these lessons up close and personal with one of the 21st century's chief architects of american foreign policy. but cobb leadership lecture series was established by ambassador sue cobb to commemorate her has been, chuck cobbs, 50 great day. please join me in recognizing sue and check for 25 years of providing the university of miami an opportunity to host in april in provocative leaders from all walks of life. [applause] i also want the students to thank them for a very generously donating 300 of secretary rice is very big book, which were given to the first 300 students who attended this year's event.

[applause] now, the university takes no credit for. i want to thank our good friend, mitch avlon. 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. [applause] now, the cops have sponsored other distinguished speakers. catherine weinberger, bob galvin, eds founder, ross perot and david stern, david curt and. sue and chuck have dedicated their careers and energy to serving their country and community and a variety of ways. between them therefore to verbal

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 of secretary rice served as national security advisor and u.s. secretary of state. governor jeb bush appointed her secretary of state of florida from 2005 to 2007. she's cochair of the u.s. department of state's mandatory seminars for newly appointed ambassadors. in an interesting twist, she's both an alumni of stanford, university, where secretary rice is a member of the 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. dubya bush and the break and it registration he served as undersecretary assistant secretary of the u.s. department of commerce where he was responsible for trade

development export promotion and international travel and tourism. he was appointed by florida's governors, jeb bush and charlie crist to serve on statewide boards. both sue and checks up on the there is on the consulate of american ambassadors. chuck is a double graduate of stanford. while the can't claim him as an alumnus come he's a longtime member of the board of the university of miami university of miami's board of trustees. please welcome miami's diplomatic, dynamic duo, the ambassador cobbs. [applause] [applause] >> thank you, president shalala. ambassador reiss, professor cobb, gas, we are pleased to have all of you here. this'll then you sort of unfolded around the interest of

my husband in leadership. so when we have been able to have a mainlanders come through this area, we've arranged to have the university of miami students and our guests participate. and that has been an extraordinary pleasure. this year we've had to check pot with condoleezza rice. we do have a relationship that goes back. as you know, don't you rice was the provost at stanford and is back now at the woodrow wilson institute. chuck and i spent eight years on campus in stamford. it was not because we couldn't graduate. that's a different story. and we have many mutual friends from our service and government at stanford and elsewhere. and of course, we also had the privilege of service to our

country that very consequential times. one of the things that i enjoyed taking about his leadership also. i think about her race as a transformational leader. in fact, i think the president shalala and ambassador cobbs as transformational leaders. and you might think about and ask, what are the common trait? vision, contextual kn vision, contextual knowledge, understanding the environments which are operating, communication and motivational skills. they are challenging, but empowering. rocksolid integrity, unusual determination and perseverance, perseverance and perseverance. well, as you might guess, i am a great admirer of the her race --

dr. rice. not much is moammar gadhafi. i don't have a scrap book. [applause] but i do have an enormous regard for dr. rice and very, very pleased that she is here and to do her formal introduction come i'd like to invite ambassador cobb to the stage. [applause] >> good morning, everybody. thank you to president shalala, my wife for those nice, nice comments. and before you introduce condoleezza rice, i want to share with all of you a favoritism i have house, a that i have. and this bias is that i have a strong affinity for smart,

strong, powerful, successful and charismatic women leaders. and as evidenced at that -- [applause] and there's evidence of that, i have been married to one of those ladies for 52 years. [applause] but as second -- but a second evidence of that i had the pleasure to chair the search committee with the university of miami president. and our first choice by far was donna shalala because she had all of those skills and all those talents. [applause] and then thirdly, i am 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 will talk as 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 work. and so, we were a successful and encouraging congresswomen, jane harman, who was a congressman from california and also a very charismatic, tribune, powerful, wonderful smart lady. so it is quite obvious i think from all of this that i really do have this bias. and for that reason, it is really an opportunity and a pleasure for me to introduce the most successful woman in the world and they 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 skills she has i think all successful leaders have this, is the ability to bring people together, cheap team built, to seek a common ground. and no one is more skilled at this and condoleezza rice. as national security advisor as you all know, it is her job to bring really diverse personalities together. and so in her case, as cheney the vice president, colin powell secretary of state and don rumsfeld, secretary of defense, really different personalities, really strong personalities, invite attention in the room as you will read in this book, but she brought a consensus and under her leadership and the president's leadership, and they made some of the most important decisions of the century and because of that great ability to

