Rice Engages in Nomination Ritual - Without the Nomination

The difficult Senate gantlet that Susan E. Rice is trying to navigate this week is a familiar one for cabinet and Supreme Court nominees, whose political fate often rests squarely on their ability to successfully woo key lawmakers.

Except Ms. Rice is not a nominee.

For two days, Ms. Rice, the United Nations ambassador, has engaged in an elaborate and very public process of courtesy calls to senators who will eventually play outsize roles in confirming President Obama's choice to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state early next year.

But the visits by Ms. Rice - which have produced two days of scathing sound bites from her Republican detractors - are remarkable precisely because they are so premature. While he has repeatedly praised Ms. Rice, Mr. Obama has not yet nominated her to become his next secretary of state.

There is, officially, no nomination for the senators to debate.

“It seems highly unusual. I'm not sure if we can find an analogous situation,” said Jim Manley, a former top Democratic aide in the Senate who has had years of experience watching presidential nominees march through their confirmation battles.

A veteran Republican operative who has helped guide his party's presidential nominees through the Senate confirmation process also marveled on Wednesday at the unfolding spectacle between Ms. Rice and the lawmakers, saying he had never seen anything quite like it.

“It's remarkable to watch,” said the Republican, who asked not to be identified to avoid appearing to criticize Republican senators. “The only rationale for the meetings is through the prism of her being a prospective nominee. Why else would a U.N. ambassador be meeting with senators about an appearance on the Sunday talk shows unless it was for that?”

The succession of closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill have been followed by the traditional post-meeting gaggles of reporters clustered around the senators and - in the case of Ms. Rice - statements by several Republican senators expressing grave doubt as to her qualifications to succeed Mrs. Clinton as the nation's top diplomat.

“It's important that the secretary of state maintain credibility in the United States and around the world,” Susan Collins, the Republican senator from Maine, said on CNN Wednesday. Ms. Collins said she was concerned that Ms. Rice had damaged her credibility with her early appearances on Sunday morning talk shows five days after the attacks on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The fact that Mr. Obama has not yet said that he wants Ms. Rice to be his secretary of state - and may actually nominate someone else for the job - has done little to alter the sense that the confirmation process for Ms. Rice has all but begun.

That's not the way it usually works.

Presidents often float the names of potential nominees before officially making a selection. That gives senators the chance to express their opinions about the potential choices and gives the White House an idea of the difficulty that a potential nominee might have getting confirmed. Interest groups spend weeks or months gearing up their arguments for those on the shortlist.

By the time Mr. Obama officially announced in May of 2010 his choice of Elena Kagan, the solicitor general, for the Supreme Court, most people already thought she was a likely choice. Earlier, the president's choice of Timothy F. Geithner to run the Treasury Department did not come as a huge surprise to many in Washington.

But there appears to be little, if any, precedent for one of the people on a shortlist to begin the process of courting senators before a presidential announcement.

Jay Carney, the president's press secretary, was asked on Wednesday whether Ms. Rice's meetings on Capitol Hill should be seen as a “trial run” for a possible nomination. M r. Carney said that Ms. Rice saw the meetings as an opportunity to clarify her comments about the Benghazi attacks.

“I think she believed that it was entirely appropriate to meet with members who had been particularly interested in, and sometimes critical of, her appearances and what she said,” Mr. Carney told reporters. He said she was eager “to meet with them and discuss exactly what happened, where the information came from.”

If Ms. Rice had hoped that the meetings would tamp down the Republican criticism, the process seems to have failed. In several cases, the Republican senators she met with emerged from the meeting just as critical as they were before - if not more so.

Less clear is the political impact of the meetings on the president's decision about whom to nominate to replace Mrs. Clinton.

If he decides against Ms. Rice after such a public process, it would invite critics to say that he did so because of the negative assessments by R epublican senators.

If anything, the repeated criticism of Ms. Rice this week appears to have offended Mr. Obama, who repeated his faith in her after a cabinet meeting Wednesday afternoon, saying that “Susan Rice is extraordinary. I couldn't be prouder of the job she has done as ambassador.”

The remark suggests that Mr. Obama might forge ahead and nominate her for the post despite the criticism from key lawmakers, essentially betting that most senators - including many Republicans - will offer deference to a president's choice for a top cabinet post.

Mr. Manley said he believed the Republican criticism of Ms. Rice over the Benghazi attacks was “as phony an issue as a three-dollar bill.” He predicted that Republicans would not end up blocking her appointment if the president nominates her.

“The optics would look really bad if Republicans were to mount a filibuster,” Mr. Manley said. “I question how many Republicans would join in a filibus ter.”

But the Republican operative said the two days of meetings on Capitol Hill may have hurt Ms. Rice's chances of being confirmed. He said a well-orchestrated effort would have included meetings with friendly senators who could emerge from the meetings with words of praise for her potential nomination.

“Then you are at least having equilibrium in the coverage,” the Republican said. “This is an example of a political play that is trending in the wrong direction.”