by Susan Rice
West Africa marked a fitting conclusion to my Oxford years, a period of accelerated growth and maturation. I left feeling my independence was fully established, confidence strengthened, relationship with Ian solidified, and my circle of friends diversified and deepened, even as my ambitions remained unchecked. Oxford was a tremendous launching pad for whatever might come next.
Though still hoping that one day I might make public policy, with President George H. W. Bush in power, there seemed no proximate route for me into the executive branch (nor would I have wished to serve in his Republican administration). After Oxford, I decided to take yet another detour that would broaden my experience and develop different skills.
McKinsey & Company, a leading management consulting firm, had recruited me. Back then, McKinsey hired most of its associates out of the top business schools but reserved a few slots for Rhodes Scholars and others from nontraditional backgrounds they deemed strategic thinkers they could train in the necessary analytical tools.
Despite my atrophied quantitative skills, in early 1991 I joined McKinsey in Toronto, a comparatively small, collegial office that had a track record of molding non-MBAs, including roughly ten of my contemporaries from Oxford, into highly successful consultants. Better yet, Ian was in Toronto, having completed his one-year master’s at the London School of Economics and landed a plum job as a producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s flagship nightly television news magazine, The Journal. My two years at McKinsey were both challenging and interesting, even if it wasn’t high policymaking. Still, helping Canadian companies adjust to a changing global economy was important work. It was also great training for policy development, when down the road I would again need to digest vast quantities of information, formulate options for decision makers, execute implementation strategies, and make concise, compelling presentations to senior officials, not least the president of the United States.
More than eight years into my relationship with Ian, over half of which we had spent apart, the timing could not have been better for us finally to decide whether we would stay together. Through a process that combined personal maturation with something akin to comparative analysis, I had gotten many doubts out of my system. Yet, even with the right man, I feared my ability to sustain a relationship forever.
One fall Sunday in 1991, Ian and I were lazing in bed late into the morning. We started to argue about something insignificant. Our fights were not infrequent, but rarely consequential or lasting. This morning was no different.
To defuse the moment and declare an end to our dispute, Ian reached into a bedside drawer and pulled out a small box. Opening it, he revealed a diamond ring and then blindsided me by asking, “Will you marry me?” Melting into tears, after a few moments, I managed a muffled but determined “yes.”
My parents were thrilled that Ian and I had decided to marry. To my occasional annoyance, my mother always viewed Ian as near perfect. If something were wrong between us, in her view, it was undoubtedly my fault (which was often true but not always so). Dad had finally acknowledged that Ian was good enough even for his little girl.
Ian’s parents were equally supportive. I was no longer so young—his mom’s original complaint—and had amply demonstrated my abilities and potential. Seeing that Ian and I were well-suited, race was not an issue for them, not least because Ian’s older brother had already married a black woman. Clearly, however, they would have wished that I were Canadian rather than American. Foreseeing the likelihood that Ian and I would make our lives in the U.S., they preferred that their son stay in Canada. Beyond wanting her son to remain in closer proximity, Ian’s mother sensed that my career might take precedence over Ian’s in the U.S., limiting his assent and all but ensuring we might never return to Canada. His parents also had more mundane concerns. Ian’s father, Newton Cameron, had made his fortune in the British Columbia plywood industry and sold his company at the right time to Canadian Pacific, a leading national conglomerate. The Camerons regretted that Ian’s share of the family’s wealth would be diminished under U.S. tax laws.
Ian and I planned to marry on Memorial Day weekend 1992, in Washington, D.C., at the Little Sanctuary, an intimate, charming stand-alone chapel on the grounds of St. Albans School. Our luncheon reception would be held at my godmother Peggy Cooper Cafritz’s lovely house, replete with a rare collection of the best African American art, and large enough to support an indoor wedding, if weather necessitated, but perfect for an outdoor party on her expansive porch and lawn.
Shortly before the invitations were to be printed in February, I freaked out. My terror about commitment resurfaced with a vengeance. To get some perspective, I moved out of Ian’s town house and into a monthly rental apartment downtown near Lake Ontario. Then I started seeing a therapist to help me confront my fears with their obvious origins in my family’s collapse.
Ian let me go, without resistance or anger. Disappointed but stoical, even clinical in his assessment, he said, “You need to work through these issues. And, if you cannot, it’s best that you figure that out before we get married.” We postponed the wedding indefinitely, and I lived a life of monastic introspection. Soon after I left, Ian was sent by the CBC to South Africa to cover the referendum on ending apartheid. Throughout Ian’s four weeks there, we did not communicate—partly so I could see what life without him might be like. I found it tolerable, but empty.
On the morning that Ian was to fly home from Johannesburg to Toronto, I awakened as usual to CBC Radio news. The lead story jolted me: Barbara Frum was dead of cancer. The nationally beloved anchor of CBC TV’s national news magazine and Ian’s boss and friend, Barbara had been a huge champion of our engagement.
I rose crying and sobered. Barbara’s death delivered to me what one of my favorite writers, Virginia Woolf, called “a moment of being.” In that instant, on that morning, I suddenly knew with clarity what needed to happen.
