Two days later, Hillary and I were at a DLC retreat at White Oak Plantation in northern Florida, which has the largest wild game preserve in the United States. I got up at four in the morning to watch the inaugural ceremonies for Nigeria’s new president, former general Olusegun Obasanjo, on TV. Ever since gaining independence, Nigeria had been riddled by corruption, regional and religious strife, and deteriorating social conditions. Despite its large oil production, the country suffered periodic power outages and fuel shortages. Obasanjo had taken power briefly in a military coup in the 1970s, then had kept his promise to step aside as soon as new elections could be held. Later, he had been imprisoned for his political views and, while incarcerated, had become a devout Christian and had written books about his faith. It was hard to imagine a bright future for sub-Saharan Africa without a more successful Nigeria, by far its most populous nation. After listening to his compelling inaugural address, I hoped Obasanjo would be able to succeed where others had failed.
On the home front, I started the month with an important clean-air announcement. We had already reduced toxic air pollution from chemical plants by 90 percent, and had set tough standards to reduce smog and soot that would prevent millions of cases of childhood asthma. On May 1, I said that after extensive consultation with industry, environmental, and consumer groups, EPA administrator Carol Browner would promulgate a rule to require all passenger vehicles, including gas-guzzling SUVs, to meet the same pollution standards, and that we would cut the sulfur content of gasoline by 90 percent over five years.
I announced a new crime initiative, releasing the funds to complete our efforts to put 100,000 police on the streets (more than half of them were already in service); expanding the COPS program to hire 50,000 more police officers in the highest-crime areas; and making it a federal crime to possess biological agents that could be turned into terrorist weapons without a legitimate, peaceful purpose for having them. The twelfth was a day I had hoped would never come; Bob Rubin was returning to private life. I believed he had been the best and most important Treasury secretary since Alexander Hamilton in the early days of our Republic. Bob had also been the first head of the National Economic Council. In both positions he had played a decisive role in our efforts to restore economic growth and spread its benefits to more Americans, to prevent and contain financial crisis abroad, and to modernize the international financial system to deal with a global economy in which more than one trillion dollars crossed national borders every day. He had also been a rock of stability during the impeachment ordeal, not only speaking up at the meeting when I apologized to my cabinet, but also constantly reminding our people that they should be proud of what they were doing, and cautioning them not to be too judgmental. One of our younger people said that Bob had told him that if he lived long enough, he would do something he’d be ashamed of, too.
When Bob came into the administration he was probably the wealthiest person on our team. After he supported the 1993 economic plan, with its tax increase for the highest-income Americans, I used to joke that “Bob Rubin came to Washington to help me save the middle class, and when he leaves, he’ll be one of them.” Now that Bob was moving back into private life, I didn’t think I’d have to worry about that anymore.
I named Bob’s able deputy secretary, Larry Summers, to succeed him. Larry had been in the thick of all the major economic questions of the last six years, and he was ready. I also named Stu Eizenstat, the undersecretary of state for economic affairs, to be deputy Treasury secretary. Stu had handled a lot of important assignments well, none more important than the so-called Nazi Gold matter. Edgar Bronfman Sr. had sparked our interest in it by contacting Hillary, who got things moving with an initial meeting. Eizenstat then spearheaded our attempt to secure justice and compensation for Holocaust survivors and their families whose assets had been looted as they were being packed off to concentration camps. Soon afterward, Hillary and I flew to Colorado to meet with students and families from Columbine High School. A few days earlier the Senate had adopted my proposals to ban the import of large ammunition clips that were being used to evade the assault weapons ban, and to ban the possession of assault weapons by juveniles. And in the face of intense lobbying by the NRA, Al Gore had broken a 50–50 tie to pass the proposal to close the gun show loophole in the Brady law’s requirement of background checks.
Although the community was still grieving, the students at Columbine were coming back, and they and their parents seemed determined to do something to reduce the chances of further Columbines. They knew that though there had been several school shootings before theirs, it was Columbine that had finally pierced the soul of America. I told them that they could help America build a safer future because of what they had endured. Although Congress would not close the gun show loophole, in the 2000 election, because of Columbine, the voters in conservative Colorado would pass a measure to do so in their state by an overwhelming margin.
Whitewater World was still alive and well in May, as Kenneth Starr, despite his defeat in the Susan McDougal trial, pursued his case against Julie Hiatt Steele. The case ended in a hung jury; in conservative northern Virginia, it was another setback for the independent counsel and his tactics. After all Starr’s efforts to get into the Jones case, the only person who was indicted as a result was Steele, another innocent bystander who refused to lie. Starr’s office had now conducted four trials and lost three. In June, the punishing bombing raids on the Serbs finally broke Milosevic’s will to resist. On the second, Victor Chernomyrdin and Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari personally handled NATO’s demands to Milosevic. The next day Milosevic and the Serbian parliament agreed to them. Predictably, the next few days were full of tension and disputes over the details, but on the ninth NATO and Serbian military officials agreed to a prompt withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo and the deployment of an international security force with a unified NATO chain of command. The next day Javier Solana instructed General Clark to suspend NATO’s air operations, the UN Security Council passed a resolution welcoming the end of the war, and I announced to the American people that, after seventynine days, the bombing campaign was over, the Serb forces were withdrawing, and the one million men, women, and children driven from their land would be able to go home. In an Oval Office address to the nation, I thanked our armed forces for their superb performance and the American people for their stand against ethnic cleansing and their generous support of the refugees, many of whom had come to America. Allied Commander Wes Clark had managed the campaign with skill and determination, and he and Javier Solana had done yeoman’s work in holding the alliance together and in never wavering in our steadfast commitment to victory on the bad days as well as the good ones. So had my entire national security team. Even though when the bombing wasn’t over in a week we were constantly secondguessed, Bill Cohen and Hugh Shelton had remained convinced that the air campaign would work if we could hold the coalition together for two months. Al Gore, Madeleine Albright, and Sandy Berger had all remained cool under fire in the nail-biting, roller-coaster weeks we had just been through together. Al had played a critical role in keeping our relationship with Russia intact by staying in contact with Victor Chernomyrdin and making sure that we and the Russians had a common position when Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari went to Serbia to try to persuade Milosevic to give up his futile resistance. On the eleventh, I took a congressional delegation to Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to say a special word of thanks to the crews and support personnel on B-2 stealth bombers, which flew all the way from Missouri to Serbia and back, nonstop, to perform the nighttime bombing operations for which the B-2 was especially well suited. In all, 30,000 sorties were flown in the Kosovo campaign. Only two planes were lost, and their crews were recovered safely.