Rice glad to be out of political spotlight

ByABC News
May 7, 2009, 12:17 AM

DANA POINT, Calif. -- Condoleezza Rice does not miss her old job.

The former secretary of State no longer begins days with terrorist-threat security reports. Gone is anxiety that came with grabbing her morning newspaper.

"It's nice not to have that knot in your stomach as you go to the front door," Rice said during an interview with USA TODAY. "I loved representing this country, but eight years was a long time."

Rice, 54, is back at Stanford as a senior fellow for the Hoover Institution, a public policy research center that studies politics and economics. But she is not out of the spotlight entirely.

Last week, she defended policies of the George W. Bush administration by telling Stanford students that "we did not torture anyone" and that waterboarding was legal, safe and necessary. And she has not shied from weighing in on issues facing the new administration.

She says she agrees with President Obama's strategy to increase U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan. When asked during a session with NFL owners in late March what region poses the biggest threat to U.S. security, Rice said that it "comes in three flavors." In addition to the Iraq-Middle East and Pakistan-Afghanistan regions, she puts Mexico in the category of a possible threat to our security.

"This is getting to be a very dangerous place," she said.

She believes Russia bears watching after "something of a wrong turn" with its invasion of Georgia, attempts to subvert elections in Ukraine and crackdown on political opponents and the press.

"It's not the Soviet Union," Rice said. "But it's not the open society that we'd hoped it would be."

On the war against terrorism, Rice is a staunch defender of the policies of President Bush.

"I hope people believe I love my country and that I did my best under difficult circumstances," she says. "We didn't always succeed, but we made the country a better and safer place. I'm grateful that there wasn't another attack on American territory in the years that we were there. I'll tell you, after what happened to us on Sept. 11, every other day was Sept. 12. I worried every single day that there might be another attack.