(CNN) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that despite President Bush’’s low approval ratings, people will soon "start to thank this president for what he’’s done."

"So we can sit here and talk about the long record, but what I would say to you is that this president has faced tougher circumstances than perhaps at any time since the end of World War II, and he has delivered policies that are going to stand the test of time," Rice said in an interview that aired on CBS” "Sunday Morning."

The secretary of state brushed off reports that suggest the United States” image is suffering abroad. She praised the administration’’s ability to change the conversation in the Middle East.

"This isn”t a popularity contest. I”m sorry, it isn”t. What the administration is responsible to do is to make good choices about Americans” interests and values in the long run — not for today’’s headlines, but for history’’s judgment," she said.

"And I am quite certain that when the final chapters are written and it’’s clear that Saddam Hussein’’s Iraq is gone in favor of an Iraq that is favorable to the future of the Middle East; when the history is written of a U.S.-China relationship that is better than it’’s ever been; an India relationship that is deeper and better than it’’s ever been; a relationship with Brazil and other countries of the left of Latin America, better than it’’s ever been …

"When one looks at what we”ve been able to do in terms of changing the conversation in the Middle East about democracy and values, this administration will be judged well, and I”ll wait for history’’s judgment and not today’’s headlines."

Asked by CBS” Rita Braver why some former diplomats say Americans are disliked around the world, Rice said that’’s "just not true."

"I know what U.S. policy has achieved. And so I don”t know what diplomats you”re talking to, but look at the record," she said.

Rice said she wasn”t bothered by criticism about her or the administration’’s polices, saying if a person in her business is not being criticized, "you”re not doing something right."

"I”m here to make tough choices, and this president is here to make tough choices, and we have. And yes, I — there are some things that I would do very differently if I had it to do over again. You don”t have that luxury. You have to make the choices and take the positions that you do at the time," she said.

Asked about historians who say Bush is one of the worst presidents, Rice said those "aren”t very good historians."

"If you”re making historical judgments before an administration is already out — even out of office, and if you”re trying to make historical judgments when the nature of the Middle East is still to be determined, and when one cannot yet judge the effects of decisions that this President has taken on what the Middle East will become — I mean, for goodness” sakes, good historians are still writing books about George Washington. Good historians are certainly still writing books about Harry Truman," she said.

Rice, 54, said she has enjoyed working in the Bush administration during the last eight years, first as national security adviser, then as secretary of state.

"There is no greater honor than to serve this country," she said, adding that there is also no greater challenge.

Rice said when the new administration takes over, she plans to return to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and write two books — one on foreign policy and one about her parents.

By Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 12, 2008; Page A01

An eleventh-hour effort to salvage a proposed $14 billion rescue plan for the auto industry collapsed late last night as Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on the timing of deep wage cuts for union workers, killing the legislative plan and threatening America’s carmakers with bankruptcy.

“We’re not going to get to the finish line. That’s just the way it is. There’s too much difference between the two sides,” Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced after 10 p.m., concluding a marathon negotiating session that ended in gridlock. Reid warned that financial markets could plummet when trading opens this morning.

“I dread looking at Wall Street tomorrow. It’s not going to be a pleasant sight,” he said.

The legislation would have provided emergency loans to General Motors and Chrysler, which have said they face imminent collapse without federal help. The high-stakes talks broke down over when the wages of union workers would be slashed to the same level as those paid to nonunion workers at U.S. plants of foreign automakers such as Toyota and Honda.

Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), the lead GOP negotiator, said the sides were on the brink of a deal on the amendment he had offered. Representatives from the United Auto Workers — who were present for most of the negotiations — would not agree to a specific date, Corker said.

“We offered any day — any day — in 2009,” Corker said.

Minutes after the talks failed, the Senate voted on the bailout measure that had been approved Wednesday by the House on a largely party-line vote, 237-170. In the Senate, the vote was 52-35, eight votes short of the 60 needed to override a Republican filibuster. Of those voting yes, 10 Republicans joined 42 Democrats.

“It’s disappointing that Congress failed to act tonight,” the White House said in a statement. “We think the legislation we negotiated provided an opportunity to use funds already appropriated for automakers and presented the best chance to avoid a disorderly bankruptcy while ensuring taxpayer funds only go to firms whose stakeholders were prepared to make difficult decisions to become viable.”

GM said last night it was “deeply disappointed” that negotiations failed to produce an agreement. “We will assess all of our options to continue our restructuring and to obtain the means to weather the current economic crisis,” the company said in a statement.

