now condoleezza rice on "democracy." [inaudible conversations] [applause] >> and actor price is going to be interviewed for us by one of the best interviewers i know who has his own show on bloomberg or national book festival cochair and very generous supporter mr. david rubenstein. [applause] please welcome both of them.plea [applause] and thanks, and enjoy. >> thank you very much for coming. >> thank you very much or having me here and welcome everybody.yo thanks for being here. it's a great event, great event. [applause] >> it's hard to believe but

you've now been out of government for about nine years bo so before we get into your new book on democracy which i highly recommend that we will talk about it tell us what you been doing since he left government other than writing three a selling books, this is the third but other than that you were teaching at stanford and what ozzy doing? >> i've gone back to what i consider to be my real profession are they had thatat digression in washington. i started as an assistantstart professor and so i have returned to stanford. my appointment, this is a business school but i teach business classes and undergraduates. i teach a course in american foreign policy. i've been able to do a little bit of work in the private sector a little consulting the private sector and i'm spending a lot more time practicing the piano than i did when i was in the government because that's really a great love. i'm trying to improve my golf handicap. that's a lot harder than playing

the piano. >> speaking of your golf handicap you were one of ther re first two women to be elected to the augusta national golf club so was that an honor you ever expected you would get? >> i was stunned. in fact a good friend who is the member of augusta came up to tell me that i was being invited to join augusta i just sat there dumbfounded and he said you are going to say yes, right? i said yes, i am but i was completely taken by surprise. >> i won't tell anybody but what is your handicap? >> well it's not really a state secret. for those of you who are golfers there something called an index and you take that index and you go to different courses and depending on the difficulty of the course you establish a handicap. my index is 11.6 which means on most courses i'm about a 13 or 14 handicap.

[applause] >> did you ever play with president george w. bush? >> i've played with president george w. bush on a number of occasions. he plays really fast. you almost have to run to your golf ball to keep up with him but yes we played together. >> in music you did trained to be a classical musical pianistf and i've seen you perform with yo-yo ma among others so do you do a lot of those concerts anymore? >> i do at least one concert a year.rnatio was fortunate to play with yo-yo ma at his music festival at the kennedy center for which you are such a great leader david.d. at least once a year i have a concert with a professional quartet from boston university. we do a benefit for a charity that we started called classics for kids that puts a musical instance in the schools. i believe like everybody that we need s.t.e.m., science technology and mathematics but i'm also a great believer that we need the arts.

our kids need to be closer to the arts. [applause] >> i want to focus on your book but some people may not know you did a biography. you were born and grew up in birmingham and it was a segregated south and the jim crow laws. when you were growing up howu. long did it take before you realize you were not treated the same as everybody else. >> it was most segregated big city in the country at the time. it was a place where the police commissioner paul connor was well-known for brutality towards blacks and it didn't take long to know that your parents were a little embarrassed to take you to a restaurant or movie theater they were never people who let the phóc community that i grew up in which was mostly schoolteachers. my parents are educators they never let this feel in any waywh

like victims.ctim. they said when you consider yourself a victim me of loss control so don't consider yourself a victim. they also said you're going to have to be twice as good. they didn't say that as a matter of debate. they set it as a matter of fact. education was supposed to be your armor against it. but i remember the very first time it really came home to me. you know how works you take a kid and santa claus puts the kid on the knee and ask what you want for christmas? this particular santa claus was taking a white kid in sitting him on his knee and -- my father who was a former football player. my dad was 6 feet 3 inches, 240 he said to my mother angie if he does that to condoleezza and going to pull that stuff off of him and expose them as the cracker that he is.

[laughter] there's this little girl and you are five and its santa claus, daddy, how is going to end that? santa claus must have read my father's body language because when he came to me you put me on his knee and he said little girl what would you like for the f christmas? i remember that was the first time that i thought this is really terrible and santa claus of all things. >> one of the things that may been unusual in your upbringing as you had an unusual first name where did that name come from? >> so condoleezza is my mother's attempted angle if i -- which in italian means with weakness. maybe she missed the vote there but that's what it meant. her name was angelina and a half in and chemawa but i think she wanted an italian name page youu thought about on dante pettis

