I n early June, I gave a radio address to increase awareness of mental-health issues with Tipper Gore, whom I had named my official advisor for mental health and who recently had courageously revealed her own treatment for depression. Two days later, Hillary and I joined Al and Tipper for a White House Conference on Mental Health, in which we dealt with the staggering personal, economic, and social costs of untreated mental illness.
For the rest of the month, I highlighted our gun safety proposals; our efforts to develop an AIDS vaccine; my efforts to include environmental and labor rights issues in trade talks; the report of the Presidents Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board on security at the Energy Departments weapons labs; a plan to restore health and disability benefits to legal immigrants; a proposal to allow Medicaid to cover disabled Americans who couldnt meet the costs of treatments if they lost their health-care coverage because they entered the workforce; legislation to help older children who leave foster care to make the adjustment to independent living; and a plan to modernize Medicare and extend the life of its trust fund.
I had been looking forward to July. I thought it would be a predictable, positive month. I would announce that we were taking the bald eagle off the endangered species list, and Al Gore would outline our plan to complete the restoration of the Florida Everglades. Hillary would begin her listening tour at Senator Moynihans farm at Pindars Corners in upstate New York, and I would take a tour of poor communities across the country to promote my New Markets initiative to attract more investment to areas that were still not part of our recovery. All those things happened, but so did events that were unplanned, troublesome, or tragic.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan called and asked if he could come to Washington on July 4 to discuss the dangerous standoff with India that had begun several weeks earlier when Pakistani forces under the command of General Pervez Musharraf crossed the Line of Control, which had been the recognized and generally observed boundary between India and Pakistan in Kashmir since 1972. Sharif was concerned that the situation Pakistan had created was getting out of control, and he hoped to use my good offices not only to resolve the crisis but also to help mediate with the Indians on the question of Kashmir itself. Even before the crisis, Sharif had asked me to help in Kashmir, saying it was as worthy of my attention as the Middle East and Northern Ireland. I had explained to him then that the United States was involved in those peace processes because both sides wanted us. In this case, India had strongly refused the involvement of any outside party.
Sharifs moves were perplexing because that February, Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had traveled to Lahore, Pakistan, to promote bilateral talks aimed at resolving the Kashmir problem and other differences. By crossing the Line of Control, Pakistan had wrecked the talks. I didnt know whether Sharif had authorized the invasion to create a crisis he hoped would get America involved or had simply allowed it in order to avoid a confrontation with Pakistans powerful military. Regardless, he had gotten himself into a bind with no easy way out.
I told Sharif that he was always welcome in Washington, even on July 4, but if he wanted me to spend Americas Independence Day with him, he had to come to the United States knowing two things: first, he had to agree to withdraw his troops back across the Line of Control; and second, I would not agree to intervene in the Kashmir dispute, especially under circumstances that appeared to reward Pakistans wrongful incursion.
Sharif said he wanted to come anyway. On July 4, we met at Blair House. It was a hot day, but the Pakistani delegation was used to the heat and, in their traditional white pants and long tunics, seemed more comfortable than my team. Once more, Sharif urged me to intervene in Kashmir, and again I explained that without Indias consent it would be counterproductive, but that I would urge Vajpayee to resume the bilateral dialogue if the Pakistani troops withdrew. He agreed, and we released a joint statement saying that steps would be taken to restore the Line of Control and that I would support and encourage the resumption and intensification of bilateral talks once the violence had stopped.
After the meeting, I thought perhaps Sharif had come in order to use pressure from the United States to provide himself cover for ordering his military to defuse the conflict. I knew he was on shaky ground at home, and I hoped he would survive, because I needed his cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
Pakistan was one of the few countries with close ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Before our July 4 meeting, I had asked Sharif on three occasions for help in apprehending Osama bin Laden: in our meeting the previous December, at King Husseins funeral, and in a June phone conversation and follow-up letter. We had intelligence reports that al Qaeda was planning attacks on U.S. officials and facilities in various places around the world and perhaps in the United States as well. We had been successful in breaking up cells and arresting a number of al Qaeda members, but unless bin Laden and his top lieutenants were apprehended or killed, the threat would remain. On July 4, I told Sharif that unless he did more to help, I would have to announce that Pakistan was in effect supporting terrorism in Afghanistan.
On the day I met with Sharif, I also signed an executive order placing economic sanctions on the Taliban, freezing its assets and prohibiting commercial exchanges. Around this time, with Sharifs support, U.S. officials also began to train sixty Pakistani troops as commandos to go into Afghanistan to get bin Laden. I was skeptical about the project; even if Sharif wanted to help, the Pakistani military was full of Taliban and al Qaeda sympathizers. But I thought we had nothing to lose by exploring every option.
The day after the Sharif meeting, I started the New Markets tour, beginning in Hazard, Kentucky, with a large delegation including several business executives, congressmen, cabinet members, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and Al From.
