A week later, after a heated debate, the House of Representatives voted to continue normal trade relations with China. Although the motion carried by eighty-six votes, it sparked strong opposition from conservatives and liberals who disapproved of China’s human rights and trade policies. I also supported more political freedom in China, and had recently invited the Dalai Lama and Hong Kong human rights activist Martin Lee to the White House to highlight my support for the cultural and religious integrity of Tibet and for maintaining Hong Kong’s democracy now that the UK had restored it to China. I thought the trade relationship could be improved only through negotiations leading to China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. Meanwhile, we needed to stay involved with, not isolate, China. Interestingly, Martin Lee agreed, and supported the continuation of our trade relationship. Soon afterward, I flew home to Hope for the funeral of Oren Grisham, my ninety-two-year-old uncle Buddy, who had played such a large role in my life. When I got to the funeral home, his family and I immediately started swapping funny stories about him. As one of my relatives said, he was the salt of the earth and the spice of life. According to Wordsworth, the best portion of a good man’s life is his little, unremembered acts of kindness and love. Buddy had showered them on me when I was young and fatherless. In December, Hillary gave me a beautiful chocolate Labrador retriever to keep me company with Chelsea gone. He was a good-natured, high-spirited, intelligent dog. I named him Buddy. In early July, Hillary, Chelsea, and I, after a couple of relaxing days with King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia on the island of Majorca, were in Madrid for the NATO meeting. I had a fruitful discussion with the Spanish president, Jose Maria Aznar, who had just decided to fully integrate Spain into NATO’s command structure. Then NATO voted to admit Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, and made clear to the two dozen other nations that had joined the Partnership for Peace that NATO’s door remained open to new members. From the beginning of my presidency, I had pushed for the expansion of NATO and believed this historic step would help both to unify Europe and to maintain the transAtlantic alliance. The next day we signed a partnership agreement with Ukraine, and I left for stops in Poland, Romania, and Denmark to reinforce the meaning of NATO expansion. There were large, enthusiastic crowds in Warsaw, Bucharest, and Copenhagen. In Poland, they were celebrating their new NATO membership. In Bucharest, about 100,000 people chanted “U.S.A, U.S.A.!” to demonstrate their support for democracy and their desire to enter NATO as soon as possible. In Copenhagen, on a bright sunny day, the size and enthusiasm of the crowd reflected an affirmation of our alliance and an appreciation of the fact that I was the first sitting President ever to visit Denmark.
By mid-month, I was back at work in the White House, proposing legislation to ban discrimination based on genetic screening. Scientists were rapidly unlocking the mysteries of the human genome, and their discoveries were likely to save millions of lives and revolutionize health care. But genetic testing would also reveal an individual’s propensity to develop various illnesses, like breast cancer or Parkinson’s. We couldn’t allow the results of genetic tests to be the basis for denying health insurance or access to a job, and we didn’t want to discourage people from undergoing them out of fear that the results would be used against them rather than to lengthen their lives. At about the same time, the IRA restored the cease-fire it had broken in February 1996. I had pushed hard for the cease-fire, and it would hold this time, making it possible at last for the Irish to find their way through the thicket of accumulated hurt and suspicion to a shared future. As July was drawing to a close, we still hadn’t been able to agree on a detailed budget consistent with the earlier, more general agreement with the Republicans. We remained at odds over the size and shape of the tax cuts and over the allocation of new funds. While our team continued to negotiate with Congress, I went on with the rest of my job, asserting that, contrary to the dominant opinion in Congress, global warming was a reality and that we had to cut our greenhouse gas emissions, and holding a forum with Al Gore and other federal and state officials at Incline Village, Nevada, on the condition of Lake Tahoe.
Tahoe was one of the deepest, purest, cleanest lakes in the world, but its quality was degrading as a result of development, air pollution from traffic, and direct pollution from fuel that was discharged into the water from inefficient motorboats and Jet Ski engines. There was broad bipartisan support in California and Nevada for restoring the lake, and Al and I were determined to do everything possible to help.
At the end of the month, after I spoke to the National Governors Association in Las Vegas, Governor Bob Miller took me and several of my former colleagues to play golf with Michael Jordan. I had started playing again only two weeks earlier and was still wearing a soft leg brace for protection. I didn’t really think I needed it anymore, so I took it off for the golf match.
