Condoleezza Rice on Race, Russia, Freedom and Why America’s Best Days Are Still Ahead
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I'm Barry Weiss. This is Honestly. And my guest today at once needs no introduction and also 20 pages of introduction. I'll do my best. When I think of pioneering American leaders, Condoleezza Rice is front and center in my mind. Good evening. Good evening, distinguished delegates. Good evening, my fellow Americans. There may be no one in public life quite like her. A little girl grows up

in Jim Crow Birmingham. This is Birmingham. For a month, the two communities, Negro and white in Birmingham, had been building up to scenes, to clashes like this. The situation was perilously close to an explosion. Her parents can't take her to a movie theater or to a restaurant. And I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.

But they have her absolutely convinced that even if she can't have a hamburger at the Woolworth's lunch counter, she could be president of the United States if she wanted to be, and she becomes the secretary of state.

By the time she walked into the White House as National Security Advisor and later as Secretary of State, I, Condoleezza Rice, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States. She was one of the most powerful people in the world and the highest ranking Black woman in the history of the United States. So help me God.

I spoke with Secretary Rice at Stanford University, where she served as the youngest provost in the school's history and is now director of the Hoover Institution. We talk about her story. We talk about race, immigration, America's contentious role on the global stage, China, possible war between Russia and Ukraine, the continued popularity of Donald Trump,

whether or not she has regrets about policies that she pursued during the George W. Bush administration, and why she's still optimistic about America. Stay with us. Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.

There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts. It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Secretary Rice, thank you so much for making the time. Thank you. It's a real pleasure to be with you.

So, Secretary Rice, you grew up in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1950s and '60s. On one side of your family, your great-great-grandmother had several children from different slave owners. On the other side, your great-grandmother carried the last name of her slave owner. I believe her name was Julia Head. You were just eight years old when a bomb in a Birmingham church killed four girls in your own neighborhood.

As a little girl, what did you imagine your life would or could be? Well, that story says something about America and the possibilities of change and redemption.

I think as an eight-year-old, it would never have occurred to me that I was going to one day walk into the White House as National Security Advisor. Although I will say there is a picture of me outside the White House when I'm about eight or nine years old. And my father said that I said, I'm going to work in there one day. I think it's one of those things dads make up.

because I don't think I ever said that. But it really says something about how far America has come. I will say that growing up in Birmingham was different than people might have expected. I grew up in a very tight-knit little community. I think everybody in the community taught school. I think there was one lawyer and one doctor, and everybody else taught school.

It was a community for which it was about faith and family and education. And if you could get a high quality education, then they could do nothing to you despite the limitations of segregation. So I think the real part of that story is that I had extraordinary parents. I wrote a book about them called Extraordinary Ordinary People.

because while they were in some ways ordinary, my mom was a school teacher, my dad a high school guidance counselor, later on a university administrator, they just believed that there were unlimited horizons for me and that more than anything is the story of why I ended up where I did. Were they tiger parents?

My mom was a little bit of a tiger mom. And you asked what I imagined my life would be. I thought it was going to be Van Cliburn because I studied piano from the age of three and I was going to be a great concert pianist. And I remember very one day, I played piano all these years and at about 10, I went to my mother and I announced, I am quitting piano.

I don't like the piano anymore. And she said, you're not old enough or good enough to make that decision. And so I kept playing. And many years later, when I had an opportunity to perform with Yo-Yo Ma and to perform at Buckingham Palace, I looked heavenward and I thanked my mom for insisting that I continue to play. They were loving, but they had really high expectations of me. And the people in that community had high expectations of the kids. It wasn't

oh, you know, it's too bad that Birmingham is like that. You have to be twice as good. And that meant you worked twice as hard. You were twice as confident. It was there are no victims. The minute that you say you're a victim, you've given control of your life to someone else. And so in many ways, I've often said paradoxically,

I credit segregated Birmingham with the toughness and the resolve to overcome it. And so I give a lot of credit to those people who brought their kids up in less than ideal circumstances and still gave them limitless horizons. How did they explain segregation to you? And how did it connect or disconnect from the patriotism that I imagine they were trying to instill in you?

It's a very interesting question because on the one hand, I was taught to love America with all my heart and all my soul. I remember my father taking me through the history of World War II and the things that America had done. And they seemed to have an irrepressible belief that America would eventually overcome its prejudices.

