Tough Love

by Susan Rice

  In Germany, Obama delivered a major policy speech to a massive crowd of Berliners assembled at the Victory Column in the Tiergarten, where he stressed his commitment to work collaboratively with our European allies. I joined him as he met for the first time with a rather quizzical, if not skeptical, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who seemed unsure what to make of her wildly popular visitor. In France, its flamboyant president Nicolas Sarkozy all but endorsed Obama at a press conference set up as if for a visiting American president. In London, Obama met with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and opposition leader David Cameron in a more staid set of discussions, leavened by Cameron’s hip gift to Obama of a box of CDs, underscoring their generational parity.

  The trip ended without a hitch. Obama hit it out of the park, and the campaign had substantially deflated the arguments of those who insisted that Obama was not ready to be president.

  Upon our return in late July, the campaign’s focus turned to the convention, debate preparation, and soon, transition planning. In addition to my other responsibilities, I was assigned to co-lead the national security transition team.

  Throughout that fall, I felt like we were entering uncharted territory. There would be a new president, but we didn’t know who or whether America had an appetite for real change. He would have to cope with a massive recession, but no one knew quite how deep or long-lasting it would be. At a personal level, I would either be staying at Brookings through the start of yet another Republican administration or returning to government in some unknown capacity.

  That same sense of uncertainty and anticipation, tinged with hopefulness, recalled another fall during a much earlier turning point in my life—when I first left home for college. Heading west to Stanford, I was finally escaping the confines of the familiar and the constraints of other people’s expectations, feeling free at last to forge my own way.

  Just before I left for college, Dad took me to a quick dinner at McDonald’s to give me some parting advice. To underscore his seriousness, after we started eating, he pulled out a couple small pages of handwritten notes. I didn’t recall his prior lectures coming with crib notes, so I listened with extra attentiveness. When he finished, I asked, “Dad, do you mind if I keep those notes?”

  “Sure.” Dad grinned, and handed me his scribbles, which I have preserved to this day.

  On this occasion, when I think Dad felt a special duty to send his firstborn off as well-equipped as possible, his teachings were unusually pithy and wide-ranging. Dad’s notes, just jots, condensed his advice into five numbered points:

  Use of Time: Time is my “most valuable asset.” I must “plan its use and manage it wisely.”

  Work: I must have high standards for my work and “learn to enjoy it, plan it, set goals.”

  Trust: “Trust is very tricky. There is no substitute for good judgment about people.” I must “know what I think at any given time but be flexible and prepared to change my mind—to upgrade or downgrade my judgments, including of people, without waiting for a crisis or confrontation.” He also insisted: “In love, trust is an essential element. Be careful.”

  Take Care: I must “take good care of my mind and body,” manage stress and care for my “mental and physical hygiene.”

  Philosophy: For my soul, I needed to formulate a “comforting, persuasive, pervasive philosophy of life.”

  While Dad made sure I packed his wisdom, it was Mom who ensured I actually made it across the country with all of my stuff together. I was very appreciative that she came with me out to Stanford to help me get settled at the start of my freshman year. Following the fiasco in the Cathedral, Mom had tried to be more supportive, not necessarily of my college choice, but of me. Before she left, Mom gave me a big hug and, as she always did, made a point of stressing, “You know how much I adore you,” reminding me how proud she was of me as her daughter.

  Despite requesting an all-freshman house, which I thought would be more fun, I was placed in a more sober four-class coed dorm. Still, I made good friends in both my dorm and beyond; for the first time, my social set came from various racial and socioeconomic backgrounds—fully reflective of the diversity of California and the larger country.

  And then, there were boys! Coming from an all-girls school, I relished a coed environment where smart and attractive men were plentiful. It was like gazing at an all-you-can-eat buffet! In my first weeks, I went to plenty of fraternity parties, football games, and freshman events, meeting several guys who piqued my interest, but I was in no hurry.

  Barely into my first week, however, I met a nice, cute senior at an ice cream social thrown by upperclassmen for freshmen in our dorm. He was tall and thin with gorgeous curly brown hair, soft eyes, and a great smile. I will always remember every detail of our first encounter.

  He introduces himself and asks me where I am from. I announce proudly, “Washington, D.C.” (because out west, you need to specify your Washington).

  I ask him where he is from, and he says, “British Columbia.” I pause to wrack my supposedly well-educated brain, thinking—Where the hell is British Columbia? I quickly deduce: Colombia is in South America. There is British Guyana and French Guyana. Maybe there is also a British Colombia.

  So, I hazard: “Is that in South America?”

  He looks at me quizzically like I am the biggest idiot he has met at Stanford. “No,” he replies dryly, “it’s in western Canada.”

  Almost four decades later, my husband, Ian Cameron, has never stopped giving me a hard time about our first encounter. In fact, he got more mileage out of that story the higher I rose in the diplomatic ranks.

  After failing my geography test, I next encountered Ian a few days later at the first Stanford home football game. To this sunshine, bikini, and shorts affair, Ian and his buddy Paul Fisher had brought a cooler of gin and tonics, perfect for the hot weather. By the third quarter, I was feeling good enough—and Ian was looking good enough—for me to drape my arms around his neck and shoulders (while standing one step above him in the bleachers, since he is over a foot taller than me). I can’t remember if Stanford won or lost, but I do recall going fountain-hopping with Ian and the Stanford Band (a postgame tradition when there is no drought).

