Because the election had not been in doubt for several weeks, it was easy to miss its significance. After the 1994 elections, I had been ridiculed as an irrelevant figure, destined for defeat in 1996. In the early stages of the budget fight, with the government shutdown looming, it had been far from clear that I would prevail or that the American people would support my stance against the Republicans. Now I was the first Democratic President to be elected to a second term since FDR in 1936.
FORTY-SEVEN
On the day after the election, I was back at the White House for a celebration on the South Lawn with my staff, cabinet, other appointees, campaign workers, and Democratic Party officials. In my remarks, I mentioned that the night before, as I waited for the election results, I had held a reunion with people who had worked for me in Arkansas when I was attorney general and governor, and that “I told them something I want to tell you—that is, I have always been a very hardworking, kind of hard-driving person. I’m always focused on the matter before me. Sometimes I don’t say ‘Thank you’ enough. And I’ve always been kind of hard on myself, and sometimes I think, just by omission, I’m too hard on the people who work here.”
Our team had accomplished a lot in the last four years under extreme duress. This was the result of my own early mistakes, the first two years of intensely negative press coverage, the loss of Congress in ’94, the financial and emotional toll of Whitewater, too much personal tragedy, and the constant demands inherent in trying to turn the country around. I had done my best to keep my own and everybody else’s spirits up, and to keep us all from being too distracted by the tragedies, the trash, and the mishaps. Now that the American people had given us another term, I was hoping that in the next four years we would be freer to do the public’s business without the turmoil and strife of the first term. I had been inspired by a statement made in late October by the archbishop of Chicago, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, a tireless advocate for social justice whom Hillary and I knew and admired very much. Bernardin was desperately ill and didn’t have long to live when he said, “A dying person does not have time for the peripheral or the accidental… it is wrong to waste the precious gift of time given to us on acrimony and division.”
In the week after the election, several people central to the administration announced their intention to leave by the end of the year, including Leon Panetta and Warren Christopher. Chris had lived on an airplane for four years, and Leon had seen us through the budget battles, not to mention staying up on election night playing hearts with me. Both of them wanted to go home to California and to a more normal life. They had served me and the nation well, and I would miss them. On November 8, I announced that Erskine Bowles would become the new chief of staff. His youngest child was off to college now, and Erskine was free to serve again, though it would cost him an arm and a leg to do so, as he once again gave up his lucrative business ventures.
Thank goodness, Nancy Hernreich and Betty Currie were staying. By this time, Betty knew most of my friends around the country, could handle a lot of the phone traffic, and was a wonderful help to me in the office. Nancy understood the dynamics of our office and my need for both involvement in and distance from the details of the day-to-day work. She did everything she could to make it easier for me to do my job, and kept the Oval Office operations in great shape. My then presidential aide, Stephen Goodin, was leaving, but we had lined up a good replacement: Kris Engskov, who had been at the White House from the start and whom I first met in north Arkansas way back in 1974 during my first campaign. Since the President’s aide sat just outside the Oval Office door, was with me all of the time, and was always by my side, it was good to have someone I’d known so long and who liked so much doing the job. I was also glad to have Janis Kearny, the White House diarist. Janis had been the editor of the Arkansas State Press, Little Rock’s black newspaper, and she was keeping meticulous records of all our meetings. I don’t know what I would have done without my Oval Office team.
A week later, after I announced an eighteen-month extension of our mission in Bosnia, Hillary and I were on our way to Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand for a combination of work and a vacation that we needed. We began with three days of pure fun in Hawaii, then flew on to Sydney, Australia. After a meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, a speech to the Australian parliament in Canberra, and a day in Sydney, including an unforgettable game with one of the greatest golfers of our time, Greg Norman, we flew north to Port Douglas, a coastal resort on the Coral Sea near the Great Barrier Reef. While there, we walked through the Daintree Rainforest with an aboriginal guide, toured a wildlife preserve where I cuddled a koala named Chelsea, and snorkeled around the magnificent reef. Like coral reefs the world over, it was threatened by ocean pollution, global warming, and physical abuse. Just before we went out to see it, I announced America’s support for the International Coral Reef Initiative, which was designed to prevent further destruction of reefs everywhere. We flew from Australia to the Philippines for the fourth Asian Pacific leaders’ meeting, hosted by President Fidel Ramos. The principal result of the conference was an agreement I had worked for that eliminated all tariffs on an array of computers, semiconductors, and telecommunications technology by 2000, a move that would result in more exports and more high-wage jobs for America. We visited Thailand to honor the king’s fiftieth year on the throne of one of America’s oldest allies in Southeast Asia: the United States had signed a treaty of amity and commerce with the king of Siam in 1833. King Bhumibol Adulyadej was an accomplished pianist and a big jazz fan. I presented him with a golden anniversary gift any jazz aficionado would appreciate, a large portfolio of photographs of jazz musicians, autographed by the superb jazz photographer Herman Leonard. We got home in time for our traditional Thanksgiving at Camp David. This year our group included our two delightful young nephews, Roger’s son, Tyler, and Tony’s son, Zach. Watching them play together made the spirit of the season come alive.
In December, I had to reconstitute a large part of my administration. Bill Perry, John Deutch, Mickey Kantor, Bob Reich, Hazel O’Leary, Laura Tyson, and Henry Cisneros were all leaving. We were losing valuable people in the White House, too. Harold Ickes was returning to his law practice and consulting business, and Deputy Chief of Staff Evelyn Lieberman was going to the State Department to head the Voice of America.
Early in the month I announced my new national security team: Madeleine Albright as secretary of state; Bill Cohen, former Republican senator from Maine, as secretary of defense; Tony Lake as CIA director; Bill Richardson as UN ambassador; and Sandy Berger as national security advisor. Albright had done an outstanding job at the United Nations and understood the challenges we faced, especially in the Balkans and the Middle East. I thought she had earned the chance to be the first female secretary of state. Bill Richardson had proved himself to be a skilled diplomat by his efforts in North Korea and Iraq, and I was pleased when he agreed to become America’s first Hispanic ambassador to the United Nations. Bill Cohen was an articulate, youthful-looking politician who had been an innovative thinker on defense issues for years. He had helped to craft the START I treaty and had played a key role in the legislation that reorganized and strengthened the military command structure in the 1980s. I wanted a Republican in the cabinet, liked and respected Cohen, and thought he could fill Bill Perry’s very big shoes. When I pledged to him that I would never politicize defense decisions, he accepted the job. I hated to lose John Deutch at the CIA. He had done a fine job as deputy secretary of defense, then had stepped into the tough CIA job after Jim Woolsey’s brief tenure. Tony Lake’s work at the National Security Council had given him a unique understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of our intelligence operations, which were especially critical now with the threat of terrorism on the rise. I didn’t consider anyone other than Sandy Berger for the job of national security advisor. We had been friends for more than twenty years. He felt comfortable bringing me bad news and disagreeing with me at meetings, and he had done a superb job on a whole range of issues in the first term. Sandy’s analytical powers were considerable. He thought through problems to the end, seeing potential pitfalls that others missed, without being paralyzed by them. He understood my strengths and weaknesses and how to make the most of the former and minimize the latter. He also never allowed his ego to get in the way of good decision making.