I remember once being with my uncle and it was election day and we passed by these long lines of black people and George Wallace was running for governor and I said to my uncle, "Well if all of those people vote then that man Wallace can't possibly win." Because I knew he wasn't good for black people. And my uncle said, "Oh no," he said, "We're a minority so Wallace is going to win." And I said, "Well then why do all of those people bother?"

He said, "Because one day their vote will matter." And that's how they saw America as a place that would overcome its differences. They explained segregation pretty clearly, pretty honestly, that it was a bad system, that we had to work to overcome it.

I remember my first kind of encounter with race, because remember, Birmingham was so segregated that you really didn't deal with white society. We had our own theaters, we had our own schools. I didn't go to an integrated school until I moved to Denver, Colorado at 12. And so in some ways, race was everything and race was nothing because you didn't really encounter other people.

But then I remember going to see Santa Claus at five years old. And you know the drill, you stand in line, you tell Santa Claus what it is you want. And I heard my father, who was a very big man, my father was 6'3", been a football player. And he said to my mother, "Angelina," because the Santa Claus was picking up little white kids and putting them on his knee, but he was holding little black kids out to the side.

My father said, "Angelina, if he does that to Condoleezza, I'm going to pull all that stuff off of him and expose him."

And you know, you're five years old, daddy, Santa Claus, daddy, Santa Claus. It was really quite unnerving. But Santa Claus must have read my father's body language because when I got there, he put me on his knee and he said, little girl, what would you like for Christmas? I thought later on, what an extraordinarily sad introduction to race and to segregation. Santa Claus, really?

But despite all of that, we were never allowed to believe that there was anything that we couldn't achieve. And I think that was really the secret sauce of that little community. So you mentioned moving to Denver. You graduated high school in Denver when you were just 15 years old. Being the youngest at things is sort of a theme of your life. You went to the University of Denver and you graduated at 19.

As you mentioned, you were really a prodigy, a musical prodigy studying piano. But in college, you were struck by the Soviet Union. And even though, as you mentioned, you've continued to play piano and have shared the stage with some of the greats of our time, your pivot at that point to international affairs really shaped the course of your life. What was it that caused you to change course?

I was a failed piano major. That's what caused me to change course. I went to the Aspen Music Festival School the summer of my sophomore year in college, and I met these kids who could play from sight everything. It had taken me all year to learn. I was 17. They were 12. I thought, "Okay, let's find another career." And fortunately, I wandered after quite a few tries at different things. I wandered into a course in international politics. It was taught by a man named Joseph Korbel. He was Madeleine Albright's father.

And I just loved his lectures and I loved his stories. He'd been a Czech diplomat and all of a sudden this world of things international and things Russian and diplomacy, a great book by Jim Billington, James Billington who would become the Librarian of Congress, called The Icon and the Axe about Russian History and Culture.

And it was suddenly as if I just found what I wanted to know more about and what I wanted to do. It wasn't a straight line to where I ended up because it wasn't obvious what one did with a degree in international politics. I did a lot of international economics. I tell my students to this day, when you're at that age, you ought to be exploring broadly because you might end up loving something that you didn't even know was on the agenda at the time.

And so that's what happened to me. I found my passion in a class in college. So in 1981, Reagan becomes president.

The time people are talking about the doomsday clock, and it's the same year you get your PhD in political science. And you ultimately end up here on this campus on a fellowship to study what I think was the most urgent problem in the world at the time. Take us back to then. What impact were you personally hoping to have?

In 1981, really even a little bit before, the patriotic thing to do was to study Russian. The biggest challenger to the United States was the Soviet Union. And I had actually, in the 70s, begun to study the Russian language. In 79, I spent five months in Moscow studying Russian.

getting a really strong sense for what a really terrible system this was. I remember very well walking along the streets and Russians wouldn't look you in the eye. They looked at their feet. They were obviously kind of an oppressed people and I got a first-hand look at that. And then I came to Stanford and on a one-year fellowship to take young Soviet specialists and teach them

really the hardcore bombs and bullets, how many warheads could dance on the head of an SS18. And I took to it. I loved military affairs and international security, but it's also the story of another turn in my life because I thought I could make a difference, but I really loved teaching and I really thought I would be a professor at Stanford and teach.

