RICE IS MUCH TOO VALUABLE TO TAKE THE FALL.

Byline: EARL O. HUTCHINSON

EVER since former Bush counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke testified that National Security Adviser Condeleezza Rice was largely to blame for the lack of preparedness before the 9-11 terror attacks, the tongues have wagged furiously about her future.

A White House damage-control effort has been busily under way, and Rice has dropped her opposition to publicly testifying under oath before the 9-11 Commission. Yet it will take much work to undue the collateral damage from Clarke's attack and Rice's week of foot-dragging before finally succumbing to public pressure.

Conventional wisdom holds that her days in politics are numbered. Some predict she will exit the White House if President George W. Bush wins a second term, if not before. Time magazine has bluntly asked, ``Is Condi the Problem?''

Rice is thought by some to be the weak link in Bush's top chain of command. Her expertise is in the Soviet Union and its military relations with East European satellite countries, and not on how to assess and fight terrorism. By the time she took the reins as Bush's security adviser, the Soviet Union was out of business, and many of the Eastern European countries had either been reconfigured or had become allies of the U.S.

There were long stretches during the intense debates over Bush's Iraq war policy, the terrorism war, foreign policy and security matters, when Rice sunk from public view. During those times, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and even Vice President Dick Cheney became familiar fixtures on talk shows explaining Bush policy. This led some Bush administration critics to ask, ``Where's Condi?''

But Condi, as Bush has affectionately dubbed her, isn't likely to be the sacrificial lamb for the Bush administration's alleged 9-11 failures.

The sole reason that Rice even became an issue in the tit-for-tat between Clarke and Bush over who's to blame for 9-11 is because Clarke singled her out by name for blame. Yet, from what can be gleaned from the spate of recent tell-all accounts of the inner workings of the Bush administration, her role is not to make policy but to follow Bush policy directives.

For the most part, Rice plays a role for which she is perfectly suited - Bush's hard-nosed political defender on matters of policy. As the close personal family friend and political ally of Bush Sr. and now Bush the younger, she has always been the consummate team player. That means she takes orders, follows directions and does not stray one inch from the White House's political script.

Bush officials have quickly circled the wagons around her. In their furious counterattack against Clarke, they have all but branded him a liar and a self-serving, book peddling opportunist, while downplaying Rice's role before 9-11, or barely mentioning her at all. Republican congressional leaders also gently let Rice off the hook.

Rice serves a dual political purpose that makes her invaluable to Bush, even with the current controversy. Her appointment as security adviser - a first for a black and a woman - appears to confirm Bush's oft-repeated boast during the 2000 presidential campaign that diversity would be the new watchword in the Republican Party. Though polls taken after Bush appointed Rice his national security adviser and Powell his secretary of state found that black hostility toward Republicans remained intense, many blacks, the Rev. Jesse Jackson included, still publicly expressed admiration for Rice and Powell. When Clarke attacked Rice, many blacks privately grumbled that she might be made the scapegoat for Bush's intelligence failings.

But Rice's conservative views on social and domestic issues are generally in line with Bush's, and that plays well with conservative voters who Bush needs to beat Sen. John Kerry in the fall.

That's been glaringly evident in the administration's response to various hot-button, racially tinged issues. When Bush rejected reparations and refused to allow the U.S. to participate in the U.N. World Racism Conference in Durban in 2001, ostensibly because of its anti-Israel tilt, Rice denounced reparations and claimed the conference had been ``hijacked.''

When Bush backed the white students in their lawsuit against the University of Michigan's affirmative action program last year, Powell openly criticized him, but Rice responded with praise. During her tenure as provost at Stanford University during the 1990s, student groups claimed that Rice attempted to gut affirmative action and women's programs and oppose increased minority hiring at the school. Rice denied the charge, but her reflexive backing of Bush in the University of Michigan case indicated that in a heated battle on a contentious racial issue, Rice is loathe to break ranks with her boss.

During her long association with the Bushes, Rice has loyally and aggressively defended the family and the administration against all enemies. Her weeklong refusal to publicly testify before the 9-11 commission was yet more proof of that abiding loyalty.

Don't write Condi's political epitaph just yet.

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(1 -- 2 -- color) Is National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice the problem, as Time magazine suggests? Or is this team player in the Bush administration being cast as the sacrificial lamb for its alledged 9-11 failures?

Susan Walsh/Associated Press