A Chrysler spokeswoman said the company would “continue to pursue a workable solution to help ensure [its] future viability.”

The Senate closed out its legislative session for the year but will stay open for pro forma sessions until the next Congress begins Jan. 6. Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) agreed that the auto rescue would not happen this year.

Stock markets in Asia tumbled on the news. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei average fell more than 6 percent in midday trading, while stocks in Hong Kong slipped more than 7 percent. - read more

GOP Looks to Louisiana’s Governor

By Michael Leahy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 30, 2008; Page A02

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Last weekend, 18 days after Barack Obama decisively defeated their candidate for president, a mostly Republican crowd of self-described conservatives received their first introduction to someone many prominent members of the GOP think could be the party’s own version of Obama.

Like the president-elect, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is young (37), accomplished (a Rhodes scholar) and, as the son of Indian immigrants, someone familiar with breaking racial and cultural barriers. He came to Iowa to deliver a pair of speeches, and his mere presence ignited talk that the 2012 presidential campaign has begun here, if coyly. Already, a fierce fight is looming between him and other Republicans — former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who arrived in Iowa a couple of days before him, and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is said to be coming at some point — for the hearts of social conservatives.

“The Republicans really have no choice except to look at some people more youthful if they want to have a better chance of winning,” said Betty E. Johnson, an independent and the wife of a Cedar Rapids pastor, who voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 but who went for Obama over 72-year-old John McCain. “I liked Obama’s energy and hope. I don’t know, but maybe a younger person would give Republicans a feeling of more energy, openness.”

Jindal insists he is ignoring all the speculation. In Cedar Rapids, at a breakfast event devoted to addressing this beleaguered city’s efforts to rebound from its disastrous flood last summer, he avoided any reference to 2012, staying focused on explaining Louisiana’s methods for coping with hurricane floods in emergencies on his watch.

Meanwhile, others around the country were talking him up. No less an aspiring kingmaker than Steve Schmidt, the chief strategist of McCain’s failed presidential bid, sees Jindal as the Republican Party’s destiny. “The question is not whether he’ll be president, but when he’ll be president, because he will be elected someday.” The anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist believes, too, that Jindal is a certainty to occupy the White House, and conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh has described him as “the next Ronald Reagan.”

Jindal is, above all else, a political meteor, sharing Obama’s precocious skills for reaching the firmament in a hurry. It was just four years ago, after losing a gubernatorial election, that he won election to Congress, and only this year that he became Louisiana’s governor, the first nonwhite to hold the office since Reconstruction. And now, 10 months into his first term, the talk of a presidential bid is getting louder among his boosters.

Youth, Norquist notes, has never been at a greater premium for Republicans in search of a new path. And the generally positive reaction to Jindal’s handling of Louisiana’s mass evacuation in August before Hurricane Gustav, and his response in the storm’s aftermath, bolstered the image of the new governor’s vigor.

“If anything, McCain’s candidacy suggests that age is not always a positive — and sometimes is a negative,” Norquist says. “As Republicans, you have a real problem now with younger voters and immigrants. If you were going to central casting for a candidate to deal with all that, who do you have? Jindal. He is young, and he looks young. . . . He’s a great communicator. And his record is that he’s sharp and quick with policy.”

Jindal supporters regularly evoke the Reagan parallel, fueled by a confidence that their hero’s brand of social and fiscal conservatism, coupled with his sunny folksiness on the stump, can rekindle the Reagan flame. But all the comparisons end there. In 1981, Reagan entered the presidency at age 69, in the model of a leader the party traditionally favored then, older and seasoned. Just an elementary school kid when Reagan stepped into the Oval Office, Jindal is boyish-looking and six years younger than John F. Kennedy was when he became the nation’s youngest elected president.

Jindal is his own invention, in the mold of an Obama. Born in Louisiana as Piyush Jindal to highly educated immigrants from India, he decided as a young child to nickname himself “Bobby,” after his favorite character on the TV show “The Brady Bunch.” Raised as a Hindu, he converted to Catholicism while in college and later wrote a lengthy, intimate story that provided a window on his religious evolution, in a manner that fairly calls to mind Obama’s books about his own grappling with issues of self-identity. Success at Brown University and later at Oxford University during his Rhodes years led to high-profile attention in the power corridors of Louisiana and Washington.

