No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

21 SECRETARY OF STATE

I MUST ADMIT that the prospect of becoming secretary of state stirred mixed emotions in me. Obviously, I was honored that the President wanted me to become his chief diplomat. The historic significance of becoming Thomas Jefferson’s sixty-fifth successor wasn’t lost on me.

After four years as national security advisor, I was ready to be a line officer with the authority that only Cabinet secretaries have. I was tired of coordinating others and tired of the mismatch between authority and responsibility that is an everyday challenge for the NSA. My good friend and mentor George Shultz had predicted this when I left for Washington. “One day you’re going to want to run your own shop,” he said. He was absolutely right.

I also thought that I could help the President with the State Department and help the department with the President. The President had been burned by leaks of the kind Dean Acheson had described as “What the President meant to say.” That had led to some lingering distrust. And I felt that many people in the Foreign Service didn’t really understand or appreciate the strengths of the President. Given my strong ties to him, I felt that I could bridge the distance between Foggy Bottom and the White House.

I knew too that there was a lot of work to do going forward to strengthen diplomacy as a matter of both reality and perception in the Bush administration’s policies. We had of necessity taken a lot of difficult and controversial steps after 9/11, and many people, particularly in Europe, had hoped that the tough-talking Texan would be sent home. But he would be President for four more years.

The eminent Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis had come to visit shortly before the election and over lunch said something that resonated with me. “Never forget how really dependent the world is on America. And they know it. After all the upheaval of the last few years, this is a time for reassurance,” he counseled. A colleague from France had put it a different way: “After 9/11 we knew that you would do what you needed and wanted to do. We just hoped to know your intentions even if we couldn’t always influence them.” I thought that an overstatement, but, thinking back on the reaction to the National Security Strategy, it may well have been indicative of how others felt. Then one morning I saw the postelection cover of The Economist. “Now, Unite Us,” it read. I kept that issue in my upper desk drawer at the State Department for the four years of my term.

As I contemplated the job ahead, I also had to acknowledge that I was tired—bone tired. I knew that the secretary of state would need to travel and travel and travel. In fact, it’s much easier as secretary of state to drive the agenda when you’re abroad. When you are in Washington, you’re competing with the latest headline; when you’re overseas, you have a press corps eager to report on your every meeting. Usually you have a time change working in your favor so that you’re not making news in the middle of the cycle, and you have compelling visuals that help emphasize policies. Being on the road is a good thing for the secretary of state. But I understood why Colin had been concerned about extensive time abroad: he didn’t trust either the White House or the Pentagon and always feared that something was happening behind his back when he was on the road. Frankly, I don’t think he needed to worry so much about it, but he did. Yet with all the technological possibilities of phone and video, diplomacy is best practiced in person. I knew that, and it ran counter to my own preference for the normalcy (such as it was) of being at home. I like my own bed and my routine.

But most of all I wondered what moving down to C Street would do to my relationship with the President. As national security advisor I had seen him every day, often five or six times a day. I was well aware of the importance of keeping the connection to the Oval Office and concerned that, despite our best efforts, it would be hard to do. Steve Hadley would become national security advisor, and that was comforting because I trusted him to let me know—bluntly—if any distance was emerging between the President and me. I never wanted to leave the President wondering what I was thinking and doing.

It was in that frame of mind that I walked the short distance from my cabin to the President’s office in Laurel Lodge at Camp David on the Friday morning after the election. I entered the room and looked around at the photographs on the wall. There, prominently displayed, was a picture of the two of us in the Oval Office a few days after his inauguration. The President was on the phone, and I was standing at his desk, looking down pensively. Eric Draper, the President’s photographer, took the shot in silhouette, with the morning sun shining through the windows behind us. I thought of all we’d been through in the last four years.

The President didn’t waste time with chitchat. He simply said, “I want you to be secretary of state.” I responded by saying how honored I was but that there were a few things we needed to talk about. I said that I hoped he wouldn’t take what I was going to say as criticism of the last four years. After all, I’d been deeply involved in the decisions. But recounting Gaddis’s admonition, I noted that we had repair work to do with the allies and that we’d need to reaffirm the primacy of diplomacy in our foreign policy. That would also mean reaffirming the primacy of the secretary of state as the principal agent of the development and execution of that policy. We talked about how to make it work, particularly the need to do what we’d done for more than four years: never let distance develop between us that others, foreign or domestic, could exploit. “How am I going to know what you’re thinking if I don’t see you every day?” I asked.

He replied that we could talk anytime. “You know how it is in the White House,” he said. “I’ll get busy and forget to call, so you have to call me.”

“Okay,” I replied, “you’ll hear from me every day,” only partially in jest.

I’d later tell my colleague Henry Paulson, when he became treasury secretary, to spend time alone with the President. Cabinet secretaries are busy people with big organizations to run and many, many demands on their time. But you have only one boss: the President. You have to find the time to air your differences privately and early. Then, having established the parameters, the secretary can execute policy freely on behalf of the government. I didn’t want to be in the position of having to phone home every time I needed to make a tough call on behalf of the United States. The President had to trust me to know when I needed guidance and when I didn’t. Before my confirmation, I gave the President a copy of a biography of Dean Acheson and of Acheson’s own memoir, Present at the Creation. Acheson had succeeded in staying close to President Truman and thus retaining authority and credibility as the voice of U.S. foreign policy. Together, they had led the United States and the world through turbulent times.

I then turned to one substantive issue that was on my mind. “Mr. President,” I said, “we need to get an agreement and establish a Palestinian state.” He said that he wanted to do so but asked if I thought it could be done. We were both anxious to take advantage of the impending withdrawal of the Israelis from Gaza and the upcoming election of a new Palestinian president, who was predicted to be Mahmoud Abbas, someone we both liked. “We’ll get it done,” he said after a little more discussion. “What about my offer?”

I said that I needed a little time to digest our conversation and asked if we could talk the next morning. We didn’t wait until the next day. When we talked again after dinner, I said yes, I would be honored to become the sixty-sixth secretary of state.

I TURNED FIFTY on November 14 and had invited a number of family and friends to Washington to celebrate the occasion with me. My cousin Lativia and her husband, Will, my Aunt Gee, Uncle Alto and his wife, Connie, my stepmother, Clara, and my stepbrother, Greg, all made the trip from as far away as California to mark the big “5–0” with me.

We’d gone to a fancy dinner at a downtown restaurant, Galileo, on Friday. So I decided to do something low-key on Saturday night—or at least I thought so. I suggested dinner at a favorite casual restaurant, Café Deluxe, on Wisconsin Avenue. I just wanted downtime with my family—nothing formal.

