extend MFN to China. In May, Warren Christopher sent me a report saying that all the emigration cases had been resolved; that we had signed a memorandum of understanding on how to deal with the prison labor issue; and that for the first time China had said that it would adhere to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On the other hand, Christopher said, there were still human rights abuses in the arrest and detention of peaceful political dissidents and the repression of Tibet’s religious and cultural traditions.
China was extremely sensitive to other nations “interfering” in its political affairs. The Chinese leaders also felt that they were managing all the change they could handle with their economic modernization program and attendant huge population shifts from inland provinces to booming coastal cities. Because our engagement had produced some positive results, I decided, with the unanimous support of my foreign policy and economic advisors, to extend MFN and, for the future, to delink our human rights efforts from trade. The United States had a big stake in bringing China into the global community. Greater trade and involvement would bring more prosperity to Chinese citizens; more contacts with the outside world; more cooperation on problems like North Korea, where we needed it; greater adherence to the rules of international law; and, we hoped, the advance of personal freedom and human rights. In the first week of June, Hillary and I went to Europe to honor the fiftieth anniversary of D-day, June 6, 1944, when the United States and its allies crossed the English Channel and stormed the beaches of Normandy. It was the largest naval invasion in history and marked the beginning of the end of World War II in Europe.
The trip began in Rome, with a visit to the Vatican to see the pope and Italy’s new prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, the country’s biggest media owner and a political novice, who had put together an interesting coalition that included an extreme right-wing party that evoked comparisons with fascism. Despite his incomplete recovery from a broken leg, His Holiness Pope John Paul II was vigorous in discussing world issues, ranging from whether religious liberty could be secured in China to the possibilities of cooperation with moderate Muslim countries to our differences over how best to limit population explosion and promote sustainable development in poor nations. Berlusconi was, in some ways, Italy’s first television-age politician: charismatic, strong-willed, and determined to bring his own brand of discipline and direction to Italy’s notoriously unstable political life. His critics accused him of trying to impose a neo-fascist order on Italy, a charge he strongly denied. I was pleased with Berlusconi’s assurances that he was committed to preserving democracy and human rights, maintaining Italy’s historic partnership with the United States, and fulfilling Italy’s NATO responsibilities in Bosnia.
On June 3, I spoke at the American cemetery at Nettuno, once scarred by battle, now lush with pine and cypress trees. Row after row of marble headstones display the names of the 7,862 soldiers buried there. The names of another 3,000 Americans whose bodies were never found are inscribed in the chapel nearby. All of them died too young, in the liberation of Italy. This was the battle theater in which my father had served.
The next day we were in England, at Mildenhall Air Force Base near Cambridge, where we went to another American cemetery, this one with the names of 3,812 airmen, soldiers, and sailors who had been based there, and another Wall of the Missing with more than 5,000 names on it, including two who never returned from their flights over the English Channel: Joe Kennedy Jr., the oldest of the Kennedy children, who everyone thought would become the politician in the family; and Glenn Miller, the American bandleader whose music was all the rage in the 1940s. At the event the Air Force Band played Miller’s theme song, “Moonlight Serenade.”
After a meeting with John Major at Chequers, the fifteenth-century country residence of the British prime minister, Hillary and I attended a mammoth dinner in Portsmouth, where I was seated next to the queen. I was taken with her grace and intelligence and the clever manner in which she discussed public issues, probing me for information and insights without venturing too far into expressing her own political views, which was taboo for the British head of state. Her Majesty impressed me as someone who, but for the circumstance of her birth, might have become a successful politician or diplomat. As it was, she had to be both, without quite seeming to be either.
After the dinner we were guests of the royal family on their yacht, the HMS
When the service was over, we boarded the
On D-day, I spoke at Pointe du Hoc, Utah Beach, and the U.S. cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer. Each site was filled with veterans from World War II.
I also took a walk on Utah Beach with three veterans, one of whom had won the Medal of Honor for heroism on that fateful day fifty years earlier. This was his first trip back. He told me we were standing almost exactly where he had landed in 1944. Then he pointed up the beach and told me his brother had landed a few hundred yards in that direction. He said, “It’s funny how life works out. I won the Medal of Honor and my brother was killed.” “You still miss him, don’t you?” I asked. I’ll never forget his reply: “Every day, for fifty years.”
At the ceremony, I was introduced by Joe Dawson of Corpus Christi, Texas, who, as a young captain, was credited as being the first officer to successfully reach the top of the forbidding bluffs of Normandy under withering German fire. Almost 9,400 Americans died on D-day, including thirty-three pairs of brothers, a father and his son, and eleven men from tiny Bedford, Virginia. I acknowledged that those who survived and had returned to the scene of their triumph “may walk with a little less spring in their step and their ranks are growing thinner. But let us never forget, when they were young, these men saved the world.”
The next day I was in Paris to meet with Mayor Jacques Chirac, speak to the French National Assembly in the Palais Bourbon, and attend a dinner hosted by President Francois Mitterrand at the Elysee Palace. Mitterrand’s dinner ended about midnight, and I was surprised when he asked me if Hillary and I would like to see the “New Louvre,” the magnificent creation of Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei. Mitterrand was seventy-seven and in ill health, but he was eager to show off France’s latest masterpiece. When Francois, U.S. ambassador Pamela Harriman, Hillary, and I arrived, we found that our tour guide was none other than Pei himself. We looked at the magnificent glass pyramid, the restored and adapted old buildings, and the excavated Roman ruins for more than an hour and a half. Mitterrand’s energy never flagged as he supplemented Pei’s narrative to make sure we didn’t miss anything. The final day of the trip was a personal one, a return to Oxford to receive an honorary degree. It was one of those perfect English spring days. The sun was shining, a breeze was blowing, and the trees, wisteria, and flowers were all in bloom. In brief remarks, I referred to the D-day commemoration, then said, “History does not always give us grand crusades, but it always gives us opportunities.” We had plenty of them, at home and abroad: restoring economic growth, extending the reach of democracy, ending environmental destruction, building a new security in Europe, and halting “the spread of nuclear weapons and terrorism.” Hillary and I had had an unforgettable week, but it was time to get back to those “opportunities.”
The day after I returned, Senator Kennedy’s Labor and Human Resources Committee reported out a health- care reform bill. It was the first time legislation providing universal coverage had ever even made it out of a full congressional committee. One Republican, Jim Jeffords of Vermont, had voted for it. Jeffords encouraged me to keep reaching out to Republicans. He said that with a couple of amendments that wouldn’t gut the bill we could pick up a few more votes.
Our euphoria was short-lived. Two days later, Bob Dole, after having told me earlier that we would work out a compromise on the issue, announced that he would block any health-care legislation and make my program a major issue in the November congressional elections. A few days later, Newt Gingrich was quoted as saying the Republican strategy was to make health-care reform unpassable by voting against improving amendments. He was as good as his word. On June 30, the House Ways and Means Committee voted out a universal coverage bill without a single Republican vote. The Republican leaders had received a memorandum from William Kristol, former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, urging them to kill health-care reform. Kristol said the Republicans couldn’t afford to allow anything to pass; a success on health care would present a “serious political threat to the Republican Party,” while its demise would be a “monumental setback for the President.” At the end of May, at a Memorial Day retreat, the Republican congressional leaders decided to adopt Kristol’s position. I wasn’t surprised that Gingrich would follow Kristol’s hard line; his goal was to win the House and push the country to the right. Dole,
