Full transcript

Sharon McMahon: Thank you so much for doing this.

Sec. Rice: Real pleasure to be with you.

Sharon: It's a delight. You know, one of the things that I know you're very keenly aware of is that we are struggling with civic education right now. There have been studies done that show that we spend around fifty four dollars a year per student in the United States on STEM.

A worthy goal. We should be educating for STEM, but only about five cents per student on civic education. And I wonder, from your perspective, what are the repercussions of that?

Sec. Rice: Well, first of all, thank you for having me, and this is a really important discussion. Because the repercussions of not having civic education for our students, not to mention for our adults, is that we have a democracy that people don't understand.

They don't understand how to make it work for them. Because democracy is an actually kind of complicated idea that you can carry out your interests and your values through these abstractions that we call institutions, the Constitution, elections, rule of law.

[00:01:00] And if Americans don't feel that they can represent their interests through those institutions, then they tend to pull back, and no democracy can work effectively if its citizens are not actively engaged.

And so, getting people to really understand the institutions, to understand how to make them work, is essential to a functioning democracy.

Sharon: You know, I've heard you say in the past that, you know, looking back on history, like the civil rights movement, that the civil rights movement was made possible, yes, of course, by things like marches and planned protests, but there were other important pieces of that tripod, like some of the institutions that we built, like the justice system, like the legislature. That you can't have long lasting change just with protests alone, but that in order to make that long lasting important change, you have to understand the institutions.

[00:02:00] The problem here that I'm sure you're very well aware of is that Americans are at a record low distrust of these institutions. A recent survey said that. Maybe 25 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the federal government. What would you say to Americans who just feel like our institutions are not trustworthy?

Sec. Rice: There is no doubt that we've seen this decline in the confidence and trust in institutions, but very often you don't trust what you don't know. And so really imploring Americans to, to know the institutions, to know their history, to know what they've done in the past. It's really pretty extraordinary, for somebody like me.

I grew up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, and I went all the way to be Secretary of State. That's a story about the extraordinary capability of American institutions to channel change.

[00:03:00] And so one of the things I think we have to do is to remind Americans of when our institutions have brought about that change so that people are willing to give them a chance.

My great friend, George Shultz, who died at the age of 100 years old, used to wear a tie and it said, democracy is not a spectator sport. And so I would say to Americans. You get the democracy that you deserve, that you work for. I know it's hard with the federal government sometimes. As a matter of fact, one of the things I often do is tell my students, If you want to work in government, go work in local government.

Go work on a planning commission. Go and try to influence a mayoral race. Because you'll see that government closer to the people tends to get their trust because they can see the effects they can see things happening. When you get to the federal government, it's sometimes hard to see things happening, but we need to go back to those stories of when the federal government has made things happen and to realize that not everything is bad in Washington.

[00:04:00] Not everything is good, but the founding fathers understood that there were a very few things that the federal government had to do, and a lot of it was to, as they would have said, reserve to the states, reserve to the localities and they added reserved to the people.

Sharon: I hear regularly from people in this political moment that they feel like they have been sold a bill of goods. That the idea that we have been educating people on that you have made a career educating people on the idea that we have things like the rule of law, that we have separation of powers and checks and balances, and that these fine institutions that we've spent hundreds of years building, that they're going to withstand the storm.

And I know there are a lot of Americans at this moment who feel like, "I don't know if that is true. I am seeing evidence to the contrary."

[00:05:00] Can you speak to that fear? Can you speak to the idea that maybe democracy is not on the upswing?

Sec. Rice: Well, if democracy isn't on the upswing, I don't know what is. You know, I'm often told, sometimes even by my students who are young and they don't remember some of our history of democracy, and they'll say, "Well, we can't get anything done."

Well, actually, democracy was not meant to work quickly. The Founding Fathers were afraid of the tyranny of the majority, that if you just went with the majority and everything the majority wanted, the minority would be disadvantaged, and so they built this thing called representative government, rather than direct government, where we go in and just… we decide everything on the basis of our individual decisions, our individual interests.

It's a process and it's a system that requires compromise and it requires time.

