Tough Love

by Susan Rice

  At our final meeting just days before the inauguration, Flynn expressed appreciation for my efforts to ensure an effective NSC transition. Indeed, ours turned out to be the only national security transition in the entire U.S. government, because Trump’s designated successors to the secretaries of state and defense refused or were prohibited from meeting with their predecessors. Trump’s team seemingly had no interest in learning anything from their Obama counterparts, even if it meant entering the most important jobs in government in near perfect ignorance about what awaited them.

  And then came that moment when, instead of shaking my outstretched hand, Flynn accepted my good wishes and offer to help him subsequently, if ever I could, and asked for a hug. After the hug was granted, we parted that afternoon. It was the last time I saw him and have never heard from him since. It turned out I was twenty-four days off on the over/under for how long he would make it in the job.

  Those last days of the Obama administration were both joyful and painful. Joyful because we had maintained a strong sense of team, a camaraderie among veterans who had each other’s backs, played our hearts out until the final buzzer, and ended an eight-year-long season with a winning record. Yet painful because of Clinton’s devastating electoral loss and the foreboding we all felt about the future. Could Trump prove as dangerous and ill-suited for the presidency as he seemed? Could it be far worse than any of us imagined?

  On January 20, 2017, as I witnessed the literal dismantling of the Obama presidency—his Oval Office desk, carpet, and drapes being removed and refitted for a successor who could not have had more different taste—in decor, policy, or patriotism—I doubted whether any among the incoming Trump team would even care to try to bend “the arc of the moral universe toward justice.”

  When I reflect back on the myriad crises and pressures I faced, particularly in my first two years as national security advisor, I marvel that I did not lose my composure or crumble in exhaustion. The job was brutal, however much I enjoyed it and felt privileged to have it.

  Still, family always came first. With the unequivocal backing of President Obama, and in order to model to my team that they should do the same, I never skipped a child’s doctor’s appointment, a back-to-school night, or a parent-teacher conference. To ensure I would not miss a potentially urgent call from my mother or one of her caregivers, I asked my assistant to listen out for my personal phone when I was in the Situation Room, the Oval Office, or my own office—all secure spaces where one cannot take a cell phone. If the call was important or time-sensitive, they would send a note to me so I could step out and respond.

  While I mostly managed to separate my personal life from the pressures of the job, at times work and family merged, if only to enable me to be with my kids when it mattered most to them. I tried hard to catch Maris’s weekend soccer games, if they were not too far away. Never untethered from email, the phone, or secure communications, I often found myself multitasking on the sidelines, talking to one of my colleagues while watching the games intently and apologizing when loud cheers (including my own) interrupted our discussions.

  Potentially a more fraught occasion, the December 2015 night when Jake was set to hear whether he would gain admission to his preferred college coincided with our NSC Christmas party for staff and families. As host, I had to attend, but Jake, Ian, and I stayed behind in my White House office until the decisions were released so Jake could be with us when he got the news. When he logged on and saw the word “Congratulations,” we whooped and danced and popped champagne before heading over together to join the real party.

  Over the years, I demonstrated an odd capacity to compartmentalize. Throughout my time in government, I managed to sleep well most nights. Able to bound my work-related responsibilities, I did not allow the stress they engendered to consume my family life or adversely affect my overall state of mind, and vice versa. Perhaps I first developed that skill early when I had to keep the difficulties in my family life and my parents’ divorce from stunting my academic and personal development.

  Yet I worried sometimes that this detachment, this strange separation of my work from the emotional side of my life, was unnatural, if not unhealthy. It enabled me, for instance, to endure the psychic pain of making difficult decisions without them eating away at my soul. Rather than dwell on my strange ability to separate my emotions from my intellect, and my passions from policymaking, however, I was just grateful to be able mostly to keep the pressures of the job in a workbox and to spare my family from after-hours agonizing.

  Throughout my tenure in the Obama administration, the biggest source of stress in my life was actually never my job, either as U.N. ambassador or national security advisor. It was worrying about my parents, especially my mom in her later years.

  While my dad was recovering from his stroke and surgeries in 2010, and before he passed away in 2011, my mom experienced a recurrence of her prior cancers of the epiglottis and surrounding lymph nodes. A mass was discovered in her lung. I attended her surgery and recovery at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, after which she was able to continue to live independently in Washington for another eighteen months, before a second lung cancer required yet another surgery in June 2012. Mom came through this subsequent surgery at Mass General but then suffered a postoperative stroke, which impaired her physical strength and diminished her executive functioning (including her capacity to keep a schedule), dulled just slightly her incredibly sharp mind, and changed her personality, rendering her somewhat less argumentative and more persuadable.

  Following her stroke and long recovery, Mom required 24/7 home care. I took on the task of hiring, firing, and scheduling round-the-clock caregivers. Sitting alone in my spacious West Wing office, I often had to make evening calls in between reviewing piles of paperwork to ensure that Mom always had continuous, quality support in her own home. Too often, I had to scramble, beg, and plead with various caregivers to fill gaps in her coverage especially over weekends and holidays, which I tracked carefully using a printed-out monthly calendar. Yet, to concentrate on my job, I desperately needed the peace of mind of knowing that Mom was in safe, kind hands.

