Tough Love

by Susan Rice

  Even then, I sensed the New Hampshire loss may have been a blessing in disguise. We had to be able to take a punch and correct course; and the campaign needed time to test and season our candidate. Had the road to the nomination been quick and easy, I believe Obama may not have been as well prepared to take on the Republican nominee.

  After Clinton won the next contest in Nevada by 5 percentage points but split the delegates almost evenly with Obama, the campaign was essentially tied going into South Carolina, an important southern bellwether and indicator of how African American voters would choose between their long-standing affinity for the Clintons and the potential historic opportunity presented by Obama.

  At my first stop in a rural black church near Greenville, I arrived to learn that Michelle Obama, the scheduled headliner, would not make it due to plane trouble. I was suddenly required to fill in as the main event, along with my former Clinton administration colleague, Ertharin Cousin, a Chicagoan with ties to the Obamas. I got up and mustered as much spirit and soul as I could to explain why I had picked Obama over Clinton. My rap probably sounded something like this: “Obama is about the future, our future. He is about change that we all can believe in. This choice is not about loyalty or passing the torch from one member of a dynasty to the other, however much we loved Bill Clinton. This is about the future and who has the ideas, the energy, the vision to understand your needs and make your lives better.”

  For about a week, I traversed the far corners of South Carolina, my dad’s home state, where I had spent time over the years visiting my aunt Pansy, who had died just the year before. I went to university campuses and Democratic Party breakfasts, knocked on doors, and helped staff the statewide headquarters. The Clintons fought hard in South Carolina, knowing that a loss there would be costly and bode ill for their ability to galvanize the black vote.

  Despite a race-tinged campaign, Obama won handily. The victory was especially sweet, given the bitterness of the fight, and set the battlefield for the rest of the contentious primary season. “All-in,” I remained devoted to helping Obama win the nomination, even though I realized that with each television appearance or super-delegate converted, I was digging my grave deeper with the Clinton machine. Yet this kind of dedication to mission, committing myself completely to what I believe in, came easily to me. It reflects who I am—indeed, who I grew into being at my demanding Washington, D.C., high school.

  After Beauvoir, I attended the National Cathedral School for girls (NCS) from fourth grade until high school graduation, on the Washington Cathedral Close. Daily, as I greeted the ever-cheerful crossing guard while traversing Woodley Road, I looked up in awe at the immense, gray stone gothic Cathedral. Having attended services there since nursery school, I knew its massive flying buttresses, powerful tolling bells, meticulously carved gargoyles, and breathtaking stained glass windows—one containing a moon rock retrieved by the Apollo astronauts—with almost the same intimacy as my own home. To presidents and statesmen whose inaugural events and funerals are held there, the Washington Cathedral is the national house of worship. To me, it was my first church—its pulpit a familiar perch, its nave a path I regularly processed, its repertoire of hymns as much second nature as the Lord’s Prayer. On these hallowed grounds is where I was most challenged, learned invaluable lessons, made friends for life, and became who I am.

  Mom and Dad didn’t agree on much, but they sent me off to NCS with a frequent refrain of my upbringing: “Always do your best, and your best will be good enough.” That meant they would not tolerate half-assed effort by me or Johnny, because we had all the skills we needed to excel. And if we truly tried, even if we failed, they would be proud of us—no matter the result. At the same time, they counseled us never to use race as an excuse or a crutch. Undoubtedly, my parents warned, we would face racial discrimination and must call out and fight bias wherever we encountered it. For many, they stressed, pernicious prejudice remains an enormous obstacle. Yet, Johnny and I were fortunate to have an excellent education and other rare opportunities; therefore, we would be wrong to blame race for our own failures or use race unfairly to our advantage. Our parents taught us, quite matter-of-factly, that we needed to be twice as good as the next (white) kid, because that is what it would take to be considered almost equal. At NCS, I came to understand exactly what they meant and held fast to that wisdom everywhere I went.

  After a solid, if not exceptional, start, I kicked into high academic gear between eighth and ninth grade, once the worst of my parents’ divorce was behind me. In this period, I seriously considered leaving NCS for boarding school at someplace like St. Paul’s or Andover in New England. I had friends who loved these places and was excited by the prospect of a fresh start—an escape from the turbulence of my family life. My dad urged me to stay. His voice mattered, but it was another that ultimately swayed me. In the English Department office where we often talked after school, my public speaking and American literature teacher, Jim Tibbetts, was relentless. Using the nickname given me by my basketball teammates, which was short for “Sportin,” Mr. Tibbetts argued, “Spo, you are loved and will knock the lights out here at NCS. You have too much to contribute and too much to gain to leave. Don’t do it.”

  In his late thirties, Mr. Tibbetts was jovial, heavyset, and frequently bearded, playing Santa Claus at Christmas and fitting the part. He became a mentor and a close friend whose door was always open, a kind and supportive male figure who was not a parent but understood me and what I was going through at home. The amount of time we spent together raised some eyebrows, but our friendship was one truly of respect, trust, and humor—lasting through college, graduate school, and well beyond.

  Having taken Tibbetts’s advice, I stayed at NCS, benefiting enormously from excellent teachers and coaches who perceived my potential before I did.

