No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

by Condoleezza Rice

  “I don’t know,” I replied, “Karl is telling everyone that the composition of the survey sample for the exit polls seems to be skewed against us.”

  “Let’s hope so,” he said with a little resignation in his voice.

  The plan was to have the senior staff and spouses watch the returns on TV in the Roosevelt Room. After about an hour, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I’m going to find Karl, I decided.

  I found him upstairs in the family dining room, where he’d set up a kind of war room. “Can I make myself useful?” I asked, not wanting to just sit around and do nothing. “Yes. You can follow Ohio,” he said, taking the time to show me how the computer program worked. Slowly but surely the electoral votes began to pile up. Indeed, the exit polling had been wrong. When Karl’s program showed that we’d won Ohio, the room broke into pandemonium. The verdict was confirmed a few minutes later on several television broadcasts. I hugged Karl. “We tried to screw it up for you,” I said, referring to the series of mishaps and leaks of the last month of the campaign. “But he pulled it off!”

  As the hours passed, though, it became clear John Kerry wasn’t ready to concede. Here we go again, I thought. Can the country handle another recount? With the celebration postponed, I went home at 3:00 A.M., uncertain of the results. But this time there would be no recount. Senator Kerry conceded the next morning. The President had won another term.

  I walked into the Oval Office shortly after he’d heard the news. “Congratulations, sir!” He thanked me for all I’d done and then said that we needed to talk about the future. In the weeks prior, he’d said a couple of times that Colin was ready to step down and that he wanted me to be secretary of state, so I knew what was coming. I deflected the conversation for the moment, saying there would be time to talk at Camp David, where we’d go for a long weekend the next day. It was November 3. In eleven days I’d be fifty, and I was about to become the secretary of state. But the President and I needed to talk first, as directly as we ever had. I’d liked being his national security advisor, but a lot would change when I left the White House and crossed into Foggy Bottom, as the State Department was informally known. He and I both needed to understand how we’d handle the new relationship, one that, historically, hadn’t always been smooth: the interaction between the President of the United States and the secretary of state.

  21

  SECRETARY OF STATE

  I MUST ADMIT that the prospect of becoming secretary of state stirred mixed emotions in me. Obviously, I was honored that the President wanted me to become his chief diplomat. The historic significance of becoming Thomas Jefferson’s sixty-fifth successor wasn’t lost on me.

  After four years as national security advisor, I was ready to be a line officer with the authority that only Cabinet secretaries have. I was tired of coordinating others and tired of the mismatch between authority and responsibility that is an everyday challenge for the NSA. My good friend and mentor George Shultz had predicted this when I left for Washington. “One day you’re going to want to run your own shop,” he said. He was absolutely right.

  I also thought that I could help the President with the State Department and help the department with the President. The President had been burned by leaks of the kind Dean Acheson had described as “What the President meant to say.” That had led to some lingering distrust. And I felt that many people in the Foreign Service didn’t really understand or appreciate the strengths of the President. Given my strong ties to him, I felt that I could bridge the distance between Foggy Bottom and the White House.

  I knew too that there was a lot of work to do going forward to strengthen diplomacy as a matter of both reality and perception in the Bush administration’s policies. We had of necessity taken a lot of difficult and controversial steps after 9/11, and many people, particularly in Europe, had hoped that the tough-talking Texan would be sent home. But he would be President for four more years.

  The eminent Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis had come to visit shortly before the election and over lunch said something that resonated with me. “Never forget how really dependent the world is on America. And they know it. After all the upheaval of the last few years, this is a time for reassurance,” he counseled. A colleague from France had put it a different way: “After 9/11 we knew that you would do what you needed and wanted to do. We just hoped to know your intentions even if we couldn’t always influence them.” I thought that an overstatement, but, thinking back on the reaction to the National Security Strategy, it may well have been indicative of how others felt. Then one morning I saw the postelection cover of The Economist. “Now, Unite Us,” it read. I kept that issue in my upper desk drawer at the State Department for the four years of my term.

  As I contemplated the job ahead, I also had to acknowledge that I was tired—bone tired. I knew that the secretary of state would need to travel and travel and travel. In fact, it’s much easier as secretary of state to drive the agenda when you’re abroad. When you are in Washington, you’re competing with the latest headline; when you’re overseas, you have a press corps eager to report on your every meeting. Usually you have a time change working in your favor so that you’re not making news in the middle of the cycle, and you have compelling visuals that help emphasize policies. Being on the road is a good thing for the secretary of state. But I understood why Colin had been concerned about extensive time abroad: he didn’t trust either the White House or the Pentagon and always feared that something was happening behind his back when he was on the road. Frankly, I don’t think he needed to worry so much about it, but he did. Yet with all the technological possibilities of phone and video, diplomacy is best practiced in person. I knew that, and it ran counter to my own preference for the normalcy (such as it was) of being at home. I like my own bed and my routine.