As the Secret Service SUV barreled down Massachusetts Avenue toward the restaurant, I sat back and closed my eyes, having decided not to think at all for the rest of the night. Only my Aunt Gee knew that the President had asked me to be secretary of state. My family never talked to the press and I trusted them, but it just seemed safer to wait a while before telling too many people.

Suddenly, the car turned in to the British Embassy instead of proceeding up Massachusetts Avenue. This is strange, I thought. Then it dawned on me that maybe my friends the Mannings were inviting me for a surprise champagne toast before dinner. When we pulled up to the entry, David came out, and he was wearing a tuxedo. “Oh, Catherine and David must have a dinner afterwards,” I thought.

David escorted me from the car into the foyer. There I suddenly saw a hundred of my dearest friends and family dressed in evening gowns and tuxedos. It’s funny what your eye catches when you’re totally surprised. I focused immediately on the guests who’d come from farthest away: Carmen and Gail Policy, Mariann and Dan Begovich, Susan and Michael Dorsey, Fred Weldy, Randy Bean, and others from California. People from all phases of my life were there, arrayed beautifully along the two spiral staircases of the ambassador’s residence.

I was just thrilled, and then I thought, My God, am I underdressed!, standing there in my black slacks, turtleneck sweater, and red jacket. Fortunately, the Mannings, with the surreptitious help of a member of my staff, Sarah Lenti, had taken care of that too. I was whisked upstairs, where my hairdresser, Bruce Johnson, was waiting for me, along with a stunning, red satin gown by my friend Oscar de la Renta, who’d designed it just for me. Within about an hour I emerged like Cinderella and celebrated through the night. Van Cliburn played the national anthem and “Happy Birthday,” and the President gave the toast. We danced late into the evening. It was another of those fairy-tale-like moments.

At one point, I looked across the room at Colin and wondered what he was thinking. With the exception of the President, the First Lady, Andy Card, and Aunt Gee, he was the only other person who knew that I was going to become secretary of state. We didn’t mention it to each other that night. He’d done a remarkable job under the circumstances. None of us could have known in 2001 how much our service would be shaped by war and conflict. The Pentagon commands the spotlight in wartime. I couldn’t help but wonder how Colin’s tenure might have been different in less tumultuous times.

THREE DAYS LATER, the President and I stood in the Oval for a few minutes alone before heading into the Roosevelt Room for the announcement. What an unlikely pair: a scion of a Republican political dynasty—albeit one with a Texas accent—and a middle-class black daughter of the South. We’d been through a lot since that meeting in Kennebunkport. Cataclysmic events and our response to them had shaped his presidency thus far. Now, with the dust settling, we had a chance to build a firm foundation for U.S. foreign policy in the changed circumstances of the post-9/11 world.

I listened to the President’s remarks as he introduced me to the press as his nominee for secretary of state. But frankly, I didn’t want to listen too closely and become observably emotional. After he finished, I said a few words—very few—and returned to the Oval with him. “Go get ’em,” he said. I laughed and said, “Yes, sir!” and left for Capitol Hill to begin the process known colloquially as confirmation. It’s more correctly called “the consent of the Senate to the President’s nomination.” I liked the sound of that and the knowledge that it had been done only sixty-five times before in our nation’s history.

WITH THE President’s agreement, Steve Hadley and I decided that Steve would, in effect, begin to act as national security advisor as of December 1. That would give me time to prepare for confirmation hearings and plan the transition at State. Because Steve and I had worked so closely together—he’d been far more than a deputy, and the President trusted him completely—the handoff would be seamless.

It would also give me time to deal with a nettlesome and long-standing health problem. I’d been cursed with uterine fibroids for more than twenty years. There was a new, minimally invasive procedure that my physician, Sharon Malone, recommended I have. After meeting with Dr. James Spies at Georgetown University Hospital, I decided that I should have the minor surgery.

The President was traveling to Chile for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting, and we’d decided that Steve would accompany him. I could have used the transition as an excuse for skipping the trip, but with all the attention generated by my appointment as secretary of state, it was a certainty that the press would learn of my overnight hospitalization.

I decided to release a statement about my medical condition. As Sean McCormick put it, it was better to make the announcement myself rather than allow speculation that I was dying of something horrible. Nonetheless, I was a bit surprised by the coverage the announcement received, including a long segment by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN about the nature of uterine fibroids, complete with illustrations, and the details of the treatment that I would undergo. Obviously nothing was ever going to be truly “personal” again. I told myself that perhaps I was helping millions of women suffering from the same condition. But to be honest, I really resented the intrusion.

Fortunately, everything went smoothly with the procedure, and I convalesced at home over Thanksgiving weekend. The next week I continued my visits to Capitol Hill with Deb Fiddelke, the White House legislative staffer who was responsible for guiding my confirmation through the Senate. Deb was thorough and insightful and made the process far less stressful than it might otherwise have been. Her only fault was her undying love of the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

The meetings with senators were actually interesting and revealing. Obviously, one is trying not to make a mistake that might sink confirmation, but it was useful to hear what was on their minds. As staff to the President I’d had some contact with Congress, briefing selected senators in the run-up to the Iraq war and forwarding the case for funding Iraqi reconstruction. And I occasionally briefed on other issues of importance to the President, such as the Middle East. But the interaction with Congress is not a formal part of the NSA’s job. As a constitutional officer, on the other hand, the secretary of state has obligations to the institution established in Article 1 of the Constitution. Members of Congress will remind you from time to time that the founding fathers established the legislative branch first. In line with that, I resolved to always take my responsibilities to the House and Senate very seriously indeed.

The State Department’s portfolio was breathtakingly broad. Individual senators tended to pursue their state’s parochial issues, such as this or that water treaty, an environmental problem with our neighbors to the north or south, or agricultural and trade issues with friends and foes alike. But there are also the myriad administrative concerns related to embassy management—everything from a multimillion-dollar construction program to salary competition with the private sector for the best local staff. The Foreign Service is unionized, and the Hill maintains an interest in work rules and benefits for even the most senior officers. There was a lot to learn before taking the reins at State. I felt grateful for having been provost of Stanford University, where I had been, in effect, the chief operating officer and had come to love budgets and day-to-day management. I’m not kidding—I loved it.

