Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has made a remarkable transition from a detained human rights dissident to a member of Myanmar's parliament.
In her first trip to the U.S. in 40 years, Suu Kyi talked a lot about how she's learning to compromise with the former military men who kept her under house arrest for years.
"We are beginning to learn to work together. We are beginning to learn the art of compromise, give and take [and] achievement of consensus," Suu Kyi said last week at the U.S. Institute of Peace. "It is [a] good that this is beginning in the legislature and we hope this will spread and become part of the political culture of Burma."
Suu Kyi said she hopes the U.S. can help in this learning process. On Wednesday, in the rotunda of Congress, Suu Kyi paid tribute to the man who started the reforms in Myanmar, President Thein Sein, and pointed out that one of his top advisers was present in the room for the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony.
"I am particularly encouraged by the presence of Minister U Aung Min, who has been leading peace talks in our country, and whose presence reinforces my faith in reform and reconciliation," she said.
That was good politics, says Michael Green of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Green, a Bush administration adviser on Asia, says Suu Kyi understands that she needs to work with reformers in government if democracy is to succeed.
"The only way she can do that is by trying to make them comfortable and reach out without compromising on her core principles," Green says. "So it's admirable in the spirit of a Nelson Mandela, and it's shrewd in the spirit of [Lyndon B. Johnson]."
Green says it was amazing to see Suu Kyi talk about all of this at a time of such partisan bickering in Washington.
"It was really quite striking to watch her speak so positively about people who had been responsible for her suffering," he says. "Although she didn't intend for us to take our own lessons away from this, I hope people do."
Suu Kyi didn't weigh into U.S. politics at all during her visit. She even went out of her way to be bipartisan as she spoke at a dinner with the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute.
"I believe in our people and I believe in democrats everywhere — democrats with a small 'D,'" she said.
Suu Kyi says Myanmar has a steep learning curve when it comes to democracy. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also referred to that in her comments at the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony. She described a conversation she had with the speaker of parliament in Myanmar last December.
"He went on to tell me that they were trying to teach themselves by watching old segments of the West Wing," Clinton said. "I said, 'I think we can do better than that.'"
Clinton says it might have been easier for Suu Kyi to remain above the political fray. Instead, she's now in parliament, chairing the Rule of Law and Tranquility Committee, and compromising with her former jailers.
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