team built. now she also used that skill is secretary of state and i was a really tough problems of palestine and israel in one hand and that it was pakistan and india on another. and day after day, countries that had really diverse and fundamental differences. and again, no one is better in bringing everyone together than dr. condoleezza rice. at age 38, secretary rice is in the provost of stanford and was alma mater. she was the first woman, first in stanford's history. she showed exceptional leadership skills at stanford that since that time come universities all over the country are trying to get her to be a president. again, there was unsuccessful as i was earlier of getting her they are. she is a leader with incredibly diverse skills. she's a concert pianist, sports

aficionado and because her leadership skills has been offered to be the commissioner of the pack 12 and is then considered the commissioner of the nfl and a lot of other sports franchises. she serves on the board of hewlett-packard, chevron, charles schwab, rand corp., carnegie, transamerica and many other boards and corporate and civic organizations. so ladies and gentlemen, it is a really distinct pleasure and i think no higher honor to this university have been to have a leader with so many talents and experience this. and so i present to you, the former secretary of state and the national security adviser, condoleezza rice. [applause] >> thank you. that was beautiful. thank you. [applause] thank you very much. [applause] thank you.

madame secretary, welcome. >> thank you. >> how long have i been invited you here? the mac a few years. >> most of our questions today were submitted by students. the mr. with the first one. one of our students ask, how do i get to be secretary of state? >> good question. let me just start by thanking you very much. and i have known president shalala, secretary shalala, but also as my friend, donna. the thank you very much for having me here at the u. [cheers and applause] i want to thank my good friends, the cobbs, the ambassador cobbs for their service to the country and for their extraordinary friendship as well. and so thanks to you, university of miami student, for having me

here. so how do you become secretary of state? all right. you start as a sales piano major. [laughter] i actually went to college to be a concert pianist. i said to peter for the age of three. there was never any doubt that was what i was going to do. the summer of my software to something called the aspen music festival schools, which a lot of prodigies repair and there were 12 euros two could play what i could play after only one year. there were 12, i was 17. i decided i would either end up teaching 13-year-olds beethoven or maybe playing at nordstrom someplace. you know, find careers, but not really for me. unfortunately i wandered into international politics than it was topped by specialists. it 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 am as you find something that you absolutely love to do. and so i would say to each and everyone of you students, find your passion. not what job you want, not what career you want, but what you are passionate about. what will wake you up every day i want to go into that. secondly, if you are fortunate come your passionate tonsil come together and i went on to become a professor at stanford. and i met when i was a young professor and a seminar at stanford, a man named brent scowcroft with the national security adviser to president gerald ford and would become the national security adviser for george h.w. bush. he took an interest in my career and when president george h.w. bush was the lack did, 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. he doesn't get much better than that. but the second less than just find people who are interested in you ended your career who can help to guide you in open up opportunities. we sometimes say what you get there there on my own. nobody gets their absolutely on their own. there are always mentors. there's another important lesson. sometimes we say you had to have role models who look like you. well, if i'd been waiting for a black woman soviet specialist mentor, i would still be waiting. [laughter] so, your mentors come to your wall monitors can come in any color, shape or size. just find somebody who really cares about you and cares about your career. the final part of that story is that when in 1990, the cops 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 and his wife

