Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book TV 20111203 : vimarsana.com

CSPAN2 Book TV December 3, 2011



>> given to the first 300 students who attended this year's event. [applause] now, the university takes no credit for doing this. i want to thank our very good friend, mitch kaplan, of books and books. the university met with him recently to discuss launching a new partnership to bring speakers to campus, and one week later he called to say that we were going to have an opportunity to host secretary rice's first public book tour event. mitch, i think this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship. thank you very much. [laughter] [applause] now, the cobbs have sponsored other distinguished speakers, casper weinberger, bob galvin, ross perot, mba commissioner david stern, david gurgin. sue and chuck have dedicated their careers and energy to serving their country and community in a variety of ways. between them, they are a formidable diplomatic corps that spans from iceland to jamaica to d.c. to tallahassee and miami. sue served as u.s. ambassador to jamaica from 2001 to 2005 during the same time when secretary rice served as national security adviser and u.s. secretary of state. governor jeb bush appointed her secretary of state of florida from 2005 to 2007. she's taught at the foreign service institute and co-chaired the u.s. department of state's mandatory seminars for newly-appointed ambassadors. and an interesting twist, she's both an alumna of stanford university where secretary rice is a very distinguished member of the faculty and former provost and the university of miami school of law. chuck cobb was the u.s. ambassador to the republic of iceland during the administration of george h.w. bush, and during the reagan administration he served as undersecretary and assistant secretary at the u.s. department of commerce where he was responsible for trade, development, export promotion and international travel and tourism. and he was appointed by florida's governors, jeb bush and charlie crist, to serve on statewide boards. both sue and chuck serve on the board of directors of the consul of american ambassadors. while we can't claim chuck, he's a longtime member and past chairman of the board of the university of miami's board of trustees. please, welcome miami's diplomatic dynamic duo, the ambassadors cobb. [applause] >> thank you, president shalala. dr. rice, ambassador cobb -- [laughter] guests, we're very pleased to have all of you here. this whole thing has sort of unfolded around the interest of my husband in leadership. so when we have been able to have outstanding leaders come through this area, we've arranged to have the university of miami students and our guests participate. and that's been, um, an extraordinary pleasure. this year we hit the jackpot. [laughter] with condoleezza rice. we do have a relationship that goes back, as you know, i think, dr. rice was a provost at stanford and is back at stanford now at the woodrow wilson institute. chuck and i spent eight years on campus at stanford. it was not because we couldn't graduate. [laughter] but that's a different story. um, and we have many mutual friends from our service in government and stanford and elsewhere. and, of course, we also had the privilege of service to our country at very consequential times. one of the things that i enjoy thinking about as leadership, also, and i think of dr. rice as a transformational leader. in fact, i think of president shalala and ambassador cobb as transformational leaders. and you might think about and ask what are the common traits. vision, contextual knowledge, understanding the environment in which you're operating, communication and motivational skills. they're challenging but empowering, rock solid integrity, unusual determination and perseverance, perseverance and perseverance. well, as you might guess, i'm a great admirer of dr. rice. not quite as much as moammar gadhafi. i don't have a scrapbook. [laughter] [applause] i do have an enormous regard for dr. rice and am very, very pleased that she's here and to do her formal introduction, like to invite ambassador cobb to the stage. [applause] >> good morning, everybody. thank you, president shalala and my wife, for those nice, nice comments. [laughter] and before i introduce condoleezza rice, i want to, i want to share with all of you a favoritism i have, a bias that i have. and this bias is that i have a strong affinity for smart, strong, powerful, successful and charismatic women leaders. [applause] and as evidence of that -- [applause] and as evidence of that, i've been married to one of those ladies for 52 years. but as second -- [applause] but as second evidence of that, i had the pleasure to chair the search committee for the university of miami president, and be our first choice -- and our first choice by far was donna shalala because she had all of those skills and all of those talents. [applause] and then, and then thirdly, i'm on the board of the woodrow wilson center, and i had the honor to chair its search committee recently. and our first choice was condoleezza rice who, clearly, has all those skills as i'll talk a little more about in a moment. [applause] unfortunately, we couldn't get her away from stanford, and we couldn't get her away from writing this great book. and so we were successful in encouraging congresswoman jane harmon who is a congresswoman from california and also a very charismatic, driven, powerful, wonderful, smart lady. so it's quite obvious, i think, from all of this that i really do have this bias. and for that reason it's really an opportunity and a pleasure for me to introduce the most successful woman in the world. and i really do believe that. so you've heard from my wife about leadership skills and, clearly, condoleezza rice has all of those. but in my opinion, the most important leadership skill she has is -- and i think all successful leaders have this -- is the ability to bring people together, to team build, to seek a common ground. and no one is more skilled at this than condoleezza rice. as national security adviser, as you all know, it's her job to bring really diverse personalities together. so in her case it was dick cheney, the vice president, colin powell, the secretary of state, and don rumsfeld, secretary of defense. really different personalities, really strong personalities, a lot of tension in the room as you will read in this book. but she brought a consensus, and under her leadership and the president's leadership they made some of the most important decisions of this century. and because of that great ability to team build. now, she also used that skill