During my meetings on Capitol Hill, I came to appreciate most those senators who brought thoroughness and expertise to foreign policy issues. I’d expected this of such people as Richard Lugar, John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and Joe Biden. But I learned quickly that James Webb of Virginia knew Southeast Asia in great depth, and I was impressed with Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold, who possessed knowledge of and concern for Africa. George Voinovich of Ohio was deeply involved in Eastern Europe, and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski was the reason that I became conversant on Arctic affairs.

As I approached my hearings, I knew that there were some senators who, given the war in Iraq, would never support my confirmation. The fact that we had acknowledged on January 12, 2005, that we had called off the search for weapons of mass destruction served to heighten criticism of the administration in advance of my hearings. But I was in a good position overall, and there was little doubt that, barring a big mistake on my part, I’d be confirmed.

My hearings were set for January 18. I’d enjoyed the six weeks of the transition. Every day I’d go to the department for briefings that covered practically every office within it. I studied every evening so that I’d know the issues in detail. I’m an academic, and I don’t like to “float” at thirty-thousand feet. I’m most comfortable when I can engage an issue in far greater depth than the “talking points” prepared by the staff.

On the day of the hearings, I awoke and went through my usual routine. Running on the elliptical trainer, I didn’t review the issues. Few people doubted that I knew the substance of the job, but there was a pervasive concern that I’d just be the White House proconsul at the Department of State. The question on the table was what kind of secretary of state would I be. As the Christian Science Monitor put it, “When Condoleezza Rice goes to the Senate next week … she will appear before a row of senators as something of an enigma … a national security advisor who oversaw a steady shift of authority over foreign policy toward the Pentagon and the vice-president’s office, and is now taking over the agency she helped eclipse.” The assessment was lacking in nuance, but frankly, it was emblematic of what people were thinking.

I thought the critique unfair. We’d been at war, and the Pentagon carries a disproportionate share of the responsibility in combat. Nonetheless, I had to deal with the perception. There was even a suggestion in the press that I really wanted to be secretary of defense. The President and I had talked about my suitability for the job in passing, sometime around the Abu Ghraib incident, when Don had offered his resignation, and briefly again before the election. The idea of being the first woman to run the Pentagon did appeal to me at some level.

But I’d known for a long time that the President wanted me at State. As the impact of the wars on our alliances and our standing in the world was being felt, State was where I thought I could do the most good. I decided to use a phrase in the hearings that would make clear where I stood and to repeat it as often as possible. “The time for diplomacy is now” was meant to convey that I intended to rebalance U.S. foreign policy toward diplomacy—and its execution toward the Department of State. I also acknowledged the charge of unilateralism. “Our interaction with the rest of the world must be a conversation, not a monologue,” I said. “Alliances and multilateral institutions can multiply the strength of freedom-loving nations. If I’m confirmed, that core conviction will guide my actions.” The message was meant for our friends in the world and my colleagues in the administration.

The hearings began with Dianne Feinstein, the democratic senator from California, presenting me to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This is a nice tradition by which the nominee is introduced by a senator from his or her home state. I’d known Dianne and her husband, Richard Blum, for many years. Her strength was on full display that terrible day when Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were murdered in San Francisco. She was then a young, untested local politician who demonstrated remarkable fortitude and pulled the wounded city through its grief. Though she was of the other party, I respected Dianne for her tenacity, knowledge of foreign affairs, and good humor, and I was honored to have her present me to the Senate.

My relationship with the other senator from California, Barbara Boxer, was, to put it mildly, less cordial. That became very clear during the hearings when she suggested that I had been dishonest in presenting the intelligence in advance of the Iraq war. She should have been more careful with her talking points before the hearings, because I’d been tipped off by the press that she was going to accuse me of allowing the Iraq mission to overwhelm my respect for the truth. I fired back that I’d never lost respect for the truth in the service of anything. It wasn’t the last time that we’d have angry exchanges when I testified before the committee. Barbara Boxer and I had a history. She knew that I’d worked for every California Republican who’d tried to defeat her. And perhaps she bristled at speculation that I’d one day take her on for that seat. She needn’t have worried, but it was never just a policy difference for Senator Boxer; she always managed to descend into a personal assault.

About halfway through the first day, the wiry junior senator from Illinois took the floor. His questions were sharp but not rude, and he actually seemed interested in my answers. We volleyed back and forth a few times, and I was really impressed. That was my first encounter with then Senator Barack Obama. He’d vote for my confirmation despite objections from some in his camp, and we would become friendly. We didn’t always agree, but I always knew that our exchanges would be without personal animosity or rancor.

A low point of the hearing came late on the first day. Almost everyone had gone home—the press, the senators, most of the staff. The hearing room was noticeably darker without the klieg lights of the networks that had illuminated it earlier in the day. Only the chair, the obviously tired Senator Lugar, Senator George Voinovich of Ohio, and Senator Kerry remained. When asked whether he had further questions, Voinovich demurred, saying that he was there only to keep the chairman company. He left shortly after yielding his time to Senator Kerry.

Perhaps smarting from his defeat in the election two months before, the senator from Massachusetts launched on a long rhetorical journey through most of the points he’d made in the campaign. After having testified for nearly nine hours, I was exhausted and ready to go home, but I kept telling myself that this was really about him, not about me. It helped that I held then and hold now a great deal of respect for John Kerry’s knowledge of the issues. So I tried to answer the questions without exhibiting any annoyance. Finally, well after 7:30 P.M., the hearings adjourned. Senator Lugar said that a few other senators wished to ask questions and asked if I could return the next day. I did, and the hearings wrapped up without incident. The committee went into a “business session” and voted 16 to 2 to recommend my confirmation to the full Senate. I was well on my way to becoming secretary of state.

The White House had hoped to have a vote in the full Senate immediately after the President took the oath of office on January 20. But some legislators, led by Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, insisted on a floor debate. I was annoyed because the debate would have no real effect; the whole purpose was to provide time for further indictment of the Bush foreign policy.

Thus I attended the inauguration not as the secretary of state but as the secretary of state–designate. At lunch in the Capitol Rotunda, Majority Leader Senator Bill Frist picked up my name card, scratched out “national security advisor,” and wrote in “secretary of state,” joking that it was clearly his fault that I wasn’t yet confirmed. Colin would continue as secretary for a few more days.

My good friend Gene Washington accompanied me to the inaugural balls that night. The fact is that those events are more like stand-up cocktail parties than dances. The President and First Lady make an appearance at each and then depart for the next.