and walking slowly and that wasn't so good. allegro med fast and that definitely wasn't good.d. so she came up with it. >> your parents move at a a birmingham and moved to denver and you ultimately went to school at the university of denver for your graduated phi beta kappa. then you went to notre dame but it didn't get involved in football cheering or anythinge reviewer graduate student.nt >> i love folk all, are you kidding? of course i went to the football games. >> you impacted then bring that hd and then you went to stanford that's correct. >> her specialty was soviet. i was a failed music major. i started in college as a piano major. i studied piano from each of three. my grandmother taught piano so i

learned very young and at the end of my sophomore year in college i went to the austin music festival school and i metg met -- i thought i'm about too end up playing piano bar someplace. i took a class in international politics. all of a sudden i knew what i wanted to be.t, i wanted to do eastern diplomacy and that took me then into international policy because tha major ultimately was a degree. >> madeleine albright tells the story that her father once said his favorite student with you and she was surprised that you had been a student and she hadn't known that. ultimately you got involved in

the george herbert walker bush administration counsel staff. >> yes. it's a really important storyoms because there is this notion sod that you have i got there on my own. nobody gets there on their own. there's always somebody advocating for you, working for you and for me brent scowcroft who i had been national security adviser since gerald ford came up to give a talk. i was the second-year professor at stanford. he got to know me and said i want to get to know you better. i like your work and i was sort of getting my -- not for my work on soviet military involvement. he started taking me to the strategy group and he really mentored me into the field. i often say there's another lesson in that you also say you have to have role models and mentors who look like you. it's great if you do but if isot waited for lack female role

model and still be waiting. instead my role model is going to be my mentors were white men. those were the people who dominated my field. i always tell my students now your mentors are people who believe in you and see things in you that you don't necessarily see in yourself. >> said he hoped to get a job under bush 41? >> when george h.w. bush was elected he asked brent, he called me and he said this is 1988 remember gorbachev is doing some interesting things in the soviet union. the president will need someone to help them sorted out. as a result i got to be a white house specialist at the end of the cold war. >> and you speak russian? r >> i do speak russian. after that administration wasswb over he went back to denver and

then when george w. bush was running for president how did you get involved with that? >> i was provost at the university which is the chief operating officer of the university and a very happy academic but george h.w. bush called me one day and he said you know my son is the governor of texas and thinking about running for president. they spent a couple of days with them and after a while he asked me to organize his foreign-policy campaign. that's how i got involved with george w. bush. >> were you surprised he asked you to be national security officer at the beginning of that administration? >> by the time he got his election i figured i'd go into administration and national security adviser had been on tho national security council. >> how many women had served as national security adviser before you? >> none. [applause]

let's talk about this book, "democracy." why did she compelled -- feel compelled to write a book about democracy? >> in many ways i wanted to write this book for a long time because it is in some ways an expression of my own life. i am a firm believer that there is no other system that accords the kind of dignity that human beings crave to be able to be free to say what you think and worship as you please and most importantly to have too governed without consent. growing up in segregated earning him where my parents were half citizens and fundamentally believed in this american democracy. i relate one book. i was with my uncle aldo and he picked me up at school on election day in alabama.

i was six years old or so andi then you and my own 6-year-old way that this man george wallace was not good for black people. there were long long lines of people going in to vote and it was segregated of course. i said to my uncle while all these people vote. that george wallace man can't possibly win and my uncle said oh no we are a minority or george wallace is going to win anyway. i said to him so why do they bother? and he said because they know that one day that vote will matter. i never forgot that. i thought as i wrote this book of the extraordinary story of the united states of america the constitution that was given to america by its founders, the words about equality and yet a country born with slavery but

how the same constitution that had once counted in the compromise my ancestors were three-fifths of a man with a the same constitution that would take the oath as the 66th secretary of state under the portrait of benjamin franklin borne by a jewish woman ruth bader ginsburg and that's the story of democracy. [applause] >> you point out in the book that you are african-american but actually 40% of your bloodline is white. is as >> 40% of my bloodline is european. >> and 10% is asian. >> something, other. some other. >> the young girls were killed in the bombing were they people that you knew? >> absolutely.ly the the community was pretty small

and one of the four girls killed in the baptist church and 53 had been in my father's kindergarten. i'd gone to kindergarten with her. there's a picture of my father giving her kindergarten diploma. her father was the photographer at everybody's wedding and birthday parties. addy mae collins had been in my uncle's homeroom. i remember him saying that monday when they put out to school he looked at her and just cried. >> when that happened did your family say we should move out of here? >> no. you remember the first time seeing in my parents eyes but they could do to protect me but know we stayed there. birmingham again to change. again it's a story of democracy.