[00:06:00] And so I would ask my fellow Americans to be a little bit patient with our institutions, because the worst thing is when you have somebody who can deliver, but they deliver without any interest in what you might have thought, what you might have been concerned about.

Authoritarians are often very efficient. You just better hope that they're also benevolent. And most of the time, they're not. So we're going to have to stick with democracy. That's the first point.

Now, once we stick with democracy and we're more patient with it, we also realize that in times when things are in turmoil or in change, you also have to give time. These levers that, you mentioned, rule of law, the ability of different levels of government to push back, the individual citizens to push back against what they may consider excesses: that also takes time.

Things will go to the courts. We will decide, the courts will help to decide what is an appropriate role for the executive and what isn't an appropriate role for the executive.

[00:07:00] We have Congress. And Congress people will go to their constituencies and they'll hear loud and clear, this isn't working for me, that isn't working for me, and if they want to get re-elected, that will affect how they behave when they go back to Washington, D.C. But most importantly, when we look at the states, when we look at what governors do, it's one reason I actually love governors. They really do have to deliver.

And they have probably a greater say in many of the issues that are of interest to us. Education is one of them, that's essentially a state and local issue. And so, don't give up on democracy. There isn't anything else out there. You know, it's been said that it's the worst of all systems until you've tried everything else.

So,we have an obligation to try to make this work, and it has many guardrails, it has many opportunities for engagement. And we have something else that most democracies don't have – we're a very powerful civil society.

[00:08:00] We have those institutions, like rotary clubs, and Boys and Girls Clubs, and American Red Cross, where individual citizens take responsibility for individual citizens.

And that's one of the strongest reeds of democracy, too. So this is a multi-layered system. And that's why I have so much faith in it. The founders were afraid of tyranny. That's what they feared most. They wanted to get out from under George III. And so they created a system that would be multilayered, but it means that it sometimes works slowly.

Sharon: I heard you say something that I want to touch on, which is this idea of compromise. Most of the important things that have happened in US history, most important pieces of legislation, you know, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, etcetera. They are a result of coalition building and compromise.

[00:09:00] And I think we're at this moment politically where compromise has become a four letter word. It's been reduced to something gross. I'd love to hear your take on what it means to compromise in a democracy.

Sec. Rice: To compromise in a democracy is that we try to find what I'll call the overlap of our interests.

So it's not that kind of squishy middle. It's not that I compromise on my values or my principles. But it does require me to realize when it's really not about my principles versus your principles or my values versus your values. It's just, we have a policy dispute. We have a policy difference. We want to approach a problem differently.

So now, let's see if there's a place where I can take what you are interested in, what you need, what I am interested in, what I need, and can we find that overlap? That's the compromise. And it is absolutely essential in a democracy. Madison called it a constant contestation of politics. So, on this issue you might get a little bit more of what you want, and I get a little bit less.

[00:10:00] Next time around, it might be the other way around. But I have to recognize that we're going to move from this issue to the next issue, and you have to be my partner each time. So I treat you with respect. I treat you with dignity. I listen to your concerns. And then we try to find a place where we can come together.

The problem now is that everything moves so fast. If I could have one reform, I would actually take the cameras out of the Senate and out of the House of Representatives. I know, you know, transparency, so forth and so on, but I'd kind of like them to have a chance to talk to a colleague before you go and post your position, before you find a microphone to just have a firm, I must have this.

Because maybe you don't have to have that after you've listened to your colleague. If I could have a rule, it's before you go to social media, you have to talk to at least one colleague with whom you disagree.

[00:11:00] Sharon: It seems like, yeah, cameras in Congress have just become opportunities for press conferences, an opportunity for grandstanding. If the camera pans, nobody is there listening. They are talking to an empty room to get on camera.

Sec. Rice: It really does happen. I actually even remember this sometimes from my personal experience. I would go to testify and when the cameras were in the room it was contentious and it was, because you wanted to show you gave what for to the Secretary of State and then you got on the evening news back home and it was all great.

The minute the cameras were gone, that kind of energy went out of the room and people were actually interested in the answers to the questions, not just making a point. So again, I get the transparency point. But I also think that sometimes if you can get people into a less public environment, into a place where they're not performing for the cameras.