Back in 2001, I’d been very excited about the inauguration and the evening’s festivities. I’d bought a new dress and invited scores of friends and family to attend. This time I wanted to skip the whole evening. I dutifully went to three events (wearing the Oscar de la Renta from my birthday party) where I never got past the crunch of well-wishers at the front door. I asked Gene if he minded skipping the rest of the parties. He and I went back to my apartment and, dressed in our inaugural finery, ate leftover ham sandwiches. I went to bed early and slept like a very tired baby.

Six days later, on January 26, the Senate voted 85 to 13 to confirm me. At about seven o’clock, Andy Card administered the oath of office at the White House, and I became the sixty-sixth secretary of state. A few minutes later, I walked out of the West Wing basement door and into a vehicle protected by Diplomatic Security. My time as national security advisor was over.

Two days later there would be a formal swearing-in ceremony in the Benjamin Franklin room of the Department of State. The elaborate rooms on the eighth floor of the State Department look as if they belong in European palaces, not in the 1950s building at Foggy Bottom. But they are the United States’ attempt to capture the seriousness and the grandeur of diplomacy. Those rooms, named for the founding fathers, house remarkable artifacts of our nation’s history, including Thomas Jefferson’s desk. The Franklin room is my favorite, decorated in warm rose and beige colors and dominated by an enormous portrait of our most beloved founding father hanging above the fireplace. Franklin was the United States’ first diplomat, having been dispatched to Paris in December 1776.

With the President and my Aunts Gee and Mattie and Uncle Alto looking on, my friend and Watergate neighbor Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg read the oath of office. As I repeated it, I took in every word: “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” Then I thanked all those who’d helped me, especially the generations of Rays and Rices who’d always thought such a day possible. I glanced up at the portrait of Franklin. What would he have thought of this great-granddaughter of slaves and child of Jim Crow Birmingham pledging to defend the Constitution of the United States, which had infamously counted her ancestors “three-fifths” of a man? Somehow, I wanted to believe, Franklin would have liked history’s turn toward justice and taken my appointment in stride.

That night my closest friends; Chip Blacker, who had come from Stanford; Mary Bush; the Hadleys; my family; and I had dinner at the restaurant in the Watergate Hotel. I didn’t want to do anything elaborate because I was ready to stop celebrating my appointment and get on with doing the job. But it was quite a moment to be with this collection of extraordinary ordinary people who had been so important throughout my life. We talked a lot about my parents, John and Angelena, who I was sure were there in spirit, looking over the whole incredible scene and happy about it, if not surprised. Before going to sleep I prayed that I’d never take for granted the charge that I’d been given or the sacrifices of those who’d made it possible.

THE NEXT DAY I stood on the steps of the lobby of the State Department, employees surrounding me on all sides. It wasn’t the most elegant of settings in which to introduce myself—and, of course, the microphone gave off one of those annoying feedback sounds as it was passed to me—but my purpose in calling everyone together was to let them know that I expected a lot from them and that in return they could expect an energetic voice in foreign affairs.

I deliberately drew an analogy to the period immediately after World War II, when heavyweights in the department from George Marshall to Dean Acheson to Paul Nitze had shaped the future and laid a foundation for victory in the Cold War forty years later. I wanted to evoke a narrative of a revered time in the department’s history—a time of great consequence and success in U.S. foreign policy.

My biggest challenge in taking the reins at State was to ensure the active loyalty of the Foreign Service. I use the modifier “active” because I don’t mean to suggest that people were disloyal. But they did sometimes appear less than enthusiastic about the President’s policies, and, at worst, some (but not all) kept a kind of psychic distance from the more controversial decisions that had been made. In blunt terms, Iraq had to be the Department of State’s war too—not Bush’s war, not the Pentagon’s, but America’s war. And the President’s vision for a democratic Middle East had to be more than a slogan that diplomats repeated without believing it to be possible.

Shortly after my appointment I had assembled a small team of trusted aides to help plan the transition and accompany me to State. They were, for the most part, people whom I’d come to rely on at the White House. I asked John Bellinger to become my legal advisor. The development of the legal framework in the war on terror—issues such as the role of the Geneva Conventions, interrogations, and Guantánamo—had left a bitter taste with some of our allies and with many in the legal community at home. John would be indefatigable in addressing those concerns in a serious manner. He would be neither a constant skeptic nor an unthinking proponent of the international community’s supposed code of conduct. That would be good for us abroad and critical in the domestic debates at home.

Jim Wilkinson would join me as senior advisor. A whirling dervish with an idea a minute, Jim was unlike anyone else I’d ever known. He was a Texan who had come from humble circumstances but was extremely well read and had a wonderful “eye” for public relations and image. Jim would help me send the right messages to the American people and to the world about what we were trying to do and how we would do it. Later, Colby Cooper would also join me from the White House to help Jim in developing and executing the public side of my diplomacy.

Brian Gunderson would become my chief of staff, but ironically, we first met when I interviewed him for the position. I say “ironically” because the chief of staff is usually the closest person to a principal, and Brian would become an extremely close confidant. He’d worked for Bob Zoellick in that position, and it was Bob who had recommended him. Brian was a taciturn Minnesotan who, like Jim, had worked for Congressman Richard Armey and possessed impeccable conservative credentials. He was thorough, calm, and had terrific political instincts. I wanted a chief of staff who would never think of himself as a “gatekeeper” but rather as facilitating contact to me. That is a hard balance to maintain, because not everyone should be able to get to the secretary. Yet some of my predecessors had become known for their “palace guard.” The organization needed to be as flat as possible. Ruth Elliott had worked for me in the Provost’s office when she was a freshman at Stanford and had come to the White House with me in 2001. She became Brian’s deputy, bringing a touch to the job that only someone who has known you for so long can.

Sean McCormack would join me at State as assistant secretary for public affairs and spokesman, the positions he’d held at the NSC. Sean was a Foreign Service officer whose expertise was in economics, not media relations. He’d served in several complex posts abroad, including Algeria and Turkey. Moreover, he had a strong interest in the emerging phenomenon of social media and wanted to modernize the department’s media and public relations operations. But mostly I trusted Sean to be on the front lines with the press every day. He’d been with me through the 9/11 Commission, “the sixteen words,” and countless other press crises, and I’d never once seen him with his hair on fire.

I rounded out my inner circle with two appointments meant to ensure that I’d be challenged intellectually—in the academic sense of the word. Phil Zelikow would become my counselor. The role of counselor varies greatly in accordance with the secretary’s wishes. Colin didn’t even have one. But the role has often been one of in-house critic, a kind of licensed kibitzer to push the thinking of the department beyond established bureaucratic boundaries. My long association with Philip, dating back to the first Bush administration, and our coauthorship of a book on German unification had taught me how to take advantage of Philip’s talents. He wouldn’t be shy in debating me, and he’d be a provocative and creative colleague. Phil’s elbows are a bit sharp and he doesn’t lack self-confidence, but he is very smart and he would challenge our assumptions going forward.