I went to a seminar that was held by a man named Brent Scowcroft and he came over to me afterwards actually very I think I asked him a question and you know how you are when you're young I think was probably a slightly rude question because I wanted to be noticed and he came over and he said I know some of your work and I'd like to really get to know you and he started taking me to

to things like the Aspen Strategy Group, where the kind of foreign policy elite would gather in the summer in Aspen. And he mentored me, and he introduced me to people. And then when he became national security advisor to George H.W. Bush, I'll never forget the phone call. He called me up and he said, um,

You want to come help the president? He needs somebody to help him understand this guy Gorbachev, who's doing some pretty interesting things. And that was really then my connection to going into government. I had spent one year as a Council on Foreign Relations fellow with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

And this gets a little bit to my background as someone who had grown up where race was both nothing and everything. I walked into that office to work for the Office of Strategic Nuclear Planning, the guys who wrote the single integrated operations plan for the employment of nuclear weapons. I was three things they'd never seen: black, female, and civilian.

And now, here I was, there with them for a year, and the first day they said, "The rookie makes the coffee." Now, I could have gotten huffy about it and said, "I'm a professor at Stanford. I don't make -- I made the coffee." Right? "I make coffee so strong nobody can drink it." So didn't get asked to do that again. But the next week, I won the football pool. And now I was in.

And every Monday was about Sunday's football game. And so it was a lesson to me that when you're the different one,

It's not just their responsibility to make you, quote, comfortable. You can reach across and bridge, too. And to this day, that was one of my best experiences was that year with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And it really helped me to prepare for working for George H.W. Bush when the Cold War was ending. 1982, you switch parties and you become a Republican. Why?

I became a Republican in large part because of foreign policy and Reagan's strength. As I mentioned, I had been in the Soviet Union in the summer and early fall of 1979, kind of a tough time to be there as a young woman. But I came back and I had seen what the Soviet Union was like.

And then I was at my parents' home and my father said, "The Soviet Union just invaded Afghanistan." I said, "What? Afghanistan?" And we went, we looked at it. - Looked at a map. - Looked at a map, looked at the television coverage. And when President Carter said, "I have learned more today about the Soviet Union than I knew in all my life," I thought, "What are you talking about?" And I was attracted to Reagan's Peace Through Strength. I was attracted to his foreign policy.

As time has gone on, I realized too that I was attracted to the principles that really articulated how I had grown up.

that it was about individual responsibility and individual freedom and working hard and insisting that the future was in your hands. And Reagan had that kind of optimism about what was possible in America that really very much reflected how I felt about how my life had unfolded as an American.

In a little bit, I want to go deeper into the future of the GOP and how it's changed, not just since the time that you were serving under George W. Bush, but certainly since Reagan. But first, I want to go a little bit deeper into your views about race and the current conversation about race in America. Your story, your personal story from childhood in the segregated South to secretary of state,

It's one that sort of makes the case for America being a place of expanding opportunity and expanding freedom, and also the idea that individual excellence gets recognized and rewarded. But as you well know, in our current culture, some people say it's wrong to say that your story is representative. They say that, you know, the American dream is still to this day extremely exclusionary. What do you say to the people who make that argument?

I would say, first of all, my case, my story, there are a lot of me's. There were even a lot of people like me in my little community. The man who is currently the president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County grew up around the corner from me. A black woman governor of the IMF around the corner from me. So this story isn't-- somehow it didn't land from Mars. There are a lot of people like me.

who were able to take advantage of what an expanding and changing America offered. But there were two elements that we can't leave out, and this is where I do worry that my story may be hard for some to achieve. The first is, I did have supportive parents and adults in my life

who challenged me and insisted on excellence, but who were always there for me. And I look at some kids now growing up in families where that support is not there, and I think we have to do something about that. And I've been very active with the Boys and Girls Clubs of America because very often the adult

who can help that kid who doesn't have that support is a staff member at the Boys and Girls Clubs or at the YMCA or at the church. We have to recognize that that support is important. The second is I had access to a high-quality education.

And if there's one thing that is going to keep our kids, particularly kids who are underserved, from achieving the American dream, it's the absence of a high-quality education. And what we're doing in our K-12 education system

is really criminal in the ways that our children are not being given those opportunities. I am personally a major proponent of school choice. Not because I don't believe in public schools. I very much believe in public schools and I want to see them better. I want to see teachers who are good at what they do paid well and succeed.

But I know that in too many communities, your zip code is going to determine whether you get a good education. And poor parents need to have other options. I've heard people say, well, we can't have an opt-out system with school choice. We have an opt-out system.

