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(Photo: AP)
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Condoleezza Rice succeeded Colin Powell as secretary of state in President Bush's second-term Cabinet. Confirmed by the Senate Jan. 26, 2005, by a vote of 85 to 13, she became the first black woman to hold the post. The vote against Rice, who previously served as Mr. Bush's national security adviser, was the highest against a nominee for secretary of state at least since World War II. Several Democrats attacked her previous work in shaping U.S. foreign policy, which was topped by the ongoing U.S. war in Iraq.
Raised in the segregated South, Rice is an accomplished pianist and Russian scholar. She worked at the National Security Council in President George H.W. Bush's White House and went on to be provost of Stanford University in California before working for President Bush's 2000 campaign. She is considered more of a foreign policy hard-liner than Powell.
Powell, widely viewed as the moderate in an administration dominated by hawks, resigned Nov. 15, 2004, saying he never intended to serve beyond a first term. The son of Jamaican immigrants, he grew up in New York City, graduating from the City College of New York in 1958. He entered the Army shortly thereafter and served two tours in Vietnam. In August 1989, he became the first black officer to hold the nation's highest military post when President George H.W. Bush named him chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In that post, he oversaw Operation Desert Storm during the victorious 1991 Persian Gulf war. After retiring from the military, he served as chairman of America's Promise, a national nonprofit dedicated to youth development. Powell declined to run for president in 1995 despite a well-organized movement to draft him.
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