managing partner thank you. [applause] >> welcome everyone. i am the managing partner of a commercial law firm it is an exciting project in her regio region. i have the pleasure and honor to introduce ambassador rice and tom healy. ambassador rice is currently distinguished visiting research fellow at the school of international service at american university. nonresident at the bill for

center for international affairs and harvard kennedy school government. and a contributing writer for the new york times. and her memoir tough love ambassador rice spans her career on the front lines of diplomacy as one of the assistant secretary in the clinton administration and the national security advisor to president barack obama. and us ambassador to the united nations a mother and wife and daughter and to also see baseball and football. [laughter] tom healy is an outstanding

writer leading the brooklyn conference at the brooklyn museum at the backend of miami beach animal spirit and the right hand and knows. put your hands together for tom healy and susan rice. [applause] >> there is a lot of love in this room susan. >> thank you for coming out everyone. [applause] tom, thank you for doing

this. >> thank you for coming to miami they arrived half an hour ago. [laughter] she made an entrance. i would set it up why is a poet introducing a diplomat but that is because we are friends and we have been with our spouses for a long time now. and actually i wanted to start by taking us back almost ten or 11 years ago to something that was red for president obama's inauguration and she writes we encounter each other

with that whisper and that is love. to talk to us about toughness and love. >> it is how my parents raised me my husband and i have tried to raise our kids and that is how i try to serve our country. with someone you love they are not doing what they are supposed to do if you care you will tell them and to bring them to a better place and that has been so valuable to me professionally and personally but the back story with full disclosure i like so

many authors was wrestling with my title exactly what the right thing was and tom and i would have dinner from time to time and we would brainstorm titles and nothing quite fit until one night we are at a dinner party tom and his husband fred were hosting and tough love came right off your list is the perfect and calculation so he deserves credit to make me realize tough love. [applause] and as soon as he said it going back and forth i said that is absolutely it. so thank you, my friend to. >> thank you. i want to start with the whole process of writing.

start by telling everybody about the wooden barrel. >> i'm a national security advisor and un ambassador i haven't spent as much time in the latter parts. and then to put their names on to the president or whoever. but yet going back to my time in high school when my passion was writing poetry. >> so you will be back. >> i wanted the story to be told in my own voice but the process was to go back and excavate emotionally and psychologically my family history my childhood with those happy and painful moments of the childhood.

and all of the factors that went into shaping that my father went back to europe and it served as my nightstand every time i got a piece of paper or a letter or report card something that was significant to me? and i never opened it to look at what was in it. and then when i began to write the book it is the archaeological dig of my life before e-mail.

[laughter] and i had a letter from a grandmother to tell me that she loved me. i had no idea i still have that or if i ever had it frankly. so that was part of the paper trail that was the primary source my parents passed when i was serving in the obama administration. they had huge caches of papers from those depositions that were horrific to go through from photographs and personal letters in all of that i had never had the opportunity to look through so the historian and be that i could draw through with my own personal upbringing. >> it is eloquent so your

parents are not here for this but i know you have a lot of support from your kids and husband and your brother how do you answer quex. >> if they're still talking to me. [laughter] it's very personal in many respects. i found some painful truths about myself and my past as extraordinary human beings with pretty broad detail of what that was like and how that affected me with a custody battle i talk about my kids and their health

challenges and my daughter who experienced hallucinations over a period of months during the sunday show appearances in 2012 after the benghazi attack and that i talked about my son and his health challenges as a child and now his personal political evolution to evolve into a quite conservative republican. [laughter] my daughter is fine. [laughter] [applause] they are actually both wonderful kids with different political perspectives so at the dinner table we try to keep the food from flying. everybody.

so next week will be interesting. [laughter] >> talk about that because clearly it is a lesson for politics because divisions happen with your parents politically dramatic differences with your son and you but yet it is clear in the book wrestling with that to bring you together it goes from your personal life. >> i haven't thought of it quite that way but you are right. the experience of my parents breakup affected me in a lot of different ways and in some ways it made me more resilient to actually make a conscious decision i would not let it

pull me down because i was the little firefighter who would come downstairs in the middle of the night when they were fighting to break it up and even mediate between them to those negotiating skills i didn't know i would need later on but it also gave me a fierce commitment to having a whole family. so fast forward to where we are as parents first of all i was terrified about getting married because i was fearful i would fail as my parents had and that would be a huge disservice to my children we have been married thankfully 27 years. [applause]

and also fiercely determined that despite those policy differences that happen within the family we love each other we are committed to each other and we will not let those differences divide us. and i talk about the personal side of my life in the professional side and how they intersect. is not what you can easily separate. and the work that i have done to bridge those differences to reconcile those negotiations to figure out a path forward as we negotiate the security council it has been a hallmark of my experience. but i do write in the book in the last chapter called bridging the divide, not only

about the personal divide within the family but as a microcosm of what we deal with nationally. along the ideological lines i argue the domestic divisions are our greatest national security vulnerability because it is preventing us from doing the most basic things to remain competitive investing in infrastructure because we can't keep the government ope open. we cannot do the basic things that competitors like china take for granted and we see every day adversaries like russia work through social media to exacerbate the divisions among us depict americans against each other

by literally spitting up extremist views on both sides of every issue whether race or immigration or guns. that that they do every day on social media just read the paper you will see how powerful and cunning that is and how we fall for it. >> you have an op-ed in the times. [laughter] to talk about that you want to ask two things and also more broadly your role with the administration during this time what does it mean to be engaged in opposition quex.

