During my meetings on Capitol Hill, I came to appreciate most those senators who brought thoroughness and expertise to foreign policy issues. I’d expected this of such people as Richard Lugar, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and Joe Biden. But I learned quickly that James Webb of Virginia knew Southeast Asia in great depth, and I was impressed with Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold, who possessed knowledge of and concern for Africa. George Voinovich of Ohio was deeply involved in Eastern Europe, and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski was the reason that I became conversant on Arctic affairs.
As I approached my hearings, I knew that there were some senators who, given the war in Iraq, would never support my confirmation. The fact that we had acknowledged on January 12, 2005, that we had called off the search for weapons of mass destruction served to heighten criticism of the administration in advance of my hearings. But I was in a good position overall, and there was little doubt that, barring a big mistake on my part, I’d be confirmed.
My hearings were set for January 18. I’d enjoyed the six weeks of the transition. Every day I’d go to the department for briefings that covered practically every office within it. I studied every evening so that I’d know the issues in detail. I’m an academic, and I don’t like to “float” at thirty-thousand feet. I’m most comfortable when I can engage an issue in far greater depth than the “talking points” prepared by the staff.
On the day of the hearings, I awoke and went through my usual routine. Running on the elliptical trainer, I didn’t review the issues. Few people doubted that I knew the substance of the job, but there was a pervasive concern that I’d just be the White House proconsul at the Department of State. The question on the table was what kind of secretary of state would I be. As the Christian Science Monitor put it, “When Condoleezza Rice goes to the Senate next week … she will appear before a row of senators as something of an enigma … a national security advisor who oversaw a steady shift of authority over foreign policy toward the Pentagon and the vice-president’s office, and is now taking over the agency she helped eclipse.” The assessment was lacking in nuance, but frankly, it was emblematic of what people were thinking.
I thought the critique unfair. We’d been at war, and the Pentagon carries a disproportionate share of the responsibility in combat. Nonetheless, I had to deal with the perception. There was even a suggestion in the press that I really wanted to be secretary of defense. The President and I had talked about my suitability for the job in passing, sometime around the Abu Ghraib incident, when Don had offered his resignation, and briefly again before the election. The idea of being the first woman to run the Pentagon did appeal to me at some level.
But I’d known for a long time that the President wanted me at State. As the impact of the wars on our alliances and our standing in the world was being felt, State was where I thought I could do the most good. I decided to use a phrase in the hearings that would make clear where I stood and to repeat it as often as possible. “The time for diplomacy is now” was meant to convey that I intended to rebalance U.S. foreign policy toward diplomacy—and its execution toward the Department of State. I also acknowledged the charge of unilateralism. “Our interaction with the rest of the world must be a conversation, not a monologue,” I said. “Alliances and multilateral institutions can multiply the strength of freedom-loving nations. If I’m confirmed, that core conviction will guide my actions.” The message was meant for our friends in the world and my colleagues in the administration.
The hearings began with Dianne Feinstein, the democratic senator from California, presenting me to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This is a nice tradition by which the nominee is introduced by a senator from his or her home state. I’d known Dianne and her husband, Richard Blum, for many years. Her strength was on full display that terrible day when Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were murdered in San Francisco. She was then a young, untested local politician who demonstrated remarkable fortitude and pulled the wounded city through its grief. Though she was of the other party, I respected Dianne for her tenacity, knowledge of foreign affairs, and good humor, and I was honored to have her present me to the Senate.
My relationship with the other senator from California, Barbara Boxer, was, to put it mildly, less cordial. That became very clear during the hearings when she suggested that I had been dishonest in presenting the intelligence in advance of the Iraq war. She should have been more careful with her talking points before the hearings, because I’d been tipped off by the press that she was going to accuse me of allowing the Iraq mission to overwhelm my respect for the truth. I fired back that I’d never lost respect for the truth in the service of anything. It wasn’t the last time that we’d have angry exchanges when I testified before the committee. Barbara Boxer and I had a history. She knew that I’d worked for every California Republican who’d tried to defeat her. And perhaps she bristled at speculation that I’d one day take her on for that seat. She needn’t have worried, but it was never just a policy difference for Senator Boxer; she always managed to descend into a personal assault.
About halfway through the first day, the wiry junior senator from Illinois took the floor. His questions were sharp but not rude, and he actually seemed interested in my answers. We volleyed back and forth a few times, and I was really impressed. That was my first encounter with then Senator Barack Obama. He’d vote for my confirmation despite objections from some in his camp, and we would become friendly. We didn’t always agree, but I always knew that our exchanges would be without personal animosity or rancor.
A low point of the hearing came late on the first day. Almost everyone had gone home—the press, the senators, most of the staff. The hearing room was noticeably darker without the klieg lights of the networks that had illuminated it earlier in the day. Only the chair, the obviously tired Senator Lugar, Senator George Voinovich of Ohio, and Senator Kerry remained. When asked whether he had further questions, Voinovich demurred, saying that he was there only to keep the chairman company. He left shortly after yielding his time to Senator Kerry.