in the thick service. i thought, i'm really glad he changed my major. [laughter] .. was almost painful for me to read it. it was hurting cap. if you were to advise 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 secretary of defense, treasury, even the vice president, would be, gets awell with others? >> that might eliminate a fair number of people in washington so i would be careful about that krilt tear i can't. there is 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 are not personal issues. known the less, we got along just fine until the most stressful time. the most stressful times were around the war on terror and around iraq. perhaps the lesson is that in so-called normal times to the degree that anything is ever normal in decision-making in washington, you can, it is important to have different voices. you can even deal with some tension but you know when things get tough it is easier if people get along

and that perhaps is the lesson 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 is a lot harder. >> let me follow up on that question. it is the personalities but it is also different points, very strong points of view. some black and white. many so more nuanced as you described it in your book. does the fact that each political party have kind of this big tent strategy, does that need to be reflected in the foreign policy leadership other can you just bring people in to consult with them? i'm pushing you pretty hard on how you put the team together. >> right. well, it is a really fine line because if you bring a team together with views too similar you get group think. >> yep. >> that's not a good thing. when i was secretary of state i actually had a couple of curmudgeons on my

staff and would come in and challenge me with just about everything i wanted to do. i have always thought, if you're constantly, this is true in school too. if you're constantly in company with people that 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. >> within the political parties, both republican and democratic parties they do have people with widely different views. if you were actually advising a president you can't anticipate 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 had the kind of substantive expertise

that you have. >> that's right. 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 was chief of the joints chief of staff and deputy security advisor. i was in the white house before. we actually had a lot of expertise. i'm really to this day not quite sure sometimes the personalities didn't jell and i'm not actually sure, i don't actually think it was observeable in, before we got to washington. that is why i say i think it was the times that perhaps tested us. but i would say to a president who is choosing a foreign policy team, do think about talking to people about internal dynamics and because it can get a bit out of control. >> think about the team. >> think about the team part as well. have strong views because strong views are important. you don't want a president who is just hearing one side of the story but think about

the team dynamics as well. >> let's talk a little about latin america and the caribbean. do you think it makes sense to focus on latin america and the caribbean in a region to develop u.s. foreign policy given the fact that so many of the countries differ in their stage of development and so many of them, their issues are really global issues? >> yes, yes. there is one sense in which i do think we want to think about latin america and the caribbean as a region. as a matter of fact i would say even the western hemisphere. which is there is kind of a 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 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 as we call them the "bric"s. one of the emerging economies that have a hand to structure the international economy going forward. when you think about countries like, obviously the united states has a global role but when you think even about couldn't tries 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 woos really about latin america and the caribbean and, you know, we would have these discussions and hugo chavez would take off and everybody would sort of close and whatever and almost a week or two weeks later we would go to the asia-pacific economic council, apec and there it is 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 t was about freeing trade and so i actually always thought in that sense the countries had more in common with their asian counterparts than they had with their latin american counterparts. >> how they perceive themselves the stage of development significant there? >> i think it is. if you look at places like

chile quite developed in many ways, colombia getting there in terms of development, 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 central america like guatemala, for instance, you're talking about places where you can't even reach farmers in the highlands by highway. so their problems are to try to build infrastructure so 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 north of mexico and the interior of the country and you have very different levels of development even within countries. >> does a secretary of state think of cuba different think -- differently than as

part of the region because of the domestic politics and the relationship? >> i think we think of cuba differently because it is the one country in the oas that can't even take a seat at the table because it doesn't have a democratically elected president and unfortunately we have a history with cuba of castro's decision to install soviet nuclear capability that threatened the territory of the united states. highly anti-american regime there and so there are foreign policy reasons principally that we have a different relationship with cuba but my hope is that in the larger democratization that is going on across the world that the cuban people simply can't be left behind. it absolutely has to be the case when fidel castro goes the cuban people get a chance to elect their next government. that it is not somehow handed over to raul castro [applause]