If you are of means, you will go to private school. Oh, you can move to a district where the schools are good and the houses are expensive. Do you think that the pandemic, and perhaps this is the silver lining, has made the case for school choice more powerfully than half a century of op-eds in the Wall Street Journal? Absolutely. Because parents are seeing...

what has happened in private schools and parochial schools when they've managed to stay open, they've managed to reach the children. And so I do think there's an awakening

about education. But when I'm asked, is your story somehow unique? No, it's not. But the circumstances have to be replicated for others to have that experience. And it means a high quality education and it means adults, parents who will care.

Following George Floyd's murder, you wrote an op-ed where you said, race is still an anchor around our country's neck, but we're better than we were. I'm curious how you hear the following statements. Here's one from Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley. She said that a system created out of white supremacy cannot be reformed. Here's Congresswoman Cori Bush, who tweeted last July 4th, black people still aren't free. How do you hear statements like that?

Well, I would ask them how they get elected then. Black people are free. Do we still have effects of the birth defect of slavery and the long journey through Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement? Of course. You don't rid yourself of that birth defect very easily.

But I've been around the world. I know and have seen almost every other system in the world. I don't know another country that has worked so insistently and so hard to try to deal with its problems of race, to try to bring equal opportunity to people. I don't know a single place in the world that has tried so hard. And if I look at where we are now,

and where we were even in my lifetime, we have come so far. And to say something like that is actually to undervalue the sacrifices of all of the people

who have gotten us to a better place. Do you think that people saying things like that, and it's now become almost cliche in our culture, do you think they believe it or do you think it's just good politics? I just don't know. And I won't question their motives. I'll just say, if you really believe that we have made no progress, then look around you.

Look at the number of people who are black who have been elected. We've had a black president. We've had two black secretaries of state. We've had black attorneys general. Again, it doesn't say that we don't still have effects of race.

But when you talk about systemic racism, it sounds so big, it sounds so impenetrable that it's almost not worth going after it. I often, in a little bit tongue-in-cheek, say, so am I supposed to say to the seven-year-old, you know, don't bother to study. Until we fix systemic racism, you have no chance. So what you're really doing is you're taking agency out of the hands of black people.

Nothing makes me angrier than when you take agency away from me, when you make me somehow your vassal, when you make me somehow your project. Recognize that I have capabilities. Recognize that I have will. Recognize that I am able to progress.

And when I hear these comments about white supremacy and I hear these comments about white privilege and I hear the comments about systemic racism, I really wish people would examine their own thinking. Do you think I am so incapable and so helpless that I have to have your permission to succeed?

I'd love to hear your perspective on the debate really roiling the country. And I would argue that really had an effect on the outcome of the Virginia governor's race with Glenn Youngkin's win. And that's the debate over critical race theory. How do you understand what most Americans hear when they hear that phrase? Because I know it's very complicated. And what do you make of the

efforts, and I would say it's almost like a kind of soft reparations on the part of mostly white liberals, let's be honest, but now increasingly beyond that, to sort of

teach children about what they understand to be systemic racism? Right. First of all, the Virginia election was hardening in a lot of ways, but it also don't tell parents that they don't really have a role in their children's lives. I thought we were spending most of our time trying to make sure parents were involved in their children's education, in their children's lives. And so that was that element of it. But also critical race theory, of course, is a kind of

academic debate and people have shorthanded what is happening in our schools with CRT. I really don't mind if critical race theory is debated at the Stanford Law School. It ought to be. As in, let academics write about it, let them debate it. The progeny of it, the piece that has begun to shape our national dialogue, our educational system and the like, is that somehow race is the first factor in understanding everything.

And I thought we just spent 140 years after the end of slavery trying to set that aside and trying to say, "Don't look at me and assume certain things about me because of the color of my skin. And I will not look at you and assume certain things about you about the color of your skin." And so that flips this on its head. And the further you go down into the schools, the younger children are when you introduce this concept.

I think the more confusing it is for them. Race is a pretty complicated concept. And saying to a seven-year-old, you know, well, you have to think of yourself as a white person and as a person whose ancestors have oppressed your little black friend here. And you have something to apologize for. And you have something to apologize for. It's confusing. I think it's disheartening. And I really don't.

particularly want little white kids to feel bad so that little black kids can feel better about themselves. Let them both feel good about themselves and their fledgling relationships that we shouldn't be racializing already when they are growing up. Are you worried about the backlash in terms of white identity politics that could come from this movement?