  My mother hated being minded and longed for her independence. She balked at having someone around her constantly, but she loved her extraordinary caregivers, especially the incredibly diligent, devoted Kadiatou Touré and deeply experienced and hilarious Missy Moore. Without their care and friendship, Mom would not have lived her final years as fully and happily, and I could not have continued serving at the highest levels in government.

  After the stroke, for the next five and a half years Mom gradually continued to weaken, her voice fading almost to a whisper as scar tissue from radiation ruined her vocal cords and made swallowing difficult. She had two more recurrences of lung cancer.

  Despite her deteriorating condition, Mom remained emotionally strong, never giving up, never doubting her ability to endure, and ever devoted to her children and grandchildren. Almost every Sunday, we hosted Mom for dinner at our house with the kids, and with Johnny’s family whenever possible. It was a ritual I clung to desperately, as I worried our remaining time with Mom was diminishing. Those family dinners afforded us all cherished quality time with her.

  Ever the matriarch, Mom used the occasions to ensure her children and grandchildren were meeting her standards of excellence—critiquing the kids’ table manners, college options, political views, and sports performance. She also never spared me and Johnny her unvarnished views of how we were executing our professional, spousal, and parenting responsibilities.

  Mom’s toughness was legendary. No challenge was too difficult to surmount—not six cancers, not a worsening swallowing disorder, not a stroke nor pneumonia. One Friday night in November 2014, the day before my fiftieth birthday party, Mom fell in her dining room. She had been left alone for a few minutes between caregiver shifts. When the next caregiver arrived, she found Mom lying on the slate floor conscious but bleeding from the back of her head. It
wasn’t clear what her head had struck or how badly she was injured.

  Rushing to her from the White House, I arrived just as the ambulance was preparing to take her to Georgetown University Hospital. The MRI showed no head trauma, but a laceration on the back of her scalp needed stitches. Mom spent the night in the hospital for observation but was determined to escape the next morning in order to get ready for the party. On Saturday night, Lois showed up at Union Station, where Ian hosted the best party since our wedding, looking fly. Mom’s hair was perfectly done and her outfit impeccably chic.

  Ian had arranged the best birthday present ever: Aretha Franklin performed at my fiftieth birthday party! After hosting my U.N. Security Council colleagues in 2009, Aretha had kept in touch with us. She seemed to take a special liking to Ian, and they exchanged friendly text messages over the years. In fine form, she rocked the house full of friends from every stage of my first half century. The only momentary glitch was when Aretha lost an emerald earring and the whole party stopped to scour the floors to find it. After a few minutes, Aretha discovered the gem in the pocket of her own gown. Crisis ended. Mom joined family and friends on the dance floor in a series of righteous boogies. That night, I was bursting with gratitude—for Ian, my beloved friends and family, Aretha, and above all the woman who brought me into this world fifty years before.

  The support Mom provided never ebbed. I counted on her every day. Even as her health deteriorated and she shrank physically, Mom’s centrality in my life never diminished. I depended on her encouragement, wisdom, and support. When I called her from the office or in the car on the way home, no words meant more, even when she could only whisper them, than when she told me, “I adore you.” Her potent love helped sustain me through all of the toughest times and buoy me in my greatest triumphs. In many ways, we valued our relationship more for having struggled to find mutual peace over so many years.

  When we spoke each night, she often ended by reiterating how proud she was of me and Johnny. After major news events, like an Obama State of the Union speech or a legislative defeat, she dialed me within seconds to celebrate or commiserate. To this day, if the home phone rings after a consequential television moment, like the end of the riveting Blasey Ford/Kavanaugh hearing, I expect it to be Mom calling.

  By 2016, I sensed that Mom’s time was limited. She was tolerating immune-therapy treatment for her last cancer, and it seemed to have slowed the cancer’s growth. But Mom’s weakness was increasing, and her weight stayed stubbornly under one hundred pounds. I brought Mom, her caregiver Kadi, and a dear friend of Mom’s from her college days to the White House for one of the last Christmas parties of the Obama era. She was able to see President Obama again and hold court at the party. Mom was equally a hit at the family holiday party my husband and I throw where, as usual, she stayed to the end, charming friends and neighbors.

  At Christmas dinner at Johnny’s, Mom was suffering from a bad cold and struggling with excessive quantities of mucus. But it seemed like she would overcome it. After Ian, the kids, and I left on December 26 for Anguilla, we didn’t expect to get that call from Johnny on New Year’s Eve, saying, “You need to come home. As soon as possible.”

  Mom was in the hospital with her second bout of pneumonia, and it was serious. When I arrived, Mom was in the ICU on breathing support. She was conscious and able to communicate with difficulty, and we hoped she might pull through yet again. The next night, Johnny’s family and mine, our closest cousins, and Mom’s caregivers gathered at her bedside to offer her encouragement and affirm our love. She couldn’t speak. Her breathing, even with support, was very labored. But when Mom’s doctor, who had been a classmate of mine at Stanford, showed up to check on her, looking fine in a smart leather jacket, she perked up, managed to talk, and put her best face on. It was classic Lois.