Perhaps smarting from his defeat in the election two months before, the senator from Massachusetts launched on a long rhetorical journey through most of the points he’d made in the campaign. After having testified for nearly nine hours, I was exhausted and ready to go home, but I kept telling myself that this was really about him, not about me. It helped that I held then and hold now a great deal of respect for John Kerry’s knowledge of the issues. So I tried to answer the questions without exhibiting any annoyance. Finally, well after 7:30 P.M., the hearings adjourned. Senator Lugar said that a few other senators wished to ask questions and asked if I could return the next day. I did, and the hearings wrapped up without incident. The committee went into a “business session” and voted 16 to 2 to recommend my confirmation to the full Senate. I was well on my way to becoming secretary of state.
The White House had hoped to have a vote in the full Senate immediately after the President took the oath of office on January 20. But some legislators, led by Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, insisted on a floor debate. I was annoyed because the debate would have no real effect; the whole purpose was to provide time for further indictment of the Bush foreign policy.
Thus I attended the inauguration not as the secretary of state but as the secretary of state–designate. At lunch in the Capitol Rotunda, Majority Leader Senator Bill Frist picked up my name card, scratched out “national security advisor,” and wrote in “secretary of state,” joking that it was clearly his fault that I wasn’t yet confirmed. Colin would continue as secretary for a few more days.
My good friend Gene Washington accompanied me to the inaugural balls that night. The fact is that those events are more like stand-up cocktail parties than dances. The President and First Lady make an appearance at each and then depart for the next.
Back in 2001, I’d been very excited about the inauguration and the evening’s festivities. I’d bought a new dress and invited scores of friends
and family to attend. This time I wanted to skip the whole evening. I dutifully went to three events (wearing the Oscar de la Renta from my birthday party) where I never got past the crunch of well-wishers at the front door. I asked Gene if he minded skipping the rest of the parties. He and I went back to my apartment and, dressed in our inaugural finery, ate leftover ham sandwiches. I went to bed early and slept like a very tired baby.
Six days later, on January 26, the Senate voted 85 to 13 to confirm me. At about seven o’clock, Andy Card administered the oath of office at the White House, and I became the sixty-sixth secretary of state. A few minutes later, I walked out of the West Wing basement door and into a vehicle protected by Diplomatic Security. My time as national security advisor was over.
Two days later there would be a formal swearing-in ceremony in the Benjamin Franklin room of the Department of State. The elaborate rooms on the eighth floor of the State Department look as if they belong in European palaces, not in the 1950s building at Foggy Bottom. But they are the United States’ attempt to capture the seriousness and the grandeur of diplomacy. Those rooms, named for the founding fathers, house remarkable artifacts of our nation’s history, including Thomas Jefferson’s desk. The Franklin room is my favorite, decorated in warm rose and beige colors and dominated by an enormous portrait of our most beloved founding father hanging above the fireplace. Franklin was the United States’ first diplomat, having been dispatched to Paris in December 1776.
With the President and my Aunts Gee and Mattie and Uncle Alto looking on, my friend and Watergate neighbor Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read the oath of office. As I repeated it, I took in every word: “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” Then I thanked all those who’d helped me, especially the generations of Rays and Rices who’d always thought such a day possible. I glanced up at the portrait of Franklin. What would he have thought of this great-granddaughter of slaves and child of Jim Crow Birmingham pledging to defend the Constitution of the United States, which had infamously counted her ancestors “three-fifths” of a man? Somehow, I wanted to believe, Franklin would have liked history’s turn toward justice and taken my appointment in stride.
That night my closest friends; Chip Blacker, who had come from Stanford; Mary Bush; the Hadleys; my family; and I had dinner at the restaurant in the Watergate Hotel. I didn’t want to do anything elaborate because I was ready to stop celebrating my appointment and get on with doing the job. But it was quite a moment to be with this collection of extraordinary ordinary people who had been so important throughout my life. We talked a lot about my parents, John and Angelena, who I was sure were there in spirit, looking over the whole incredible scene and happy about it, if not surprised. Before going to sleep I prayed that I’d never take for granted the charge that I’d been given or the sacrifices of those who’d made it possible.
Assembling the Team
THE NEXT DAY I stood on the steps of the lobby of the State Department, employees surrounding me on all sides. It wasn’t the most elegant of settings in which to introduce myself—and, of course, the microphone gave off one of those annoying feedback sounds as it was passed to me—but my purpose in calling everyone together was to let them know that I expected a lot from them and that in return they could expect an energetic voice in foreign affairs.
I deliberately drew an analogy to the period immediately after World War II, when heavyweights in the department from George Marshall to Dean Acheson to Paul Nitze had shaped the future and laid a foundation for victory in the Cold War forty years later. I wanted to evoke a narrative of a revered time in the department’s history—a time of great consequence and success in U.S. foreign policy.
My biggest challenge in taking the reins at State was to ensure the active loyalty of the Foreign Service. I use the modifier “active” because I don’t mean to suggest that people were disloyal. But they did sometimes appear less than enthusiastic about the President’s policies, and, at worst, some (but not all) kept a kind of psychic distance from the more controversial decisions that had been made. In blunt terms, Iraq had to be the Department of State’s war too—not Bush’s war, not the Pentagon’s, but America’s war. And the President’s vision for a democratic Middle East had to be more than a slogan that diplomats repeated without believing it to be possible.