We see, you know, certain books getting banned or sort of banned. It's unclear. You know, when I think about the effects of essentially neo-segregation, I think about what does it mean to tell white children that their race is the most important thing about them? And in fact, their race is something that gives them power over other people.

Does that worry you? It certainly worries me that there will be those who use the fact of racialization

to say, "All right, so I'm going to racialize on the other side." - Exactly. - Right? And then you do get the backlash. You get identity politics that's really ugly. - Yes. - And we have seen some things that should have long stayed buried in our history in recent years. Because if you're telling someone, you know, you have white privilege, right? I once said to a diversity council, "Could we never use those words again?" - Why? - And here's why.

Because do you really think that the unemployed coal miner in West Virginia whose opioid-addicted children believes that he's got white privilege? You're sitting here with your fancy car in the parking lot, and your big concern is, do I exercise my options to go on a vacation in Cabo or in Tahoe? You really think this is a good argument? And then what happens is people can play in that pool.

they can say they don't respect you, they don't understand your struggles, they want to give away what you have to those who haven't earned it. And we get into a spiral of a very bad psychology about one another.

And so somehow we've got to back off because there are people who will take advantage of it and say, now you have to defend your rights and white identity. This is a place we don't want to go. And so I say to both sides in this, can we back off of racialization of each other? It's not that I expect when I walk in the room that you don't see color. Of course. We're never going to be colorblind.

Could I just get you to act like you are? Could I just get you to not be colorblind, but not to think that you know everything about me because of the color of my skin? A friend of mine on the Stanford faculty and I, David Kennedy is his name. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning American historian. Liberal in his politics. I'm conservative in mine. But we did a film called American Creed.

a few years ago for PBS because we wanted to talk about what does it really mean to be American. But we started with a little dramatization in which we said, which one of us is third generation college educated? Well, it turns out it's me.

I'm not even the first PhD in my family. My aunt was a PhD in Victorian literature. In 1952, she got her degree at the University of Wisconsin. She wrote books on Dickens. I always say to people, you think what I do is weird for a black person? She wrote books on Dickens. David, first generation, first to go to college in his family.

So racialization makes you ignore everything that you need to know about me by asking about it, by getting to know me. And now you can just put a label or a color on me and that gets in the way of human interaction. Last question on this subject, then I want to go to politics. It seems like black public figures in American society

who don't adhere to sort of the proper way of thinking about the world. I'm thinking about Clarence Thomas, of course. I'm also thinking about Barack Obama and the notion that he was acting white. We've seen this with you. You've been called a foot soldier for white supremacy. You've been called an Uncle Tom and other horrible things, including by other black writers and intellectuals. How do you deal with those kind of accusations? Oh, I just tell people I don't need you to tell me how to be black. All right, I've been black all my life.

So I don't pay it any attention. I have, I think, done more than a lot of the people who are critical of black conservatives for trying to make sure that children, whatever color, but particularly underrepresented minorities, get opportunities

I started many years ago something called the Centers for New Generation for after school and summer programs for kids who are underserved. So I try to, in my actions,

deal with the impacts of race rather than just talking about the impact of race and setting myself up as some kind of judge about how others ought to act in their obligations to other black people. So I'm quite comfortable with and in fact proud of my record in this regard and I just hope that those who are critical can say the same thing.

After the break, House Secretary Rice explains the rise of Trump, the future of her party, and whether or not she fits in anymore. We'll be right back. All right, let's talk about your party, the Republican Party. How do you understand the rise of President Trump and his continued popularity? I don't know what to make of continuing popularity. You know, I'll be very clear. I thought that January 6th was a tremendous thing on our country.

And it was only when they reassembled in the Capitol and in the most boring way certified that election that I was reminded how really extraordinary American institutions are and my pride in being American went up tremendously. So I hope that we can get away from trying to relitigate an election that is now over.

We need to move on. And I don't mean the January 6th commission. Look, I'm actually, I believe in Liz Cheney. I think that censoring people when they are voting with their conscience is wrong. It's wrong when Democrats do it. It's wrong when Republicans do it. But I hope that we can now, as a party, really address some of what that election of 2016 really said.

When you think about it, people were willing to take a chance on somebody whose first job in government was going to be President of the United States. We'd never done that before. And why? Because so many people didn't feel heard.

