are the people closest to her heart. i also want to ask her why she's remained the most eligible unmarried woman in washington? >> i think that we'll have an interesting time together and maybe illuminate some important questions that people have about me. condoleezza rice, is it more fun being in power or is it more fun after power? >> it's certainly different being out of power. you can read the newspaper and say, oh, isn't that interesting, and you can go only the next page, which i like. which i rather enjoy. i've always loved my life whenever i'm in it. i had the great honor to serve as the national security adviser for the united states. it was a wonderful opportunity. but i love being a professor and i've about been at stanford university, next year -- or this year it will be 30 years. stanford is home and i feel very comfortable. >> a lovely picture of you outside the white house. when you look at that picture, a sweet little condoleezza. very sweet. >> it means sweetness. >> when you stood there, what were you thinking? did you ever imagine in your wildest dreams you'd be in there? >> no, i was going to be o concert pianist. i probably thought i'd be playing the piano in there some day. my father told a story, which i can never really remember. he said i said one day i will be working there. today i'm standing out here. i don't know if that was true but i remember going to washington for the first time on one of those family trips where you go to see the capitol and the white house and i was very excited by the energy of the city. >> your memoir is an extraordinarily personal one. it focuses early on of your early life, your parents. they sound like extraordinary characters. tell me about those early days. >> i wanted to write the book because i'm asked so many times how did i become who i am? i said it starts with john and angelina rice. you had to know them, my parents. they were ordinary people. my mom was a school teacher. in fact, one of her first students was a ballplayer, willie mays. my dad was a high school guidance counsellor, later on a university administrator and later a presbyterian minister. he was very interested in politics and sports. he was also a football coach. >> you're into football. >> i am mad about -- yes, american football. >> not the right one. >> i don't understand soccer that well. by my parents were that way very ordinary. i don't think they made more than $60,000 between them. >> what values did they instill in you? >> they were determined i would have all the benefits of education. we visited universities like most people visit national parks. we once drove 150 miles out of the way to see ohio state. >> sounds fun. >> so they were very devoted to education. but not just for me, but also for the kids that they taught and the kids in the community. >> most extraordinary thing about your upbringing was this interest you developed in the piano which was encouraged by your family. but you've become a concert pianist. we've got footage which must have been one of the great moments of your life. >> oh, my. all right. >> this is when you were actually playing with aretha franklin. >> while this is being shown, i had already played with the symphony. i played a mozart concerto. >> but this is aretha franklin. >> aretha knew what she was doing. all i had to do was sit in the background and vamp. it wasn't that difficult. when you play the piano, you need to concentrate. your hands will do things you don't expect if you're not concentrating. >> do you ever think, in the rough and tumble of the white house, when the iraq war was blowing out, did you ever think to yourself, i wish i had carriried on playing the piano? >> no, no, no. because i knew had i carried on playing the piano i would have been playing in a piano bar or playing at nordstrom's, not that those aren't great professions but i wasn't good enough. i played the piano throughout my time in washington. >> you've had an awful day, everyone's screaming in your area, because that goes with the job. then you go home, sit at the piano and play a bit of brahms >> play a bit of brahms and remember why you chose to do something else in your life. >> what is it that convinced you to do this god-forsaken challenge? >> because there's no greater challenge or honor to be in public service. i know some people think it's a hack-kneed phrase that you want to serve, but i find the great majority of public servant as cross the entire political spectrum come because they believe in united states and they want to change the world. those are not bad motives. sometimes we tend to impugn the motives of public servants but i can assure you they're not there for the glory. are there some that are in it for themselves? >> well, perhaps there are -- >> no one is a saintly figure. >> you're not far off, are you? >> well, i am far off. >> you're the least sleazy politician i've ever met. >> thank you very much. >> you played the piano. you were a stateswoman. you never seemed to trip up or make a catastrophic error in your life. >> let's not test the proposition or tempt fate. >> there are things we don't know about you. >> probably. >> anything you want to share with me? >> not really. >> i could never imagine you being a naughty girl. >> i was a girl, i was a normal kid. despite the fact i did all these things, my parents were not step forward parents, they let me be a little girl. i was kind of a tom boy, jumping up on things, rolling around in the dirt. i was a normal little girl. >> a normal little girl who grew up to be one of the most powerful woman in america. >> that's the great thing about the united states, there are a lot of stories like that. later, does dr. rice regret the decision to invade iran? did that decision doom the u.s. to failure in afghanistan? 