The Education of an Idealist

by Samantha Power

  “Hey man,” I said. “Just calling to say goodbye. I guess things didn’t turn out exactly the way we had hoped.”

  “No, they certainly didn’t,” he said.

  There was a long pause. Then, in unison, we each said, “We tried.”

  This would be the last time I ever spoke to Vitaly, who died the following month of a sudden heart attack at the age of sixty-four.

  MY TIME IN GOVERNMENT would end at noon on January 20th, 2017.

  Late in the evening on January 19th, I assembled a small group of those with whom I had worked most closely. We gathered in the same office vestibule where we had celebrated small victories and personal milestones. I went around and toasted each team member, recalling their quirks and all that they had personally done for their country. I also commended them for their achievements on behalf of people whom they would likely never have the chance to meet. It felt like an Irish wake—dark yet uplifting.

  I left the Mission at around four a.m. after wrapping up thank-you notes and departure memos to my successor, South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, with whom I had been in touch during the transition. I labeled my office belongings for the movers and carried just one box out the door, an assortment of family photos, Declan’s and Rían’s drawings that I had peeled off my office walls, and copies of the UN Charter and the US Constitution. At the last minute I threw in a stash of business cards, to remind me of the time I had once been the US Ambassador to the United Nations.

  When the UN opened the next morning, I returned with Mum and Eddie, Cass, Declan, Rían, and María for a last look around. Declan and Rían sat in the US chair in the Security Council, donning the earpiece I had so often used for translation. Then, as a family, we each took up a seat and pretended to stage a Council vote.

  “Should Donald Trump remain in the Paris climate agreement and protect the planet from catastrophic warming?” I asked.

  The resolution passed with seven out of seven delegates in favor.

  Afterword

  On a snowy Tuesday night toward the end of January 2017, I was unpacking in our new home in Concord, Massachusetts, when the doorbell rang.

  I carried a box of utensils from the kitchen to the nearby front door. A policeman stood on the stoop.

  “Is this the home of Cass Sunstein?”

  I had been trying to reach Cass for well over an hour and had begun envisioning various doomsday scenarios. But having imagined so many previous calamities, I was able to talk myself out of them . . . until I saw the policeman.

  He began, “I’m sorry to inform you—”

  “Is he alive?” I interrupted. Nothing mattered but the answer to that single question.

  “I don’t have the latest,” the officer said. “He appears to have been hit by a car while walking home. I don’t know his current status.”

  We were interrupted by a piercing scream from Declan. He and Rían had been obscured from the policeman’s view by a stack of boxes—and the officer now looked chastened that he hadn’t made sure we were alone before delivering the news. Declan began to cry, “I don’t want my daddy to die.” Rían could not comprehend her father’s accident, but draped her arms around her big brother’s midsection. “It’s okay, Declan. You’re going to be okay, sweet boy,” she said, unwittingly using Cass’s term of endearment for his only son.

  The policeman handed me a piece of paper with the scribbled name of the hospital where Cass had been taken. Driving there in the snow would take at least forty-five minutes, he informed me. “Why did they take him so far away?” I asked, gesturing in the direction of Emerson Hospital, which was within walking distance. The officer mumbled something about head trauma specialists. I grasped at potential good news.

  “So he is alive?” I said.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. It’s best if you get to the hospital to talk to the doctors.”

  “What hospital?” I asked, forgetting the name was on the paper in my hand.

  María, who had made yet another move with our family, had begun praying, and I knew she would find a way to soothe Declan and Rían.

  Ten days earlier, I would have jumped into the backseat of an armored, government-owned SUV. My security detail would likely have sounded the sirens. Hospital management would have been informed that a senior US official’s spouse was entering critical care in their emergency room.

  But in my new life, I was once again on my own.

  During the tense drive, I began to make deals with God—as I had done as a little girl when I first moved to Pittsburgh. “Just let him live,” I pleaded over and over again. Cass had tremendous brain capacity, I thought, far more than he really needed. My husband would be heartbroken if he couldn’t play sports or race Declan again, but as long as he survived, we would find a way forward.

  I ditched the car at the curb in front of the emergency room’s glass doors and dashed into the waiting area, leaving the engine running and my keys and wallet behind. I approached the receptionist behind the desk.

  “I’m married to Cass Sunstein,” I exclaimed, frantic. “Is he alive?”

  My heart was no longer beating. My future was in her hands. “Sunstein, Sunstein, Sunstein,” she said, methodically thumbing through her papers.

  I wanted to scream, “It’s a yes or no question. Please, please, please answer!”

  Finally, she looked up serenely and said, “Oh yes, he’s alive. Once you fill out these forms, I can let you back to see him.”

  Cass was in rough shape. Watching him sleep during our nine years of marriage, I had often marveled that he seemed to bear the trace of a smile, as if ideas—or memories of satisfying squash forehands—were coming to him in his dreams. But now his swollen face was twitching, his mouth downturned, his coloring yellow and gray from bruising and shock. The emergency room doctor explained that he had suffered severe head trauma that had left him unconscious with five broken vertebrae, multiple broken ribs, a skull fracture, and serious brain bleeding.