Steve Krasner, my longtime colleague and an eminent political scientist from Stanford, would become the director of policy planning. Like counselor, this position had waxed and waned in importance depending on the secretary’s vision for it. Paul Nitze had written NSC-68 while holding the position and was generally viewed as its most influential occupant. At its best, the small policy-planning staff would push the envelope and prevent “group think” within the department. Many thought of it as a long-range planning apparatus looking years out into the future. I wanted someone who’d bring rigor and new ideas to the current problems we were facing. In the midst of two wars and the fight against terrorism, I didn’t have time for speculation about 2020.

When he came to the State Department, Steve brought together a terrific staff of “young guns” to push new ideas. One of his most inspired appointments came in 2006, when he hired the twenty-something Jared Cohen, who’d been a student at Stanford and had taken a four-month sojourn on his own in Iran. He would use his position at Policy Planning to begin to integrate social media into our diplomatic tool kit. That would pay off handsomely some years later, when Twitter and Facebook became accelerants of democratic change in the Middle East.

When it came to the most senior line positions, I wanted to select people whose appointment would send a message of competence, independence, and bureaucratic weight. In that regard, the deputy secretary of state had to be someone with unquestioned foreign policy credentials and recognized intelligence. At times, the person has also functioned as a kind of chief operating officer for the department, running the day-to-day management of the huge organization. With 57,000 employees worldwide located in some 180 countries over twelve time zones, that is no small task. But beyond that critical function, the department needed someone who could carry weight in the foreign policy debates in Washington and abroad and who could powerfully represent the United States diplomatically. I was more than happy to pick up some of the day-to-day tasks of managing the department since, frankly, I liked “making the trains run on time.”

Bob Zoellick, who’d been the U.S. trade representative (USTR), was my first choice for the job. He’d bring not only brilliance and intellect to our work but deep expertise in matters of economics and trade. As USTR Zoellick had held Cabinet rank and had some understandable qualms about becoming a “number two.” The President helped me assure Bob that he would be my alter ego and that he could make a unique contribution as the deputy secretary.

The President very much liked the idea of Zoellick, whom he knew and trusted, occupying this position. Some in the administration had raised John Bolton’s name, but I did not want to repeat Colin Powell’s experience. I wasn’t sure that I could fully trust John to follow my lead at State, and I didn’t want a clash later on should John be—or appear to be—insubordinate. Nonetheless, it seemed to me that he’d be a fine ambassador to the United Nations, where his skepticism about the organization was an asset with conservatives and, from my point of view, a corrective to the excessive multilateralism of our diplomats in New York.

I asked our ambassador to NATO, Nicholas Burns, to become under secretary of state for political affairs, the third-ranking position in the department and one traditionally held by a senior Foreign Service officer rather than a political appointee. Nick and I had known each other from the administration of George H. W. Bush, when he had served first as special assistant to Zoellick at the State Department and then as my deputy for Soviet affairs at the NSC. He hadn’t been an expert on the Soviet Union when I asked him to join me at the White House in 1990, but he was one of the brightest young people in the Foreign Service at the time. His career after that had risen meteorically. He’d served as the spokesman for Clinton-appointee Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, causing raised eyebrows among some of the political folk when he was nominated by President Bush to be NATO ambassador in 2001. But by the time he became “P,” as it is called, Nick had more than demonstrated his commitment to the President’s agenda. A polished, creative diplomat, Nick would become my “go-to guy” for the most difficult negotiating assignments.

The appointment of the under secretary for public diplomacy was closely watched as well, because there was strong sentiment in the foreign policy community and on the Hill that the United States was terrible at projecting its values and a positive image abroad. That stemmed in part from a somewhat rosy view of U.S. public diplomacy in the past. Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and Voice of America had been unqualified successes during the Cold War. The populations of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union had relied on them to break through the propaganda and lies of the governments that subjugated them.

The circumstances of the post–Cold War world were fundamentally different, though. Not only had media changed, replacing radio waves with satellite TV and the Internet, but the target of America’s outreach, the Muslim world, possessed little of the affection for the United States that was so deeply held by the anti-Communist populations of the Soviet bloc. The question “Why do they hate us?” was a complex one that tended to equate dislike of U.S. policies with hatred of the United States. A degree from an American university or college was the most revered credential in the world. And people lined up for blocks to get an entry visa to the United States. The problem was, our policies had rarely been popular with them, long before George W. Bush came to office. For many in the Arab world, the United States was associated with authoritarian regimes—not freedom, as in Eastern Europe. Their suspicions about the messenger overwhelmed the message.

I therefore had less ambitious goals for public diplomacy than some others in the foreign policy establishment had. It would be a huge task just to counter the propaganda of Arab satellite TV on a twenty-four-hour news cycle, to give more people—particularly young people—access to the United States and Americans, and to empower our diplomats abroad to engage the peoples of the places they served. The State Department’s public diplomacy apparatus needed reform to make it more nimble and central to the department’s mission abroad; public diplomacy shouldn’t be an afterthought.

Reflecting on it, I realized there was only one choice for that job with outsized public expectations: my friend from the White House Karen Hughes. Karen was the best and most creative communicator I’d met; she was close to the President; and, though she wasn’t a foreign policy expert, she’d been centrally involved in the execution of our policies from the beginning. After a lot of arm-twisting by everyone I could enlist, including the President, Karen agreed to take the job. In my last year, this critical role would be filled by Jim Glassman, who, after a distinguished career in journalism, editing, and publishing, had most recently served as the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs would be the most important group within Karen’s organization. ECA, as it was called, oversaw most of the exchanges with foreign students and civil society activists. As a result it would be key in our efforts of outreach to the Muslim world and the Freedom Agenda. The Bureau had carried out its functions expertly but not very creatively. That had been the case since I had been an intern there in 1977. I asked a dynamo, Dina Powell, who had directed the Presidential Personnel Office in the White House, to become the ECA assistant secretary. An Egyptian American, fluent in Arabic and passionate about America’s promise, Dina would bring energy and new ideas to the bureau. She would launch several effective initiatives, including public-private partnerships and a program near to my own heart that made sports ambassadors of such athletes as the figure skater Michelle Kwan and baseball greats Cal Ripken Jr. and Ken Griffey Jr. She would become, in the course of my term, one of my closest and most trusted advisors.