>> i will enter the last part first. but i did not set out to have a role of discourse after leaving the administration. if not such an insane period of time i would've happily faded into the background and wrote my book and all of that but donald trump started it in march 2017. but my parents always told me don't start a fight but don't take the crap that was my father's mantra and then it

becomes a challenge. that what is happening that is so profoundly disturbing we are losing muscle memory for what is normal. it is it normal to have first of all no press conferences from the white house but the president himself just goes out every day on the south lawn and lies. it's not normal for the white house to interfere in the ongoing justice department investigations. remember watergate? are so many aspects of what is happening that i feel something of a responsibility of the national security sphere to remind all of us that what decision-making is supposed to look like and what

those interests are as opposed to personal and political interest guiding us to remind us we have allies we invest in for a reason. that we are clear eyed about our opponents for a reason. >> i want to touch on that but in the book talk about the national security profit and that emphasis is on that process that you bring together officials and principal meetings that you elaborate well but what is clear is the response. talk about the process now.

>> say that again. [laughter] >> but it is a fundamental argument that the seat of the pants that is resistance to the elites and intellectual approach to problems. . . . . >> no, you can't and nor can his particular, you know, no individual alone can fix it and since 1947 when the national security act was passed and

created the national security council where the president's cabinet officials convened to make recommendations to the president and assessing the risks and benefits and reviewing the intelligence available, and that process held through every administration democrat and republicans until now. and it doesn't mean that the process always yields good decisions. you can -- obviously that's not the case, but you can be damn sure without it, you're not going to have good decisions because you will not have considered carefully the benefits and the disadvantages of various courts. you will not have enlisted the expertise and the knowledge and the perspectives of the various experts and the agencies that have, you know, wisdom to bear,

whether you're talking about china or iran, or russia or how to deal with the ebola epidemic. the stories that i tell of challenges we faced in the obama administration, and what's happened now under president trump, particularly, the most dramatically when john bolton was national security advisor, the process was abandoned. there were no longer these regular meetings of the cabinet level principles, much less those below them to feed options. everything broke down and then you have a president who really, to add, you know, insult to injury, can care less what is recommended to him. so in a way, we'd be better off with a functioning process, but in this unique circumstance we have a president who just decided that he alone will fix it or he alone will decide it or he alone will screw it up. and that's how we have such

crazy outcomes as inviting the taliban to camp david on 9/11. or literally being 10 minutes from striking iran. having the war planes in the air and then turning them around. or withdrawing our forces from syria overnight and leaving our kurdish partners completely naked. and then now, literally now, russian forces are occupying our bases. the russian flag is now flying over bases that you paid for as taxpayers. >> and 10,000 isis-- >> prisoners are now not being well-guarded and hundreds have escaped. so, this -- that's how when you have no process and one man

thinks that his rit is all that matters, you get chaos and the op-ed i wrote today very quickly was really on the impeachment inquiry and what have we learned after two weeks, i'd say we've learned four things, one in a nutshell that all the evidence reinforces what was in that perfect phone call transcript, which is that the president extorted from the ukrainian president information or tried to get information about his political rival, joe biden, and withheld military assistance which ukraine desperately needed because it's in a hot war with russia, and the white house visit which the new president of the ukraine needed to reinforce negotiating hands with the russians, for this dirt or alleged dirt that doesn't exist on joe biden. that's clear.

secondly, we learned just how extraordinarily talented and committed and patriotic are the civil and foreign service and uniformed military. [applaus [applause] >> i was so privileged to serve of alongside these men and women for 16 years and i can't tell you the pride that i and all of us feel in them. thirdly, we've learned that the republican party has decided that it is the party of its own political self-interest and no longer the national interest. and that pains me to say. it's not in keeping with their traditions and their principl principles, but they've clearly decided that they're going to ignore the facts in order to, you know, distract and tar those that have brought forth

damaging evidence on the president and then finally, who benefits from all of this? louder. [laughter] >> absolutely. russia. russia. we have sitting members of congress, senators, we now know as of today who have been briefed by the intelligence community that this ukraine manufactured diversionary story that they somehow worked with the democrats in 2016, not the russians or in addition to the russians, it's completely made up and guess who made it up? russia. >> yeah. >> and the senators know that. >> they do. >> members of the house know that and they're still propagating that lie. so that is a big and very