  Ruth Ann Williamson was a legend at NCS who had been teaching Medieval History for at least thirty years. Smart, demanding, and eccentric, Mrs. Williamson pushed us hard. One day at the end of seventh grade, she pulled me aside and said, “Susan, you are a talented young woman. If you apply yourself, and work for it, I believe you can win The Flag.” Her conviction that I could actually win the coveted American flag that flies adjacent to the National Cathedral—the prize given annually to the senior class valedictorian—was catalytic. Surprised that she thought I could do it, and even more startled that she bothered to tell me, I tucked the thought away until high school, when I resolved to do my true best.

  History was my favorite subject, and John Wood, who taught eleventh-grade modern European history, helped cement my fascination and build my skills, readying me for the inimitable Anne Macdonald. “Annie Mac,” as we called her, taught AP U.S. history in twelfth grade. Her course was tough and riveting, requiring us to conduct primary research at the Library of Congress, where I prepared my thirty-page paper on poverty in Appalachia. Mrs. Macdonald wrote me the most generous letters of recommendation, warranting that I had rare talents as a scholar, leader, and potential politician. An old-school Republican, she may have been the first person to tell me I should be president of the United States.

  Mrs. Macdonald’s words struck a chord with me, because at the age of ten, I had made up my mind that I wanted to become a U.S. senator.

  I knew several senators and members of Congress; they were the parents of my friends, many of whom came from across the aisle. In that long-lost bipartisan environment in which I grew up, relationships were not constrained by politics but rather forged in compatibility and shared interests. Starting at Beauvoir, my classmates and I took field trips to Capitol Hill and toured the offices of members of both houses, including Senator Bill Brock (R-TN) and Representative Richard Ottinger (D-NY), the fathers of two of my closest early friends. I saw what senators did—make speeches, meet constituents, work on important issues. Politics was hot, and my hometown was hopping with the electricity of government.

  Coming of age in D.C. in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was ste
eped in models of leadership and exemplars of public service.

  Vividly, I recall watching Egyptian president Anwar Sadat wave triumphantly as he walked into the Egyptian embassy across the street from my mother’s house on Massachusetts Avenue. Secret Service snipers had requisitioned her roof. Sadat had just signed the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, ably negotiated by President Carter. It was a moment powerfully imbued with history, made more memorable by the fact that, just three years later, Sadat paid the ultimate price for daring to make peace with Israel, cut down in Cairo by assassins’ bullets.

  Soon after began the torturous 444 days during which we, like all Americans, feared and prayed for our fifty-two hostages seized in the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Held by student revolutionaries backed by the extremist Iranian regime, these American hostages were public servants, mainly diplomats and military personnel, captured and tormented in the line of duty. On the January day in 1981 when they finally came home, cruelly released just after Carter left office, our nation rejoiced and honored the hostages with a huge parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. Yellow ribbons hung everywhere, and standing along the parade route I felt the enormous sense of collective relief.

  Thereafter, I was swiftly reminded that the risks incurred by our country’s public servants are not limited to those stationed overseas, nor to rank-and-file officials. In March 1981, shortly after taking office, President Ronald Reagan was shot and nearly killed outside the Hilton Hotel, just blocks from my mother’s house, and we heard the sirens as they whisked him to George Washington University Hospital. Americans were shaken by such a brazen assassination attempt in our capital city. While I strongly disagreed with Reagan’s policies, he was our president and an honorable man who had nearly given his life in service to our country. To me, his sacrifice, that of those injured, and of the diplomats, development officers, military personnel, and intelligence officers who operate daily in harm’s way, was emblematic of the nobility of public service.

  Within one city, I was exposed to consequential events from the local to the global that reinforced in me the importance of competent leadership, effective government, and wise public policy. The business of Washington was fascinating, and I wanted to be part of it.

  My enthusiasm was tempered only by the realization that I lived in the one place on the American mainland that had zero U.S. senators. Washington, D.C., had no voting representation in Congress, and we still do not. As I argued passionately for the liberal side to my conservative colleagues at one of our weekly Government Club debates: “D.C.’s disenfranchisement is one of the major injustices of our political system. Over seven hundred thousand people pay full federal taxes. They can be conscripted into war but have no right to elect leaders whose votes count in Congress.” This purgatory appears all but permanent, given that change would require a constitutional amendment, and Republicans have long wished to deny heavily Democratic D.C. a full voice in Congress.

  When I decided to become a U.S. senator one day, I knew all of that, so I was an early and strenuous advocate of D.C. voting rights, even as I considered adopting a home state in adulthood. My teenage plan was to run for the House of Representatives before eventually trying for the Senate. To me, both chambers were interesting and important, but back then the Senate seemed more stable, sober, and collaborative than the rough-and-tumble House. As I set out to learn as much as possible about Congress and public policy, my path after college seemed clear: go to law school, practice law, get established locally, and, at the right moment, run for Congress.