  I snapped photos of his head X-rays and emailed them to Mum. She said they were horrific, but assured me that if he could move all of his limbs and get through the night without seizures, he would likely regain normal brain and physical function. The neurosurgeon on call offered a more detailed version of the same message.

  “Thank you for your service,” the doctor said at the close of our conversation. “Thank you for your service,” I responded.

  For the next several days, I stayed at the hospital. Thirty-six hours after the accident, Cass became more alert. When prompted, he was able to provide his name, address, and profession. When asked his wife’s name, he painstakingly tilted his head in my direction and slowly but slyly answered, “Jeane Kirkpatrick?”

  When the doctor asked me how I was holding up, I told him I felt as though I had won the lottery. “Not only has my husband survived a harrowing accident,” I said. “But he has achieved the impossible: he’s taken my mind off Donald Trump.”

  I HAVE NOW LIVED for two and a half years under a single roof with my small family. Cass, who recovered astonishingly quickly, has returned to teaching and writing. While Declan still loves baseball, he isn’t sure how he feels about his mother’s hands-on coaching. And now that I’m finally around to encourage him to practice the piano, he has learned to play beautifully—his manner and sounds evoking those of my late father. Rían has fallen in love with nature and spends entire afternoons surveying rocks and leaves in our backyard, while Finley and Snowy, our Labrador retrievers, follow her everywhere.

  Mum is working harder than ever, forging deep and lasting ties with her patients. Eddie, who has now been retired (and sober) for more than a decade, is still clipping articles and sending me book recommendations. Stephen lives with his wife and young son, Malachy, in Los Angeles, and tracks politics like we once followed sports. After a year with us in Concord, María returned to be with her family in Virginia, and we see her several times a year. John Prendergast and I have begun a gratitude ritual in which we email e
ach other at night the three aspects of the day for which we are most thankful.

  If one lesson in my experience stands out above the others, it is that the people we love are the foundation for all else. I have never found the optimal balance between immersion in my work and the pull of home, love, and laughter that are my fuel. But I do know that when we turn in our White House badge—or its equivalent in other fields—what is left is our own garden, and what we have sown and cultivated.

  I have gone back to teaching at Harvard Kennedy School and Law School, offering a course on geopolitics and one that I co-teach with Cass on the law and politics of social change. I serve on the board of the International Refugee Assistance Program (IRAP), which organizes lawyers and law students to provide pro bono legal representation to refugees. In January of 2017, when the Trump administration first issued its executive order halting refugee admissions and barring people from seven predominantly Muslim nations from coming to the United States, IRAP organized thousands of volunteer lawyers to flock to airports across the country. On the spot, they began representing shell-shocked individuals who had received visas to enter the United States but suddenly found themselves detained. IRAP also won the very first court ruling against the travel ban, which had the effect of allowing more than 21,000 vetted refugees to enter the United States in 2017. While the Supreme Court lamentably upheld an amended version of Trump’s travel ban in 2018, these refugees would never have made it had his initial executive order not been challenged.

  I also serve on the advisory council of the Tent Partnership, the coalition of businesses that have agreed to hire refugees and improve services and investment in their communities. Under the leadership of Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya, Tent’s companies have come to see refugees not as victims who need charity, but as resourceful and driven people who strengthen workforces and communities. Having myself been given the chance to move to the United States, I am committed to doing what I can to support those working to ensure that refugees and immigrants are protected and treated with respect.

  AS I HAVE TRAVELED around the United States and abroad since leaving office, I have heard—and asked myself—many variants of the same question: “Are we going to be okay?”

  We have ample grounds for alarm. The sources of America’s strength—our diversity, our embrace of individual rights and dignity, our commitment to the rule of law, and our leadership in the world—are under severe threat. The basic lessons Cass and I try to teach Declan and Rían (tell the truth, count and share your blessings, treat everyone equally) are being abused and ridiculed by the person holding the highest office in the land. President Trump’s contempt and bigotry, his rage and dishonesty, and his attacks on judges, journalists, minorities, and opposition voices are doing untold damage to the moral and political foundations of American democracy. His cruel rhetoric and actions have not only unleashed vitriol toward those he has branded “enemies,” but have also fueled violence by extremists within our own borders.

  In late October of 2018, I received a call from the FBI’s Boston field office. The agent informed me that Cesar Sayoc, the man accused of mailing more than a dozen pipe bombs to critics of President Trump, had done internet searches for the home addresses of other potential victims, including me. This call came the same week Declan and Rían had been incessantly checking our mailbox, awaiting the arrival of a mystery novel and science kit I had ordered for them.

  Extremists with malicious tendencies like Sayoc have always been with us. But today our culture is saturated with misinformation. Even when falsehoods don’t contribute to violence, they frighten people and turn us against one another. The decline in respect for objective truth and facts means we lack a stable underpinning on which to base our debates—and, ultimately, our decisions.

