"Some call it a blind spot, others naivete, but Mandela sees almost everyone as virtuous until proven otherwise. He starts with an assumption that you are dealing with him in good faith. He believes that, just as pretending to be brave can lead to acts of real bravery, seeing the good in other people improves the chances that they will reveal their better selves.

"It is extraordinary that a man who was ill-treated for most of his life can see so much good in others. In fact, it was sometimes frustrating to talk with him because he almost never had a bad word to say about anyone. He would not even say a disapproving word about the man who tried to have him hanged. I once asked him about John Vorster, the Nazi-sympathizing president of South Africa who tightened apartheid and rued the fact that Mandela and his comrades had not been executed.

" 'He was a very decent chap,' Mandela said with complete sincerity. 'In the first place, he was very polite. In referring to us, he used courteous terminology.'

"This might seem like praising Saddam Hussein because he was kind to animals. But it is not that Mandela does not see the dark side of someone like John Vorster; it is that he is unwilling to see only that. He knows that no one is purely good or purely evil. We were talking one day about a prisoner who had been a rival of Mandela's on Robben Island and who had actually put together a list of grievances about Mandela. When I asked him about the fellow, Mandela did not address the man's hostility but said, 'What I took from him was his ability to work hard . . .'

"What I took from him. Mandela seeks out the positive, the constructive. He chooses to look past the negative. He does this for two reasons: because he instinctively sees the good in people and because he intellectually believes that seeing the good in others might actually make them better. If you expect more of people, whether they are coworkers or family members, they often contribute more. Or at least feel guilty if they do not.

"The worst he might say about someone is that they are operating in their own self-interest. I remember once listening to him talk on the phone with the editor of South Africa's largest black newspaper. The editor was planning to run a piece on the negotiations, and Mandela asked him to hold off because the matter was sensitive. Afterward, Mandela assured me that the editor would pull the story. The following day, though, the story was as big as life on the front page. I pointed it out to him, and he smiled and said, 'These people do these things, you see, without an ulterior motive. They do it from the point of view of their own interest. So I didn't get cross about it.' The editor had not misled him; he had simply acted in his own interest. There was no point in taking it personally. And he didn't."