The post of under secretary for economic, business, and agricultural affairs was also crucial, and I settled on Josette Sheeran. Josette had been Bob’s deputy when he was USTR, and she brought energy and expertise to the position. Her career path had been a bit unusual, including a stint as the managing editor of the conservative Washington Times.

Later, when Josette left to become head of the UN World Food Programme, Reuben Jeffery, who had worked with Jerry Bremer in Iraq, took on that crucial role in economic affairs. Reuben was a former Goldman Sachs partner who brought deep expertise in financial markets and the global economy. As national security advisor I had seen the increasing relevance of economic power to our international position. There was no doubt that I would spend a good deal of time as secretary of state on issues of trade and the economy. With both Josette and Reuben, State had a strong voice in matters that were increasingly of equal weight to military and political issues in our policy.

Henrietta Holsman Fore became under secretary for management. The Department of State is a huge operation with all the attendant problems of personnel and facilities. Henrietta had founded her own small business and had most recently overseen a dramatic remaking of the management structures of the U.S. Mint. Henrietta and her strong deputies Pat Kennedy and Rajkumar Chellaraja had the skills and the good common sense to make certain that the department was well run. There were administrative practices that needed attention as well. I was shocked, for example, to learn that the Department had over fifty differenct cell phone contracts as opposed to a consolidated account, which could cut costs significantly. Tim Warner, who had been my closest advisor when I was provost at Stanford, helped lead critical reform efforts that improved the management of the Department.

Finally, I retained Paula Dobriansky as under secretary for global affairs, a relatively new creation of the Clinton years, which oversaw multilateral matters from the environment to women’s issues to human trafficking to relations with UN agencies. Paula and I had known each other in the 1980s, when we were young East Europeanists participating in the events that would lead to the end of communism in Europe. Paula had distinguished herself earlier in carrying the thankless brief on climate change at a time when suspicions of the administration were at their height. Eventually we would add the word “democracy” to her title, making her the under secretary for democracy and global affairs, a fitting addition given her long commitment to a U.S. foreign policy based on values. In that work Paula was joined by Barry Lowenkron, with whom I had worked in the George H. W. Bush years. As assistant secretary for democracy, human rights, and labor, Barry oversaw key elements of the Freedom Agenda.

These appointments at the level of under secretary gave me a strong team of people who could lead on issues and make decisions so that not every question floated to the top for resolution. Yet I needed to maintain a direct link to the all-important assistant secretaries for the regions of the world. These were the people to whom I looked to represent us abroad and give coherence to U.S. policy. They helped set the substantive policy course, oversaw the embassies, maintained relations with foreign governments, and negotiated on behalf of the United States. The Pentagon had combatant commanders for each region; similarly, the assistant secretaries were my diplomatic commanders and the vital counterparts of and counterweights to the military commanders around the globe. They had to be fully empowered and respected to be able to access high-level officials in foreign capitals and to be seen as speaking for me and for the President. I insisted that they have strong deputies who could run the bureaus in Washington so that they could stay on the road as much as 50 percent of the time. The assistant secretaries had to be seen as the faces and heard as the voices of U.S. foreign policy in their regions.

At any given time, the mix of political and career appointments to those crucial positions has varied. Under George Shultz, for example, a little more than one-half of the regional assistant secretaries were political appointees, not Foreign Service officers. The figure was two-thirds under Madeleine Albright. But I wanted to make career appointments to those positions wherever possible. It would be a signal to the Foreign Service that I valued them and a message that I expected commitment to the President’s agenda in return. In the final analysis, five of the six regional assistant secretaries came from the career ranks.

The one noncareer appointment brought Jendayi Frazer to the department as assistant secretary for African affairs. Jendayi had left the White House to serve as ambassador to South Africa. When deciding who would succeed Connie Newman, the highly effective assistant secretary under Colin Powell who continued serving until August 2005, I never considered anyone else. Jendayi had been an architect of the President’s highly acclaimed Africa policies and was trusted and admired throughout the region.

When it came to the other appointments, two Foreign Service officers who’d already demonstrated their competence and dedication while serving on the NSC staff quickly emerged as the lead candidates. As special assistants to the President they’d been an integral part of his inner circle at the White House, and he knew and trusted them. They were equally well respected in the Foreign Service and in the capitals of the regions they would oversee.

I asked Daniel Fried, who’d been ambassador to Poland and then special assistant for European affairs at the NSC, to become assistant secretary for European affairs. Dan and I had a long history, going back to 1989, when he was a young desk officer for Poland in the State Department. We’d conspired to push administration policy faster toward recognition of the events that were leading to the collapse of Soviet power. When Dan couldn’t get the ultraconservative State Department to sign off on his position papers, he would “bootleg” them to me and I would use them to shape White House policy.

Dan would be on the front lines in repairing relations with the allies, but he was tough-minded and would do so sympathetically but without apology for all that had transpired. He was well respected as a first-rate diplomat in both the department and the capitals of Europe.

Tom Shannon had also served at the NSC as special assistant for Western Hemisphere affairs. As I’ve noted, the President and I thought it important to reenergize our policies in the neighborhood. He’d come to office hoping to make Latin America a key priority, but we hadn’t yet managed to exhibit the energy and creativity in that region that he wanted. Tom Shannon was a trusted aide and a renowned diplomat and could carry that brief. He’d also managed the Cuba issue very well. The President and I shared a deep disdain for Communist Cuba and had very little tolerance for calls to “reach out” to the bloody dictator, Fidel Castro, whom I remembered mostly for his shortsighted decision to place Soviet missiles aimed at the United States on his territory. But in Europe and in some foreign policy circles this unrelenting attitude toward Cuba was viewed with disapproval. Tom proved to be very capable in managing the issue, largely because he was himself deeply committed to a more democratic Latin America—a vision that wouldn’t be fully realized until the Cuban people were free. And he capably handled the thorny domestic politics of the issue as well.

I asked David Welch, then serving as U.S. ambassador to Egypt, to take up the critical post of assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs, overseeing the Middle East. David is one of the finest diplomats of his generation, a well-respected Arabist, and he had served in some of the toughest places. He’d been in Pakistan when our embassy was burned in 1979 and Syria during the Lebanese civil war. And as was the case with Dan Fried, I’d known David and worked closely with him during the George H. W. Bush administration.