>> that was a set-up question. it is miami. [laughter] both the national security advisor, certainly the secretary of state are almost firefighters part of the time. you get woken up in the middle of the night. someone does something stupid even within your own organization or around the world. >> yeah. >> how do you anticipate the future though? there is some evidence that while there was the basis for the arab spring or even others predicted the soviet collapse, how do you anticipate the future when you're in those particular leadership roles for both the president but more importantly for the country and how do you organize yourself to do that? >> well, yes, obviously you try to have experts who are keeping an eye on events and in this regard having embassies with people who really know the place and can get out into the community, one of the things i tried to get foreign service officers to do was

not stay in the embassy, not talk to other foreign officials but get out in the country, get a sense for what the conversation is on the street in the country. and that sometimes will give you a bit of early warning. secondly on the arab spring i think we knew something was coming. the freedom. agenda we launched about the middle east, i gave, president bush had given his second inaugural address in which he talked about the need for there to be no man, woman or child who lived in tyranny including in the middle east. i gave a speech at the american university in cairo saying that egypt needed to lead this revolution. i can remember going to see mubarak the morning before i gave the speech and saying to him, you know, mr. president, get out ahead of this. get reforms started before your people are in the streets because what you could feel by being in the middle east was the kind of

seething anger that was growing against authoritarians who were corrupt, authoritarians who were planning suck sections from -- suck sections from themselves to their sons. you could sense mubarak or ben ali in tunisia were increasingly isolated with people telling them their people loved them but on the streets their people didn't love them. we had a sense this was coming. what you can never know what is the spark. that the spark would have been a man, a shopkeeper self-imolatting in tunisia. you see the kindling gathering but don't know what it might ignite. the best you can do it might ignite at any time and try to get ahead of it. particularly trying to get our friends in the middle east to reform before their people were in the streets was our way of trying to get

ahead what happened ultimately in egypt and tunisia and other places. >> you know a little about the collapse of the seven yet union in terms of what scholars knew and you were right there. >> i was and we used to laugh that people would say, gorbachev is bound to fall from power. thank you, but when? it was the issue because you, general sense that things are going bad is not enough. people knew that the infrastructure, political, economic, social of the soviet union was weak. i went to the soviet union for the first time in 1979 to study language. i was there for an extended period of time and i was a student of the soviet military and i remember thinking, i had this image of the soviet military as 10 fetal and i remember going into a store to buy some little tchotkes for my family and they were doing the come pewtation of the prices on abacus. i hadn't seen an abacus

since second grade in birmingham, alabama. i thought, this isn't a very developed place. you start to get a sense that something's really wrong there. so i think soviet specialists knew that the infrastructure was weak. it took, however, a true believer in kind of marxist ideology that it could triumph over the fact that people were estonian or ukrainian. it took somebody who believed you could reform the soviet union. gorbachev. tried to reform it and then it collapsed. i can tell you that still envelope 1990, the soviet union collapses on december 25th, 1991. in 1990 when we were unifying germany in the fall of 1990 i don't think anybody thought the collapse of the soviet union was a year away. >> one of our students wanted to make sure i asked about the social media and how the foreign policy establishment now follows social media around the

world. >> yes. >> and whether that's part of the intelligence-gathering? >> it is now. in fact when i went to state i took with me someone in zan mccormick from the white house who was very interested in what was then an emerging kind of social media. there was not yet any facebook or twitter but people were on internet sites all the time and chat rooms. so we started to understand better what was going on there. i also asked a former student of mine, gentleman named jared cohen, who would later on go to work for secretary clinton, who go and start thinking about, did we even want to help people to use social media to democratize. so he created groups of friends who would, for instance, people who had helped to overthrow terrorism in colombia, who could chat with people in the middle east who were trying to deal with terrorism. so we were starting to use

social media. what i have begun to understand now, of course social media is an accelerant. it is not the cause of these trend but it is an accelerant. but what is very interesting what is happening with social media in china because the regime is doing everything it can to control the internet. it's terrified of the internet. in fact hacking into servers to try to find that last human rights advocate who might be online and apparently social media is going wild in china. and the regime is not so certain that maybe it's, maybe it's not a bad thing. that people have a way to vent through social media. so you remember the story of this young girl that was run over in the streets and people --, that exploded into the social media in china. but, i would say to the regime, it is one thing to think that people will just vent. but eventually they will