[00:12:00] I mean, who are we kidding? Cameras make everybody perform. And then social media, of course, just exacerbates it because you go to social media to talk to your tribe. So, I'm not one who believes that social media, by the way, is necessarily the root cause of it. Social media exacerbates the root cause, and the root cause is not having the patience and the time to listen to those who may disagree.

Sharon: You know, you have a very uniquely expert opinion on the international world order and I wonder if you could share with us, what does it mean for America's place in the world? What does it mean for foreign relations when we are not getting the kind of civic education that we need? You know, what does it mean now, but also what does it mean for our future if we poorly understand how the world works?

[00:13:00] Sec. Rice: I would love to see Americans understand how America works, and that gives you a lens on why the United States has been so influential in the world. If you go to other countries–which I did all the time as secretary, I still do–they are amazed that Americans, who actually don't share ethnic background, nationality, we're not the same religion, and somehow, we stay together in what is a creed.

It doesn't matter where you came from, it matters where you're going. You can come from humble circumstances, you can do great things. And for the most part, we've been able to make that true. And that's enormously attractive to people who are still struggling for freedom.

The other thing that's enormously attractive, and I try to make this point all the time, and again, it's something Americans have forgotten, is this is a long journey, democracy. It took us a long time.

[00:14:00] My ancestors were counted as three fifths of a man in the first Constitution. When I was a child in Birmingham, we couldn't go to a restaurant or to a movie theater because we were black.

And so, when you know America's story as an American, you can go out into the world and say, America is here not because we're perfect. As a matter of fact, we're incredibly imperfect. But because every day we get up, and we try to put another brick into the foundation of democracy. And every day, we try to extend “We the people” just a little bit more.

And so we understand the experience of countries that are just getting the chance to build democracy because a tyrant has been overthrown or a bad system has collapsed. That's the connection between understanding America's history and heritage and who we are and how long it's taken us and having something to say to the rest of the world.

[00:15:00] The point that I make abroad and with Americans is, if any people should be patient about those who are seeking to have the rights that we enjoy – the right to say what you think, worship as you please, be free from the knock of the secret police at night, and to choose those who would govern you, how hard that is – Americans ought to understand that. Because we've been through a very long and sometimes very tough journey to even get to where we are now.

Sharon: I have one question that I wanted to ask you that some of my listeners sent in. You said a couple of months ago that, "Great powers don't mind their own business. If we don't shape the international environment, then others will."

And I think that we can think of many examples throughout history where we've used, say, the hard power of military force to shape the international environment. But we've also tried to use the soft power of things like international aid and programs that aid in building democracies around the world.

[00:16:00] Programs that feed hungry children so that they grow up feeling like the United States is a positive influence on their country. What does it mean for the United States on the world stage to be cutting a large portion of our soft power when we're cutting the majority of USAID, for example, what does that mean for the U.S. on the world stage?

Sec. Rice: Well, I would be the first to say that not everything that we have done in foreign assistance and foreign aid is effective. And, it may be time to rethink some of it as well. I'm a great believer, first of all, of humanitarian assistance. We have great non profits, whether it's Catholic Charities or World Vision or the International Rescue Committee.

[00:17:00] We have a lot of great charities that help the most hurting. Whether it's out of disaster relief, whether it is to feed hunger, the United States has always been the largest food aid donor in the world. And we were actually the largest food aid donor to North Korea at one point in time because no American president uses food as a weapon.

That's very unusual for a great power. And I want to be able to say that about the United States of America. I also want to be able to say that we have power: military power, economic power. But we also have compassion as a people. And so, when I would go to a place and I could see mothers that had been saved by the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS relief so they were going to see their children grow up.

Or I went once to China, and this little boy was probably 12 years old or so, and he spoke perfect English, and he walked up to me and said, “You're that lady from America, aren't you?” And I was there for disaster relief after an earthquake. That's the side of America that is quite unlike most of those great powers that shape the international system.

[00:18:00] And so we need all aspects of our power. Yes, we need military power. Sometimes it's just a security issue. Yes, we need our economic clout. Sometimes it is about making the world more prosperous and America more prosperous because of that. But sometimes it's about just showing our heart, showing who we are as a people.

