Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The subtitle of Elizabeth Bumiller's biography ``Condoleezza Rice: An American Life'' tells you everything you need to know. The book is serious, sober and deeply unimaginative.

Neither an attack nor a valentine, it would be far more interesting if it were either -- if the writer ventured an actual stand. Instead it shows how the entire notion of ``balance'' has sucked the vitality out of mainstream journalism, both stylistically and intellectually.

Bumiller's book is essentially a 400-page Sunday magazine profile, carefully calibrated both to maintain her reputation as a journalist -- she is a Washington correspondent for the New York Times -- and to preserve the insider access that Washington reporters hoard like keys to the executive washroom.

Her portrait of Rice is believable and unsurprising. As a minister's daughter growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, Rice was both affected by the city's racial violence (she was friends with one of the four girls killed in the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church) and, taking a cue from her father, aloof from the civil-rights movement. The vague notion she inherited from him seems to have been that government redress of injustice weakens the victims.

You can see this attitude playing out most strongly in the book's best section, on Rice's tenure as provost of Stanford University -- a post for which affirmative action carried the weight that her thin publishing history and solid but unoriginal scholarship could not. It gave her a leg up that she later refused to others; in fact, public remarks of hers to the effect that affirmative action played no part in Stanford hires have prompted a U.S. Department of Labor investigation to determine whether the university violated federal law.

Essence of Rice

Bumiller does capture what would later come to seem the essence of Rice, the emotion that plays out when the camera catches those lizard eyes sizing up an opponent: confidence to the point of arrogance coupled with the certainty that any kind of questioning is a personal affront.

Faced with hard financial decisions at Stanford, Rice carried them out but with a bluntness and insensitivity that alienated others, then couldn't understand why they were hurt. One colleague says Rice may be harsh but would never stab you in the back. Perhaps not, but Bumiller makes it seem likely she would cut your throat if she deemed it necessary and then wonder why your grieving relatives were so emotional.

Stanford sets the stage for her tenure in the Bush White House. But here Bumiller grows cautious, taking a much more on- the-one-hand-on-the-other approach. There's no doubt that, under Bush, Rice has stood for the possibility of diplomacy. First as national security adviser and then as secretary of state, she often found herself in conflict with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

Sanest Inmate

But how much credit does the sanest inmate in the asylum deserve? She wholeheartedly supported the invasion of Iraq and, Bumiller records, reacted with surprise at the widespread looting. That response suggests a mind-set that expects world events to proceed by plan.

Rice's area of expertise was the Soviet Union -- which means that since 1991 she has been essentially a historian. Bumiller studiously ignores the question of how this background qualified her to direct a foreign policy focused on the Mideast.

Bumiller brings her equitable blandness even to the moment that will forever define Condoleezza Rice: her brusque insistence that an August 2001 intelligence document she had read, ``Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States,'' contained nothing worth more than a cursory examination. Rarely has a public official so openly acknowledged the blood on her hands, or so blithely dismissed it.

``Condoleezza Rice'' is published by Random House (400 pages, $27.95).

(Charles Taylor is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this story: Charles Taylor at ctaylor121@nyc.rr.com.

Last Updated: December 12, 2007 00:05 EST