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[ male announcer ] honey nut cheerios tastes great and can help lower cholesterol. bee happy. bee healthy. ♪ try capzasin-hp. it penetrates deep to block pain signals for hours of relief. capzasin-hp. take the pain out of arthritis. so you were saying, you didn't get a cold in the eight years you served in office? >> that's right. >> not even a sniffle? >> not even a sniffle. but i took care of myself. >> how do you stop getting a cold. >> you exercise and take care of yourself and there are some advantages to living alone. you don't get colds. >> so you live alone in a sterile home, no one's allowed in? >> a little bit like that. a little bit like that, yes, right. >> it's fascinating. >> yeah. >> do you -- i mean what is the secret? did you drink alcohol when you were in office? >> occasionally, occasionally. >> when you're in your kind of job, can you ever actually get intoxicated? >> of course not. >> never. >> no. >> that's it. >> no, no, no. i would never want to get intoxicated anyway. i don't like that sort of sense. >> you want to be in control. >> i'd rather be control. you have to realize you're always on. that phone call may come in at 3:00 in the morning. you have to be absolutely alert. >> it takes extraordinary self-control. >> well, it takes a recognition that you've undertaken certain responsibilities and you're going to try to live up to them. but the nicest thing about being in washington and doing those jobs is you do them with a lot of people for whom you have admiration, they become your friends, and it is true that the people with whom you're working for that period of time become very close to you because you're together all the time. >> you're still absurdly fit? >> i'm still fit. >> please tell me you don't get up at 4:30. >> 5:15. >> every day? >> no, 6:15. i sleep in on sunday till 6:15. >> you get up at 5:15 even though you don't need to do so. >> yes. >> why. >> i like to exercise in the morning and have the whole day before -- >> what do you do? cardio? lift weights? >> i do some cardio, kick boxes. >> what do you do? >> i don't think. when you work out, don't think. you really want to be in the moment. >> punching a bag. >> no, just in the moment. i much prefer to work out. i don't even listen to music when i work out. i once did. i just work out. you know, i was a figure skater as a kid, and figure skaters are on the ice at 5:00 in this morning so maybe it came from that. >> what do you think your parents would have made of you? the sad thing for you, i think, is not just the fact you had this terrible tough upbringing, you know, birmingham in those days was an awful place for a young black girl to be brought up, i guess, but i think for you, your parents neither are living to see what happened to you. there must be a great sadness? >> first of all, birmingham was not an easy place to grow up if you were black, but i was fortunate to live in a very loving family, very loving community. we had our ballet lessons, piano lessons, french lessons, we really weren't deprived of anything. >> one of your friends was killed in one of the morneau tore yous incidents? >> yes, denise mcnair. >> a bomb went off o in a church and she and three others died. >> yes. birmingham became known as bombingham, '62, '63. bombs went off in communities, including ours, quite frequently. but again, i was lucky. i had parents who told me you might not be able to control your circumstances but you can control your response to your circumstances. >> here's the interesting thing, your mother, it seems to me, had one view, but your father was a tough man who believed in fighting physically if need be against the tyranny of racism. >> yes. >> so much so that he wouldn't march with martin luther king because he said i don't believe in peaceful protests. if someone comes after me as a racist, i'm going to fight them. >> that's right. i remember very well my mother and father talking. i was a little girl standing out in the hallway. he said, angelina, they're telling us we should go out there and be nonviolent but if somebody's going to come after me with a billy club, i'm going to try to kill them, and my daughter's going to be an orphan, so i'm not going out there. my father was a big man, a very physical man. neither was my mother or me. no more could i imagine someone being clubbed or spat upon and not responding. so, yes, he was someone who was pretty tough. >> did he make you tough? >> well, certainly i think i had -- i have perhaps part of my father's personality. my father was a loving person. his students from across his life remember him as the most caring professor, the most caring minister that they ever had. but he was tough-minded and he was demanding and i think i'm a lot like that. >> what would he have made of what happened to you? >> well, he knew a little bit because he died in 2000. he died just before i left. just before i left to become national security adviser. i don't think he would have been terribly surprised by the whole thing because he thought that i was going to do something special. that was always what he said. my mother died considerably earlier. she died in 1985. and i was well on my way to being a stanford professor but i was not yet involved in the political life. >> would she have been amazed? >> yeah, i think she would have been amazed. they would have both been amazed in some sense because i was their little girl. and to see your little girl do that is surprising. but i don't think they would have been surprised i did something unique, and something that took a lot of guts. i don't think they would have been surprised by that. >> the passages in the book about your mother and the tragically early death, what kind of woman because she? >> my mom was a lady in the nicest sense of the term. she was born in alabama in 1924. i don't think she ever picked up a ball or a bat of any kind. ladies didn't do that sort of thing. she was a musician. she played beautiful piano and oregothe organ and she was elegant. elegant in social graces. >> she got cancer. >> she got cancer when i was only 15. she had quite an aggressive breast cancer at the time. she survived it for 15 years. she survived it with tremendous courage and with grace. because in those days, the treatment was pretty blunt. you simply lopped off the