  But most of all I wondered what moving down to C Street would do to my relationship with the President. As national security advisor I had seen him every day, often five or six times a day. I was well aware of the importance of keeping the connection to the Oval Office and concerned that, despite our best efforts, it would be hard to do. Steve Hadley would become national security advisor, and that was comforting because I trusted him to let me know—bluntly—if any distance was emerging between the President and me. I never wanted to leave the President wondering what I was thinking and doing.

  It was in that frame of mind that I walked the short distance from my cabin to the President’s office in Laurel Lodge at Camp David on the Friday morning after the election. I entered the room and looked around at the photographs on the wall. There, prominently displayed, was a picture of the two of us in the Oval Office a few days after his inauguration. The President was on the phone, and I was standing at his desk, looking down pensively. Eric Draper, the President’s photographer, took the shot in silhouette, with the morning sun shining through the windows behind us. I thought of all we’d been through in the last four years.

  The President didn’t waste time with chitchat. He simply said, “I want you to be secretary of state.” I responded by saying how honored I was but that there were a few things we needed to talk about. I said that I hoped he wouldn’t take what I was going to say as criticism of the last four years. After all, I’d been deeply involved in the decisions. But recounting Gaddis’s admonition, I noted that we had repair work to do with the allies and that we’d need to reaffirm the primacy of diplomacy in our foreign policy. That would also mean reaffirming the primacy of the secretary of state as the principal agent of the development and execution of that policy. We talked about how to make it work, particularly the need to do what we’d done for more than four years: never let distance develop between us that others, foreign or domestic, could exploit. “How am I going to know what you’re thinking if I don’t see you every day?” I asked.

  He replied that we could talk anytime. “You know how it is in the White House,” he said. “I’ll get busy and forget to call, so you have to call me.”

&nbs
p; “Okay,” I replied, “you’ll hear from me every day,” only partially in jest.

  I’d later tell my colleague Henry Paulson, when he became treasury secretary, to spend time alone with the President. Cabinet secretaries are busy people with big organizations to run and many, many demands on their time. But you have only one boss: the President. You have to find the time to air your differences privately and early. Then, having established the parameters, the secretary can execute policy freely on behalf of the government. I didn’t want to be in the position of having to phone home every time I needed to make a tough call on behalf of the United States. The President had to trust me to know when I needed guidance and when I didn’t. Before my confirmation, I gave the President a copy of a biography of Dean Acheson and of Acheson’s own memoir, Present at the Creation. Acheson had succeeded in staying close to President Truman and thus retaining authority and credibility as the voice of U.S. foreign policy. Together, they had led the United States and the world through turbulent times.

  I then turned to one substantive issue that was on my mind. “Mr. President,” I said, “we need to get an agreement and establish a Palestinian state.” He said that he wanted to do so but asked if I thought it could be done. We were both anxious to take advantage of the impending withdrawal of the Israelis from Gaza and the upcoming election of a new Palestinian president, who was predicted to be Mahmoud Abbas, someone we both liked. “We’ll get it done,” he said after a little more discussion. “What about my offer?”

  I said that I needed a little time to digest our conversation and asked if we could talk the next morning. We didn’t wait until the next day. When we talked again after dinner, I said yes, I would be honored to become the sixty-sixth secretary of state.

  I TURNED FIFTY on November 14 and had invited a number of family and friends to Washington to celebrate the occasion with me. My cousin Lativia and her husband, Will, my Aunt Gee, Uncle Alto and his wife, Connie, my stepmother, Clara, and my stepbrother, Greg, all made the trip from as far away as California to mark the big “5–0” with me.

  We’d gone to a fancy dinner at a downtown restaurant, Galileo, on Friday. So I decided to do something low-key on Saturday night—or at least I thought so. I suggested dinner at a favorite casual restaurant, Café Deluxe, on Wisconsin Avenue. I just wanted downtime with my family—nothing formal.

  As the Secret Service SUV barreled down Massachusetts Avenue toward the restaurant, I sat back and closed my eyes, having decided not to think at all for the rest of the night. Only my Aunt Gee knew that the President had asked me to be secretary of state. My family never talked to the press and I trusted them, but it just seemed safer to wait a while before telling too many people.

  Suddenly, the car turned in to the British Embassy instead of proceeding up Massachusetts Avenue. This is strange, I thought. Then it dawned on me that maybe my friends the Mannings were inviting me for a surprise champagne toast before dinner. When we pulled up to the entry, David came out, and he was wearing a tuxedo. “Oh, Catherine and David must have a dinner afterwards,” I thought.

  David escorted me from the car into the foyer. There I suddenly saw a hundred of my dearest friends and family dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos. It’s funny what your eye catches when you’re totally surprised. I focused immediately on the guests who’d come from farthest away: Carmen and Gail Policy, Mariann and Dan Begovich, Susan and Michael Dorsey, Fred Weldy, Randy Bean, and others from California. People from all phases of my life were there, arrayed beautifully along the two spiral staircases of the ambassador’s residence.

