We’ll never know if she could have stopped W. from ruining his presidency and destroying so many lives when there was no national security stake.

We only know that when you sell your soul, it’s not like a pawnshop. Condi thought she could reclaim it after she was secretary of state and bring W. back to the light of diplomacy and common sense. But, as Russell Baker once noted, she was trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube, spinning her wheels in the second term trying to undo the disasters of the first.

What a wonderful lesson she could have taught those graduates about the perils of succeeding at any cost, about how moral shortcuts never lead to the right place.

She should have said she was sorry about everything — except becoming one of the first two women permitted to join Augusta National.