I was glad that Jackson was making the tour and that we were starting in Appalachia, Americas poorest all-white area. Jesse had long worked to bring more private-sector investment to poor areas, and we had grown even closer during the impeachment year, when he had strongly supported my whole family and made a special effort to reach out to Chelsea. From Kentucky we traveled to Clarksdale, Mississippi; East St. Louis, Illinois; the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota; a Hispanic neighborhood in Phoenix, Arizona; and the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles.
Even though America had had two years of unemployment rates just above 4 percent, all the communities I visited and many like them suffered from unemployment that was far higher than that and per capita incomes well below the national average. The unemployment rate at Pine Ridge was over 70 percent. Yet everywhere we went, I met intelligent, hardworking people who were capable of contributing much more to the economy.
I thought doing more to get investment into these areas was both the right thing to do and economically smart. We were already enjoying the largest economic expansion in history, with a rapidly growing rate of productivity. It seemed to me there were three ways to continue to increase growth without inflation: sell more products and services overseas; increase the workforce participation of particular populations, like welfare recipients; and bring growth to new markets in America where investment was too low and unemployment too high.
We were doing well in the first two areas, with more than 250 trade agreements and welfare reform. And we had made a good start on the third, with more than 130 empowerment zones and enterprise communities, community development banks, and aggressive enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act. But too many communities had been left behind. I was putting together a legislative proposal to increase available capital to inner cities, rural towns, and Indian reservations by $15 billion. Since it would promote free enterprise, I hoped to get strong bipartisan support and was encouraged by the fact that Speaker Hastert seemed especially interested in the effort.
On July 15, Ehud and Nava Barak accepted an invitation to spend the night at Camp David with Hillary and me. We had an enjoyable dinner, and Ehud and I stayed up talking until nearly three in the morning. It was clear that he wanted to complete the peace process and believed that his big election victory gave him a mandate to do so. He was interested in doing something substantive at Camp David, especially after I showed him the building where most of the negotiations President Carter mediated between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin had taken place in 1978.
At the same time I was also occupied with trying to get the Northern Ireland peace process back on track. There was a deadlock caused by a disagreement between Sinn Fein and the Unionists over whether the IRAs decommissioning could occur after the new government was formed or had to come before it. I explained the situation to Barak, who was intrigued by the differences and similarities between the Irish problems and his own.
The next day John Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister Lauren were killed when the small plane John was flying crashed off the coast of Massachusetts. I had liked John ever since I had met him in the 1980s when he was a law student working as an intern in Mickey Kantors firm in Los Angeles. He had come to one of my first New York campaign events in 1991, and not long before they perished I had enjoyed showing Carolyn and John the residence floors of the White House. Ted Kennedy gave another magnificent eulogy for a fallen family member: Like his father, he had every gift.
On July 23, King Hassan II of Morocco died at the age of seventy. He had been an ally of the United States, and a supporter of the Middle East peace process, and I had enjoyed a good personal relationship with him. Again on short notice, President Bush agreed to fly to Morocco for the funeral with Hillary, Chelsea, and me. I walked behind the kings horse-drawn casket with President Mubarak, Yasser Arafat, Jacques Chirac, and other leaders on a three-mile route through downtown Rabat. Well over one million people lined the streets, ululating and shouting in grief and respect to their fallen monarch. The deafening din of the huge, emotional throng made the march one of the most incredible events I had ever participated in. I think Hassan would have approved.
After a brief meeting with Hassans son and heir, King Mohammed VI, I flew home for a couple of days of work, then left again for Sarajevo, where I joined several European leaders as we committed to a stability pact for the Balkans, an agreement to support the regions short-term needs and long-term growth by providing greater access to our markets for Balkan products; working for the inclusion of southeastern European countries into the WTO; and providing investment funds and credit guarantees to encourage private investment.
The rest of the summer flew by as I continued to disagree with the Republicans over the budget and the size and distribution of their proposed tax cut; Dick Holbrooke was finally confirmed as UN ambassador after an unconscionable delay of fourteen months; and Hillary moved closer to declaring her Senate candidacy.
In August, we took two trips to New York to look for a home. On the twenty-eighth, we visited a late-nineteenth-century farmhouse with a large addition from 1989 in Chappaqua, about forty miles from Manhattan. The old part of the house was charming, the new part spacious and full of light. The instant I walked upstairs into the master bedroom I told Hillary we had to buy the house. It was part of the 1989 addition; it had extra-high ceilings with a row of glass doors facing the backyard, and had two huge windows on the other walls. When Hillary asked me why I was so sure, I replied, Because youre about to start a hard campaign. Therell be some bad days. This beautiful room is bathed in light. Youll wake up every morning in a good humor.