that same constitution would be used by the naacp and thurgood marshall and others going all the way back and it's tomorrow report from 1937.g they would decide what they were going to take to try and break down segregation and inequality. that would eventually end up in the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965 and the first time my parents and i could go for restaurant. two days after the civil rights act passed my father said let's go to dinner. we got all dressed up and we went to this hotel for dinner. i remember the people sort of looking up from their food and realizing now was okay to have dinner. >> in your book you point out we have -- slavery but when slavery was ended in 1865 we had jim

crow laws so how do you as an african-american woman rationalized what our country did and the civil rights amendments that occurred in the constitution. went to 100 years of -- how dodo you say democracy is such a wonderful system? how do you rationalize that? >> because there is no perfect ever and yet because of the institutions that we weree bequeathed, the constitutionss and the courts independent judiciary slowly but surely the rights of the descendents ofli slaves would be one through those very institutions. when martin luther king ander k others and dorothy height who was a very mentor of mine and the only real women among those great civil rights leaders they

weren't asking america to be something else. there were asking america to be what you say you are. when you have is a situation someplace and you appeal to the decision. in any system the bringing of rights to people is a difficult and sticky and hard process. it was extremely hard and i think we have done better than i can think of anyplace in the world has done it.accomp >> today you're a very accomplished person you are very famous. do you feel discrimination anywhere in the world and anyway you feel you are discriminated: against? profess >> i always face sometimes you are treated badly because of your race or your gender it's your fault not theirs? know, it feels very strongly that i'm able to achieve what i want to achieve and i try to

tell my students it's the samemy way. it's what my parents said if you consider yourself a victim and somebody else has control of your life. we all know that there is inequality in our society and we know that our great national myth it doesn't matter where you came from, matters where you're going. you can come from humble circumstances and you can do great things that isn't true for all of us. our goal, our job as citizens oo democracy is to demand that these institutions that they deliver on that promise and not shun them because they are still the best option for getting there. >> did your parents with to see your great success as a professional? >> i lost my mother very young. my mother was only 61 years old. i was 30 when she died but she

did get to see me as professor at stanford. before she died he gave her my very first book which is on "the news york times" seller. it was called the check was off army and it was my dissertation. if you haven't noticed neither of those exist anymore. i gave her the book. my father knew that i became national security adviser.rtly w he died shortly after. i'm an only child. >> and the pressure of being an only child. >> that's why i'm a sports fanatic. that was my father's passion and the music fanatic because that was my mother's passion.n. >> let's talk about democracy around the rest of the world.n the united states has democracy and is not perfect. you talk about the soviet union and russia.bj you point out a couple of times democracy broke out in russialse

after the revolution and lost power perhaps. why did democracy in both casesr disappear after gorbachev lost our? >> one thing i do in this booki. is submit one of the explanations you sometimes get t about russia. like the rushes don't have the dna for democracy. i believe there any people in the face of the earth who aren't capable of democracy and david you know that we have huge cultural arguments. the germans were supposed to be marshals for democracy predations were -- but of coursw you got south korea and you've got japan. the africans they were to travel but of course you got botswana and you have kenya who is going pretentious thing.

i cannot democracy. of course now there is brazil and chile and columbia and by the way african-americans were too childlike. of course we have had a black president and a black attorney general and attorneys general and the black secretary of state.e. i reject the dash and with the russians to get it all the time. they like strongman that really what the story is, this story of the failure of institutions to take hold under enormous pressure. if you think about the collapse of the soviet union and to think about the effort to build capitalism 50% of the russian population fell into poverty practically overnight. the country broke apart overnight and unfortunately their first president bush yeltsin who i admired for a lot of reasons, instead ofof strengthening the institutions and working through them he

starts to rule by the creed. he weakens the legislature weakens independent web -- judiciary. that strong presence and her poor self is one thing. when vladimir putin becomes present that same strong presidency is now on the pants of someone with authoritarian instincts. the russian failure is the importance of institution. >> deep down you don't see putin as a jeffersonian democrat? >> i don't think you would confuse him with that. i know him pretty well. >> does he speak english? >> he was learning english by the time he came into a thin now i understand it's possible but i would chitchat with him in russian. he really kind of like me at the beginning i think but i remember once sitting with him towards the end of my time as secretary and he said condi you know what