  Trump and his enablers in politics and the media have been effective in fanning fear. While I once viewed the conflict in Bosnia as a last gasp of ethnic chauvinism and demagoguery from a bygone era, it now seems more of a harbinger of the way today’s autocrats and opportunists exploit grievances, conjuring up some internal or external threat in order to expand their own power. Those of us who reject these tactics have yet to figure out how to convincingly reach people who are frightened by false claims.

  While my generation was often told about the impending triumph of democracy and human rights, young people today are bombarded with commentary forecasting the retreat of liberal democracy—or even its demise. A growing mistrust in democratic institutions breeds cynicism about politics and America’s future, and encourages an inward focus.

  And while our rifts at home deepen, the world is not standing still. Gallup polling across 133 countries shows that approval of US leadership has plummeted since 2016, and that Russian president Putin and Chinese president Xi are now viewed as favorably as (or more favorably than) the American president. In the economic sphere, China’s economy will likely surpass that of the United States in the next ten to fifteen years.

  However, nothing is foreordained. The combined work of individuals can change a community’s—and a country’s—trajectory in a hurry. We have seen this often at home and abroad. In 1972, Richard Nixon was reelected president in a landslide, winning every state except Massachusetts. Two years later, a small number of dogged reporters and investigators had exposed his crimes, and he had resigned from office in disgrace. In the fall of 2014, the US government was predicting more than one million new Ebola infections in West Africa by early 2015. Yet thanks to determined efforts by people in the region and the US-led international response, a major Ebola outbreak was defeated.

  America’s greatest assets remain our democracy and the citizens who comprise it. The best predictor of whether we will ultimately “be okay” is if citizens who stand to benefit or lose from political decisions choose to organize and vote. I see among young people a fresh surge of interest in public service, born of the recognition that each of us has a responsibility—and an opportunity—to make the changes we seek. President Trump may have destabilized and weakened our institutions, but thus far his actions have not broken them.

  The single most pressing task for Americans in the coming years is of course strengthening our democracy and governing ourselves more effectively. This requires making inroads against intense inequality, big money in politics, gerrymandering and restrictions on voting rights, corruption, polarization, racism, and exclusion—no small feats. At the same time, our engagement in the world cannot await the completion of a democratic renewal. We should deepen our investments in an area where the United States has achieved significant successes at minimal cost: diplomacy. Especially as US influence in the world diminishes, diplomacy will become more—not less—vital.

  At the moment, military force is seen as the “go-to” tool in the US toolbox. Since September 11th, 2001, almost three million US service members have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, many of them serving multiple tours. Astoundingly, US troops today are involved in counterterrorism activities in more than 40 percent of the countries in the world.60 The burden of fighting wars and undertaking these missions is carried by US service members and their families. Such a heavy reliance on our military is neither sustainable nor desirable. It is emblematic of a militarization of US foreign policy that concerns people across the political spectrum. I heard our generals repeatedly plead in the Situation Room for the other facets of American power—reconstruction aid, economic development and investment, diplomatic mediation, economic and other pressures—to be brought to bear because military strikes and even battlefield victories could not achieve US strategic aims.

  At present, the Pentagon and armed services have more than 225,000 American personnel deployed outside the United States; the State Department only around 9,000. Indeed, the Pentagon famously has only slightly fewer people serving in marching bands than the State Department has diplomats. This imbalance creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: the less we engage in diplomacy, the more chaotic the world becomes, and the ha
rder it is to convince Americans that our international engagements are worth continuing.

  Breaking out of this cycle will benefit all Americans, in the short and long term. Notwithstanding the diminishment of American influence, the United States will remain the most important country in the world for decades to come. In countless Security Council meetings, I watched foreign diplomats half-heartedly listen to the delegates from other countries, only to snap to attention when I, as the US representative, took the floor. On issue after issue, either the United States brought a game plan to the table or else the problem worsened. During my time in government, I saw US diplomats mobilize seventy countries to take on ISIS, negotiate the Paris climate agreement, get political prisoners out of jail, and build a coalition to impose such stringent sanctions on Iran that it gave up its potential nuclear weapons program. At more than 270 embassies and consulates around the world, diplomats aid American citizens when they run into trouble. They help ensure that American companies can more easily do business. And they attempt to negotiate an end to conflicts—an important task, especially now that Americans under the age of eighteen have lived in a country at war for their entire lives.

  The United States is the only nation capable of standing up to foreign aggressors like Russia in Ukraine. It is the only country that, during a challenge like the Ebola crisis, could rapidly devise and launch a complex, unprecedented operation—as President Obama liked to put it, “building the airplane while flying it,” while summoning other countries to the task. America’s capacity for creative ambition and forging powerful coalitions remains unmatched.

  If the United States steps back from leading the world—because of exhaustion, disillusionment, or internal division—American ideals, American prosperity, and American security will suffer. China will grow more aggressive in shaping the international rules of the road to its advantage. Crippling cyberattacks will cause growing harm and sow even greater divison. Right-wing extremists abroad will become more sophisticated in coordinating their efforts, backing their ideological allies in the United States and elsewhere with money and propaganda.