Later in August, I traveled to Atlanta to give the Medal of Freedom to President and Mrs. Carter for the extraordinary work they had done as private citizens since leaving the White House. A couple of days later, in a White House ceremony, I gave the award to several other distinguished Americans, including President Ford and Lloyd Bentsen. The other recipients were civil rights, labor, democracy, and environmental activists. All were less famous than Ford and Bentsen, but each had made unique and enduring contributions to America.
I did a little campaigning, going to Arkansas with Al Gore for meetings with local farmers and black leaders from across the South and a large fund-raiser full of people from my old campaigns. I also spoke and played saxophone at an event for Hillary on Marthas Vineyard, and appeared with her at events in New York, including a stop at the state fair in Syracuse, where I was right at home with the farmers. I enjoyed campaigning for both Hillary and Al, and I was beginning to look forward to a time when, after a lifetime of being helped by others, I could end my life in politics the way Id started it, campaigning for other people I believed in.
In early September, Henry Cisneros finally resolved his case with independent counsel David Barrett, who had indicted him, unbelieveably, on eighteen felony counts for understating personal expenses to the FBI during his 1993 interview. On the day before his trial began, Barrett, who knew he had an unwinnable case, offered Cisneros a deal: a guilty plea to one misdemeanor, a $10,000 fine, and no jail time. Henry took it to avoid the crushing legal expense of a long trial. Barrett had spent more than $9 million of the taxpayers money to torment a good man for four years. Just a few weeks earlier, the independent counsel law had expired.
Most of September was devoted to foreign policy. Early in the month Madeleine Albright and Dennis Ross were in Gaza to support Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat as they agreed on the next steps to implement the Wye River accord, approving a port for the Palestinians, a road connecting the West Bank and Gaza, the handover of 11 percent of the West Bank, and the release of 350 prisoners. Albright and Ross then went to Damascus to urge President Assad to respond to Baraks desire for peace talks with him soon.
On the ninth, I made my first trip to New Zealand for the APEC summit. Chelsea went with me, while Hillary stayed home to campaign. The big news at the summit involved Indonesia and the support its military had given to the violent suppression of the pro-independence movement in East Timor, a long-troubled Roman Catholic enclave in the worlds most populous Muslim country. Most of the APEC leaders favored an international peacekeeping mission for East Timor, and Australian prime minister John Howard was willing to take the lead. At first the Indonesians were opposed to it, but soon they would be forced to relent. An international coalition was formed to send troops to East Timor under the leadership of Australia, and I pledged to Prime Minister Howard that I would send a couple of hundred American troops to provide the logistical support our allies needed.
I also met with President Jiang to discuss WTO issues, held joint discussions with Kim Dae Jung and Keizo Obuchi to reaffirm our common position on North Korea, and had my first meeting with Boris Yeltsins new prime minister and chosen successor, Vladimir Putin. Putin presented a stark contrast to Yeltsin. Yeltsin was large and stocky; Putin was compact and extremely fit from years of martial arts practice. Yeltsin was voluble; the former KGB agent was measured and precise. I came away from the meeting believing Yeltsin had picked a successor who had the skills and capacity for hard work necessary to manage Russias turbulent political and economic life better than Yeltsin now could, given his health problems; Putin also had the toughness to defend Russias interests and protect Yeltsins legacy.
Before we left New Zealand, Chelsea and I and my staff took some time to enjoy the beautiful country. Prime Minister Jenny Shipley and her husband, Burton, hosted us in Queenstown, where I played golf with Burton, Chelsea explored caves with the Shipley kids, and several of my staff went bungee jumping off a high bridge. Gene Sperling tried to goad me into trying it, but I told him Id had about all the free falls I could stand.
Our last stop was the International Antarctic Center in Christchurch, Americas launching station for our operations in Antarctica. The cen-ter contained a large training module in which the frigid conditions of Antarctica were replicated. I went there to highlight the problem of global warming. Antarctica is a great cooling tower for our planet, with ice more than two miles thick. A huge chunk of Antarctic ice, about the size of Rhode Island, had recently broken free as a result of thawing. I released previously classified satellite photos of the continent to aid in studying the changes that were occurring. The biggest thrill of the event for Chelsea and me was the presence of Sir Edmund Hillary, who had explored the South Pole in the 1950s, was the first man to reach the top of Mount Everest, and, most important, was the man Chelseas mother had been named for.
Soon after I returned to America, I went to New York to open the last UN General Assembly of the twentieth century, urging the delegates to adopt three resolutions: to do more to fight poverty and put a human face on the global economy; to increase our efforts to prevent or quickly stop the killing of innocents in ethnic, religious, racial, or tribal conflicts; and to intensify our efforts to prevent the use of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons by irresponsible nations or terrorist groups.