  Mom passed quietly the next morning, January 4, 2017, with Johnny and me crying while holding her hands. It all ended sooner than I had anticipated. I figured we likely had only months left with her, a year max. For a long time, I’d been working to prepare myself for this loss, and when it came I was grateful that she didn’t suffer long. Johnny, who takes the opposite approach to death—fighting its inevitability until it can no longer be denied—was devastated. Losing our last parent was unmooring and profoundly painful. Since she passed, I have felt a huge sense of loss, tempered by tremendous gratitude for all she has given me and my family and so many others whom she powerfully touched.

  I miss my mom and dad mightily.

  Knowing Mom, I believe she timed her passing strategically—to leave this world while her beloved Barack Obama was still president and when predictions even about the near future could only be speculative.

  23 Bridging the Divide

  Sitting alone at our kitchen table, now my makeshift office, on the second day after the end of the Obama administration, I am trying to adjust… to the feeling of having no huge stack of paper awaiting my review, no government-issued cell phone alerting me to the next crisis. Exhausted, proud, and done, following eight years of long hours and intense pressure, I am relieved to be through with government—at least for now. It has been a tremendous experience and an unmatched privilege to serve. At this point, however, I want nothing more than to sleep, vacation, and spend time with my family and friends.

  Unburdened and untethered, liberated and lonely, I am befuddled by the recognition that there is nothing I have to do right then and there. Email offers a familiar distraction, even if it will not contain any issues of urgency or national security import, much less a matter of life and death. Opening my mailbox, I find a series of kind messages from former colleagues and friends thanking me for my service and wishing me well in the “afterlife” and more notes of condolence for my mother’s passing three weeks earlier.

  In my crowded inbox, one email immediately jumps out, because it is entitled “Love You.” It’s from Jake, then a freshman at Stanford University, and his message is characteristically direct:

  Hey Mommy,

  I have been thinking about you this week, and about how proud I am of you. You are truly a massive source of inspiration for me in life, and I look up to you in everything that I do. I will always be proud to identify myself as your son. You have done amazing work for our country, and I will forever be grateful for that.

  … Look forward to talking to you tomorrow. I am going birding but will try to call you in the afternoon.

  Love,

  Jake

  Jake’s email leaves me briefly buffeted by emotion. No one has sacrificed more than my family, especially my two children and my husband, to enable me to serve another eight years in government. It is gratifying to be reminded that Jake neither resents the tradeoffs my service entailed nor the lost time.

  His pride moves me enormously, especially since Jake has long since declared his political independence from our family and adopted a classic conservative philosophy. At Stanford, he would grow more active and vocal, eventually becoming the high-profile president of Stanford College Republicans and, as my son, a darling of right-wing media. Given our strong differences—including over key issues that define the Obama administration’s foreign policy legacy—I am touched all the more that my son emphasized his admiration for me and my service, appreciating that I had done my best for our country.

  Jake’s message is a timely reminder of how much we share and how bound we remain. Jake and I agree that we cannot allow our differences to overshadow what we have in common—an abiding bond of family and country—even in the most testing times.

  Initially, my return to private life was refreshing—a time to focus on my health, relax and catch up on sleep, and start to think about what I wanted to come next. Struggling against sensory overload, I tried my best not to despair over early indications of how disruptive and dishonest Trump’s presidency would prove to be.

  Then, barely ten weeks after Trump took office, a new assault began, which I could not tune out.

  Step one o
f their play was run the night of Sunday, April 2, 2017. Ian alerted me by texting a link to Mike Cernovich, the alt-right conspiracy theorist who had accused Hillary Clinton of running a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor in Northwest Washington. Cernovich had tweeted: “I just published ‘Susan Rice Requested Unmasking of Incoming Trump Administration Officials.’ ”

  Within minutes, I was trending on Twitter. Shortly thereafter, I again became a constant story on Fox. The right-wing media machine, and many Republican members of Congress, including of course Senator Lindsey Graham, accused me of “improperly” or “illegally” “unmasking” Trump campaign and transition officials “for political purposes.” The Wall Street Journal editorialized: “All this is highly unusual—and troubling. Unmasking does occur, but it is typically done by intelligence or law-enforcement officials engaged in anti-terror or espionage investigations. Ms. Rice would have had no obvious need to unmask Trump campaign officials other than political curiosity.”

  I’d seen it coming but hadn’t anticipated the full force of the hit. After leaving government at the end of the Obama administration and free from the public spotlight, I was briefly under the illusion that I would no longer be a favorite target of the right wing, a recyclable bogeyman. Certainly, I never expected to be personally and publicly targeted by this (or any) president of the United States.

  Thankfully, I had already heard rumors that the White House and then-chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Representative Devin Nunes, were gunning for me. Friends confided that, to reduce the pressure President Trump was feeling from the investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the White House wanted to change the subject. Trump’s March 4, 2017, tweet storm of lies accusing President Obama of having put a “tapp” on Trump Tower had been thoroughly discredited. The Trump team needed somehow to justify those false tweets and divert attention from Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation, just after it became clear he made false statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee about his campaign contacts with Russians.