David had been somewhat skeptical of the decision to invade Iraq, and I knew that. But he brought deep expertise to the issue, having negotiated the still-working ceasefire between the two major Iraqi-Kurdish factions in 1998. David was also cautious with regards to the democracy agenda in the Middle East. Our conversations convinced me that the differences were ones of tactics not strategy: a little tension on that score wouldn’t be a bad thing. And if we were to make progress on the Palestinian issue, David would have to be at the heart of it. All the major players respected him, and that would be key to success.

Dan, Tom, and David were self-evident picks. That wasn’t the case with the assistant secretary for East Asian affairs. The region presented numerous problems, everything from managing the rise of China to strengthening relations with Southeast Asia to dealing with North Korean proliferation. Asia had no mature regional institutions like NATO or the European Union, and relations between the major players were contentious, with many unresolved issues from World War II. How did one deal with a maturing democratic ally in Korea who harbored deep suspicions of our long-standing Japanese ally? What about Russia’s unresolved conflicts with Japan and Tokyo’s strained relations with China? What of the tensions between Seoul and Beijing? East Asia was a thicket of bad bilateral relations. The United States was struggling to maintain good relations with each of the powers and often found itself caught up in the hostility of a region that had not yet put World War II behind it.

East Asia was also the region with the most assertive Pentagon profile. The combatant commander for the Pacific was always something of a proconsul, a four-star admiral operating from his base in Hawaii and prone to pronouncements on matters that at best blurred the boundaries between diplomacy and military policy and at worst shattered them. And it didn’t matter who held the post; it seemed to be a permanent feature of the command. The department needed someone who would develop good relations with Pacific Command but stand toe-to-toe with the admiral when necessary.

Moreover, I needed someone who would think differently about East Asia. In the Foreign Service there were Koreanists and Sinologists and those who knew Japan (often referred to derisively as “agents of the Chrysanthemum throne”), but there were no real regionalists in the way that David knew the whole Middle East or Dan all of Europe. I turned to Christopher Hill, who was as close to a generalist as one will find in the Foreign Service, though most of his work had been in Europe. Returning from a successful posting as ambassador to South Korea, Chris had an understanding of the region yet none of the innate prejudices that so bedeviled long-standing specialists. He was a creative thinker and a tough, persistent diplomat who had helped Richard Holbrooke face down Slobodan Miloševič in Serbia.

The remaining bureau was a new and crucial one: South and Central Asia. I’ve mentioned the reaction that I had on September 15 at Camp David when we rolled out the map of Afghanistan. The immediate concern was to strip al Qaeda of its safe haven, but the strategic value of Afghanistan lay in its geography. There was a reason it had always been an object of the great powers’ attention in what had historically been known as the “Great Game.” Sitting above Pakistan and India to the South, Central Asian states to the north, and Iran to the west, a stable and democratic Afghanistan had the potential to transform the entire region. It would not happen quickly, but if it were ever to happen, the first step was to redefine the territorial confines of South Asia. That meant that the Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan had to be thought of as relating to South Asia, not Europe. The reason those states had been lodged in European Affairs in the State Department was the legacy of their past incorporation into the Soviet Union. I decided to break them out and combine them with the South Asian countries to create a new bureau that represented the current and future geopolitics of the region. There were some howls from traditionalists, including some in those countries who didn’t particularly like being lumped with backward Afghanistan instead of developed Europe. But Afghanistan would never grow economically and politically without a regional home that made sense.

The South and Central Asian Bureau would need a senior person to bring it into being and to fight off the many bureaucratic challenges to this new entity. Christina Rocca, the assistant secretary for South Asian affairs under Colin, worked diligently with me over the next year to facilitate this effort. To lead the reorganized bureau, I chose Richard Boucher, who’d been Colin’s spokesman but was also a senior Foreign Service officer with a concentration in economic affairs, reasoning that many of the early efforts at regional integration would be on the trade and economic fronts.

Finally, I was stunned to learn that there was no independent Iran desk in the Department of State. It turned out that the department thought in terms of “relations” with countries. Since we had no “relations” with Iran, it didn’t warrant its own desk. Amazing. We created an Iran desk and later an outpost in Dubai to follow Iranian affairs from a place with geographic proximity to Tehran. The idea was borrowed from the 1920s, when the United States had maintained an outpost in Latvia to watch events in the Soviet Union prior to the establishment of diplomatic relations. Because the Dubai station processed visas for Iranians, for instance, we were able to learn about events in Iran from people coming through. The Iran desk reported directly to Nick Burns to give it stature and proximity to the seventh floor—the secretary’s floor.

Shortly after 9/11, it had become clear that there were new threats and challenges such as terrorism that were not confined to any one geographic area. Coordinator positions have traditionally been established within the State Department to fill this void. These offices report directly to the secretary and draw on functional, as opposed to regional, expertise to manage the U.S. government’s response to a particular issue across agencies. To lead the Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, which directed the development and implementation of U.S. counterterrorism policy, I chose Henry “Hank” Crumpton, a former CIA officer who had led the Agency’s Afghanistan campaign in 2001 and 2002. In 2004, Colin Powell had established the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, which led efforts to institutionalize the U.S. government’s civilian capacity to rebuild post-conflict societies. Carlos Pascual was the Department’s first coordinator and did remarkable work in shaping the position at its inception. I selected former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst to succeed him in 2006. John’s leadership would prove instrumental in launching the Civilian Response Corps, a rapidly deployable force of civilian employees trained and equipped to assist in post-conflict reconstruction efforts. The Corps would allow the military to focus on security without the additional strains of fulfilling objectives more suitable for civilian specialists in the field.

But the best personnel decision that I made was to bring the incomparable Liz Lineberry back to the State Department with me. Liz had been an assistant to James Baker, Warren Christopher, and Madeleine Albright. Wanting a change, she’d come to work for me at the NSC and was with me practically every day. Liz just knew how to get things done. And she knew what I needed before I did. When I became secretary, Liz came back to Foggy Bottom. She kept my calendar and helped me keep my sanity, reminding me from time to time to have dinner with friends, call my family, or take a Sunday afternoon off to play golf or music.

Liz and my executive assistant, Steve Beecroft, a wily senior Foreign Service officer with a wicked sense of humor, made sure that the front office had warm and open relations with the staff. That is absolutely critical, as the secretary is busy and operates under a good deal of stress. If the front office exacerbates the constant sense of crisis, everyone will feel it and efficiency will decline. Liz and Steve, and later Joe Macmanus when Steve left to become ambassador to Jordan, did just the opposite: they were calming influences. That was an indispensable contribution to me and to my work.