swent vent and want to organize to do something about it. so i think social media will continue to have a huge impact on how revolutions, how reform, how democratization takes place. >> so foreign policy experts in the years ahead are going to have to follow social media? >> absolutely. >> that will be another dimension plus our intelligence. >> i think it will be one of the most important source, understanding the pulse of what is going on beneath governments because governments are not irrelevant by any means to this but populations are more empowered than they have ever been by social media. >> i have to ask you about iraq because one of the things you do is a put a broader context and a broader justification on the reasons to go into iraq, and you describe it i think as a kind of imminent security risk. >> yes. >> and my question is, first, how did you change the collection of intelligence

information after your experience in iraq? because clearly there were real questions about how accurate the information was. >> yes. the most important thing we did was to reorganize the intelligence agencies. by the way, both as a result of the intelligence failure prior to 9/11 and intelligence fail her with iraq because, in the prior case, we had a wall between domestic intelligence and the fbi did and external intelligence which the cia did, when they crossed as they did in 9/11, they couldn't talk to one another. in iraq we -- >> excuse me, conde? explain, because many students may not understand why we have that as your teacher, why we have the gap between the fbi and the cia? >> absolutely. the gap, the wall, as i like to call it, was there for very good and legitimate

reasons which was we did not want foreign intelligence agency, the cia, being active inside the country and perhaps spying on domestic events own american citizens and so forth, so the cia was kept to the a foreign intelligence agency. the fbi which operated under rules and laws, think law and order. the fbi. was internal intelligence agency. telephone call was made to san diego by one of the men ultimately would ultimately be one. suicide hijackers in afghanistan. couldn't track across that bound did i, because we didn't want to. phone calls inside the united states, by foreign intelligence. what i would like to have known what i said, 9/11.

when we realized of course we had internal security problem of the attack on our internal security, we had to sew up that the gap, then the cia knew what was going on outside the country and fbi going on inside the country could talk to one another. that is so-called patriot act you probably read about, it closed that seam. that was one intelligence problem. was a little bit different. but also structural. we had, as many as depending how you count them, 15 and 17 different intelligence agencies in the united states. defense department has one. energy department has one, state department has one. cia has one, et cetera. cia has one. person in charge of all of those as the director of central intelligence also head of cia. we had the strange situation which we had all the

different intelligence reporting, but obviously director of cia was human he trusted his own intelligence agency than all these other he was supposed to be over. we found some of the counter evidence about what was going on in iraq with weapons of mass destruction programs and probably didn't get the airing and hearing that might v so we created the director of national intelligence. he is not the director of the cia. he is a separate person. to cull the intelligence, help the president understand when there are disagreements in the intelligence agency and give more of a total picture of what's going on with intelligence. so that was the big reform that was made. >> you also have talked in, at least one speech that i know about eventory self-defense as about of the

making decision to go into iraq and i really want to ask you, when you examined the iraq situation and there was a discussion, did you look at other countries as well? because if you look at the list of justifications, you could put those on iran as well. and so why iraq rather than iran? and did you look at more than one country? >> yes. we looked, iraq was sui generis in our view. it was unique. because we had been to war against saddam hussein in 1991. he signed an armistice. he was systematically violating that armistice. he was found in 1991 to have had been one year from a crude nuclear device. he had used weapons of mass destruction against the iranians and against his own people. the constraints that were put on him were starting break down, including by the way, the fact that we were

flying so-called no-fly zones to keep his air force on the ground. he was shooting at our aircraft practically every day. i can remember the president asking, don rumsfeld, what if we do if he get as lucky shot and brings down an american pilot? we were really in a state of suspended hostilities with iraq, not in a state of peace with iraq. in 1998 president clinton had actually launched cruise missiles against iraq and he, the inspectors were supposed to be keeping his weapons of mass destruction programs under control were left, the country. so he was different for having dragged region into war several times including us. the fact he was continuing, we believed to build weapons of mass destruction and according to the intelligence agencies, had reconstitution the his chemical weapons. reconstituted his biological weapons and was on his way to reconstituting his nuclear programs.

