August 1998: Rice Tutors George W. Bush on Foreign Affairs

Former President Bush secretly invites two people to his Kennebunkport, Maine, compound: his son George W. Bush, and Condoleezza Rice, a longtime protege of his close friend and colleague Brent Scowcroft. Rice had been the elder Bush’s assistant on Soviet affairs from 1989 to 1991, and later became provost of Stanford University. Rice and the younger Bush spend many hours discussing foreign affairs, with Rice attempting to tutor him about the fundamentals of US relations with a host of other countries and regions. “We talked a lot about America’s role in the world,” Rice will recall. Bush “was doing due diligence on whether or not to run for president.” Rice will become “foreign policy coordinator” to the nascent Bush campaign. [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 117; Unger, 2007, pp. 160]