MY FIRST days in the office were largely devoted to getting to know my “building,” as it is called, and getting used to being called “S.” It was as if I’d lost my proper name since I heard everyone refer to me that way. “S” says this. “S” needs that. I learned quickly not to think out loud lest I set off an entire bureaucratic process to deliver what “S” wanted.

The organization also needed to be flatter. In both of my stints at the NSC I’d marveled at the bureaucratic hierarchy of the State Department. Everything took a long time because several people and offices had to approve even the simplest policy paper. As national security advisor I was always amused that our morning calls would often expose the fact that I knew what was going on in Don’s or Colin’s building before they did. My one special assistant for a given region would have given me a heads-up on a department’s position while it was still making its way step by step up to the secretary. I asked very simply if we could cut down the number of clearances, passing paper through the hands of only those who really needed to be in on a decision. “Of course,” everyone told me. But four years later I was still asking. When something was going to “S,” everyone with even a passing interest wanted to have a say in it. Eventually I took the step on certain occasions of asking to be briefed by the desk officer who had actually written the paper.

There were also a number of immediate management problems that had come to my attention during the transition. The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, for instance, was overseeing huge budget expenditures for the training of police in Afghanistan and Iraq. The recordkeeping, though, and thus the accountability for that work was less than adequate. The serving assistant secretary was resistant to the changes that needed to be made. That would have been fine, and I certainly would have allowed him to make his case. But when Brian, my chief of staff, walked into my office late one evening and told me that the gentleman had gone behind my back to complain to his patrons on the Hill, I decided that the bureau needed new leadership. The message had to be clear that I encouraged open disagreement but that this kind of behavior was unacceptable.

Nancy Powell, a senior Foreign Service officer on leave between assignments, became the bureau’s acting head. Then I appointed Anne Patterson, an outstanding officer who would later become ambassador to Pakistan. There was no stronger manager and leader in the Foreign Service than Anne.

She took over the bureau, which had inadequate processes to deal with the crushing workload of two huge simultaneous nation-building projects. Matching resources and responsibilities is critical to the success of any organization, and I paid personal attention to problems like that.

Nothing, though, would take more time than trying to make the department’s personnel policies more flexible and responsive to our needs. From my position as national security advisor I’d watched the State Department struggle to deploy senior Foreign Service officers to Afghanistan and Iraq. The service is small, about eleven thousand officers globally. Bob Gates and I would later joke that there were as many people in military bands as in the Foreign Service. The numbers had at least improved, thanks to Colin’s initiative to hire more than a thousand new officers over the four years of his term. But we were still woefully short of the people we needed, particularly in hardship posts where families couldn’t accompany the officers. Since the State Department uses a system where people bid for posts, the least desirable ones often went unfilled—particularly at the midcareer level, where family considerations were salient.

Moreover, the officers we did have were not properly apportioned to the tasks at hand. We had nearly as many officers in Germany, which had a population of 80 million, as in India, which had a population of 1 billion. That was, in large part, a legacy of the Cold War, when Europe had been at the center of the national security agenda. Bob Zoellick led an effort to look at redeployment of our personnel. I’d talked about transformational diplomacy in my confirmation hearings. By that term, I meant that the work of diplomacy was now active democracy promotion, AIDS relief, rebuilding failed states, and the like. The department’s most treasured function, political reporting through long cables, was simply less important in a world of instant communication. The Foreign Service needed to embrace new functions and perform them in more remote and sometimes highly volatile places.

All this demonstrates the breadth of the secretary’s portfolio. Policy issues and crises dominate the agenda. But the department has to function properly if policy execution is to succeed. I well understood that I should not micromanage. Yet there is a level of knowledge about the details of what is going on in one’s building that is absolutely necessary. As I would experience several times, bureaucratic screw-ups usually reached my desk when it was already too late to do much about them. Playing catch-up with the press and Congress agitated and looking for answers is hard. At my first staff meeting I sent a message that I didn’t like mistakes but could understand them and that I’d work with people to find a solution. But I hated surprises. “Never fail to tell me something that I should know before people outside this building know,” I pleaded. Early warning is the key to good management, but it’s very hard to achieve.

MY PREOCCUPATION with the daily work of the department occasionally gave way to the remarkable moments that reminded me of the incredible honor of being secretary of state. Attending the President’s State of the Union address in 2005 was one of those times.

I stood just outside the chamber of the House of Representatives, peering in through the door at the assembled members of Congress. I’d always loved the State of the Union, rarely missing the televised annual spectacle that affirms the institutional legitimacy and stability of American democracy. “Mr. Speaker, the President’s Cabinet.”

The doors flung open, and the bright lights of the press were suddenly and blindingly apparent. I started down toward the front, reaching out to shake the hands of members on both sides of the aisle. At the time of the establishment of the country only four Cabinet positions were created: secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, secretary of war, and attorney general. That order is used in all formal protocol settings. And the secretary of state is fourth in the line of presidential succession after the Vice President, speaker of the House, and president pro tempore of the Senate. As the senior member of the Cabinet, the secretary is always seated first and thus leads the processional of cabinet members just before the arrival of the President.

When I reached the front row, I realized that I’d walked a bit quickly, not wanting to hold up the line. My colleague Treasury Secretary John Snow was well behind me, shaking hands and enjoying the moment. I made a mental note to walk more slowly the next year. After a few minutes the applause stopped, and there was a moment of silence and anticipation. “Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States.” As he passed, the President and I exchanged glances. Then he ascended the podium to wild applause. “Members of Congress, I have the high privilege and the distinct honor of presenting to you the President of the United States,” said Speaker Dennis Hastert. And so it went: my first State of the Union as secretary of state and a moment when I felt intensely the tradition and the history that attended my role.

I came to relish every historical tidbit about the position, learning, for instance, that the secretary of state is the keeper of the Great Seal of the United States of America. One day I found myself signing hundreds of documents, including certificates commissioning other Cabinet officers. “Why am I signing these?” I asked.

“You are the keeper of the Great Seal,” someone said.

“And when did I become the keeper of the Great Seal?”

“Thomas Jefferson was the keeper of the Great Seal,” I was told.

One could imagine the founders deciding that an infant republic separated from great-power politics by vast oceans would have minimal foreign policy concerns. Tom Jefferson needed more to do. Why not give him that administrative function? I’d never understood why Henry Kissinger had been required to sign Richard Nixon’s resignation letter in 1974. Now I did. The secretary of state had to affix the Great Seal and sign any official document; I was the nation’s notary. I had the Great Seal—a mechanical device that imprints the stamp—prominently displayed in the State Department’s Exhibit Hall and created a traveling exhibition to commemorate its 225th anniversary.