russia has been great when it's been ruled by great men like peter the great in alexander. you want to say you mean flat amid the great but you are secretary of state and you can't do that, that would be rude. in fact he thinks he is reunited the russians and i think that instinct has led him to destroy all of the institutional constraints on the judiciary the free press and civil society. >> you think the chance of them voluntarily stepping down as slim? so. >> i think so. the thing about were seems like' that is you don't know they aret brutal until something happens. after a member the only district of vladimir putin did not win in 2012 was moscow.

that tells you something about how he is viewed in the city. >> let's talk about another country that joins russia and that's poland. poland's democracy did break ou. in poland and what they think the state of democracy is employed today? e >> poland is a story that we should try to emulate. poland is the story of having institutions in place of what i call the democratic opening. solidarity and nationwide labor had actually been underground from the declaration of partial law and the beginning of the 1980s. it had been the same by the vatican. the afl-cio was the labor union and ronald reagan. when gorbachev comes to poweror and your pets free poland had that crucial if a structure in

place so was easier in poland than on most anyplace else. now what we are seeing in poland is it still a young democracy. it has for the first time a vero strong centralized executive and you're starting to see a kind of erosion of the judiciary, the independence of the press but people are fighting back. society is mobilized on social media against what is called the law and justice party which is the president's party and the president actually ended up having to veto a law that he had sponsored that would have gone a long way to undoing the independent judiciary. don't count out polish democract just yet. >> let's go further and talk about ukraine. what is the state of democracy in ukraine now?

>> if you are trying to build a democracy with a very watchful and assertive and aggressivee a neighbor that is in the process of taking your territory and making the eastern half of your country and stable it's kind of hard to build democracy. they are making progress. poroshenko who's the president has launched an anticorruption campaign. one of the great checks on democracy one of the great challenges of democracy. they have made good moves on corruption. there are some young people there in the legislature that are determined to deliver democracy and it's a vibrant society in its western part. the problem with ukraine is that the troubles in eastern ukraine and you don't read much about them in the newspapers these days but people are dying every day in eastern ukraine as the russian separatist supported by the russian forces are causing all kinds of problems. ukrainian democracy is always on

a nice edge but it's not an authoritarian regime either. that's something to celebrate. >> as long as putin is in charge of russia you don't see eastern ukraine going back to ukrainian crimea going back to ukraine? >> crimea think will be very hard but here's one point i like to make it one of the reason i wants to write this book also was to talk about the role america can play in supporting democracy. we have a tendency and they take some responsibility for this to associate democracy with what happened in iraq and afghanistan. those were extremely stressful situations where we had a security problem and later on tried to build a democracy. .. under soviet occupation, when i

was a special assistant for soviet affair its had a stamp and it said, the united states does not recognize the corporation of the politic states into the soviet union, whenever you mentioned lithuania latvia or estonia you stamped it with that. we couldn't do anything about the fact that the soviets had enforceable incoverage operated the ball stick states but we stood for the principle. in crimea we have to stand for the principle. even if we can't do anything for it that says annexation of crimea is illegal. >> host: you mentioned iraq and afghanistan and i want to talk about middle east but where were you on 9/11? >> i was the national security adviser on 9/11 and if you were in a position of authority on 9/11 every day after september 1st. was at my disk any youngest assistants came in and said a plane hit the world trade center. thought that's a strange accident.

>> keep me in informed.un a few minutes later i was having any staff meeting and somebody handed a note said second plane had had hilt the world trade center and now we knew it was a terrorist attack and colin powell was in peru at a meeting of the organization of american estate. george cia director had gone already to a bunker they said we can't reach secretary rumsfeld his phone is ring aring we look on telephone the plane had hit the pentagon. about that time they came and they said you have to get to bunker because planes are flying into buildings in washington, d.c. now they don't escort you they kind of pick you up, and they carry you so i remember some kind of lev levitated to bunker saying i have to make a phone call i called my aunt and uncle you have to know they

