss of a single American life and they kept the peace process alive by acting as an honest broker. I was there when Israel signed peace agreements with the PLO in Washington and a treaty with Jordan on the land between the two former enemies.

Blame it on George W. Bush, perhaps, but Secretary Rice, as National Security Adviser, with little expertise on the Middle East failed to take seriously–and impress strongly on the new president–the August, 2001 warning that Osama was preparing to strike in the U.S. “How could we know,” she said later. But she was at the center of questionable administration efforts to manipulate the nation and the press into the invasion of Iraq, with phony charges that Sadam Hussein and al-Quaida were linked, and who can forget her warning that “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud?”

Indeed, Rice has been as wrong as anyone in the administration on the war. The point is that while her predecessor, Colin Powell, was at least an inside voice of skepticism, Rice has been a spokesperson for the administration’s policies. She has even helped rekindle animosities with Russia, which has withdrawn from a hard-won arms deal. Not only has she not advanced the cause of peace between Arabs and Israel; she has set it back and the Middle East is in flames despite her many visits. When Israel was pounding Lebanon to pieces, she remarked that it was “the birth pangs of a new Middle East.”

Leaks from the State Department suggest that Rice is waging an intra-administration battle against the hawks, including Vice-president Cheney and maybe the president, who are looking for an excuse to bomb Iran, even seeking the help of Arab nations with promises of weapons sales. But what would she do if the hawks prevailed and Iran was attacked? In 1980 Carter’s Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, resigned in protest when the president launched a failed attempt to free 53 American hostages, which cost eight lives. It would be worth asking if Rice would commit such an act of conscience.