The Louisiana governor at the time, Murphy J. “Mike” Foster Jr., turned to a 25-year-old Jindal to shore up Louisiana’s Medicaid program, which had fallen badly into debt. By the time Jindal finished, he had shut down some state hospitals and had the program running a surplus. “He had to close a hospital in my district, but he didn’t hesitate doing what he had to do,” remembers former Louisiana state senator Tony Perkins, now the leader of the Family Research Council. “He always knows what he wants to get done.”

The record is still evolving, like the rest of him. But social conservatives like what they have heard about the public and private Jindal: his steadfast opposition to abortion without exceptions; his disapproval of embryonic stem cell research; his and his wife Supriya’s decision in 1997 to enter into a Louisiana covenant marriage that prohibits no-fault divorce in the state; and his decision in June to sign into law the Louisiana Science Education Act, a bill heartily supported by creationists that permits public school teachers to educate students about both the theory of “scientific design” and criticisms of Darwinian evolutionary concepts.

“Y’all are great to come,” Jindal said to a pack of robust, gray-haired men who towered over his thin, 5-foot-8 frame. A couple of men dared to say they hoped he would be back campaigning in Iowa soon, to which he simply responded with a tight-lipped smile. Away from the rostrum, in response to a question, he declared he had only one political race on his mind. “I’m running for reelection to be governor of Louisiana in 2011,” he said. “I’m not running for any other office.”

You’re in Iowa, someone said.

“I’ve spoken to the governor of Iowa and the Cedar Rapids group about what we can do with the flood victims because we’ve had to deal with these things, and they’ve been committed to helping our people when they were hurt by floods,” he responded. “I want to be the best governor I can be for the people of Louisiana. Look, I think the American people are tired of campaigns and politics. We need to get behind our new president and our new Congress, support them, and stop being Democrats and Republicans. We need to work together to make sure our government is successful.”

As he took the lectern for his speech, a former Iowa state representative, 72-year-old Rosemary Thomson and her husband, Jim, leaned forward and listened closely, a pair of lifelong Republicans who had delayed a trip to Illinois just to check out Jindal. They cautioned that they would not be making up their minds about him this morning, wanting a long look in the next few years at the entire Republican field. “But you read everything about him, and you know he’s very smart,” said Thomson, who had never heard him speak before. “It’s an impressive résumé. Rhodes scholar. . . . He’s done so much, and he’s so young, a real up-and-comer.”

Jindal’s speech impressed them. While the crowd pushed away their eggs to study him, he alluded to the light dusting of snow to which Cedar Rapids had awakened. “Where I come from, we call that a blizzard,” he said, eliciting chuckles from the Thomsons.

He segued quickly to the floods that had damaged their states and what he said he had learned from Louisiana’s hurricanes. Government’s swift reaction “matters more than red tape,” he said. “Always side with the people. You can write an apology to the bureaucrats later.”

This won him appreciative laughs, which grew into loud applause as he told about a rough-talking, no-nonsense Louisiana sheriff who had exhibited even less patience with bureaucrats. “You don’t succeed by waiting for FEMA to tell you what to do,” he declared. “You tell them what you need.”

It was a speech devoted in large part to a skewering of federal bureaucracies, which was red meat for the breakfast attendees who showed their appreciation for his praise of the private sector and of faith-based organizations that he said had aided Louisiana. “If you ever get cynical, come down to Louisiana,” he said, and then lauded those gathered for their “generous response” during his state’s crises. “Know this: We will rebuild. Our people are strong and resilient. Thank y’all very much.”

The Thomsons pressed forward to shake his hand and have their picture taken alongside him. “He’s a great speaker,” whispered Rosemary Thomson. “He’s enthusiastic. He has a background of success . . . with those hurricanes, where others failed. But it’s too early to support anyone. There’s a long ways to go.”

She walked back to Jindal, because something had just occurred to her. “So the campaign has begun, huh?” she affably said to him. “2012 has begun.”

He smiled. “Oh, no, no, not yet,” ” he replied. “No, not yet.”

CLEVELAND — LeBron James reacted strongly to Charles Barkley’s comments that the Cavaliers star isn’t showing respect for Cleveland fans and his teammates by discussing his possible free agency following the 2010 season.

“He’s stupid. That’s all I’ve got to say about that,” James said Friday night before the Cavaliers’ game against Golden State.

Barkley made the comments on TNT’s NBA studio show and Dan Patrick’s radio show.