  At the start of November, then fully smitten, I called my mom to share that, “I met this guy. He’s wickedly funny and extremely nice. It might be starting to become something. He sent me a dozen red roses—for Halloween!”

  With November comes Big Game, the annual Stanford-Berkeley football contest that consumes the Bay Area. The 1982 Big Game, my first, was at Berkeley, so Ian and I made the trek across the Bay to Memorial Stadium. This time, I remember all too well what happened.

  The game was tight throughout. With just a few minutes left in the fourth quarter, it was Cal 19, Stanford 17. Stanford quarterback John Elway threw a 29-yard pass on fourth down and 17 yards to go, from the Stanford 13-yard line. He managed to get the team into field goal range, and Stanford nailed the field goal with 8 seconds left. 20–19 Stanford, with 4 seconds on the clock. Our side was going crazy in the stands, and we incurred a 15-yard penalty for unsportsmanlike celebration on the kickoff.

  Stanford started from its own 25-yard line and strangely opted for a squib kick. Cal fielded the ball and proceeded down the field. When the clock ran out, Stanford thought the Cal ball-carrier had been downed, and the Stanford Band along with many of our players swarmed the field in elation. But Berkeley kept moving downfield with a bizarre series of five consecutive laterals, plowing through the Stanford Band into the end zone and scoring by flattening a Stanford trombone player.

  After tense deliberations, the referees ruled that the laterals were legal, and no Cal man was down. It was touchdown Cal! WTF???!! The 85th Big Game was awarded to Cal 25–20, on one of the craziest plays in college football history. We were stunned, then pissed, then devastated. “The Play,” as it came to be called, was a low point of my Stanford experience, but years later provided a useful analogy with Barack Obama.

>   Academically, I found Stanford stimulating but not difficult. I have often marveled, truthfully, that “Nothing in life has seemed hard since NCS.” High school had sapped nearly every ounce of initiative out of me. I came to Stanford exhausted, as the demands of academics, sports, and serving a voracious school administration as school government president had taken a toll on me. During my freshman year, I lacked the motivation to do much beyond the minimum—take classes, make friends, watch my soap operas, and spend time with Ian.

  After graduating at the end of my freshman year, Ian stayed in Palo Alto and started his difficult search for an entry-level job in broadcast journalism. Eventually, he was hired by the tiny CBS affiliate in Eureka, California, as a reporter, producer, cameraman, weatherman, and weekend sports anchor. We managed to see each other on occasional weekends, when he or I could make the five-hour trek along the coast.

  From Eureka, Ian moved to Ottawa, Ontario, to obtain his master’s degree in journalism and later to work as a local TV news reporter in Canada’s capital. We exchanged visits when we could and hoped our relationship would endure extended separation. By my junior year, Ian made clear that he hoped we might share a lifetime together, but we both realized how improbable it was—given how young we were and how much of life would intervene before either of us was ready to marry.

  Not surprisingly, I was wary of committing to the first man I truly loved, worried about feeling trapped and never experiencing alternatives. Deeply skeptical of the sustainability of a happy, monogamous partnership, I confessed to Ian that I needed more than one data point—as it were—

  before getting married. In one of our many written exchanges of these years, I explained, “I am a hyper-rational, super-empirical person.… I don’t trust myself to rely solely on suspicion in making the biggest commitment of my life. My experience with my parents’ divorce has made me scared and determined not to fail. What I seek is confidence, the confidence to believe my decision is an informed, correct one. I am not looking for someone or something better. I can’t even imagine such a person. What I seek is confirmation of my suspicion that you are the person for me—and vice versa.”

  The rational solution, we agreed, was that while we were living apart, we would remain a couple but could also date other people if we wanted. We adopted an explicit policy that equated to “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” To this day, I have not asked what Ian did, but I took selective advantage of this freedom, which in my view probably enabled our relationship to survive years of long-distance.

  After NCS, I was tired of student politics but wanted to deepen my knowledge of real-world issues. As a Washingtonian immersed in current events, I regretted that many very smart fellow Stanford students seemed uninterested in the major issues of the day. For me, Stanford was a constant reminder of how fortunate I was, including having a top-quality education when so many like me did not. Then, as now, structural inequality in the public education system, which persistently fails to serve poor students, means that most minorities will never have a true shot at social mobility. Like Mom, I felt driven to contribute to reducing educational disparities.

  That passion led me to spend two summers working at the Black Student Fund (BSF), a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., that provides scholarships and support services to talented, low-income black students attending D.C.-area private schools. There, I wrote a guidebook for teachers seeking to incorporate black history and culture into their curricula. As a tutor/advisor, I also visited incoming students at their homes in the most distressed neighborhoods of the city, where crime, poverty, drugs, and parental neglect conspired to defeat or even kill these young people before they ever enrolled. Steeped in the economic and social stresses of low-income, inner-city students, I came to appreciate even more the crucial role, yet evident limitations, of government policy and dollars in ameliorating the causes and consequences of poverty.