But first, I had to contact Ian in South Africa about Barbara. I reached the authorities at the Johannesburg airport and had Ian paged to call me on one of those white courtesy telephones. When he phoned, I said, my voice breaking, “Honey, I wanted to catch you before you got on the plane. I’ve got very sad news: Barbara Frum has died. I didn’t want you to hear this and be shocked when you arrived. Also, I want you to know that I have been thinking a lot. I love you more than the universe, and I really do want to marry you. Will you take me back?”
He wept, buffeted by mixed emotions about Barbara and me, and said, “Yes.” When he arrived in Toronto, I met him at the airport, and I have never contemplated being without him since.
We rescheduled our wedding for September 12, 1992—a clear, warm but not hot day with no humidity. It felt like God was cheering our journey together. Sadly, my stepfather had recently died after a long struggle with cancer. I was with Alfred and my mom in the hospital when he passed. Among his last words to me, both in seriousness and jest, were: “Susan, you had better be good to Ian and appreciate how special your relationship is, or I will come back and haunt you.”
Not everyone was so sanguine about our marriage, and a few were bold enough to convey it. I had known Whalen McClellan, an older African American man and my father’s neighbor on Myrtle Street, from the time I was four. One afternoon over the summer, he approached me as I got out of the car outside our house. Without any preface or apology, but genuine concern, Mr. McClellan said to me, “Are you really going to marry that white man? What are you going to do when he wakes up one day and calls you ‘nigger’?” I was too shocked to respond. It seemed such a ridiculous question, but it shook me as a crass reminder of the racism and skepticism that Ian and I must be prepared to face as spouses and parents, even in liberal Washington, D.C. It also required me to acknowledge that prejudice against interracial marriage was as much or more a black thing as a white one. Sometimes I joke with Ian that I am still waiting for that fateful morning when “he wakes up and calls me ‘nigger.’ ” To my surprise, rarely have Ian and
I faced raw racism directed at us as a couple—in D.C. or elsewhere.
Our wedding was perfect. One hundred twenty-five friends and family members. A relaxed, but traditional Episcopal ceremony with unorthodox touches. My father walked me down the aisle. My brother, Johnny, was my maid of honor, holding the bouquet with some trepidation and dutifully performing all the typical functions. My bridesmaids were my three close friends from high school: Andrea, Laura, and Trinka. Ian’s best man was a woman, a dear friend from high school, Barbara Arneil, while his two brothers and another high school friend served as groomsmen. We flew Canadian and American flags inside the church, gave praise for our love through “Resignation,” a favorite Nikki Giovanni poem, and danced to James Brown’s “I Feel Good” after we exited the church.
It was our ceremony, exactly as we wanted it.
Dad secured the wine and a New Orleans jazz band for the reception. Mom ensured the food, flowers, and decor were Lois-level impeccable. And Peggy kept my parents on their best behavior, making sure their lingering antagonisms in no way infused our special day.
Marrying Ian is the best decision I have ever made. I cannot imagine life without his unqualified love and rock-solid support, even when I least deserve it.
With Ian, I have never felt alone.
PART TWO Fundamentals
7 Rookie Season
Everything changed for the Rice-Cameron family one evening in November 2008, as I was reading my five-year-old daughter, Maris, a bedtime story.
Not many nights earlier, together with millions of Americans, we had watched history being written with the election of Barack Obama. Early on in our pre-transition process, I had been asked to fill out the voluminous paperwork required for a senior administration position. Apparently, I had been the first potential appointee to be fully vetted for nomination, even though no one had indicated what position I was being vetted for. Whatever it was, days passed after the election before I heard anything.
Then, just as Maris and I had finished getting snuggled up in her bed and I’d begun to read, the phone rang. I excused myself and got up to answer in the adjacent study.
Picking up, I was surprised to hear President-elect Obama on the line. He said, “Hi. It’s Barack. I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.”
“No, I was just reading Maris a bedtime story.”
“That’s important,” he said. “Call me back when you are done.”
When I called back, with Maris in the next room in not quite certain slumber, President-elect Obama said, “I would like you to serve as my U.N. ambassador.”
I thanked him profusely, before adding, “That’s a great job, but I was very much hoping that you might also consider me for your national security advisor.”
Obama demurred, explaining he planned to give that job to someone who would be widely perceived on Day One as an experienced, steady hand at a time when he would be consumed by saving the economy. He said he intended to appoint retired four-star-general Jim Jones as national security advisor but would be prepared to consider me for that position down the road. In the meantime, he thought the best place for me was in New York, at the U.N.
“Do you intend for your U.N. ambassador to be a member of the cabinet and participate fully in the NSC Principals Committee?” I asked. That had been the tradition in many prior administrations, but not during the George W. Bush–Dick Cheney years, and I believed it was important that the U.N. ambassador participate in the policymaking process at the highest levels. While Obama didn’t acknowledge as much, he sounded as if he were not aware of that history. But he promptly said yes, that was his conception of the job. And, later, he made his decision stick, even when some White House advisors tried to walk it back. The president-elect concluded our discussion by recommending that I talk to Madeleine Albright, who he knew was my longtime mentor, as well as a former U.N. ambassador before she became secretary of state in the Clinton Administration. After you talk to Madeleine, he said, “Call me back tomorrow.”