Those of us who really had been part of the whole movement of globalization and saw open trade and believed in the principles that brought China into the international economy, and I fully admit I was one of those people. I believe globalization was for the good. I still think it had a lot of advantages, but boy, did it have some downsides for a lot of people. And somehow they were invisible.

to so many elites. And what is more, there was a tendency, and this I feel, to denigrate cultural values that were not coastal values. I'm a deeply religious person. My father and grandfather were Presbyterian ministers. I can't tell you how many Stanford students will come to me and almost whisper, "I hear you're Christian."

Can you help me think about my Christianity in a place that only values the secular? And so all of that, I think, came together.

to produce a backlash against some of this rampant disregard for certain values. And it wasn't just in the United States. It was Brexit in Great Britain. It was true in a great deal of Europe. It was true with populists who arose in places like Brazil. And so I think we now have to ask as a party

How do we speak to people for whom the American dream really does seem quite far-fetched and quite far away? How do we speak to people whose skills are no longer valued in an economy that is automating rapidly and where you really get punished if you don't have skills?

How do we speak to the cultural values of people who are still conservative in terms of religion and family without appearing to be exclusivist and damning of those who may think differently? It's a big national project, in fact, to find ways to talk across our differences about things that go to our core.

And in the age of social media, in the age of the sound bite, in the age of I'm not going to take time to talk to you, I'm going to tell you you've offended me, and now I'm going to organize the university for protests against you, we've lost that ability to just say, could we talk about this?

I very often tell my students, you actually don't have a constitutional right not to be offended. That wasn't actually written into the Constitution.

If somebody offends you-- They might add an amendment, though. They might add an amendment. That's why I don't really want to have a constitutional convention. You never know what might come out. But talk to the person next to you. We've lost that muscle. We don't exercise that muscle enough. You brought up globalization and sort of now looking back perhaps at the unintended consequences that a lot of those policies held for Americans. When I think about the policies that the Bush administration stood for,

spreading democracy, perhaps through wars that are now regrettable, liberalization on immigration, free trade. And then I think about where the Republican Party seems headed, not just under Trump, but in the future. It's really shifted in the opposite direction on all of those things. You know, do you feel, A, sort of chastened by that change or

And what do you feel is your place in that Republican Party that stands for things that are, you know, pretty much the opposite of the place that historically you've stood? Well, I'm not sure that they're the opposite. I think we're on a continuum here. And let me start with the democracy piece of it. We didn't go to Afghanistan and Iraq to promote democracy. We had security problems. You know, let's forget Afghanistan was the place from which 9-11 happened.

It was plotted, planned there, carried out from there. And so when you have a security problem, you go and overthrow the Taliban.

And at that point, you have to have a view about what's going to replace it. And yes, we thought that it was better to give the Afghan people a chance at decent government where women wouldn't be whipped in a stadium given to them by the UN. We thought it would be good because democracies, it turns out, don't fight one another. It also is true that democracies don't enlist child soldiers and they don't invade their neighbors. And so yes, I would be the first to say I would rather see more democracies in the world.

Now you can't impose that at gunpoint and when you overthrow a government you have certain responsibilities but most of what we did in quote democracy promotion

was to try and speak for those who wanted their governments to give them a more decent and freer life. And if we can't do that as America, can we really just hold within us that those are values and principles that only apply to us, that we won't speak for others? I don't think Americans want that. I think they want America to lead from both power and principle.

I don't think we will ever see the large-scale military engagements that we had. But again, they were from a security perspective. Now, as it comes to immigration and trade, I will speak very bluntly about immigration. I think it's our great ace in the hole.

I think people have come here for generations from all over the world to be a part of this belief that it doesn't matter where you came from, it matters where you're going. You can come from humble circumstances and you can do great things. By the way, just practically, without immigration, we have the same sclerotic demographics of Europe and Japan and Russia.

Because no one's having kids. Because no one's having kids. We'd better think twice about cutting off immigration. I believe in legal immigration. I believe we need borders. But I also know that we're not a place that's going to deport 12 million people living in the shadows. Who are we kidding?

And so let's remember that we are a country of immigrants and that they have made us more vibrant and more vital. And by the way, that's true of the people who came here to make $5, not 50 cents. And it's true of the people like Sergey Brin's parents who bring him here at the age of seven from Russia. He founds Google. So immigration's great. Trade, that's the one that I would have to say I feel some chastening because particularly with China,

I think we had expectations of China playing by the rules that didn't pan out.