would have made their way and i call president bush i said you can't come back here. united states is under attack, and rest of the day was dealing with the reality that americans security could never be the same. >> and on afghanistan has been in the news lately, longest war 16 years, you see any solution in the near term? >> i'm worried about afghanistan. i have always said that -- what the point that we have to get to somehow in afghanistan -- was afghans were able to prevent the taliban from an existential threat against the afghan government. i've always thought that you're going to have remnant had of the taliban that would bhit and run terrorists here and there in the country. but as they've been able to -- carry out bolder attacks closer to the capitol even in international zone, you have to wonder how well we're doing in getting to that place of

stability so i think the decision by the president and by secretary mattis to try to really stabilize the military situation is one that i support. but eventually there's going to have to be a political solution in afghanistan and i suspect -- that is going to involve pakistan a big problem of the problem because they're not convinced that a stable afghan is in their interest an they've got to be made to help stabilize that territory and -- you know, we are talking about democracy and look it is very tough afghanistan was fifth poorest country in the world during 9/11. but it is at least the place no where girls go to school in large numbers. it is a place now where women are not beaten in a soccer stadium that was given to the taliban by the u.n. it is a place where --

men are not lashed because they don't wear beards. it's not a place that harbors terrorists, and so i think we've had some achievements in afghanistan but yes i'm concerned. >> democracy in iraq do you think we've with made progress there and what went wrong after the invasion of iraq it didn't go the way you thought it would. what was wrong? >> i talk about iraqi case because i lay out several different scenarios of what the circumstances are when the democratic opening comes, right. now the best place is like poland with institutions in place so columbia where you have institutions that were weak but were there.eak but the worst situation is when you've had a personality leader where everything had been at the service that have leader that sm hussein so no institution to think of or we thought

underneath him so the distance between people's desire now that they've overthrown the dictator that we've overthrown dictator, and the institutions will to channel all of those passions there's a great distance and yoi don't have much time. i relate in the book that we made a lot of mistakes. we undervalued the potential for the tribe, the sunni tribe to play an important role. we didn't understand the tribe. when we got back with the surge in 2007, the tribe were a big part of the reason that we were able to defeat al qaeda and iraq. i think we didn't fully understand the implication of the disbanding of the army which wasn't supposed to take place bo the way, and i described that in the book, and so in the war a lot happens but one thing that i would like people to understand about iraq was we did not go to iraq to bring democracy to iraq. that's an urban legend i was in

immediatings it doesn't have to have benefit of being true. we went to iraq because weot thought we have a security problem in a saddam hussein who had a weapon of mass destruction i wouldn't say that to president of the united states use american military force to bring democracy to iraq or afghanista for that matter. but once you've overthrown the dictator you have to have a view about what comes after. and the president and his advisor believe we have to try to give iraqi people a chance to build their democracy. now, a lot of bloodshed, a lot of lives lost, that will never will be able to bring those people back. i will say that as the iraqis now are on the verge of defeating isis, you're beginning to see that the iraqis do have some democratic institutions they have a prime minister who's accountable to them. people protest and not shot in the streets you don't have

masquerade of the kind that saddam hussein put people in. iraq's big challenge is can thec country hold together with the kurds for a long time who haverd wanted to be a independent people but they have some institution that i think can help them. >> now arab spring was supposed to produce democracy throughout syria, and aren't having any democracy any time soon. >> rather with iraqi than syria. bashar al-assad is unfortunately -- it is beginning to be hard to get him out of power because -- the russians who have people on the ground want him in power. even which wily if he's going to go it is going to be russians t make the decision that he goes. the rest of the middle east, i'm not ready to give up on -- the middle east finding its way toward democratic institutionst you know we get very --with impatient with people when they're trying to find their way

to democracy they don't look at it or o look at all of the muslim brotherhood and we tergtw forget as we talk about david our other history of democracy and a pretty long one and tough one. and so i would say --polish e use the polish example and there are entrepreneurs who are people on whom you might build a further democracy.ere are there are several society groups, tunisia is an example of where a national labor union and women civil society groups have actually managed to bring about something is that looks like a democracy so i'm not ready to give up on the middle east yet. >> egypt has there been a movement to more democracy in egypt? >> no, in egypt, the egyptian military rulers look an awful a lot like egyptian rulers have

for a while. et cetera, but underneath again, there are siflt society imrowms that we ought to be supporting, to try to help. you know what happens in the middle east, is that when you have a chance or democratic opening the strongest institutions are often the radical islamist now why is that? it's not an accident. because leaders like mubarak destroyed the foundation of more liberal institutions and parties people like i'm others who might have been a foundation of democracy. but they didn't destroy the radical islamist who organized the radical mosque and radical so best organize od when elections came. we have to help more liberal forces be organize od when opportunities come. two parts on the middle east. israel, there's either one state solution or a two-state solution.