  My first job in life was as a Democratic page in the U.S. House of Representatives. In the summer of 1979, having just completed ninth grade, at fourteen I was thrilled to earn $600 per month. My mom got me the position through a member of Congress she knew from her work on educational policy. Like many congressional jobs then, a House page was a patronage appointment, one doled out by members based on seniority. Even without a home state and an influential representative to importune, I, like several of my NCS and St. Albans peers, was able to get a summer job in Congress, because my mother had juice.

  As pages, we all wore white shirts and blue pants, and our job was to deliver internal mail and packages between House offices. Given excessive freedom and independence, the only mortal sin we could commit was to throw our parcels into the regular mail. Democratic and Republican pages mingled and socialized, as many lived together at Thompson-Markward Hall, a dormitory on Capitol Hill. With a shared passion for politics, they came from all over the country, though very few were minorities. As a locally based page, I lived at home and rode the Metro to and from the Capitol.

  Back then, there was virtually no adult supervision of this large summer posse of teens, aged fourteen to nineteen. In an era when young people partied hard and the drinking age in D.C. was eighteen, fellow pages smoked pot even in the garage of the Rayburn House Office Building. Weekend parties were routine, and I attended my share.

  One Saturday night, I rode to a party in Virginia with a group of pages. The driver was Rebecca Moscone, a lovely, fun college freshman who six months earlier had lost her father, San Francisco mayor George Moscone, to assassination at City Hall. Living that summer at the home of Congressman John Burton, a friend of her father’s, Rebecca had borrowed his car.

  We left the party before midnight, and none of us, including Rebecca, was significantly intoxicated. Merging onto the highway, suddenly we heard the screech of metal on metal and watched in horror as our car ground into the side of a fast-moving Exxon oil tanker. Only an extended sideswipe, our car was damaged, but we were all okay. Our biggest fear was the reaction of the famously explosive congressman to news that we had wrecked his car. When Rebecca reported the accident the next morning, with all due contrition, his response was abbreviated and pointed, “Aaaah, fuck it,” he said. Crisis averted.

  Members of Congress were generally friendly and courteous to pages—joking, teasing, and telling us stories. Despite subsequent allegations of sexual misconduct by members with pages, I never saw or heard of anything untoward.

  Still, as a fourteen-year-old page, I had my earliest and most jarring experience with sexual harassment. The twenty-two-year-old perpetrator worked as a doorman who controlled access to the House floor, a patronage job he landed courtesy of a family member. As I passed through his door, he would make flirtatious, sometimes outrageous comments. I would generally ignore him and keep walking into the House chamber. Then, one day after work, when I was waiting on the Metro platform at the Capitol South station, he approached me. Getting extremely close, he told me how he planned to do unprintable things to me with his tongue. Shocked and scared, I told him forcefully to leave me alone. He did not bother me again, but to this day I cannot forget how demeaning and disgusting he was.

  Unfortunately, I have seen him multiple times since, though I always keep my distance. Now an elected official, he would likely deny any wrongdoing and may not even remember his offensive actions, but I pray he has never again sexually harassed or assaulted anyone. As jarring as his abusive behavior was, I am lucky. After I demanded he stop, he relented, and the experience did not scar me in any lasting way. Fortunately, in all my subsequent years of working in male-dominated environs, I never experienced other disturbing instances of sexual harassment beyond crude jokes, loose hands, and obnoxious comments, which I managed to parry or deflect.

  Despite that doorman, I returned to Capitol Hill for each of the next three summers, taking on increasingly challenging assignments that deepened my knowledge of policy and the legislative process. It was my privilege to be sponsored by the wise and kind Representative Augustus “Gus” Hawkins (D-CA), one of the most senior African American members and chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. Bald, compact, gentle, and soft-spoken, Mr. Hawkins quietly but effectively championed civil rights, employment and training, and education legislation, while serving as a model of civility. He was the outstanding member who served tirelessly for the greate
r good, not personal advancement.

  My admiration for Mr. Hawkins, combined with those four summers on Capitol Hill, fueled my drive to serve in Congress, even as I became increasingly aware of its shortcomings. Legislative stagnation and many members’ unabashed egotism injected a measure of realism into my idealized view of Congress—and this at a time when the House and Senate functioned comparatively well, and bipartisan cooperation was not an oxymoron!

  Summers exposed me to policy and politics, with the former becoming my calling, but as soon as September came, I dove back into the usual stuff of high school—academics, sports, extracurricular activities, and my social life.

  Through varsity tennis and basketball, I learned how to be a team player, play to win, and eventually lose with grace (which I did frequently as a mediocre point guard). My first high school basketball coach had a profound impact on me. A hard-ass—raw, rough-edged, and barely out of college—she was the opposite of our typically refined teachers. Coming from a big, Catholic, working-class family in New Jersey, she had little patience for the pretentious, coddled girls at NCS, whom she ribbed mercilessly as soft little rich kids. To toughen us up, she kicked our butts, making us run more full-court suicides than any of us could endure.

  Coach also took our team to a new level of play and cohesion, giving us each detailed individual feedback. She advised me to play with more confidence on offense—using my legs and putting more arc and backspin on my shot, concentrating on the square above the basket when executing driving lay-ups, and honing my ball-handling skills. We learned how to push ourselves and play real ball, not the effete game that many of her contemporaries favored. We all loved our coach, and she came to love us back.