he tried to sass gnat george h.w. bush. he was shooting at our aircraft. he put 400,000 people in mass graves. he was considered the biggest threat in the middle east. as bad as north korea was, as bad was iran was, there was not a category like iraq where there were 16 u.n. security council resolutions that said he was a peace threat to peace and national security. >> there is focus on israeli-palestinian issue? there they're also sue which againerries that they're unique in other parts of the world? >> the israeli-palestinian issue is not the key to the peace in the middle east to the a different kind of middle east it is a key to a different kind of middle east. any student of international politics prothe time i was your age and college which admittedly is long time ago, from that time when you took a course in international policy because people started it with the most volatile region in the world

is the middle east and that's still true today. so people have been trying to do something about that for all of this time. the israeli-palestinian issue is one of the core issues that needs to be resolved to get rid of that volatility in the middle east? >> and every administration struggled with isn't. >> every administration struggled with isn't. >> do you see hope out there? >> i do. i describe in the book, ehud olmert prime minister of israel when i was secretary of state, and mahmoud abbas, current president of the palestinian authority were pretty close to a deal in 2008. a very good deal put on the deal by olmert. olmert was in political and legal trouble so abbas did not take it up for a variety of reasons but the reason i actually wrote about i wanted to suggest it is not a hopeless cause there is an answer here. there is a two-state solution that is available but time is not on the side of either of them. >> like to go back to the

soviet union given, period of time tease about the soviet union. how do you see russia developing over next few years? do you think their importance in the world will continue to increase, perhaps, even suppress -- surpassing china? >> yes. i think the russians are in trouble in terms of global standing and i think they know it. russia is a, the russian economy is 80% dependent on exports of oil, gas and minerals. that is not a modern economy. and i'll tell you a little story about, that shows how much that oil, gas and minerals is linked up with personal fortunes, political power, and the state. i was at the australian foreign minister's house one day. we were having a meeting about energy policy and he was going around asking people about their energy policy. so the russian says, well, he says, we understand that our oil and gas fields are

technologically behind but no foreigner will ever own russian oil and gas he said. he said so we're going to buy the technology from western oil companies. and so i was, had been a director of the chevron corporation and i said, so, don't you understand that their advantage is actually in their technology? they're not going to sell you their technology to make you a better competitor? and he said, oh, that's a really good point. and then he said, are you still a director of chevron? i was the secretary of state. but in russia, dmitry medvedev, deputy prime minister was chairman of gazprom. state and economy and politics and personal fortunes all linked up together. by the way with a fair amount of political violence too. now that mr. putin has decided he is once and future president of russia i think the chances that russia is going to break out

of that and build on other strengths that might have including a very smart population, those have receded and i think unfortunately russia will not find greater strength in the international economy. it is pretty much and economy that is dependent on the price of oil to do well. >> go back to the arab spring. what do you think lessons are? >> the lesson of the arab spring is that authoritarian system not stable. it is simply not stable. if, men, women and children don't have a way to change their circumstances and change their government peacefully they will do it violently. when we were in romania, we learned of something that i've now called the chouchesku moment. nikolai chouchesku was dictator in romania. in 1989. with revolutions in hungary

and czechoslovakia. he was exhorting them what he had done for them. one lady yelled liar. then 100 people. then 10,000 people then 100,000 people are yelling liar. all of sudden he realizes something, he better get out of there. that something gone wrong. instead of delivering him to freedom the young military officer deliver him to the revolution and he and his wife elena are executed. ceausescu moment is when fear breaks down. either a old lady yells liar or soldier turns his gun away from the crowd and refuses to fire or a tank turret is turned away from the crowd. all that is left between the dictator and his people is anger. that is what you got in the arab spring now. that is why authoritarian system not stable. >> what about, what do you think about leading from behind as these multilateral coalitions and, -- >> i don't mind multilateral