if you have a one-state solution do you think you can really have democracy? >> no. i think for israel to remain a -- democratic jewish state, it has to have a democracy palestinian state i'm a believer in the two-state solution and eventually they're going to have to get there. >> let's talk about the gulf state, the gulf corporation counsel, countries -- you don't think i assume that democracy will break out there or should. >> there's a monarchy, and they have varying degrees of liberalism toward issues like womens rights and varying degrees of liberalism toward the marriage of religion and politics. but some interesting things are happening there. even in a place like saudi arabia, right, saudi arabia hase really basically now a generational shift, and most -- and a majority of the people

studying in university in saudin their great university built by king are women. now we're -- they're going to have anah interesting kind of test here. can you educate women at this level and still tell them they can't drive? is -- >> find out. [laughter] so let's go to the far east for a moment many your book you point out that authoritarian government pos will not perfectly be democracies can have some good democratic features and good pluses for the people and a you site for example singapore. what do you aside mire about singapore? >> singapore first of all very small. right, and what i really say is that when people say it is sometimes better they have two examples. china -- the largest country in the worlu and singapore one of the smalls and singapore was fortunate. a wise man leader that was at a

time when democracy values were not very -- very obvious in most of asia, and he turned out to be a trily wise benign leader. but the problem with that theory is then you better hope that the next one is benign and that his son is benign and that his son after him is benign. because you don't always get lucky. singapore got lucky and we have this tendency to hold democracy to higher starngdz than we do authoritarians. so there are all kinds of reallr bad aleadsers so the idea that they're better because they deliver for their people, the chinese have delivered.some although that particular model is kind of running out of steame now. singapore delivered but there are so many author yarens that didn't deliver that i think we stiesms hold democracies to higher standards. >> now, china, you don't expect that the democracy will break

out there any time soon, right? >> i don't expect they'll break out there but i'll tell you something about china. china is also about to have anni interesting test.onomy gr economy grew and out of o pofort a miracle what they were able to do and with heavy export, lead, economy being the low cost of labor provider in the international system, they did it with a kind of commands economy a lot of state-owned enterprises that model is run out of steam. they can't get growth out of that model any longer. now they're having to free up market forces. when you free up market forces there's a kind of mismatch between those market forces and a top down authoritarian political system. and so the question is, how long is it going to be before youth have a clash of votes so just as an example, china had 186,000 riots over the last couple of years 186,000 reported riots. not because somebody was out protesting for democracy.

but because a pose peasant that they would cease their land they have no courts to go to. so they go riot.ha so even chinese leaders will say now well we need independent courts so that doesn't happen. how long is be it before independent courts become a independent judiciary now you get a difference in institutional landscape in china so i gave a lecture at the university a great university.ec they affectionately call it cross between harvard and stamford and i wanted to give a talk that was not about u.s. china relations i decided to give the same talk i would give to stanford students find your passion. do something hard, et cetera, et cetera. the questions blew me away. the questions were, well i'm an engineer. why do i need to take literature? suppose what do you do if your parents don't like the majors that you chosen?

i thought, these are chinese kids. they're questioning this this way, how long is it before questioning your parents choice of your major -- becomes questioning your government? and so i think there are a lot of trends in china that may ultimately lead to liberalization if not to democracy -- >> but i can't help you ask you about another place i don't expect democracy to break out which is north korea. >> yeah. [laughter] that's a ways away. yeah. >> if you were advising president today, current president of the united states, or any president today, what would you tell him to do about north korea? >> this is the most dangerous situation that we face. when i was secretary we tried to negotiate with kim jong-il who kim jong-un's father to -- denuclearize the country and we made progress but ultimately wouldn't live up to agreement we walked out of the talk.. ever since they've been on a