And when we think about civics, one of the things that we know, because every child has done it, is the lemonade stand that is raising money for help with poor people, or the kids who are going to show up for the drive to get books into a poor school. We know that impulse in the United States.

[00:19:00] That impulse needs to show itself abroad as well. I'm also a religious person and, I just believe to whom much is given, much is expected. And so as we go through reevaluating our programs, what's worked, what hasn't, I don't mind that it will now be a part of the State Department. I really think that's important.

It's the right thing, but let's not lose sight of when you walk into a room as Secretary of State, on one shoulder, you have American military power. On the other shoulder, you have American economic power, but right in the middle, people know that if there's a place that's hurting, the United States of America is going to be there first.

Sharon: Yeah, we're here at the Hoover Institution. Herbert Hoover was the great humanitarian.

Sec. Rice: Herbert Hoover was an amazing humanitarian.

[00:20:00] He did the war relief after World War I and II.

Sharon: Yes.

Sec. Rice: And asked to do it because he'd done such a great job after World War I. And I'll tell you a wonderful story that connects Stanford and Herbert Hoover, but just tells you how long lasting these effects can be.

The president of Stanford a few years ago was a man named Gerhard Casper. He'd been a German child in Hamburg after the war. And he said that they would get these little packages, the devastation at the time after the war, and they called them Hoovers. Because Herbert Hoover had made sure that these American soldiers could hand out these Hoovers, these little packages of aid to German children.

He was six years old and he still remembered that, came to the United States, became the president of one of America's great institutions. That's an American story.

[00:21:00] And we want to have that be an American story for a long time to come.

Sharon: I appreciated, too, how Truman, when he, after World War II, looked around and saw famine spreading throughout Europe, he didn't look around and find the best Democrat to do the job.

He looked around and found the best American to help, and that happened to be Herbert Hoover. And this is part of Hoover's legacy that has been sort of brushed aside from the public view. And I love one of his quotes. I'm just paraphrasing, but when people criticized him about giving food aid to Soviet children, he said something to the effect of: Children are not communist or capitalist, and on our watch, these children are going to eat.

And again, I'm paraphrasing, but the idea that humanitarianism doesn't belong to a certain political party, I think is an important point to be made.

[00:22:00] Sec. Rice: Humanitarianism, compassion, if you will, it's a part of America.

And when I look at Herbert Hoover – and I see every American president in some way or another – wanted that side of America to show. The side that also spoke for the voiceless. It was Ronald Reagan that created the National Endowment for Democracy. Why? Because when you think about how grateful we should be, to be able to say what we think or to worship as we please.

If we believe that that is a universal value, then we have to speak for those who can't speak for themselves. And so for those who cannot take care of themselves in other parts of the world, America has always been a shining light. And it doesn't mean that we are not very tough minded, we actually are.

[00:23:00] Because, as I said, great powers don't mind their own business. We have tried to reshape the international system, but we've also had a sense of a view that if others were doing well, it was better for us, too. And I want that to continue to be at the core of who we are.

Sharon: What concerns you the most right now about the United States and the world?

Sec. Rice: What concerns me most about the United States right now is our inability to talk to each other across views, across boundaries, across geographies, across types of experiences. I wonder how many students here at Stanford have ever encountered somebody from a rural community. And I know that because of work in being able to do financial aid and the like, we have a lot of first generation students.

[00:24:00] It's really important that people who come from different backgrounds, different experiences, have common experiences if we're going to be American. At one time, that was the military. A lot of people served in the military. Increasingly, the people who serve in the military are not from the upper strata of society, and that's actually not good either.

I'm a great believer in national service, not necessarily military service. But you could spend a little time when you are out of high school, doing something and working with people who have less than you have. You go to a Boys and Girls Club, you see what these kids are overcoming just to have a chance.

And you think, I am never again going to ask, “Why, what don't I have?” I'm going to say, “Why do I have so much?”

And that's a wonderful experience for every American to have. And so, we in the United States have a lot of problems. We have a lot of people who are hurting. We have a lot of people who need help from their communities and from their neighbors.