depressing take away. >> so you, in the op-ed you said there are four points, they're not all bad. only one of the four was not bad. that was about the foreign service. >> right. >> and i want to focus on something good with that because i actually worked for susan. i chaired the full rights scholar program and it was part of a diplomacy effort of engaging citizens around the world and sharing notice in the arts and science and things together. so i met many of these same foreign service officers and ambassadors and we -- the obama administration spent a lot of time in ukraine doing public diplomacy and reaching out to the refugees from crimea. there are real stakes to this. but on the positive side with these great foreign service officers, one of the things you write about beautifully in the

book is your effort in this gathering of data and opinions and expertise was there were far too few voices of diversity in the history of the foreign service and at those decision making processes and you came to miami here actually to announce a program about that. could you talk a little about that? >> yes, so in 2016 in the spring, i came to fiu and i shared for the first time publicly the work that we've been doing inside the obama administration aimed at increasing diversity in the national security work force. and not just the foreign service, the civil service, the defense department,the uniformed, intelligence committee, law enforcement because the national security agencies are actually substantially less diverse in terms of race, religion, sexual

orientation, national origin, you name it. every mention of diversity and certainly gender diversity, then is the overall federal service more broadly. and we cared about that not just as a matter of principle or policy preference. we, in the obama administration, and president obama himself, viewed having diverse talent around the national security decision making tables, to be itself a national security imperative. and the reason is, whether you're in government or in the corporate boardroom or in the nonprofit sector, all the studies show that better decisions derive from more diverse decision makers. and the evidence is irrefutable. and when it comes to national security, when you're interacting with peoples and countries and issues that are so complex and involve the

entire world and we have literally the most diverse country on earth. we have people here from every corner of the earth with every perspective and every language and if we're not harnessing that talent, we're dealing with the world's challenges with one hand tied behind our back. and so, we pushed hard to change that, to have real data collected, real metrics about hiring and retention, and to enlist the leadership of the agencies who are extremely willing to participate in this enthusiastic, to join in that effort. and it was a substantial and important initiative which i do write about in the book. i'm not sure it's being sustained today. >> i would say no. [laughter] >> all right, so, i'm getting a signal that i have so many things that i want to ask you, but i'm getting the signal it's time to bring in the audience to ask some things.

but one last thing for me to ask you to talk about is where the hell is british columbia? >> british columbia. the first time i heard of british columbia, it was my first week of my freshman year at stanford university and i was in a dorm with freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors, and the upper classmen had thrown an ice cream social for us freshmen and i saw this really handsome, tall warm-eyed curly haired guy across the room and he essentially came up and started talking to me and he says to me, where are you from? and i said i'm from washington d.c. and i says, so where are you from? and he says british columbia. and i'm thinking, you know, i

know i had a good education, but where the hell is british columbia? i'm not saying this allowed. i'm thinking to myself. okay, deduction, colombia is in south america. [laughter] >> there's british giana, and i say to my now husband, is that in south america? and he looks at me like i'm the biggest idiot he's met at stanford. he says, no, dryly, it's in western canada. and i tell that story on myself. >> you do. >>, but the higher i rose in the diplomatiic ranks, the more mileage ian got out of that story. >>, but i wanted to end my questions on a story of love. let's open it up.

i'm sure there are questions that are mics-- >> oh, i have the questions. >> thank you to everyone who submitted questions. we have time for about three or four. and so over to you, tom. >> okay. what role do you see for yourself in the reconstruction of this country? i find we've been set back 150 years. >>. [laughter] >> well, we all have a role in the reconstruction of this country and it starts -- [applaus [applause] >> it starts at the ballot box. [applaus [applause] >> we have to bring back normal responsible leadership that is governing in the national interest, not in self-interest. and we all can do that and if

we do do that. i will, you know, serve in any capacity that i think i can be helpful in, whether that's in government or outside, i don't know. know. but we're-- the work of restoring our national cohesion and our global leadership is work that's going to be many years to do. and if we aren't able to start a year from now, quite frankly, i'm not sure we'll be able to dig out. so let's get this done, y'all. [applaus [applause] >> here is a question i love. now that he has his twitter feed back, what message do you have for john bolton? >> don't be a chicken sh --

[applaus [applause] >> he knows this is not right. i don't agree with much of anything, i barely know him. but i know enough to know that he knows this is wrong and to the extent he has not been willing to say so and let the people, the career people under him testify under the threat of death and he's not come forward, it's-- >> shameful. >> worse than shameful. what was your toughest choice during the obama administration? >> i mean, by definition the issues that came to my desk and therefore went on to the president's desk were the toughest issues.