“If I was LeBron James, I would shut the hell up,” the Hall of Famer said on Patrick’s show. “I’m a big LeBron fan. He’s a stud. You gotta give him his props. I’m getting so annoyed he’s talking about what he’s going to do in two years. I think it’s disrespectful to the game. I think it’s disrespectful to the Cavaliers.”

James, under contract for two more seasons, was bombarded with questions about his future when the Cavaliers visited New York to play the Knicks on Tuesday night.

The Cavaliers can offer him an extension as early as July 1, 2009. There has long been speculation James will eventually end up in one of the NBA’s larger markets and the Knicks have cleared salary-cap space in anticipation of the 2010 free-agent class.

“I think July 1, 2010, is a very big day,” James said when the Cavaliers were in New York. “It’s probably going to be one of the biggest days in free-agent history in the NBA. So a lot of teams are gearing up to try to prepare themselves to be able to put themselves in position to get one of the big free-agent market guys.”

Porsche Foxx gone from V-103 again
By Rodney Ho

Porsche Foxx is gone from V-103 —Â again. Her boss Reggie Rouse sent out an email this morning confirming her departure.

I have no details otherwise. She’s already been taken off parts of the V-103 Web site, such as this list of Veejays. Her name is still floating about though on some pages

Foxx was on air several years in the afternoon slot until late 2004. She was arrested for a DUI with pot possession and no license. She eventually had some jail time, probation and rehab.

In 2007, V-103 gave her a second shot, this time at mid-days. She has been on for about 17 months. She’s had solid ratings, in line with the rest of the station, which is consistently No. 1.

Is this a good move? Did you like her the second time around as much as the first?

Bush: Time for klieg lights to go ’somewhere else’

WASHINGTON — President George W. Bush is relishing the chance to see “the klieg lights shift somewhere else,” although he admits he’ll miss perks like White House cooking and flying on Air Force One.

“Frankly, I’m not going to miss the limelight all that much,” Bush said in an intimate family conversation with his sister, Doro Bush Koch, about how he’ll feel when he leaves the White House to make way for Barack Obama on Jan. 20.

“Been a fabulous experience to be president,” Bush told Doro in the conversation recorded for the oral-history organization StoryCorps. But he said he’ll be ready to go when the time comes.

Bush did acknowledge in the Nov. 12 conversation — aired Thursday on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” — that he would miss the trips on the presidential jet and not having to worry about traffic. He and first lady Laura Bush both agreed in the talk that they would miss the chefs at the Executive Mansion, but disagreed about who would be in charge of meals when they move back to Texas in January.

“I’m sure I’m going to lose a lot of weight, because Laura’s going to be the cook,” Bush deadpanned. The first lady responded, “You’re going to be the person grilling, though, I think.”

The president also said he would miss spending time with his sister, who lives in the District of Columbia area.

“This is a job which, you know, obviously had a lot of stress to it; it has a lot of pressure,” Bush said. “But when you’re around your family at all, all that pales.”

Since 2003, the nonprofit StoryCorps has helped people record nearly 25,000 interviews at stationary booths in New York and with mobile operations traveling around the country. Participants receive a CD of their 40-minute interview, and all recordings are archived at the Library of Congress.

By David S. Broder
Thursday, November 27, 2008; Page A29

When I started covering the White House more than 50 years ago, I believed that the smarter a president was, the better he would be. That was wrong.

Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan were certainly not intellectuals, but they understood the power of the presidency and they knew how to impose their agendas on their political partners and rivals.

By contrast, Jimmy Carter was a whiz at policy analysis and Bill Clinton grasped the connections among issues almost intuitively. Yet neither of them left the White House with a record of great achievements.

So for several years, I have been arguing that there are traits much more important to the success of a president than brainpower. Self-confidence, curiosity, an eye for talent, the ability to communicate, a temperament that invites collaboration — all these and more rank higher on the list of desirable presidential traits.

I am not ready to abandon that view. But I am struck by how lucky this country is, at the moment, that the president-elect is a super-smart person like Barack Obama.

With each passing day, it becomes more evident that even the smartest and most experienced managers of the American economy are struggling to understand — and fix — what has gone wrong in our markets.

I attempt to follow the discussion in newspapers and on Jim Lehrer’s “NewsHour” and other deeply serious television programs about the latest moves by the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury — and I am stumped.

The sums are so staggering, the vocabulary so unfamiliar, the experience so uninformative that I have not a clue whether Bernanke, Paulson and Co. are on top of the situation or are inadvertently making things worse.