  I was just thrilled, and then I thought, My God, am I underdressed!, standing there in my black slacks, turtleneck sweater, and red jacket. Fortunately, the Mannings, with the surreptitious help of a member of my staff, Sarah Lenti, had taken care of that too. I was whisked upstairs, where my hairdresser, Bruce Johnson, was waiting for me, along with a stunning, red satin gown by my friend Oscar de la Renta, who’d designed it just for me. Within about an hour I emerged like Cinderella and celebrated through the night. Van Cliburn played the national anthem and “Happy Birthday,” and the President gave the toast. We danced late into the evening. It was another of those fairy-tale-like moments.

  At one point, I looked across the room at Colin and wondered what he was thinking. With the exception of the President, the First Lady, Andy Card, and Aunt Gee, he was the only other person who knew that I was going to become secretary of state. We didn’t mention it to each other that night. He’d done a remarkable job under the circumstances. None of us could have known in 2001 how much our service would be shaped by war and conflict. The Pentagon commands the spotlight in wartime. I couldn’t help but wonder how Colin’s tenure might have been different in less tumultuous times.

  THREE DAYS LATER, the President and I stood in the Oval for a few minutes alone before heading into the Roosevelt Room for the announcement. What an unlikely pair: a scion of a Republican political dynasty—albeit one with a Texas accent—and a middle-class black daughter of the South. We’d been through a lot since that meeting in Kennebunkport. Cataclysmic events and our response to them had shaped his presidency thus far. Now, with the dust settling, we had a chance to build a firm foundation for U.S. foreign policy in the changed circumstances of the post-9/11 world.

  I listened to the President’s remarks as he introduced me to the press as his nominee for secretary of state. But frankly, I didn’t want to listen too closely and become observably emotional. After he finished, I said a few words—very few—and returned to the Oval with him. “Go get ’em,” he said. I laughed and said, “Yes, sir!” and left for Capitol Hill to begin the process known colloquially as confirmation. It’s more correctly called “the consent of the Senate to the President’s nomination.” I liked the sound of that and the knowledge that it had been done only sixty-five times before in our nation’s history.

  The Transition

  WITH THE President’s agreement, Steve Hadley and I decided that Steve would, in effect, begin to act as national security advisor as of December 1. That would give me time to prepare for confirmation hearings and plan the transition at State. Because Steve and I had worked so closely together—he’d been far more than a deputy, and the President trusted him completely—the handoff would be seamless.

  It would also give me time to deal with a nettlesome and long-standing health problem. I’d been cursed with uterine fibroids for more than twenty years. There was a new, minimally invasive procedure that my physician, Sharon Malone, recommended I have. After meeting with Dr. James Spies at Georgetown University Hospital, I decided that I should have the minor surgery.

  The President was traveling to Chile for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting, and we’d decided that Steve would accompany him. I could have used the transition as an excuse for skipping the trip, but with all the attention generated by my appointment as secretary of state, it was a certainty that the press would learn of my overnight hospitalization.

  I decided to release a statement about my medical condition. As Sean McCormick put it, it was better to make the announcement myself rather than allow speculation that I was dying of something horrible. Nonetheless, I was a bit surprised by the coverage the announcement received, including a long segment by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN about the nature of uterine fibroids, complete with illustrations, and the details of the treatment that I would undergo. Obviously nothing was ever going to be truly “personal” again. I told myself that perhaps I was helping millions of women suffering from the same condition. But to be honest, I really resented the intrusion.

  Fortunately, everything went smoothly with the procedure, and I convalesced at home over Thanksgiving weekend. The next week I continued my visits to Capitol Hill with Deb Fiddelke, the White House legislative staffer who was responsible for guiding my confirmation through the Senate. Deb was thorough and insightful and made the process far less stressful than it might otherwise have been. Her only fault was her
undying love of the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

  The meetings with senators were actually interesting and revealing. Obviously, one is trying not to make a mistake that might sink confirmation, but it was useful to hear what was on their minds. As staff to the President I’d had some contact with Congress, briefing selected senators in the run-up to the Iraq war and forwarding the case for funding Iraqi reconstruction. And I occasionally briefed on other issues of importance to the President, such as the Middle East. But the interaction with Congress is not a formal part of the NSA’s job. As a constitutional officer, on the other hand, the secretary of state has obligations to the institution established in Article 1 of the Constitution. Members of Congress will remind you from time to time that the founding fathers established the legislative branch first. In line with that, I resolved to always take my responsibilities to the House and Senate very seriously indeed.

  The State Department’s portfolio was breathtakingly broad. Individual senators tended to pursue their state’s parochial issues, such as this or that water treaty, an environmental problem with our neighbors to the north or south, or agricultural and trade issues with friends and foes alike. But there are also the myriad administrative concerns related to embassy management—everything from a multimillion-dollar construction program to salary competition with the private sector for the best local staff. The Foreign Service is unionized, and the Hill maintains an interest in work rules and benefits for even the most senior officers. There was a lot to learn before taking the reins at State. I felt grateful for having been provost of Stanford University, where I had been, in effect, the chief operating officer and had come to love budgets and day-to-day management. I’m not kidding—I loved it.