First African American Secretary of State tipped for Bush cabinet

By ANDREW GUMBEL

LOS ANGELES - With his time to prepare for the White House halved by the five-week post-electoral legal battle, George W Bush is expected to start naming members of his Cabinet as early as today, with top billing going to Colin Powell, the former armed forces chief of staff, who is in line to become Secretary of State.

Mr Bush's advisers said the president-elect would make his first big announcement from his family ranch in central Texas, where he is spending the weekend before making his first post-electoral trip to Washington next week. "I think America will be pleased with the choice," Mr Bush told reporters yesterday of his impending announcement, without specifying what it would be.

Although General Powell's name has been circulating for weeks, his appointment will be of considerable symbolic as well as substantial importance, as he will be the first African American to serve as America's top diplomat.

That fact will go a long way to promote the image of diversity Mr Bush seeks, and which previous Republican administrations have made little or no effort to cultivate.

A second cabinet appointment expected to follow in short order will be Condoleezza Rice, another African American, who is slated to be Mr Bush's senior national security adviser.

In the same vein, Mr Bush and his running mate, Dick Cheney, have announced their intention to "reach out" to Democrats and find at least one or two members of the other party to serve in the Cabinet.

Yesterday, Mr Bush had lunch in Austin with John Breaux, a Democratic Senator from Louisiana, and was believed to be interested in offering him the post of Energy Secretary. Mr Breaux preempted him, however, saying that he would be staying in the Senate and working to bridge gaps there between Republicans and Democrats.

That decision can have come as no surprise, since Mr Breaux's resignation from the Senate would have upset the even 50-50 split between the two parties and handed a slim majority to the Republicans.

Mr Breaux's presence in Austin just two days after Vice-President Al Gore's concession was still something of a propaganda coup for Mr Bush. It seems Mr Breaux will act as some sort of liaison in encouraging other Democrats to join the administration and fostering co-operation in Congress.

The big question is what kind of Democrats these will be. Most of the names circulating in the past few days have been conservative southerners likely to sympathise with much of Mr Bush's agenda on education, health care and pension reform, while offering little opposition to his traditionalist views on social issues such as abortion and welfare.

The feeling, particularly among Democrats on Capitol Hill, is that Mr Bush will have to do better if he truly wants to persuade Congress – and the country – that he intends to rule from the middle.

One obvious post for a Democrat would be Defense Secretary, particularly as President Bill Clinton has begun a tradition of giving a member of the opposite party ultimate control at the Pentagon. But the obvious candidate – the former senator Sam Nunn – has already said he is not interested in returning to public service.

The next few days will be decisive in bolstering Mr Bush's credibility as a "uniter, not a divider" – something he promoted as the very essence of his leadership style, both in the campaign and in his address taking up the mantle of president-elect on Wednesday night.

With official transition business up and running in Washington under Mr Cheney's command, not in Texas under Mr Bush's, the new presidency's centre of gravity is gradually moving eastwards.

Having hosted such Republican luminaries as Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, and Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, on his ranch in the past few weeks, it will now be Mr Bush's turn to travel to the capital, starting with a two-day visit on Monday and Tuesday in which he will conduct interviews for senior posts, meet congressional leaders and hold meetings with both Mr Gore and Mr Clinton.

By the middle of next week the world should know whether the president-elect will have a Cabinet that "looks like America" – in the celebrated phrase Mr Clinton used on taking power in 1993 – or looks like a coterie of Mr Bush's family retainers, with a few token dark faces thrown in.

General Powell, for example, may be African American and an advocate of such unfashionable Republican ideas as affirmative action, but he is also a career soldier who will have to tread carefully not to upset diplomatic sensibilities around the world.

Given his reputation as the man who vanquished Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, his credibility as an honest broker in the Middle East will be particularly open to scrutiny.

There are similar problems with Ms Rice, an academic who – during the campaign at least – espoused an isolationist policy of withdrawing US troops from foreign hotspots, including the Balkans. She will have to prove herself with Nato allies and, possibly, at the United Nations.

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