breast, you didn't bother with reconstruction. i remember that her arm was swollen because of the lymph nodes she lost and she just went to wearing long-sleeved dresses. she never complained. she wanted us to go back to normal. she didn't talk about her fears about the disease. it recurred 15 years later and even though that was very tragic -- i've always thanked god that i was 30, not 15 when i lost my mother. >> you must miss her terribly. >> oh, of course, every day, but i'm a deeply religious person and i believe that spiritually we are united across the castle of death. it's not a daily occurrence but there have been times when i felt my mother and my father very, very strongly. so i say in the book, and i really mean that very often i feel their presence rather than their absence. >> they would be bursting with pride to see you reach secretary of state level, coming from where you come from, an extraordinary journey for you, all of you. >> but the wonderful thing about my parents, they were people who were bursting with pride when i did a bad tap-dancing routine in my school. i never felt that achievement was to them somehow a litmus test for unconditional love but their unconditional love led them to give me the extraordinary opportunities, and i think they would have been proud. >> my mother gave me a post card once that had a hippopotamus flying with a flock of seagulls and the headline, ambition knows no bounds. >> yeah, i think that -- >> you can almost chart anyone's success to their parents. >> i think you're very, very fortunate if you had great parents and if you didn't as many kids don't threaten there has to be some adult who's going to advocate for that child. no child navigate this world alone. >> condoleezza rice rose to the highest levels of american politics, but a lot has changed over the last few years, from the tea party to the crosshairs of policy. what does she think of the new landscape? 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[ man ] ♪ trouble ♪ trouble, trouble trouble, trouble ♪ ♪ trouble been doggin' my soul ♪ since the day i was born ♪ worry ♪ oh, worry, worry worry, worry ♪ [ announcer ] when it comes to things you care about, leave nothing to chance. travelers. take the scary out of life. there's been a big debate, dr. rice, in the country since what happened to representative giffords, and obviously you, yourself, have been in high office. you've been presumably on the receiving end of threats. you've had to live in the fear of potential assassination. what were your thoughts about what happen and what do you think about overall debate of aggressive political rhetoric being possibly an incendiary fuel to people who are perhaps a bit unstable. >> first of all, i think we all want to have continuous prayers for representative giffords and for those who were harmed as well as for the families of those who lost their lives. it's a terribly sad set of circumstances for the united states. and it's one of those days that's going to live in all of our collective consciences. i think it's probably best to take some time and step back and to know what horrible motivations and dark motivations there may have been for this young man. and so i myself think it's not a good time to jump to conclusions about what the relationship may have been to what has been a spirited debate, no doubt, and this set of events. >> as a principle, do you think it's wise for any politician, anyone in the world, never mind just america, to use imagery like crosshairs, to use the language of the gun in that kind of way? the fact is our politics are pretty rough. it is. >> it is very rough. >> i certainly experienced it myself. our politics has been rough for a long time. it didn't start two years ago. frankly people across the whole spectrum use colorful and sometimes a language that might be considered incendiary. >> your administration was a past master. it was pretty rough. >> we used pretty rough language for people who committed the act of war against us on september 11th and i have no regrets for using very tough language about them. >> what about on opponents? >> let me just say, a all of that said i would like to see the politics cool down, i'd like to see us cool off as a country. i'd like for all of us to be more careful about what we say about one another and give politicians time to deal with the difficult issues we face. >> how did you deal psychologically with the threats that came to you personally while you were in office. you must have had a lot? >> for the most part you try to ignore them and when you're in government, of course, you have protection and you have people who are looking out for your well being. but you can't live in a state of fear. if you do, then you're not going to do your job very well and you're going to give yourself high blood pressure which probably isn't worth it. so i tried for the most part to take precautions, and i still do. i'm careful to take precautions. but i never lived in fear that something was going to happen. you know, there's a god and i think i trust in him. >> how's president obama doing do you think? >> well, i'm very fond of the president personally. i knew him when he was a senator. when i was secretary he was a senator on foreign relations. >> you were a democrat. >> i was. i was a democrat and voted for jimmy carter. >> you flirted on both sides. >> it was 1976 i was a democrat, so let's not extend that too far. >> what kind of circumstances would lead you to vote for president obama? >> i think that he is a fine person and he's doing his best for this country and i was personally quite gratified that america elected a black president and i went to the state department press room that morning to say what it said about our country, that our country is what it claims to be, so all of that is great. i'm a committed republican. i believe very strongly in individual liberty. i tend not to think much in terms of group politics. i really am a small government kind of person and i'm most certainly a fiscal conservative and strong on national def