A TIME 100 Symposium

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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

(8 of 17)

ROSE: I think someone mentioned that, Walter, in terms of activism that most of the people here that we have mentioned, most of them had an activist definition of what leadership was about.

ISAACSON: I think it's important in this century who really defines a strand and I would get off of Presidents when you talk about activism and say what really happened in this century was a movement towards civil rights, individual rights and individual liberties. That after 20 centuries or so in which people were under the influence of the States and religions, whatever it may be, individual rights became the hallmark of this century. I looked at Dr. Martin Luther King, people like Rosa Parks who wouldn't give up her seat on a bus, Gandhi who scooped down, [unintelligible] the water, made salt when he was forbidden to do so by the government. Those type of people who were activist leaders of grassroots movements in favor of individual rights will be the ones who go down in history.

ROSE: Yes, Ma'am.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Okay. In the interest of women, specifically First Ladies, could not as good a case be made for Edith Wilson, do you think?

ROSE: Edith Wilson, the wife of Woodrow, Woodrow Wilson? Yes. Doris?

KEARNS-GOODWIN: There no question that when Woodrow Wilson —

[Laughter]

ROSE: Chief power behind the throne.

KEARNS-GOODWIN: —when Woodrow Wilson had his stroke that a lot of the power devolved to Edith Galt Wilson. But I think in contrast to Eleanor Roosevelt constantly championing ordinary people and making their lives better and having a big idea when she went into the First Ladyship that she wanted social and economic justice to prevail, she shaped her time rather than simply being there and assuming the power that her husband had lost as in Mrs. Wilson's case.

ROSE: What about the case for Margaret Sanger?

CUOMO: Well, there's Susan Anthony and Margaret Sanger as an entry, if you will allow that as one, because they're both New Yorkers —

CUOMO: —was a nurse who was appalled by the death of women caused by self-induced abortions. And that, that helped stir an activism and a new strength among women in this country which has been very important.

KRISTOL: She was also a eugenicist —

CUOMO: Yes.

KRISTOL: —who believed in race differences and believed the government should do something about it. So, I think we have to qualify our admiration for her.

CUOMO: May, maybe we ought to wait —

[Simultaneous conversation.]

CUOMO: —and see how that comes out.

KRISTOL: No. No. I put the pill on the list, but I wouldn't put her on the list.

RICE: I might put the scientists on the list —

[Simultaneous conversation.]

RICE: —and formulated the pill on the list —

ROSE: Irving, I'm getting the impression that you and the governor have dramatically different ideas about the virtue of using government.

[Laughter]

KRISTOL: If individual rights and activism are a major theme of the century and that should embody what kind of a person, who the greatest person of this century was, then how about a little more credit to someone like Ronald Reagan who fought against, took an activist role against communism, one of the most depressive things, if not the most, that the world faced in the 20th century.

ROSE: But, go ahead, someone speak to that. I mean you could argue that anyone — Condoleezza, you work with on that, but couldn't you argue —

[Simultaneous conversation.]

RICE: I was in the Pentagon for the Reagan Administration and I was in the Bush Administration in the White House.

ROSE: I'm sorry.

RICE: That's all right. But, I, I, I think the legacy of Ronald Reagan is one that is very powerful in this way, and both at home and abroad. At home, because he took an America that I think was feeling really very bad about itself in 1980. In the wake of the Iran situation and really I think a presidency that had lost steam with Jimmy Carter and he gave it a sense of purpose again. And he had very simple ideas about this. America was good, the Soviet Union was bad, the United States should be powerful, the Soviet Union should not. And I do think one of his most powerful statements and one which rallied even people in the Soviet Union was that communism was a sad experiment that was being practiced on a hapless population and it would one day end up on the ash-heap of history. And giving voice to that was very important. I know for people like me who've been schooled in diplomacy I thought, oh, my God, how undiplomatic of an American president to say that about the other super power. But, you know, it rang true in the Soviet Union and it caused a crisis of confidence in that leadership. And Ronald Reagan then brought America's power and America's moral authority to bear in a way that did set in motion the many events that we had the great pleasure of really bringing to conclusion.

KEARNS-GOODWIN: But wouldn't you agree that what had even more impact than Ronald Reagan's strong stance was what was going on internally in the Soviet Union? That they had a stagnant economy, they had Gorbachev, who tried reforms that didn't work; Peristroika opened, the society showed the poison that communism was and without all of that happening, his words would have simply been words. I don't think his words made those things happen.

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