rapid course of improving their bomb design, harvesting fuel ani increasing their -- the range of their delivery systems. no american president can tolerate a somewhat unhinged innovator korean leader if he's not crazy, he is reckless. this is somebody who reached into malaysia killed a half brother and he's reckless. i don't think any american president can tolerate that leader with the capacity to reach the united states. and what the administration is trying to do and i support what they're trying to do is painting very bleak picture for the chinese. that's the only country with any real leverage on the north koreans. chinese never to use it fully because wishing they would n collapse and have unstable long border and they would have the

gee flow but what had administration is saying to them your choice now is either i something about north korean problem or you do something about the innovator korean problem and hopefully that will get through the chinese because the military solutions here are not very pretty. >> so it's a missile went and came near guam -- would you think we qowld still have to wait for the chinese to do something or we -- >> i think at some point -- the american president and i'm not inside so i don't know what he's being told about -- how long he has. but at some point if you're threatening gum and already pyring missiles over japan, we're getting pretty close toap a -- getting pretty close to president having to make a decision. i will note that when kim jong-un said he was going toll attack guam the chinese must have talked to him because within a few days he came back and said maybe he wouldn't attack guam so i think we do have the chinese attention it is just a question of what are they willing to do? >> now your book covers two parts of the world i'll cover

briefly one is africa and you talk about -- election going on now, let mee ask you about --those south africa. you met with mandela why do you think democracy hangt worked as it was expected. >> mandela was remarkable man i don't think i ever met anybody i was more inspired or found nor impressive. in fact he said to george w. bush why didn't you run for another term? he said i wanted my african brothers to know it was okay to step down from office. and on a continent that had had too many presidents to life this was really an important statement. but it's again a story of institutions. it was a single essentially a single party system under the african national congress. somehow -- mandela's great authority was never transferred into institutions which could then sr. strive survive him and had

considerable trouble since. but the institutions are still there. it's been hard, and united states was lucky that george washington didn't want to be teamed. i don't know how many of you have seen hamilton it is really a great, great show. but it becomes very clear that we got lucky with the particular combination of founding fathers that we have, and many places haven't been that fortunate. >> now you're right about latin america how columbia has made progress there and military hunters of the 60s and 70s are gone. but what happened to venezuela? >> hugo chavez happen whatted to venezuela you can get a reallyne bad leader who doesn't concern doesn't get checked by those around him. with considerable oil wealth l. the oil curse is real.

when i was secretary it empowered people like chavez chough tried to buy elections across latin meshes america ande single-handedly step by step destroyed all of the really important institutions -- the opposition -- he was succeeded by somebody chavez without charm and tingas developed without chavez street smarts and taken the country down. i hope that -- this won by the organization of american sates latin american states is need to be all over maine it is sad to see where they can't find food and medicine. >> we've had an african-american president but never had a female president never had african-american female president. >> right. >> have you ever --never ha [laughter] thought --ent. [applause]

>> well thank you very much, but no. you have to know your dna you have to know your dna and i was on the campaign trail with george w. bush i'll never forget we have a five campaign events at the end of the day he was rearing to go. i just immediated to get back to the hotel. there are people who draw energy from the process. i don't so much. and i've never liked politics dearly i love -- i do love policy. the other thing is, my calling what i do. i love being a professor. i love teaching millennials. they are a challenge. they're wonderful. [laughter] you know, they come to me and they say i want to be a leadser and i say you know that's not a job description and it's not a a destination let's talk about what you're going to learn and know so somebody will follow you, and then my other favorite line, i want my first job to be

meaningful. and i say your first job is nott going to be meaningful it is going to be your first job butst meaningful is somebody will pay you to do it for the first time that's what's meaningful so -- i've got any work cut out for me. >> if you -- don't want to run for office suppose -- some president came along again and said well you did a greato job as secretary of state why don't you do it again? >> never try to go home again. i had an amazing alignment of the stars. i had a president who -- told, tell leaders we group together because we started out when he was just leaving governorship of texas a he trusted me and i admired him it was a time of consequence for the country. i have great admiration for people in public service. i don't think we -- we admire enough people who do public service it is hard. it is hard work, and -- [applause] i just hope --