I give President Trump credit for re-leveling the playing field on trade. And I think even President Biden is starting to pick some of that up because the Chinese, which, by the way, is a more and more repressive government every day against its own people, they took advantage of the international economy in ways that disadvantaged others, including our people.

Was the problem also that policymakers were sort of using the Cold War playbook and believed that somehow by liberalizing the economy that liberalization of politics and the spreading of freedom would follow, and that just wasn't the right playbook? Well, there were some who believed that. I never expected much in terms of democratization of China, to be fair. I've studied authoritarian systems. The one thing that they do is make sure there's nobody to challenge them.

I did think that over time the Chinese people, as they got richer, would want a more liberalized society. That may still be true, but whether they have the means to bring that about, I think, is, it clearly is in doubt.

But I do think that the argument that you would somehow leave 1.4 billion people outside of the international economy. So I would say to people who say, well, was it a mistake to bring China in? What exactly was the alternative? China did contribute to international economic growth. We know that. But perhaps there was not enough effort to make sure that they were really living up

to the requirements. I used to go to Beijing and talk to them and yell at them about intellectual property protection every time I was there.

we were never able to do much about it. And so I take the criticism that China gained more than we expected them to gain from it. And perhaps we weren't tough enough in demanding reciprocity. The NBA, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, every company, Apple, these

These companies are putting billions of dollars into the pockets of China and the Communist Party. And really, I think you could argue that their profits are downstream of immense human suffering, to say nothing of environmental degradation. Do you think that the leadership of companies like this are unpatriotic or even immoral?

I don't think they're either immoral or unpatriotic. Let's remember that if we go down this road with companies, then we're also going to go down the road that some of the ESG is going down, right? That you can't invest in fossil fuels or you have to have certain litmus tests for diversity. So let's try not to do that. Would I ask more of these companies and their leadership

to be more vocal about what is going on in China, absolutely. Would I ask them to be really very careful about where you locate a facility?

to be very careful about the forced labor conditions in parts of China. You know, we had this debate many, many years ago in apartheid South Africa. Should companies leave apartheid South Africa? And there was something called the Sullivan Principles that came out, where companies that wanted to continue to do business in South Africa, and by the way, employ black South Africans as well as white South Africans,

had a set of principles. They wouldn't, for instance, fire a black worker who joined the African National Congress. I really do think that if you just see the playing field

in China to the Chinese companies. It doesn't really feel right to me either for what's happening to Chinese citizens. So be vocal about it, be careful about your practices, have some principles on which you will work. I do think with the NBA, they're in a kind of privileged position because when there was that whole kerfuffle around the Houston Rockets general manager who spoke up,

I said to the NBA leadership, I said, look, you're in a very strong position because they're not going to kick the NBA out. Those little princelings, those only children don't want to watch the Kazakh national team play the Chinese national team for very long. They want to watch LeBron James and it won't be long before you're back in.

And so my point to the NBA was, don't underestimate your own power in these things. It's not a one-way street. And use it for good. But I would not want to see...

American companies not operating in China. I don't think that's good for the Chinese. It's actually not good for the economy here. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask about Russia, your expertise. Most Americans, I think, vaguely understand that there's some stuff happening at the border with Ukraine and Russia, and they're thinking, eh, why does it really matter? Why does it matter? It matters because if we want to live in a world in which big bully countries eat their small neighbors...

That would be a world that we will rue the day that we accepted that as a principle in international politics. Xi Jinping is watching.

He's watching what's going on with Vladimir Putin and Ukraine. He's watching the response of the West. He's watching under the shadow of what we did in Afghanistan when we cut and run with allies who had for 20 years served our interest in Afghanistan. Let's remember that those people, those Afghans who fought with us,

We're fighting the same forces that caused 9/11 in the United States. And so Xi Jinping is watching these things. Dictators watch. Authoritarians watch. We do not want to abandon the field and leave it to be a world in which there are no principles except the powerful win.

