Bush Adds Rice to Foreign-Policy Team

Dec. 17 -- Continuing to lay the groundwork for his administration, President-elect George W. Bush named Stanford professor Condoleezza Rice as his national security adviser this afternoon.

“I trust her judgement,” Bush said at a press conference at the governor’s mansion in Austin, Texas. “America will realize she is a wise person.”

Rice, who was Bush’s principal foreign-policy adviser during the presidential campaign, said she was “absolutely delighted” to be taking the position.

She also worked on the national-security staff of Bush’s father, former President George Bush, where she was a senior adviser on Soviet affairs.

Bush named two other members of his White House staff at the press conference. Alberto Gonzales, a Texas Supreme Court justice, will be White House counsel, while campaign spokeswoman Karen Hughes will take on a role as counselor to the president.

‘A Wonderful Time’

In her brief remarks this afternoon, Rice said it was “a wonderful time for the United States in foreign policy,” because “it is a time when markets and democracy are spreading, when our values are being affirmed around the world, and yet it’s a time of great challenge.”

Rice has been a strong proponent of putting U.S. interests at the center of all foreign-policy decisions, and has written that overseas humanitarian missions should be a “second-order effect” of the country’s foreign policy.

The former Stanford University provost did not offer specifics about her foreign-policy goals this afternoon, but said Bush “will conduct a foreign policy that combines humility with strength.”

Rice will become the first African-American to be national security adviser, a day after Bush nominated retired Gen. Colin Powell to become the first African-American secretary of state.

“I think that you will see in the presidency of George W. Bushrecognition of how important it is that we continue the last 30-plus years of progress toward one America,” said Rice. “He will have an administration that is inclusive.”