Critics of the Bush administration's foreign policy tended to see Secretary of State Colin Powell as a man with the right instincts who lacked the White House pull to get anything done. Many of them expected an even worse performance from his successor, Condoleezza Rice. But in some areas, at least, American foreign policy seems to be changing for the better, and Ms. Rice can take some of the credit.

John Bolton was a destructive presence in the State Department under Mr. Powell, and his administration fans were lobbying to see him promoted to the No. 2 job. Ms. Rice avoided that disastrous possibility by backing Mr. Bolton instead for the job of ambassador to the United Nations. She chose the far more stable and grounded-in-reality Robert Zoellick, the former trade representative, as her deputy. Granted, siccing Mr. Bolton on the rest of the world at the United Nations isn't exactly the best way to sideline him, but at least he has been removed from dangerous areas like North Korea policy.

And Ms. Rice has set about undoing some of the messes Mr. Bolton made. The Washington Post reported last month that several initiatives that had been in limbo because of Mr. Bolton's my-way-or-the-highway style are moving again. American and Russian negotiators have reached an agreement - to be sealed by President Bush and President Vladimir Putin this week- to eliminate enough plutonium to make 8,000 nuclear bombs, potentially keeping it out of terrorists' hands. The Bush administration and Ms. Rice have also dropped Mr. Bolton's ridiculous campaign to get rid of Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Last month it was heartening to hear Ms. Rice deliver long-overdue warnings to two querulous Muslim allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither," she said.

This page has not been shy about criticizing Ms. Rice, or in voicing its disappointment with her record as national security adviser. She had the president's ear, but she seemed to use it to tell him only what he wanted to hear. Her staff knew the evidence that Saddam Hussein was actively pursuing nuclear weapons was dubious at best, yet Ms. Rice fanned those fears to promote her boss's ill-advised invasion. In her new job, she has wrested Iraq policy from the Pentagon, and has demanded that the various religious and ethnic groups in Iraq work together. But Mr. Bush's delusional Iraq speech last week suggests the basic problems are as deep as ever.