Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

The responsibility, then, of all of us is to take policies that are rooted in those values and make them work on a day-to-day basis so that you're always moving forward toward a goal, because nobody believes that the kinds of monumental changes that are going on in the world or that we are indeed seeking are going to happen in a week's time frame or a month's time frame or maybe even a year's time frame. So it's the connection, the day-to-day operational policy connection between those ideals and policy outcomes.

MS. WRIGHT: Can you think of a specific instance? Sudan? India? Iran? Any of the --

SECRETARY RICE: Well, let me take the broader Middle East issues, you know, concerning democracy and -- like, you know, we've had a number of discussions -- I think each of us has -- about the fact that we have enunciated -- the president enunciated in his second inaugural -- a strong center for American policy that says democracy is and, in effect, always is the right choice, and that the values of freedom and liberty are universal values that are not exceptional or cannot be cordoned off in any part of the world under any culture, and the Middle East is included.

Obviously, countries are moving at different speeds toward that fundamental state and countries start at different places. Saudi Arabia is not Egypt. Egypt is not Jordan. The circumstances in a place like Iraq are different because there Saddam Hussein, you know, an international tyrant, international outlaw, was overthrown.

And so part of the challenge is to take in each of those cases the circumstances as you find them, not accept them to be the circumstances that will prevail, but find workable ways to move toward that goal.

So in a place like Egypt, it means going to Egypt and meeting with the opposition and having programs that support what is being done there, but in the context of a place where you have had the president -- Mubarak -- take a step, an important step, forward toward a more open system.

MR. KESSLER: Pop quiz. What are your four emotional highlights in the last six months? What are your four --

SECRETARY RICE: Emotional highlights?

MR. KESSLER: Yeah. And also your four political policy highlights.

SECRETARY RICE: Geez, I'm not all that self-reflective. You know, I'm really not.

Emotional highlights. The speech in Cairo. I think going to Iraq for the first time. There have been a lot of them, you know. There really have been a lot. Going -- they're images, you know. Going into a place and seeing for the first time that -- when I say going to Iraq -- that Baghdad is a great city and that Iraq is a great civilization. Of course, I had read that. I knew that. But it means that an Iraq that is democratic and stable is going to be a fundamental pillar of change in the Middle East.

I think seeing Afghanistan for the first time. I had never been to Afghanistan. You know, I was a Soviet specialist. I probably knew every piece of territory in Afghanistan by map and by history. But I remember saying to people that when 9/11 happened and we went to Camp David a few days after 9/11, and the map rolled out and people realized that it was Afghanistan, I mean, finally, something dawns on you. This place that has been described as, you know, the arc of crisis, the place that great powers go to die, and thinking how difficult this region was; but then being in Afghanistan and then being in Pakistan and being in India and seeing the promise of that salvation arc as imagining a world in which you have not just an Indian democracy, which is a natural ally, but also a Pakistan that is stable and has rooted out extremism and is democratic, and an Afghanistan that is stable, that has good relations with Pakistan.