At the end of the month I got back to domestic affairs, vetoing the latest Republican tax cut because it was too big, too bloated, and put too great a burden on Americas economy. Under the budget rules, the bill would have forced large cuts in education, health care, and environmental protection. It would have prevented us from extending the life of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and from adding a much-needed prescription drug benefit to Medicare.
We were going to have a surplus this year of about $100 billion, but the proposed GOP tax cut would cost nearly $1 trillion over a decade. Republicans justification for it was based on projected surpluses. On this issue I was far more conservative than they were. If the projections were wrong, the deficits would return, and, with them, higher interest rates and slower growth. Over the previous five years, Congressional Budget Office estimates had been off by an average of 13 percent a year, though our administrations had been closer to the mark. It was an irresponsible risk. I asked the Republicans to work with the White House and the Democrats in the same spirit that had produced the bipartisan welfare reform bill in 1996 and the Balanced Budget Act in 1997.
On September 24, Hillary and I hosted an event in the Old Executive Office Building to celebrate the success of bipartisan efforts to increase the adoption of children out of the foster-care system. They had increased almost 30 percent in the two years since our legislation had passed. I paid tribute to Hillary, who had been working on the issue for more than twenty years, and to perhaps the most ardent supporter of the reforms in the House, Tom DeLay, himself an adoptive parent.
I would have liked a few more moments like that, but with this one exception, DeLay didnt believe in consorting with the enemy.
Partisanship returned in early October, when the Senate rejected, on a party-line vote, my nomination of Judge Ronnie White to a federal district judgeship. White was the first African-American man to serve on the Missouri Supreme Court and was a highly regarded judge. He was defeated after Missouris conservative senator John Ashcroft, who was in a tough fight for reelection against Governor Mel Carnahan, grossly distorted Whites record on the death penalty. White had voted to uphold 70 percent of the death penalty cases that had come before him. On more than half of those he had voted to reverse, he was part of a unanimous state supreme court ruling. Ashcroft got his Republican colleagues to go along with the smear because he thought it would help him and hurt Whites supporter Governor Carnahan with prodeath penalty voters in Missouri.
Ashcroft wasnt alone in completely politicizing the confirmation process. By this time, Senator Jesse Helms had refused for years to allow the Senate to vote on a black judge for the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, even though there had never been an African-American on the court. And the Republicans wondered why African-Americans wouldnt vote for them.
Our partisan differences extended even to the nuclear test ban treaty, which had been supported by every Republican and Democrat President since Eisenhower. The Joint Chiefs were for it, and our nuclear experts said tests werent necessary to check the reliability of our weapons. But we didnt have the votes of two-thirds of the senators necessary to ratify the treaty, and Trent Lott tried to get me to promise not to raise it for the rest of my term. I couldnt figure out whether the Senate Republicans had really moved that far to the right of their own partys traditional position or just didnt want to give me another victory. Regardless, their refusal to ratify the test ban treaty weakened Americas ability to argue that other nations shouldnt develop or test nuclear weapons.
I continued doing political events for Al Gore and the Democrats, including two with gay activists who were strongly supportive of both Al and me because of the substantial number of openly gay and lesbian citizens serving in the administration, and because of our strong support of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act and the hate crimes bill, which made crimes committed against people because of their race, disability, or sexual orientation a federal offense. I also went to New York whenever I could to support Hillary. Her likely opponent was New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was a combative, controversial figure but was much less conservative than the national Republicans. I had had a cordial relationship with him, largely because of our shared support for the COPS program and gun safety measures.
George W. Bush seemed well on his way to winning the Republican nomination, as several of his challengers dropped out, leaving only Senator John McCain with any chance of stopping him. I had been impressed with Bushs campaign since I first saw him articulate his compassionate conservative theme in a farm setting in Iowa. I thought it was a brilliant formulation, virtually the only argument he could make to swing voters against an administration with approval ratings in the 65 percent range. He couldnt dispute the fact that we had 19 million new jobs, the economy was still growing, and crime was down for the seventh year in a row. Instead, his compassionate conservative message to the swing voters was this: Ill give you the same good conditions you have now, with a smaller government and a bigger tax cut. Wouldnt you like that? On most issues, Bush was in line with the conservative congressional Republicans, though he had criticized their budget for being harsh to the poor because it raised taxes for low-income Americans by cutting back on the Earned Income Tax Credit, while reducing taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
Although Bush was a formidable politician, I still thought Al Gore would win, despite the fact that only two previous vice presidents, Martin Van Buren and George H. W. Bush, had been elected directly from the vice presidency, because the country was in good shape and our administration had strong support. All vice presidents who run for President have two problems: most people dont know what theyve done and dont give them credit for the accomplishments of the administration, and they tend to get typecast as number two men. I had done everything I could to help Al avoid those problems by giving him many high-profile assignments and making sure he received public recognition for his invaluable contribution to our successes. Yet even though he was............