the easier ones got resolved at lower levels. i write about a number of issues we wrestled with in the obama administration and how we wrestled with them and i say in the book, the hardest collection or constellation of issues in my judgment and our time revolved around syria. and you know, there were different elements to those questions. should we fight isis? yes, that wasn't a hard one. should we use military force in response to the use of chemical weapons consistent with president obama's so-called red line without congressional authorization? the president decided not. but then negotiated the removal of the bulk of the chemical stock pile and its destruction. i dissented on that and i thought he should go ahead

without congressional authorization and how we deliberated on that and really, the third and the hardest issue which we wrestled with for years and disagreed on quite substantially internally, whether or not the united states ought to intervene in some fashion militarily in the syri syrian war in with assad and topple-- and as painful as regional security responsibility, president obama consistently decided it was not ultimately in our national interest, weighing the totality of the factors to put u.s. forces into a ground war in syria to topple assad because that's what it would have actually taken, and as hard as that choice was, i actually agree with it, even in retrospect.

retrospect. >> can you imagine the possibility of a republic black female president? >> yes. >> yeah, we could get your son up here to-- >> he's not female yet. [laughte [laughter] >> okay. i'm going to be in so much trouble for that. >> yes, you are. but i want to-- >> no, no seriously, condi rice could conceivably run for president. she's apparently thought about it or talked about it. >> you have to tell about your sister condi rice in china. >> she is not my sister. >> no, i know. >> and she's a colleague and someone i've known since i was an undergraduate. >> host: and people used to confuse you, too. >> my mother used to get so

pissed when people would come up and ask if she was candy rice's mother. she could not stand that. [laughter] >> anyway, my first trip to china as national security advisor, when i went solo without president obama, i went actually to meet with my chinese counterparts and actually it was president xi jinping to prepare for a summit meeting between president obama and president xi and i had all of these big long meetings and formal stuff and television cameras for cctv and on the nightly news they report that national security advisor susan rice met with president xi today in the great hall of the people and the photograph up there is condi's picture. [laughter] >> and i was like, all right. they think we all look alike.

in china. >> this is not happening. [laughte [laughter] >> so, to that story, there are so many beautiful things in this book, but there's one passage that i was really shocked and hurt by that you make into a story of extraordinary healing and this is with your high school basketball coach. so can you talk about that experience and hearing from her 30 years later? >> i had an extraordinarily wonderful young high school basketball coach who-- >> and what's your nickname? >> spo. >> for sport. >> in the book there's a picture of me playing

basketball in high school. don't be confused, it looks like i know what i'm doing, like i've got real hops in the jump shot. not so much, actually, but my coach was tremendous and she was probably no older than 21 is or 22. she came from a very large working class background in new jersey. she was coaching kids at an elite girls school in washington d.c. you know, many of these kids really never had their asses kicked before and she was one of these hard core, no-kidding coaches back in the early days of women's sports who really pushed us, and i loved her and she was wonderful. and i write about in the book how one day on those sidelines, the team is sort of gathering and out of the blue, she looks at me and just says, n-calls me

n--- and i looked at her and said f-you and that's it, and we moved on. i have never cursed out a teacher before or since. and she never said-- it wasn't delivered with malice, it was clearly something that she had heard growing up, and she just said it and as soon as she said it, she knew how wrong it was because i made clear how wrong it was, and that was the end of it. and we continued to have a wonderful relationship and i think the world of her, but it was a kind of one of those jarring moments where you realize that we come from, all of us from different perspectives and what you may not mean to be hurtful because she wasn't real at all--

really at all to hurt me. s she was young and went on to different coaching experiences and i lost contact with her sadly because in the early years after leaving, she would write me letters from time to time and very encouraginencoura within the few months after benghazi when i was still being almost daily publicly pilloreyed, a wonderful letter came from this coach, i'm sorry if i ever hurt you, i didn't mean to. i so admire you and respect you and always keep you in my prayers. that letter means the world to me, i've kept it, reestablished contact with her and of the many many people that i look to in my upbringing who really

were influential in a positive way, she's very near the top of the list. she kicked my ass when i needed to be kicked and taught me to be a competitor and taught me to throw an elbow when i had to and play good defense. >> and i hope that letter of healing went into the barrel. >> absolutely, absolutely. >> well, thank you, susan. >> thank you all. [applause] >> thank you. you know -- [inaudible i menti

couple of call-ins, joining us now is notre dame professor patrick denean. here is his book, "why liberalism failed." professor, first of all, if you would, define liberal democracy for us in your view. >> sure. i'm sure many of your listeners when they hear the word lib early or liberalism, they will think of the left side of the political spectrum what we think of progressive. i mean a political operating system of the west, of the united states, britain, europe, the political philosophy that was begun about 500 years ago that gave rise to our