coalitions. i'm sorry leading from behind is oxymoron, it is. you don't lead from behind. [applause] i actually think, some in the white house may be sorry that they used that phrase. >> let me ask you about a domestic issue. i actually share your view and had conversations with president bush about the failure of immigration reform and how serious do you think that issue is for the next presidential debate that we have? >> it is essential. and let me tell you why. when you're secretary of state you get to go out in the world. you get to see what people admire about the united states and there are a lot of things that are not admired. but one thing that is overwhelmingly admired what i call our great national myth. that you can come from humble circumstances and do great things. it doesn't matter where you came from. it matters where you're going. that led people to come here

for generations from around the world to be a part of that that is why we have asian-americans and mexican-americans and we have german-americans and indian-earns in. it is because the people, the most ambition people have wanted to be a part of that. now i don't know when immigrants became the enemy but if we don't fix this, we are going to undo one of the greatest strengths of the united states because the only thing that keeps us from the sclerotic demographics from japan is the immigration. i'm a major proponent of comprehensive immigration reform that first and foremost -- [applause] first and foremost recognizes that we have people living in the shadows and we have to deal with that. we're not a country that actually wants people to be afraid to go and take their

sick child to a hospital. that is not the kind of country we are. and i worry that the states, because the federal government has not acted, are starting a patch-work now of immigration policies when really what we need is a federal policy that is true to ourselves, true to our laws but also true to the absolute fact that the united states of america is well-served by the great malanche of people that we are. >> i have three quick questions to wind -- [applause] to wind this up. next fall, let's pretend. you've been invited to be the moderator of a presidential debate. the debate's theme is foreign policy. what's the first question you will ask both candidates? >> do you believe that america has an exceptional and unique role to play in

the world? or is america just some, any other country? because if america is just any other country, then you have no right to ask the american people to sustain the sacrifices that we have and to play the role that we have on behalf of the international community for now, better than 60 years. and so why is america exceptional? [applause] >> wonderful. second question is, even though you're not responsible and they can't officially wake you up anymore, what keeps you up at night in foreign policy? what are the things that you worry about that we ought to worry about? >> well, i worry about, you know, the list of terribles. iran, pakistan. i worry about mexico. i think that we don't pay enough attention to what is happening on our southern border.

and if you live in california or new mexico you know that the drug cartels own a lot of that space between northern mexico and the southern border of the united states. it is very dangerous. last year there were, two years ago there were 5,000 kidnapping and murders of officials, mexican officials, probably twice that in the last couple of years. so very dangerous. but you know what mostly keeps me up at night? the question of whether the united states is going to reaffirm and somehow do the internal repair that we need to do to lead. i worry that we can't seem to get our entitlements under control. i worry that we can't get our budget deficits under control. i worry about immigration policy. i worry about the fact that in k-12 education i can look at your zip code and tell whether or not you're going to get a good education and that's not just wrong. it is actually probably going to undo us more quickly than anything the

chinese could ever do to us because if we have people who are unemployable and they will be unemployable, they will have to live on the dole because they will have no other choice. we'll continue to have a situation in oy only 30% of the people who take the basic skills test to get into the military can pass it. it will indeed pull us apart as a country faster than anything else. and if we're not confident enough to fix this in our country we won't lead. so that's probably the one that really keeps me up at night. >> here's my final question. if you have a choice between running for the senate in california, being a university president, or being head of the national football league [laughter] what is your first choice. >> that is no contest. well, i used to want to be the commissioner of the nfl but i told roger good dell, you know when i was

struggling with the iranians and russians every day your job looked pretty good. actually from northern california doesn't look so good anymore. and these days, i have to say it, these days being a university professor at stanford university where the stanford cardinal are having quite a special season, you know, come on, you know what those special seasons are like. you've had plenty of them. let us have one. that is really the greatest job in the world. >> thank you, madam secretary. [applause] >> that was fun. >> for more information about condoleezza rice, visit hoover.org. and search her name. >> we have this book called, a deal from hell. what's it about, basically and why should we care, specially why should people

