Joel Brinkley's Sunday piece in the San Francisco Chronicle is devastating. (Via.) It makes the idea that America will have success promoting our vision for the final 18 months of the Bush presidency more than laughable.

I remember the heady days for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

About 2 1/2 years ago, when she was new in office, I accompanied her on her first trip around the world, with stops in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Korea, Japan and China. Crowds gathered to see her limousine drive past; people whistled, waved and cheered. Interviewers routinely asked her whether she was planning to run for president. One TV reporter in India told her she was "arguably the most powerful woman in the world." She chuckled but did not exactly agree -- or disagree.

How things change.

A few months ago, she decided to write an opinion piece about Lebanon. She enlisted John Chambers, chief executive officer of Cisco Systems as a co-author, and they wrote about public/private partnerships and how they might be of use in rebuilding Lebanon after last summer's war. No one would publish it.

Think about that. Every one of the major newspapers approached refused to publish an essay by the secretary of state. Price Floyd, who was the State Department's director of media affairs until recently, recalls that it was sent to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and perhaps other papers before the department finally tried a foreign publication, the Financial Times of London, which also turned it down.

As a last-ditch strategy, the State Department briefly considered translating the article into Arabic and trying a Lebanese paper. But finally they just gave up. "I kept hearing the same thing: 'There's no news in this.' " Floyd said. The piece, he said, was littered with glowing references to President Bush's wise leadership. "It read like a campaign document."

From the beginning of my life in Washington, I saw myself in some small way in the statecraft business. The international spies weren't my heroes; I wanted to be a diplomat. My interests changed, and I followed a different path, but never took my eye off the Department of State. In studying international relations, the saber-rattling was more interesting than the sabers.

So I grieve for the incredibly weakened state of Foggy Bottom. Not even reaching the question of whether I agree with this administration or want to see it's diplomatic goals reached, it's incredibly distressing that what should be the principle tool for international outreach is so weakened.

The damage, sadly, was almost entirely self-inflicted. And the place where the administration's influence is most needed (and where the administration has decided to focus that influence) is the very source of that damage, the Middle East. All this is made worse by the real possibility that very bad things will happen because we aren't in a position to use any tool in the foreign policy arsenal besides force. We have no diplomatic persuasion left in the Middle East. That credibility is up in smoke.

(Image of cover of Expreso from Oswaldo used via Creative Commons license.)