as secretary of state and dealt with some really tough problems with palestine and israel on one hand, and then it was pakistan and india on another, and then day after day countries that were, had really diverse and different, fundamental differences. again, no one was better in bringing everybody together than dr. condoleezza rice. at age 38, secretary rice was named the provost at stanford, and as you heard, that's our alma mater. she was the youngest provost in stanford's history. she showed exceptional leadership skills at stanford that since that time universities all over the country are trying to get her to be their president. but, again, they were as unsuccessful as i was earlier of getting her. she is a leader with incredibly diverse skills. she's a concert pianist, a sports officionado, and because of her leadership skills has been offered to be the commissioner of the pac-12 and considered as the commissioner for the nfl. she serves on the board of hewlett-packard, charles schwab, transamerica and many other boards in corporate and conservativic organizations. so, ladies and gentlemen, it's my really distinct pleasure, and i think no higher honor does this university have than to have a leader with so many talents and experiences. and so i present to you the former secretary of state and the national security adviser, condoleezza rice. [applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> madam secretary, welcome. >> thank you very much. >> how long have i been inviting you here? >> a few years, a few years. [laughter] >> most of our questions today were submitted by students. and let me start with the first one. one of our students asked, how do i get to be secretary of state? >> good question. [laughter] well, relate me just start -- let me just start by thanking you very much. i have known president shalala as secretary shalala, but also as my friend, donna, so thank you very much for having me here at the u, right? [cheers and applause] i want to thank my good friends, the cobbs, the ambassadors cobb, for their service to the country and for their extraordinary friendship as well. and so, and thanks to you, university of miami students, for having me here. well, so how do you become secretary of state? all right. you start as a failed piano major, that's how you start. [laughter] i actually went to college to be a concert pianist. i studied piano from the age of 3. there was never any doubt that's what i was going to do. and in the summer of my sophomore year, i went to the aspen music festival school which a lot of prodigies were there, and there were 12-year-olds who could play from sight what i could play after one year. i was 17. i thought i was going to end up teaching 13-year-olds to murder beethoven, and fortunately, i wandered into a course on international politics, and it was taught by a man jailed joseph carville who was madeleine albright's father. and he opened up the world of diplomacy and eastern europe to me, and all of a sudden i knew what i wanted to be, i wanted to be a soviet specialist. so the first lesson of how you get to where i've, where i am is you find something that you absolutely love to do. and so i would say to each and every one of you as students, find your passion. not what job you want, not what career you want, but what you're passionate about, what's going to make you get up every day and want to go and do that. secondly, if you're fortunate, your passion and your talents will come together, and i went on then to become a professor at stanford. and i met when i was a young professor, um, in a seminar at stanford a man named brent scocroft who had been the national security adviser to president gerald ford and was, would become the national security adviser to george h.w. bush. he took an interest in my career, and when president george h.w. bush was elected, he took me with him to be the white house soviet specialist. and i was fortunate to be the white house soviet specialist at the end of the cold war and it, frankly, doesn't get much better than that. [laughter] but the second lesson is, find people who are interested in you and in your career who can help to guide you and open up opportunities. we sometimes say i want to get there on my own. nobody gets there absolutely on their own. there are always mentors. and there's another important lesson. sometimes we say you have to have role models and mentors who look like you. well, if i'd been waiting for a black woman soviet specialist mentor -- [laughter] i would still be waiting. [laughter] so your mentors, your role models can come in any color, shape or size, just find somebody who really cares about you and cares about your career. and the final part of that story is that when in 1990 mikhail gorbachev came to the white house, and we were sitting together on the lawn of the white house in marine one, the presidential helicopter, getting ready to take off for california. just me, gorbachev, his wife and the secret service, i thought, i'm really glad i changed my major. [laughter] and so if you find your passion, if you find people who support you, if you work hard, and if you don't worry too much about what comes next, incredible opportunities do open themselves to you. finally, i'd say get involved in politics at some point, you know? find a candidate you like, work for them. ultimately, that's really how i got to be secretary of state. i worked for george w. bush, and i became his secretary of state. so those are some of the thoughts i have, but the most important, start right now. find your passion. [applause] >> wonderful. let's talk a little about the organization of decision making and your role in the nsc, the national security consul. that role was almost painful for me to read it, it was herding cats. if you were to advise now after your experience in that job in particular a president of the united states, would you suggest to them that one characteristic of the members of that team whether it's the secretary of defense, treasury, even the vice president would be gets along well with others? >> yeah. well, that might eliminate a fair number of people in washington, so i'd be careful about that criteria. [laughter] no, there's no doubt that we had very strong personalities. but i hope that i gave the impression in the book that they were debates about substance, these were not personal issues. nonetheless, we got along just fine until the most stressful times. and the most stressful times were around the war on terror and around iraq. and so perhaps the lesson is that in so-called normal times, to the degree that anything's ever normal in decision making in washington, you can -- it is important to have different voices. you can even do with some tension. but, you know, when things get really tough, it is easier if people get along. and that, perhaps, is the lesson that i would say to the president. it's a new president. you can do fine with personalities that may clash if things are going well. when they get rough, it's a lot harder. >> uh-huh. let me follow up on that question. it's the personalities, but it's also different points, very strong points of view. some black and white, some more nuanced as you described it in your book. >> right. >> does the fact that each political party has kind of this big ten strategy, does that need to be reflected in the foreign policy leadership, or can you just bring people in to consult with that? so i'm pushing you pretty hard on how you put the team together. >> right. well, it is a really fine line because if you put a team together where people have views that are too similar, you get group think. >> yep. >> and that's not a good thing. when i was secretary of state, i actually had a couple of curmudgeons on my staff who would challenge me about everything i wanted to do. because i have always thought if you're constantly -- and this is true in school -- if you're constantly in the company of people who say amen to everything you say, find other company because you don't actually test your assumptions in that way. so i would tend to err in the direction of people who do have strong views, who do express them, but who can also put them aside, ultimately, and find a way to work together. >> and within the political party, both the republican and democratic party, they do have people with widely different views. if you were actually advising a president, you can't anticipate that you're going to go through tough times. >> right. >> so what characteristics of that foreign policy team, in past years we've had people on foreign policy teams that were lawyers but not necessarily the substantive expertise that you have. >> no, that's very true. we actually had on our foreign policy team when you think about it, we had quite experienced foreign policy hands. don had been secretary of defense before, vice president cheney had been secretary of defense and chief of staff in the white house, colin powell had been deputy national security adviser, i'd been in the white house before, so we actually had a lot of expertise. i'm really to this day not quite sure why sometimes the personalities didn't gel, and i'm not actually sure -- i don't actually think it was observable in, before we got to washington. that's why i say i think it was the times that perhaps tested us. but i would say to a president who's choosing a foreign policy team do think about talking to people about internal dynamics. and, because it can get a bit -- >> think about the team part. >> think about the team party as well as as -- have strong views, because strong views are important. you don't want a president who's just hearing one side of the story. but think about the team dynamics as well. >> interesting. let's talk a little about latin america, the caribbean. do you think it makes sense to focus on latin america and the caribbean as a region in developing u.s. policy given the fact that so many, the countries differ in their stage of development, and so many of them their issues are really global issues? >> yes, yes. well, there's one sense in which i do think we want to think about latin america and the caribbean as a region. matter of fact, i would say even the western hemisphere which is that there is a kind of natural affinity for trade policy. we do share some problems of just the kind of transnational borders of trying to deal with trafficking in persons, trafficking in arms, trafficking in drugs, and so there are reasons to work as a region. i also think that since the organization of american states actually has a democratic charter, we should have a view of our hemisphere -- first and foremost, your neighborhood -- as being democratic. but you make a very good point. once you get beyond those sort of big, um, categories you really are talking about countries that are very different in how they interact with the globe. brazil thinks of itself, of course, as a regional leader. but brazil is also one of the most important emerging economies for the whole global economy. it is one of them, as we call them, the bricks, one of the emerging economies that has a chance to really structure how the international economy is going to look going forward. when you think about countries like, of course, obviously, the united states has a global role, but when you think even about countries along the pacific rim of latin america, they may connect more to the economies of asia. i was always struck when i would go to something called the summit of the americas which was really about latin america and the caribbean, and, you know, we would have these discussions, and then hugo chavez would take off, and everybody would sort of close their ears and whatever. [laughter] but then almost a week or two weeks later we would go to the asia pacific economic council, apec, and there it's the pacific rim countries of chile and up the pacific rim all the way to canada and all the way out through japan and china and korea, and the conversation was completely different. it was about global trade, it was about freeing trade. and so i actually always thought that in that sense the countries had more in common with their asian counterparts than they had with their latin american counterparts. >> is how they perceive themselves at a stage of development significant there? >> i think it is. because if you look at places like chile, now quite developed in many ways, colombia getting there in terms of development, you know, a country like brazil is interesting because on the one hand it is leading the global -- one of the leaders in the global economy, but with huge income distribution difficulties that keep it really more on the developing country side. if you look at some of the poorest countries in, say, central america like guatemala, for instance, you're talking about places where you can't even reach the farmers in the highlands by highway. and so their problems are to try to build infrastructure so that they can join the 20th century economy, forget the 21st century economy. so, yes, you have radically different levels of development. but when you think about it, you have radically different levels of development within countries. look at the north of mexico and the interior of the country, and you have very different levels of development eve

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