That’s an embarrassing admission. I get paid to cover the government, and this is by far the most important challenge facing Washington. But I am utterly dependent on others to decipher the clues that may unravel these mysteries.

Obama is not similarly handicapped. Even in the emotional maelstrom of his election victory, and even with the pressures of assembling his administration, everything points to his managing to focus on the policy choices looming in the economic field.

I have talked to two people on the fringe of the transition team — both members of Congress with major responsibilities in the economic area. Both have been asked for input by Obama, and both say that the quality of his questions — and his follow-ups — were a measure of the depth of his knowledge of the situation.

He has not been tested that rigorously in the news conferences he has held so far, but his ability to respond to the questions he has been asked, to make his points in a coherent, balanced way and to avoid any misstatement has certainly been a treat to watch.

The appointments he has made to his economic team have been impressive, and the response to them has been almost uniformly positive from Capitol Hill to Wall Street. But it is not just the incoming White House and Cabinet people who have been reassuring; it has been Obama himself.

As well as he handled himself during the long campaign, he has been equally sure-footed in the transition. And behind the smooth public performance is a mind that seems able to stretch to encompass even the most complex of policy choices.

I am sure that in coming weeks and months, there will be judgments that will jar this confidence and decisions that Obama himself may come to regret.

But for a nation in crisis, it is worth giving thanks for the performance the next president has turned in so far — and for the mind that is working on the nation’s behalf.

Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-Conn.) support of John McCain’s presidential campaign was well known. His contribution to Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) was not. (By Melina Mara — The Washington Post Photo)

By Paul Kane

Here’s a story of the Thanksgiving spirit, forgiving and forgetting senatorial style.

When Democrats gathered last week to decide the fate of Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), a pair of senators-elect, Tom Udall of New Mexico and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, stepped up to offer symbolically important speeches.

Having ridden the wave of support for President-elect Barack Obama, Udall and Merkley spoke out in favor of the spirit of reconciliation and moving on from the campaign, in which Lieberman was one of the highest profile supporters of the Republican presidential ticket.

But no one in the room knew, as Merkley spoke, that Lieberman had supported Merkley’s opponent, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.). Lieberman, through his Reuniting Our Country PAC, gave Smith’s reelection bid $5,000 on Oct. 10, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Lieberman’s support of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for the presidency was well known, punctuated by his nationally televised speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul criticizing Obama as not prepared to be president. His endorsement of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who has served as the top Republican beside him at the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, also was well known in Democratic circles.

But not even Merkley knew of Lieberman’s backing of Smith in their critical Senate race, until Capitol Briefing alerted his staff today.

“We were surprised to hear this news, but it’s time to put the election behind us. Jeff Merkley is looking forward to working with all his new colleagues on an agenda that will put our nation back on track,” said Julie Edwards, spokeswoman for Merkley.

Lieberman’s support of Smith came the same weekend he wrote an op-ed in the St. Paul Pioneer Press defending Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) for his work as chairman of an investigative subcommittee on Lieberman’s homeland security committee. The same day he wrote a check to Smith, Lieberman’s ROC PAC gave $5,000 to Rep. Peter King, the Long Island Republican. In radio and TV appearances the final days of the campaign, Lieberman also frequently said that a Democratic majority of 60 votes, a filibuster-proof level, would be a bad thing.

Lieberman’s $5,000 check was clearly not a difference maker for Smith, as Merkley still won by more than 50,000 votes. And Coleman is clinging to a razor-thin lead during a recount of his race against Democrat Al Franken.

But the internal Democratic caucus debate over Lieberman’s fate almost always focused on Lieberman’s criticism of Obama, not on his support of Republicans in Senate races. Edwards, Merkley’s spokeswoman, has said that Merkley also expressed how much Lieberman’s actions in the presidential race angered him. He did not encourage other Democrats to vote one way or the other, but did talk about moving on from the bitter fights of the campaign.

Then, on a 42-13 vote, Democrats supported keeping Lieberman as chairman of the committee with broad oversight of the Obama administration and removing him from the Environment and Public Works Committee.

Lieberman’s office acknowledged his donation to Smith, but noted that he worked hard for other Democrats as well. “While the Senator’s political action committee donated to a very few Republicans, the Senator’s pacs donated and raised over a half million dollars for wide range of Democratic candidates and organizations in this past election cycle,” Marshall Wittmann, his spokesman, said.