Shortly after my appointment I had assembled a small team of trusted aides to help plan the transition and accompany me to State. They were, for the most part, people whom I’d come to rely on at the White House. I asked John Bellinger to become my legal advisor. The development of the legal framework in the war on terror—issues such as the role of the Geneva Conventions, interrogations, and Guantánamo—had left a bitter taste with some of our allies and with many in the legal community at home. John would be indefatigable in addressing those concerns in a serious manner. He would be neither a constant skeptic nor an unthinking proponent of the international community’s supposed code of conduct. That would be good for us abroad and critical in the domestic debates at home.
Jim Wilkinson would join me as senior advisor. A whirling dervish with an idea a minute, Jim was unlike anyone else I’d ever known. He was a Texan who had come from humble circumstances but was extremely well read and had a wonderful “eye” for public relations and image. Jim would help me send the right messages to the American people and to the world about what we were trying to do and how we would do it. Later, Colby Cooper would also join me from the White House to help Jim in developing and executing the public side of my diplomacy.
Brian Gunderson would become my chief of staff, but ironically, we first met when I interviewed him for the position. I say “ironically” because the chief of staff is usually the closest person to a principal, and Brian would become an extremely close confidant. He’d worked for Bob Zoellick in that position, and it was Bob who had recommended him. Brian was a taciturn Minnesotan who, like Jim, had worked for Congressman Richard Armey and possessed impeccable conservative credentials. He was thorough, calm, and had terrific political instincts. I wanted a chief of staff who would never think of himself as a “gatekeeper” but rather as facilitating contact to me. That is a hard balance to maintain, because not everyone should be able to get to the secretary. Yet some of my predecessors had become known for their “palace guard.” The organization needed to be as flat as possible. Ruth Elliott had worked for me in the Provost’s office when she was a freshman at Stanford and had come to the White House with me in 2001. She became Brian’s deputy, bringing a touch to the job that only someone who has known you for so long can.
Sean McCormack would join me at State as assistant secretary for public affairs and spokesman, the positions he’d held at the NSC. Sean was a Foreign Service officer whose expertise was in economics, not media relations. He’d served in several complex posts abroad, including Algeria and Turkey. Moreover, he had a strong interest in the emerging phenomenon of social media and wanted to modernize the department’s media and public relations operations. But mostly I trusted Sean to be on the front lines with the press every day. He’d been with me through the 9/11 Commission, “the sixteen words,” and countless other press crises, and I’d never once seen him with his hair on fire.
I rounded out my inner circle with two appointments meant to ensure that I’d be challenged intellectually—in the academic sense of the word. Phil Zelikow would become my counselor. The role of counselor varies greatly in accordance with the secretary’s wishes. Colin didn’t even have one. But the role has often been one of in-house critic, a kind of licensed kibitzer to push the thinking of the department beyond established bureaucratic boundaries. My long association with Philip, dating back to th
e first Bush administration, and our coauthorship of a book on German unification had taught me how to take advantage of Philip’s talents. He wouldn’t be shy in debating me, and he’d be a provocative and creative colleague. Phil’s elbows are a bit sharp and he doesn’t lack self-confidence, but he is very smart and he would challenge our assumptions going forward.
Steve Krasner, my longtime colleague and an eminent political scientist from Stanford, would become the director of policy planning. Like counselor, this position had waxed and waned in importance depending on the secretary’s vision for it. Paul Nitze had written NSC-68 while holding the position and was generally viewed as its most influential occupant. At its best, the small policy-planning staff would push the envelope and prevent “group think” within the department. Many thought of it as a long-range planning apparatus looking years out into the future. I wanted someone who’d bring rigor and new ideas to the current problems we were facing. In the midst of two wars and the fight against terrorism, I didn’t have time for speculation about 2020.
When he came to the State Department, Steve brought together a terrific staff of “young guns” to push new ideas. One of his most inspired appointments came in 2006, when he hired the twenty-something Jared Cohen, who’d been a student at Stanford and had taken a four-month sojourn on his own in Iran. He would use his position at Policy Planning to begin to integrate social media into our diplomatic tool kit. That would pay off handsomely some years later, when Twitter and Facebook became accelerants of democratic change in the Middle East.
When it came to the most senior line positions, I wanted to select people whose appointment would send a message of competence, independence, and bureaucratic weight. In that regard, the deputy secretary of state had to be someone with unquestioned foreign policy credentials and recognized intelligence. At times, the person has also functioned as a kind of chief operating officer for the department, running the day-to-day management of the huge organization. With 57,000 employees worldwide located in some 180 countries over twelve time zones, that is no small task. But beyond that critical function, the department needed someone who could carry weight in the foreign policy debates in Washington and abroad and who could powerfully represent the United States diplomatically. I was more than happy to pick up some of the day-to-day tasks of managing the department since, frankly, I liked “making the trains run on time.”
No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington Page 36