  Back on campus, I delved into several of these issues through my studies. As a history major, I took courses spanning Europe, the U.S., China, the Soviet Union, and Africa. A stand-out for me was “America in the 1960s,” a class taught by Professors Barton Bernstein and Clayborne Carson (who later curated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s papers at Stanford), in which we studied Vietnam, the civil rights movement, the Great Society, and the women’s movement. It was a fascinating look at activism during a period I’d witnessed through a child’s eyes, too young to understand. I was also energized by several political science courses, including Southern African Politics with Professor David Abernethy, which fueled my interest in Africa, and was able to explore areas outside my major, like poetry writing. A vehicle for introspection and emotional renewal, poetry for me was a space removed in which to observe and absorb the world around me, to feel whole. At Stanford, I was fortunate to study with leading poets, including the award-winning Denise Levertov and Peter Levi.

  During my junior year, I got a respite from the nonchalance of the West Coast when I spent my winter and spring quarters at Stanford’s newest overseas campus in Oxford, England—a great place to delve further into history and literature. I was enthralled by London—going to plays, concerts, and museums.

  On one occasion, I attended a reading by the novelist, poet, and “womanist” Alice Walker. I had revered Walker for publishing her first book of poetry at twenty-four years old and winning the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple. So I waited in a lengthy, slow-moving line to ask her to sign my book. When I reached the front, I eagerly told her, “I really admire and respect you. I have dreamt for many years that I might equal your literary success at such a young age. It’s a huge honor to meet you.” Her terse, dismissive reply left me shocked and disappointed. I have never forgotten that deflated feeling and, in years since, even when under pressure or tired, I’ve tried to be kind to young women who come to me, as I did to Walker, to convey their admiration.

  Overall, I had a blast during my junior year at Oxford: cooking elaborate dinners with friends in the intimate but well-equipped Stanford House on the High Street in Oxford; imbibing the English pub life; and traveling throughout Europe. Still, the distance of an ocean plus a continent between me and Ian was difficult in the era before email and cell phones. This was the period when Ian and I got into the habit of writing lengthy letters, which we cherish as a rare record of the evolution of our romance.

  Not long after my return to Stanford for my senior year, I was delighted to host my brother for his first visit to campus as a college student. Following a challenging phase of his childhood in which he was hobbled by our parents’ divorce and suffered as a skinny athlete at an all-boys school, Johnny had come fully into his own while at St. Albans. A handsome, popular boy, he became a top student, an outstanding athlete who played football, basketball, and baseball (plus tennis in the summers), and a confident, happy young man.

  Though I had tried my best to woo him to Stanford, Johnny chose Yale, where he became the starting point guard on the varsity basketball team and distinguished himself as a successful student, Latin American Studies major, and mentor to young black fathers in New Haven. To my chagrin (as a committed nonjoiner), Johnny also became a proud member of Kappa Alpha Psi, a prominent black fraternity, as well as a Yale secret society. There, Johnny also met the wonderful woman he would eventually marry, Andrea Williams. As we grew into young adulthood, Johnny and I developed complementary strengths and weaknesses, such that we were able to elicit the best out of each other, while providing unvarnished criticism as needed.

  In one important respect, Stanford gave me the opportunity to catch up to Johnny, who, as a child, had developed greater comfort and clarity about race. For me, college marked an important, if belated, step in the evolution of my own racial identity. Socially, I made a number of good black friends and enjoyed parties at Ujamaa (the black theme house), while also becoming involved in the campus anti-apartheid movement, which attracted many black students, among others.

  One of my most powerful experiences was an unusual
class called “Group Communication.” It involved no reading, only intense and very personal discussion among roughly thirty students about their experiences with race and ethnicity. I heard the stories of Alaskan natives, students who grew up in the East Los Angeles barrio, boat kids from Vietnam, biracial kids who didn’t know whether they identified as black or white. Learning of their experiences exposed me to more complexity about identity than I had ever before understood. Standing before my classmates, who were open but not uncritical, I sucked up my courage to admit, “I’m uncomfortable with the fact that, intellectually, I fully understand and appreciate what it means to be black—our history, our burden, our responsibility. But socially and culturally, because I’ve spent most of my life in white environs, I feel behind the curve. Uncertain and uneasy.”

  There was still some distance to go to close that gap, and Stanford sped the process for me. In the past, I had occasionally been ripped by black kids for being an “Oreo”—black on the outside but white on the inside. I hated that insult mostly because it was racist and self-hating, but also because it failed to describe me accurately. In reality, I was more black inside than I knew how to be outside.

  In parallel, my intellectual focus began to shift increasingly toward international issues: the legacy of colonialism, the obscenity of apartheid, the potential of Africa, the impact of superpower competition and the proxy battles of the Cold War, and the still real threat of nuclear annihilation. Looking to the future, I continued to aim for public service, having received a Truman Scholarship awarded to approximately one hundred top college sophomores committed to careers in government. To serve effectively as a U.S. senator, it was not enough to be knowledgeable about domestic and economic issues, I needed to be fluent in international affairs and adept at assessing global threats and opportunities.