On Wednesday, it's the Condi show in the German editorial pages. "Our condolences" the headline screams in the left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung. The less left Sueddeutsche Zeitung is a bit more circumspect, using "The Subservient Diplomat" as its headline. The Financial Times Deutschland heralds the "End of the Duplicity." And, in a subhead, the tabloid Bild calls her "Kissinger with pumps!"

But perhaps the most telling editorial of all is the selection of pictures to accompany the stories. Die Tageszeitung features a sinister looking Rice with piercing eyes beneath the headline "Uncle Tom's Rice." The Berliner Zeitung newspaper shows a smiling Rice getting a smooch on the cheek from 43, but on its inside page, she takes on a more serious, almost perplexed look. Die Welt has the freckle-faced incoming Secretary of State grinning from ear to ear -- on two different pages. Finally, the Sueddeutsche front page shows Rice pinching contemplatively just beneath her lower lip. The image and "New Mission for Miss Rice" caption make you wonder: Is she thinking about America's next military conflict?

Back to the substance: The appointment of George W. Bush's national security advisor -- who tended to have the president's ear when it came to foreign policy, anyway -- surprised few in Germany's newsrooms. ("It was as unsurprising as Powell's resignation," writes the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). But her selection did increase fears that Bush II will pursue a more hawkish political course.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer "can no longer hope to relieve the tensions in the German-US relationship," writes Die Tageszeitung. "In the future (Fischer) will face a hard-liner, whose promotion by the president shows he holds the view that his past foreign policy was well and truly correct." No one, the paper writes, "who was hoping for a renunciation of the US's hegemonic policies, an increase in the importance of international organizations and an improvement of dialogue between Europe and the United States can be pleased by this personnel decision."

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung says Bush is sending out a message with Rice's appointment: "This (State Department) belongs to me, everything happens by my command." Indeed, no advisor in foreign policy matters has been closer to Bush than Rice. And while Rice is likely to follow Bush's orders, "she also comes from the classical diplomatic school of thinking: She is able to put herself in the position of other countries and she is capable of negotiating and not just making demands." Those are important challenges for a foreign minister -- not just in Iraq, but especially in trans-Atlantic relations. "She is no longer just the most-senior advisor to Bush who juggles between Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell. She has to pursue an active foreign policy, and this would be a good time for the Allies to influence this foreign policy," the paper writes.

The Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung offers two scenarios for a Rice State Department. "Her closeness to Bush is the (political) capital which Rice has at her disposal and which she takes with her to the State Department," it writes. But there's another way of looking at it: in the new office to which she takes that capital, "she'll be a delegate of Bush, and he could control the entire foreign policy apparatus in the future." The paper notes Powell's warning that Bush II would pursue an "aggressive foreign policy," but that the policy would then be "executed by a woman (who is an adherent) of realpolitik and has the intellectual metier to manage a superpower's relations." But, the paper notes, she's got her work cut out for her: the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, peace in the broader Middle East, the fight against terror and restoring Washington's political credibility. "It would be desired that she undertake a serious and sincere effort to close the strategic gulf with its traditional allies and for her to convince Bush to pursue a pragmatic multilateralism."