Q. What did segregation as well as Cold War politics teach you about leadership? What leadership lessons can a reader gain from Extraordinary, Ordinary People?
A. Among the most important lessons I learned from my experiences enduring segregation and observing the unraveling of the Soviet Union were the importance of vision in leadership and the universal aspirations of all people for freedom. Leaders in both the Civil Rights movement and the Cold War succeeded in part because they articulated bold visions of what a world should look like after segregation barriers fell and the Berlin Wall crumbled. It would have been easier to cave to expectations that segregation would not end in my lifetime or that Germany would not unify for more than one hundred years. And yet, because of the bold visions of our leaders, Germany unified in two years to become one of Europe’s strongest economies, and the United States elected its first African American to be president of the United States soon after two African Americans had served as Secretary of State.
Additionally, these experiences reinforced for me the idea that freedom is a universal aspiration. I often recall how my father was unable to register to vote in the South. Segregationists had long considered blacks too “childish” to participate in politics. Similarly, Soviet leaders assumed they knew what was best for their people by imposing the strong hand of communism to redistribute wealth and opportunity in a bankrupt vision of equality. Any illusion about the aspirations of people in Eastern Europe and the Soviet bloc were wiped away by the hundreds of thousands of impatient patriots protesting in squares and staring down Soviet tanks as they clamored for democracy. This same spirit—this universality of freedom—has driven Arabs into the streets today to topple authoritarian regimes. These experiences have reinforced for me the importance of leaders to stand for the proposition that every man, woman, and child deserves to live in freedom.
Q. Your book poignantly describes the constant support you, John, and Angelena provided one another. Who are the members of your support team these days?
A. I continue to be blessed with close family and an extraordinary group of friends. Since leaving office, I have reestablished my life in northern California and reconnected with many of the individuals mentioned in these pages. I often spend the holidays with my aunt Gee, and my cousin Lativia and her husband, Will, have recently moved close to me in the Bay Area. I am also extraordinarily fortunate to have resumed my professorship at Stanford, where I have the great privilege of teaching and interacting with students. Their vitality and intellectual curiosity renew my faith in the promise of the next generation that will serve our country.
Q. Will your next book pick up where this one leaves off?
A. My next memoir will indeed resume where Extraordinary, Ordinary People left off and reflect on the foreign policy decisions I helped shape during a consequential period in our nation’s history. I hope that once the memoir is published, readers will find it as informative and engaging as the book they currently hold in their hands.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RAISED IN Alabama, CONDOLEEZZA RICE became the sixty-sixth U.S. Secretary of State and the first black woman to hold that office. Prior to that, she was the first woman to serve as National Security Advisor. She is a professor at Stanford University.
A Selection from
NO HIGHER HONOR
A Memoir of My Years in Washington
Condoleezza Rice
For eight years, Condoleezza Rice influenced national and international policy at the highest levels. An excerpt follows from No Higher Honor, Rice’s long-anticipated memoir of her years as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State for the Bush Administration.
PROLOGUE
THE RIDE TO FOGGY BOTTOM from my Watergate apartment was short. I had the good fortune to live four minutes from the office, and I’d been grateful many times after late nights and tense days that I didn’t have to commute.
On this, my last morning, I would have enjoyed a little more time to reflect. But I was quickly in the garage and then up the secretary’s private elevator to the seventh floor, entering the ornate paneled hallway lined with portraits of my predecessors.
I met my staff for one final time to thank them. They had a gift for me: they’d purchased my White House Cabinet Room chair. Each member of the President’s Cabinet sits in a large brown leather chair with a plaque on the back. I remember seeing “Secretary of State” for the first time and blushing at the thought that there had been a few others who had chairs like this before me. Did Thomas Jefferson have his own chair?
The ceremonial part of the meeting was short, though, because we had work to do. Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, was coming to negotiate a memorandum of understanding on terms for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. Turmoil in the Middle East had been there when I arrived, and it was going to be there when I left. But it was a fundamentally different place than when we had entered office in 2001. So much had happened to shape the contours of a new Middle East.
Toward the end of my day, I stopped to look at the four portraits of former secretaries that I’d kept near me. There was Thomas Jefferson—everyone kept Thomas Jefferson—and George Marshall, arguably the greatest secretary of state and, well, everybody kept George Marshall too.
But I’d asked to have Dean Acheson and William Seward moved up the queue. Acheson graced my outer office. When he left as secretary in 1953, he was hounded by the question “Who lost China?” with many blaming him for America’s inability to prevent Mao Zedong’s victory. Now he was remembered as one of the founding fathers of NATO.
And I kept William Seward. Why would anyone keep Seward’s portrait in a place of honor? Well, he bought Alaska. When the purchase was submitted for ratification in the Senate in 1867, Seward was excoriated: “Why would you pay the tsar of Russia seven million dollars for that icebox?” The decision quickly became known as “Seward’s folly.” One day I was talking with the then defense minister of Russia, Sergei Ivanov. He’d recently visited Alaska. “It’s so beautiful,” he said. “It reminds me of Russia.” “Sergei, it used to be Russia,” I quipped. We’re all glad that Seward bought Alaska.
The portraits were not just decoration; they were a reminder of something that I often told the press and others: Today’s headlines and history’s judgment are rarely the same. If you are too attentive to the former, you will most certainly not do the hard work of securing the latter.
In that vein, Dean Acheson and I shared more than having had the honor of serving in turbulent times; we shared a favorite quote from the English historian C. V. Wedgwood: “History is lived forwards but it is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only.”
My, you’ve lived a lot of history, I thought. Then I headed down the hall to meet the Israeli foreign minister one last time.
INTRODUCTION
IT HAD BEEN a long two days. On Thursday morning, September 13, 2001, I stood looking at myself in the bathroom mirror. How could this have happened? Did we miss something? Keep your focus. Just get to the end of today, then tomorrow, then the next day. There will be a time to go back. Not now. You have work to do.