And if the powerful are going to win, I would rather it be a powerful country like the United States, which is still, after all, the freest and the most prosperous and the most compassionate country on the face of the earth. And if we leave the playing field,

those who will occupy it will not serve our interests or our values very well at all. What do you make of those who seem resigned to the idea that they think America's a great empire, but all empires fade and America's now sort of in an inexorable decline? I would say to them, America is not an empire. We never coveted other people's territory. We created after World War II when we were at the height of our power.

when we probably had 60% of the world's GDP. We didn't even try to protect it. We created an international open trading system so that everybody could be prosperous. We believed in a democratic peace and helped Germany and Japan become vibrant democracies. We defended Korea. We were an unusual great power.

in that we saw our interest as inextricably linked to the interest and well-being of others. And so I reject the idea of America as empire, and rather think of America as a kind of systems operator, if you will, of an international system that couldn't always deliver on a balance of power that favored freedom, but certainly tried to make the world safer, freer,

more compassionate, more prosperous. And I think we benefited in the end as well. And so I would just say to people, America's best days are ahead of us. We're still the most innovative people on the face of the earth. We're still the freest on the face of the earth. And as Benjamin Franklin, I guess, was fond of saying, we will be a republic if we can keep it.

And my final point would be that that's exactly right. What we become is not somehow written in the stars. It's in the hands of each and every American.

My great friend George Shultz, who died just after his 100th birthday not too long ago, used to wear a tie, and it said, democracy is not a spectator sport. And so I would say to every American, if you don't want to see America in decline, decide what your part is in making sure that it continues to prosper. Secretary Rice?

Quick lightning round, beginning with this question. What's your favorite football team? Cleveland Browns. I'm loyal. Russiagate, best described as a hoax or a symptom of the media's intense addiction to...

hyperbolic exaggeration? Hyperbolic exaggeration on the part of the media. In the past, you've supported civil unions and not gay marriage. Have you changed your mind? I have, because if the state is going to have something called marriage, then all people have to be treated equally. And by the way, I do think that...

It doesn't matter as much who you love, but that you do love. Will you ever run for office? Absolutely not. I do not have the DNA to run for office. Do you still want to be commissioner of the NFL? I'm going to let Roger Goodell keep that job because I've decided it's better to be a fan. If you could pick anyone for president in 2024, who would it be? Oh, I haven't decided yet. I think we have a lot of

of good possibilities on the Republican side. So I'll let them run around the track a little bit. Very diplomatic. Should we have boycotted the Winter Olympics in Beijing? I think the diplomatic boycott was the right thing, but let our athletes go. I was a competitive athlete. They trained for years and years and years. Don't take that opportunity away from them. Favorite piano piece to play? My favorite piano piece to play is the Chopin F minor ballade. What's your favorite music to listen to?

Anything from Brahms to Earth, Wind and Fire to Led Zeppelin. Best joke Bush ever made? Best joke Bush ever made. It goes back to Putin. So when Putin came to the ranch, President Bush had this little dog, Barney. And when we went to Vladimir Putin's dacha,

his big hound came out and he said, "Bigger, stronger, better than Barney." And President Bush said, "I'm glad he was only comparing dogs." Favorite place you've ever traveled? I love anything having to do with Italy. Where do you get your news? I read just about everything. I read the Wall Street Journal first, but I will read The Post. If you lived in Washington, the gossip's great.

I'll read the Times, I read the Financial Times, and then I will read specialized press quite a bit because if something's going on in Lebanon, I'll read a service there. If something's going on in Germany, I'll read a service there. So I try to read as many sources as possible. Are you on social media? I am, but only to post pictures of me at the Super Bowl, which I didn't go to this year. Least favorite part of public service?

The late nights. I'm not a late night person. And there were times when, uh, when you're just really tired. Favorite comedian? I guess Chris Rock. Guilty pleasure. Oh, guilty pleasure. Um, this is going to sound a bit pathetic. Are you going to say ice cream? No, I hate ice cream actually. Uh, my guilty pasta. What's the last book that you read?

The Walter Eisenstein's biography of Ben Franklin. Do you celebrate Black History Month? I do celebrate Black History Month because when I was a little kid growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, in fourth grade we had a book called No Alabama, and you would never have known that there were any black people as part of that history. So I think it's important to call out that history.

Secretary Rice, thank you so much. It was a pleasure, Mary. Great to be with you. Thanks for listening. Today on our newsletter, Common Sense, we have an amazing symposium on the meaning of Black History Month with people like Coleman Hughes, Eli Steele, and Noah Harris, who's the first Black student body president in Harvard's 386-year history. Check it out, and remember to subscribe at barryweiss.substack.com.

As always, if you have a guest idea, a burning question, a topic for a debate, please email us at tips at honestlypod.com. We read all of them and we love your ideas. See you next week.