Welcome, Condi! Watch Your Back.

Even before the White House made it official today that Condoleeza Rice would succeed Colin Powell, the long knives were coming out in Foggy Bottom. The Washington Post reports that Rice faces a double whammy: The State Department bureaucracy loves Powell, because he fought for their interests like no secretary of state in recent memory, and distrusts Rice, because they think she undercut him while at the NSC. Bottom line? We could be looking at the next Porter Goss. "I look forward to working with the great people in the Foreign Service and the civil service," Rice said today. That's a start.

Slate's Fred Kaplan thinks Rice's arrival could actually bring "a morale boost among foreign service officers--a note of compensation for the departure of their cherished Powell that the State Department is now run by someone who has the president's ear and trust." We'll see. I doubt it.