Before he hung up, Obama asked one final question: “What do you think of the idea of Hillary as secretary of state?” Given their hard-fought campaign, I was a bit taken aback, but replied, “If you are prepared to do that, I think it’s a very good idea.”
The next morning, I called Madeleine. As I had done many times before, I asked for her unvarnished advice. “Obama suggested I call you,” I opened, “though I would have anyway. He has offered me the U.N. job. He’s not ready to make me national security advisor. I suppose I could ask for deputy NSA. What do you think?”
Direct as always, Madeleine responded, “U.N. ambassador is a great job. You should take it without hesitation. You’ll learn a lot, have a great deal of autonomy, and it often leads to higher places.”
Enough said.
When I called Obama back to thank him again and say I would be honored to serve as his U.N. ambassador and a member of his cabinet, he seemed pleased. To myself, I noted with satisfaction that Obama appeared unfazed by my directness the night before in asking for the NSA job. We had a candid enough relationship for me to do so, and I had learned along the way that sometimes you need to be willing to advocate for yourself. Though I’d frequently seen my white male peers do the same without hesitation, often women tend to hang back. I was gratified but not surprised that Obama would expect no less from me.
I have not always so readily accepted the jobs that have been offered me—even very good ones. Long before Obama asked me to become U.N. ambassador in the fall of 2008, I began my journey in government following a very different phone call and a decision that would define my career.
In December 1992, I was contacted by the Clinton transition team and asked to interview for two prospective positions on the new White House staff. At that time, I’d been at McKinsey for almost two years and wasn’t in a rush to leave; I still had much to learn from consulting.
The month prior, Bill Clinton beat George H. W. Bush for the presidency and, although I had sat out this election season working at McKinsey in Toronto, several of my colleagues from the Dukakis team had worked on the Clinton campaign and were tasked with helping staff the new administration. Nancy Soderberg, a former Hill aide who had been my immediate boss on the Dukakis foreign policy team, was the first to find me and ask, “Susan, any interest in interviewing for the National Security Council staff?”
I didn’t hesitate in answering, “Absolutely.”
Shortly thereafter, Gene Sperling, my brilliant and sometimes disheveled economic policy colleague from the Dukakis campaign, called to inquire about my interest in joining the newly constituted National Economic Council (NEC), the economic policy analogue to the NSC. Surprised, I was delighted to be remembered by both Gene and Nancy and deemed worthy of their consideration.
On a weekend before Christmas, I flew down to D.C. from Toronto for two interviews. One was with Robert Rubin, who would chair the National Economic Council, and the second was with Tony Lake and Sandy Berger, who would run the National Security Council.
Rubin, a piercingly smart, wiry former cochairman of Goldman Sachs, met with me first, one-on-one. He tried to assess my interest in and suitability for some sort of role at the NEC. It was not clear to him (or me) where exactly I might fit, but he seemed interested in utilizing me somewhere in domestic economic policy.
My next interview marked my first encounter with Tony Lake, the national security advisor–designate, and his deputy, Sandy Berger. Lake was relaxed and loquacious, expounding on his interest in Africa and asking about my dissertation on Zimbabwe. Mindful of time and the need to conduct these interviews efficiently, Berger was all business and clearly impatient with Tony’s digressions. Sandy tried to steer us back to the subject at hand, explaining that they were considering me for the role of one of two special assistants (or right hands) to the national security advisor and deputy national security advisor. This was not a policy role but a staff support job, where organizational skills, writing capacity, discretion,
and judgment were key. I would have a bird’s-eye view of all the issues with which the national security team grappled—but no line responsibility.
Both the NEC and NSC offered me jobs. Finding both options attractive, I wrestled with the decision. I liked the idea of having policy responsibility but felt that, even after McKinsey, my readiness to take on an economic job was questionable. My academic foundation in international relations—combined with my foreign policy work on the Dukakis campaign—better prepared me for the NSC role. Then again, at only twenty-eight years old, with no prior executive branch experience, I would be starting from behind most of my colleagues in either capacity. However, since my role at the NSC would be to support the national security advisor and not directly make policy, I thought my preparation was probably sufficient.
Additionally, on a gut level, I found the high-stakes, sometimes life-and-death nature of national security policymaking more stimulating. As a pragmatist, I also calculated (perhaps inaccurately) that if, later on, I wanted to make the leap back to economic or domestic policy, there would be more opportunities to do so than if I tried to jump from the domestic to the international side, where the established experts would more likely doubt the applicability of my experience.
After deliberating, I accepted the job as special assistant to the national security advisor, turned down Bob Rubin, and gave notice to McKinsey. My bosses at McKinsey were supportive and understanding, as was Ian. I would be moving home to D.C. just months after our wedding, and he would remain in Toronto at the CBC until he could find an attractive journalism job in Washington. Long-distance, again!