i try so hard to my not to let them be cynical about public service. served as secretary of state before service and civil service people who work in the state department not to mention -- the more than 30,000 foreigners whos our embassy around the world are most dedicated you'll ever find so honoredded to leave them and i loved being nation's and there was nothing like getting off a plane that said the united states of america, and thinks what can can it i do to represent this great country but i'm done. t >> so when -- when you step down as secretary of state you handed reigns over to another woman hillary clinton what was it like -- one female secretary of state hapgding reigns over to other female with you saying we don't need these other guys anymore? >> so -- madeleine colin -- [inaudible conversations] ed it been 16 years since

there's been a white male secretary of state. and so -- we were saying, you know, i don't know. maybe we're going to have to do affirmative action and see what happens. but no, it was -- it was great, and it's a nice little club secretary of state. the dean of the secretaries of state is george shuttle who is 97 years old. [applause]is 97 and still one of my great mentors. i will tell you a little story i think he'll appreciate it with a birthday for henry who turns 94 and the two of them did 20 minutes walk around the world no notes completely coheernght. i don't know but i'm sure hoping it was something in the water at the state department. so -- amazing people. >> as i remember i heard fromhe that party -- said oh to be 94 again. he said from his point of view

henry was still a promising young man. [laughter] >> as you look back on your career which was extraordinary, what would you say your most proud of having done? >> well, what the caveat that history takes a long time to judge, i think i'm most grateful that we to stood pup or the rigt of people to live in freedom. i know that there were a lot of cynics and criticism and some of it totally justified about the freedom agenda, and declaring that america is one of america most important purposes was to -- work hard so no one would live in tyranny. but i think america is at its -- it's at its best. its highest calling when itgh leads both from power an principle when we stand for the proposition that the rights that we enjoy are indeed universal. and they are universal that --

there are no people for whom they shouldn't secure ised. and so i'm very grateful that we were able to do that. and i think become on some of my travels it was always when it was about people and a couple of things stick out in particular i went to china --ab after the great earthquakeke there, and a little boy couldn't be more than 12 years old said you're lady the united states aren't you? i said yeah, i am.m. [laughter] and just -- with people asked me what was it like to be a woman representing united states in the middle east and second class citizens so one story sticks in my mind i had a difficult meeting with shia conservative who couldn't touch me because i was a woman outside of his family. and at the end of this difficule meeting in iraq he said will you do me a favor so translator he said will you do me a favor. a favor, really -- sure.

he said my 13-year-old granddaughter watches you on television and she loves you ann she and her mother are comes to the states would you meet them? and so on that day, this little 13-year-old girl runs comes in, in a pink shirt that says princess and she walks up to me in perfect english she says i want to be morn foreign minister too and something in that moment because her conservative grandfather beamed when he thought about this little girl. this problem, this progress thae question try to bring through democracy through justice, and equality -- it's a long, long, long road. and people have is traveled that road for a long time. america has traveled it for a very long time and we're still working at it.a so the thing i'm most grateful for is that -- even with our own troubles here in the united states, we sit for the

proposition that every man wants child who lives in freedom. >> i want to highly recommend tr everybody here this book can which i enjoyed reading, democracy, and i -- [applause] i want to thank you for your service to our country program. >> thank you. and -- thank you. thank you. here are some of current best selling nonfiction books according to the conservative book club, topping the list is author and filmmaker with with his critical look at the political left in the big lie. then jd vance recalls his childhood in a rough spell town in ohio in hill billy in third

mark warn against federal government overreach in rediscovering americanism. after that bill o'reilly explores key figures of the civil war in legends and lie. followed by rogge spooks a look into allegations of foreign influence in the 2016 presidential election. by dick morris, and eileen our looked a best selling nonfiction books according to the conservative book club continues with understanding trump by former house speaker newt gingrich are followed by dangerous, by former breitbart news eds tore milo. in 8th don brown recalls final comeback mission of world war ii, in the last fighter pilot. after that, robert o'neal looks back at his 400 mission career as a navy s.e.a.l., which included his involvement in the assignment that took down osama bin laden in the operator. and rap aring up our look at the

best selling nonfiction books according to the conservative book club, is rah are heel no go zones. which suggest the law is spreading to neighborhoods in the u.s. and europe many of these authors have or will be preparing on booktv watch them on our website booktv.org. [applause] so we want to give bernie out here so i'll try to be quick good evening i'm jan and i would like to welcome you here, to the largest event that the bookstore has ever hosted. [cheering] it is, it is very different in size although similar in spirit to the impromptu event question held for senator sanders in february of 2015.