[00:25:00] We also have a lot of people in the world who would give anything just to have what we have as Americans. And so, that for me is the link between who we are at home. And our ability to exercise power and influence abroad on the basis of principle and compassion.

Sharon: What is bringing you hope right now?

Sec. Rice: I'm hopeful because I teach in a university.

And every day I encounter my students who are, in the 40 years that I've taught, the most public minded students I've ever met. They want to do things bigger than themselves. Now, they're in a hurry. And I have to slow them down sometimes. And they think if they've Googled it, they've researched it. And I say, no, no, there's this thing called depth, you've got to understand that.

[00:26:00] And I will say to them, before you decide you're going to solve that problem, how about we know something about that problem? And so part of my responsibility as a professor is to take all that energy and that desire to change the world and to help channel it into an understanding of how you do that.

And that goes back to the question of using the institutions that we are so fortunate to have in our country. Not every country has them. But using those institutions to bring change.

Protesting? Yes, it's a valued right. But, as I've said about the Civil Rights Movement, the protests that I witnessed as a child in Birmingham in what was called Kelly Ingram Park, which was where Bull Connor, the police commissioner, unleashed his police dogs on peaceful protesters.

[00:27:00] But it was also Thurgood Marshall, the great jurist who would become a Supreme Court Justice, deciding at a kitchen table from 1937 on, what cases are we going to take to try to undo segregation and Jim Crow?

And then the great legislation of 1964 and 65. So every part of the system is working: the president working with Congress, the courts making decisions, individual citizens being out there to say this has to change, but it all works together.

And I'd like my students to know that history a little bit better so that they have a strategy too for making change

Sharon: One more question, which is that I hear from adults every day that they have gotten to adulthood and feel like: I never learned any of this. I never learned how government works and there have been examples of people who have gotten elected to high office who can't name the three branches of a government, Secretary Rice.

[00:28:00] That is not good.

Sec. Rice: It's not good.

Sharon: And they are determined to do better for themselves, but also to do better for their children and their grandchildren. What would you say to somebody who is… maybe they're 40 years old and they're working in an emergency department as a nurse and they want to be a positive force in America?

They want their children to grow up knowing what it takes to move the needle, being able to research and understand the depth of problems that we're facing. What advice would you give them to make sure that they are well educated on civics and that their descendants are too?

Sec. Rice: I have, really, three suggestions for that person.

By the way, I'm old enough that we used to have those, you know, the little bill with the feet on it that was going through the system? The Schoolhouse Rock, right?

Sharon: Schoolhouse Rock, that's right, that's right.

[00:29:00] Sec. Rice: So, we really took it seriously, and Mrs. Riles, who taught me civics in fourth grade, was, she knew that I was going to know the three branches of government.

So, the first thing is get it into the schools. And ask questions about whether it's in your children's schools. Yes, it's great that people are spending money on STEM, we need that. But they're also spending money on our institutions, on how our government works, on what it is to be human, and to work within your government to make change.

So, assure that it's in your schools. And you can do that at school board meetings. And you can do that as a parent teacher association meetings. You have the right to insist on that for your children and for your grandchildren.

Secondly, in terms of your own circumstances, go online. There are lots of resources and they're going to be even more as we get to the 250th anniversary of 1776 and the Declaration of Independence, and read about them.

[00:30:00] And I believe little stories are best. I hope that there are people out there creating stories about how these institutions get used, like the one about how the civil rights Movement actually advanced.

So go online, but maybe also a book club. I know there's not much time in some people's lives, but if just once a month, and maybe in your church or in your community center, you can gather with others who just want to read a little bit about what the United States is about.

And then, finally, practice it. It is so important not to think of democracy as just something that you read about. Something that's done to you, something that was important back in that history, but something that you can experience now on a daily basis. In your community, what is it that you want to change? That is actually the practice of democracy, too.

It's not just what happens in Washington. It's not even what happens just in your state capitol. It's what happens in your community.

[00:31:00] And so I always feel that it's a little bit invigorating to be a part of a democratic enterprise in a way that affects the lives right around you. And your children will see it too.

And that'll give them more reason to think that the little bill with the feet might be worth watching.

Sharon: Secretary Rice, thank you so much.

Sec. Rice: Thank you. Great to be with you.