The response to the tweet was enormous and immediate, and, while Rice tempered her initial declaration by clarifying that she wasn’t making a formal announcement, she obviously welcomed the support and encouragement. At their event on Sunday, before turning to the scheduled discussion of geopolitics, Osnos asked Rice to speak more about the situation. The full transcript of what Rice said is below. While still being careful to avoid saying that she would definitely run, she told the story of her and her family’s ties to Maine, and explained her disappointment with Collins’s vote for Kavanaugh. The family story she told, in its historical sweep, its optimism, and its marrying of old American imagery with new American experiences, was reminiscent of her old boss. “She very much has the vocabulary and the moves of the Obama White House, in the sense that they can be very literal and quantitative and precise in their language, and also fiercely emphatic about the ideas that they care about,” Osnos said. He added, “I think it was pretty clear she’d been thinking a lot about it.”

On Friday afternoon, while Senator Susan Collins, of Maine, was on the floor of the Senate, explaining her decision to cast one of the deciding votes to put Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos was on the phone with Susan Rice, the former Obama Administration national-security adviser. Osnos and Rice were discussing an event they were appearing at on Sunday, as part of The New Yorker Festival—a conversation about international relations and American foreign policy that would include Gérard Araud, the French Ambassador to the United States. “I mentioned in the course of our conversation that it looks like Susan Collins is a yes on Kavanaugh,” Osnos told me on Monday. “And Susan didn’t really respond.” Within minutes of getting off the phone, though, Rice had put herself in the news about Collins’s speech with a one-word tweet. Responding to the former White House official Jen Psaki, who had asked , “who wants to run for Senate in Maine? there will be an army of supporters with you,” Rice wrote, “Me.”

Evan Osnos: We’re going to talk about the rest of the world, but, before we do, Ambassador Rice, I have to address something that is on the minds of a lot of people. You generated a tremendous amount of excitement, over the last few days, with a one-word tweet. And I’m going to fill people in if you may not have been following it. On Friday, just after Susan Collins, senator from Maine, indicated that she was going to throw her support to Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, somebody on Twitter, Jen Psaki, on Twitter, put out the question, “Does anybody want to run for the Senate from Maine? There will be a tremendous amount of support for you.” And, Ambassador Rice, you tweeted what?

Susan Rice: M-E.

E.O.: Me. At last count, before I walked in here, there were more than a hundred and fifty thousand likes to that tweet, which I’ll point out is about a quarter of the electorate in Maine. The Crowdpac, which is a progressive fundraising site, received so many donations that it crashed on Friday. So, I think, look, there are a lot of people who are asking, what are you thinking about? Is this a serious idea? Are you taking this seriously?

S.R.: You didn’t read my second tweet. That’s O.K. Before I think any of us focus on 2020, if you’re concerned about where this country is heading under President Trump, if you’re concerned about a Republican Congress that seems to be giving him a complete rubber stamp, then we need to focus on the midterm elections in a month’s time. And that’s where I’m focussed on, that’s where I’m giving my money, that’s where I’m giving my time. And I think all of us need to stay focussed on 2018—that’s job one.

With respect to my tweet, Evan knows, because we were actually on the phone talking very briefly before I arrived in the Phoenix airport to watch the Collins speech on television, that this was not exactly where my head was. But I did make the tweet, and I later elaborated that I wasn’t making any formal announcements. But, I have to say, I have been extraordinarily moved by the outpouring of support and enthusiasm, and a little bit surprised, quite frankly.

But my bottom line is that I’m going to give it due consideration, after the midterms. I’ll take a look. My ties to Maine are long and deep. My family goes back over a hundred years in Maine. My grandparents emigrated from Jamaica, to Portland, Maine, in 1912. My grandfather was a cobbler and a janitor; my grandmother was a seamstress and a maid. And they got on a banana boat—actually, my grandfather came first, and sent for my grandmother, whom he had not yet married. They got married on Christmas Day, in the Episcopal cathedral in Portland, Maine. And they stayed in Maine until they died, raising five children—four sons, and then my mother, their only daughter. With no education beyond middle school and early high school, they sent all their five kids to college. I believe my grandfather was the first man to ever have four sons attend Bowdoin, and then because Bowdoin was still single-sex he had to send my mother to Radcliffe, which was not ideal but would suffice back in the day.

I spent most every summer, a portion of it, of my life, spending a little bit of time at least, up in Maine, from the time I was a child, visiting my grandparents, to this day, where—my mother lived for many years in the summer after buying a house. She lived in Washington, then came back to Maine for the summer. And now, for the last twenty-so years, I’ve been a homeowner in the state of Maine. So it’s not completely crazy. But, you know, we have to see.

It’s a complicated political environment. They have lots of good Democrats in the state of Maine. And, frankly, what moved me, like I think many others, was a sense of outrage and frustration that somebody who fashions theirself a moderate centrist, and somebody who cares for equal rights and L.G.B.T. rights and Roe v. Wade and all of this stuff could, in a very political fashion, not just decide to vote for Kavanaugh, but do it in a fashion that was quite dismissive, I think, of the concerns of many Americans, and many Mainers. So it was on that basis that I decided I would think about it. And I don’t need to go on here about the trouble of Kavanaugh for the institution of the Court. But I am deeply disappointed that Senator Collins, whom I’ve known and I respect, made that choice, and made it in a fashion that, in my judgment, put party and politics over her own stated principles. I think she did a real disservice to many, many people in Maine who were counting on her. And, in a way that I really regret saying, she has betrayed women across this country. So.

E.O.: So you’re not ruling it out. Fair enough. So, and we’re going to turn to our broader discussion in a second, but just to be clear: As you go about thinking about a decision like this—you said you were going to wait until after the midterms—what other factors are going to go into you making a choice about whether to go ahead?

S.R.: All sorts of personal factors. I am a mother of two kids, one of whom is in high school in Washington. My husband was, uh, surprised to see my tweet. Not totally surprised—surprised not that I would think it, but that I might say it. And, of course, the state of Maine is a wonderful place, I love it. But it’s got a complicated political dynamic. There are many good Democrats in the state of Maine whom I respect and admire. So I will have to do a lot more homework before I can make an informed decision.