So far, President Bush is filling his second-term Cabinet with some of his closest advisers and most loyal confidants.

On Tuesday, Bush announced that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice would replace Colin Powell as secretary of state. Rice’s nomination follows quickly behind the decision to name Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, as attorney general, replacing the lightning rod John Ashcroft, who resigned after the Nov. 2 election.

Rice has a strong resume and, at least in one very important way, will be a major improvement over Powell at the State Department. A low rumble of dissent often circulated around Powell, and the world soon learned that he did not always speak for the president. In Rice, the world can rest assured that she both has the president’s ear and understands the aims of his foreign policy.

Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a national security adviser himself, was welcomed with relief by Democrats and world leaders as a voice of moderation inside a Bush White House dominated by hard-liners such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It became well-known that Powell often disagreed with his colleagues and had become marginalized within the president’s circle of advisers.

During the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, Powell went before the United Nations to make the case for a war that it’s widely believed he opposed. The reservoir of integrity established over a lifetime of public service was damaged when his presentation outlining Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was later shown to be full of holes, half-truths and innuendoes.

Rice, an accomplished scholar and a Russian expert, is not without her own problems. She was the national security adviser before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and is at least partly responsible for the poor planning and execution of the war in Iraq.

We believe, however, she will be a more effective representative of the Bush administration on the world stage. Her hard-line policies are more in line with those of the president, and she will likely maintain her close advisory relationship with the president.

We had great hope that Colin Powell could influence foreign affairs with his multilateralist and moderate views, while acting as a balance against the neoconservatives that have dominated the president’s international policy team. He could not. Instead, he has stood his ground as a “good soldier” following difficult orders. His departure pushes the Cabinet further to the right.

With Rice, the country and the world will get a Bush loyalist, and the embattled State Department will get a better seat among decision makers.