watching as far away in bangor, maine, portland, maine, new york, why should they care? >> really this book talks a lot about the differences between journalism today and journalism when i started. when i got into this, journalism, the newspaper business was really largely controlled by families. not all of them were angels by any means but they really had a, kind of a public serviceman tra that they have followed and it basically was, no one could ever put it better than mike coals, who was a leading member of the family of first newspaper i worked for, the des moines register. mike said the only thing a newspaper really has to worry about if the public respects it. because if the public respects it you will have readers. if you have readers you will have advertisers. and that is the main source of income and revenue for newspapers. so you really have to be respected by the public to

be a successful business. and then around the 1960s and the '70s that sort of got turned on its head when the families wanted to get out of the business and they started selling off their newspapers. a lot of times they sold them to people who, to corporations owned by stockholders and people that ran those corporations had a duty to journalists and to journalism but they also had a fiduciary duty to stockholders. and as first things worked fine because we all had a lot of money rolling in and it was pretty easy to balance those two things. but then in sometime after september 11th, that changed and we began struggling with revenues and as we tried to maintain the profit margins which were considerable, we, we began cutting. we began diminishing our journalism. i suspect all of us were a little bit guilty of sub bored it thatting the public,

the interest of the public to our fiduciary duties to produce the kind of returns that wall street and others expected and i really think that kind of led us down this path to where we are today. in the case of the tribune company and it led them to bankruptcy court and a great institution. it was, was a fixture and here today is an institution in trouble and i think it has, it's an institution that has, that, in all newspapers like it, are, i don't think people understand the fundamental role that newspapers play in giving voters and people in a democracy the information and news they need. and they're under threat today and it is i think it is a really troubling, it is troubling to me. it is troubling to a lot of people. so everybody i think should care about this story, not just because it's about me or not because it is about "chicago tribune" or "the

l.a. times" but it is about journal i'll. i think that is vital to a democratic society. >> though this book is called, "the deal from hell". it is really about two deals. it comes in the year 2000, involved purchase by tribune company, venerable chicago-based owner of several dozen very respected television and newspapers, it is purchase of los angeles-based times mirror company. give us succinctly the economic backdrop at the time, the newspaper industry backdrop and the rationale for that first of the two big deals. and if you want to mention a fellow somewhere along the line who became known i think as the serial killer, that is not cereal like john wayne gacy. it is cereal like cheery yos and smart starts, sce, e, a,

l. tell us about him because why he was critical in tactics and strategy executing this deal. >> the deal with sam zell was a deal from hell. tribune made a stop in purgatory when it bought the times mirror. basically the atmosphere at the time was buyer be bought. aol and time warner had just merged and things were going quite well. so when the tribune decided to buy this, things looked pretty good. the future looked pretty bright. we paid a lot of money for it and it was, and the way the deal was structured is, we bought the company even though mark willis, the serial killer, who was the ceo of times mirror. he got that title. he used to be the co-chairman of general mills where they made all the cereal, and the staff of "the l.a. times" was phenomenal.

if the staff of "the l.a. times" would have done as well at journalism as they did at coming up with nicknames we wouldn't be talking about this because they did a great time. they nicknamed mark the cereal killer. he came in right away cutting things and cutting staff. he went and closed new york news day. therefore he got that name. but when tribune bought it, mark willis didn't know that the tribune was buying the company. they bought it when he wasn't even looking. it was kind of a nice little back-stabbing drama played out in a place where they literally made drama in los angeles. and i think because they were trying to really do the deal in secret, a lot of things that we should have known about that we didn't know about came back to haunt us later and the company got in this, the things we didn't know about like a huge tax case, circulation problems at "newsday" and the circulation fraud, all of these sort of things came

back to haunt us and really became, put us into a troubled condition which made us vulnerable to mr. zell. >> you can watch this and property programs on line at booktv.org. . .