Condi Rice loves Led Zeppelin and not being secretary of State

Stop the presses! Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice still reads newspapers! And she said it on TV.

And when she wakes up each morning now back in the Bay Area, Rice tells Jay Leno on tonight's "Tonight Show" on NBC, she's absolutely delighted to know she doesn't need to do anything about anything that's in it. (For our East Coast readers, if you hurry, you can still catch the entire interview.)

Jay expressed surprise. (See the video on the jump.)

"It was an honor to serve," Rice replied. "I love this country. There is nothing like being able to do this. And I know that people talk about America’s not this and America’s not that, but I’ll tell you something. Without America in the world, the most powerful country, but also the most compassionate country, the freest country, the world would be a much, much worse place. So I was grateful to be a part of that."

A former concert pianist, Rice says her favorite music is, what? She listens to it every time she's on the elliptical: "Then I can really be with Led Zeppelin."

But how did she go from music studies to becoming George W. Bush's foreign policy mentor, national security advisor and secretary of State? "I studied piano from age 3. I could read music before I could read, and my grandmother taught me to play the piano.... I went off to school and studied piano as a music major for a couple of years. And then I went off to the Aspen Music Festival, in the summer of my sophomore year.  And I met 12-year-olds who played from sight everything that had taken me all year to learn.

"And I thought, 'OK. You’re gonna end up teaching 13-year-olds ... Beethoven, or maybe you’ll play a piano bar or maybe you’ll play at Nordstrom, but you’re not playing Carnegie Hall. Find another career path.' ”

So she wandered into the international politics class of a man named Joseph Korbel, whose daughter turned out to be Madeline Albright, the first female secretary of State before Rice became No. 2 and Hillary Clinton No. 3.

Rice took the same path as her former boss, Bush, did in a recent speech in Canada, as The Ticket reported, declining to comment on the new Barack Obama administration. "My view is we got to do it our way," Rice says. "We did our best. We did some things well, some things not so well. Now, they get their chance. 

"And I agree with the president [Bush]. We owe them our loyalty and our silence while they do it.  Because I know what it’s like to have people chirping at you when they perhaps don’t know what’s going on inside. These are quality people. I know them.  They love the country. And they won’t make the same decisions, perhaps, that we did.  But I believe they’ll do what they think is best for the country, and I’ll give my advice privately and keep it to myself."

Scroll down or click on the "Read more" line to watch a brief video.

-- Andrew Malcolm

If Condi Rice and Jay Leno were here right now, they'd be reading The Ticket. Register here for Twitter alerts on each new Ticket item.

[Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly spelled Joseph Korbel as Joseph Corbell.]

Photo: Paul Drinkwater / NBC

Comments

[OSweet]

What guts Rice has to remain a Republican.

With her educational and cultural background, she is so many kinds of awesome; if she simply made her political affiliation a D, either years ago or today, she'd now be tremendously popular and respected among the nation's major-media opinion leaders.

But her intellectually maturing, formative years came during the Cold War, and she evidently became powerfully aware of which party, when it mattered, stood firm, and uncompromising, for natural rights and individual liberty.

Integrity.

[youseeit]

This talk of "loyalty" and "silence" is exactly what was wrong with the Bush administration and their blind, simple-minded concept of "patriotism." It's our job as Americans to be vigilant and critical of our leaders. The philosophy of "you're either with us or against us" that Bush and his one-track cronies adhered to is what led to the damage caused over the previous eight years.

[Harry R. Sohl]

"maybe you’ll play a piano bar or maybe you’ll play at Nordstrom, but you’re not playing Carnegie Hall. Find another career path."

So, she brought the same skill-level, commitment, passion and expertise in politics that she had in piano. Her greatest hit was "I believe that 'historical document' was titled 'Bin Laden Determined To Attack in US'", in F-.

Yes, we got the "Nordstrom piano player" version of Secretary of State and "Intelligence" Adviser. No wonder she went shopping for shoes during Katrina - she thought she had an employee discount!

And she loves reading about it when "she doesn't need to do anything about anything that's in it" - just like the good old days when she worked for Bush on say, August 6th, 2001.