Jordan was a great golfer, a long if sometimes erratic driver who also had a great short game. I got some insight into why he had won so many NBA championships when our group played a short par-five hole. All five of us had a good chance to make a birdie four. Jordan looked at his forty-five-foot downhill breaking putt and said, “Well, I guess I have to make this to win the hole.” I could tell by the look in his eyes that he actually expected to make the difficult putt. He did, and won the hole. Jordan told me I’d play better if I put my leg brace back on: “Your body doesn’t need it anymore, but your mind doesn’t know it yet.” One reason I wasn’t playing better is that I was constantly on the phone to the White House for an update on the budget negotiations, as we made last-minute offers and compromises in an effort to conclude them.
A little more than halfway through the match, Rahm Emanuel called to say we had a deal. Then Erskine called to confirm it and tell me how good it was. We got all our education and health money, the tax cut was modest, about 10 percent of the Reagan cut in ’81, the Medicare savings were manageable, the middle-class tax cuts were in, the capital gains tax rate would be reduced from 28 to 20 percent, and everyone agreed that the budget would be balanced by 2002, and probably before then if the economy kept growing. Erskine and our whole team, especially my legislative aide, John Hilley, had done a great job. I was so happy I parred the next three holes, with my leg brace back on. The next day we had a big celebration on the South Lawn with all the members of Congress and the administration who had worked on the budget. The atmosphere was euphoric and the speeches were warm, generous, and bipartisan, although I did go out of my way to thank the Democrats, especially Ted Kennedy, Jay Rockefeller, and Hillary, for the children’s health plan. Because the deficit had already been reduced by more than 80 percent from its $290 billion high in 1993, the agreement was basically a progressive budget, with middle-class tax cuts I supported and the Republican capital gains cut. In addition to the health, education, and tax cut provisions, it raised the cigarette tax fifteen cents a pack to help pay for the children’s health insurance, restored $12 billion in disability and health benefits to legal immigrants, doubled the number of empowerment zones, and gave us the money to continue cleaning up the environment.
With all the sweetness and light at the White House that day, it was hard to remember that we’d been at each other’s throats for more than two years. I didn’t know how long the good feelings would last, but I’d worked hard to keep things more civil during the stressful negotiations. A few weeks earlier Trent Lott, who was miffed about having lost a minor legislative battle to the White House, had called me a “spoiled brat” on one of the Sunday-morning talk shows. A few days after Lott’s remarks I called and told him I knew what had happened and not to give it a second thought. After a hard week he had awakened on Sunday morning feeling bad and wishing he had never agreed to do the TV interview. He was tired and irritable, and when the interviewer goaded him about me he took the bait. He laughed and said, “That’s exactly what happened,” and the matter was behind us.
Most people who work hard under a lot of pressure occasionally say things they wish they hadn’t; I certainly had. Usually, I didn’t even read what the Republicans were saying about me, and if a harsh comment came to my attention I tried to ignore it. People hire Presidents to act for them; getting agitated about personal slights interferes with that. I’m glad I called Trent Lott and wish I’d made more calls like it in similar situations.
I didn’t feel the same sense of detachment toward Ken Starr’s continuing efforts to coerce people into making false charges against Hillary and me, and to prosecute those who refused to lie for him. In April, Jim McDougal, having changed his story to suit Starr and his deputy in Arkansas, Hick Ewing, finally went to jail with a recommendation from Starr that his sentence be shortened. Starr had done the same thing for David Hale.
Starr’s coddling of McDougal and Hale was in sharp contrast to his treatment of Susan McDougal, who was still being held in prison for contempt because of her refusal to answer Starr’s questions before the grand jury. After a brief period in an Arkansas county jail, to which she was led in handcuffs, leg manacles, and a waist chain, Susan was transferred to a federal facility, where she was kept apart from the other prisoners in a medical unit for a few months. She was then taken to a Los Angeles jail to answer charges there that she had embezzled funds from a former employer. When newly discovered documentary evidence shredded the prosecution’s case, she was acquitted. Meanwhile, she was forced to spend twenty-three hours a day in a windowless cell block usually inhabited by convicted murderers. She was also forced to wear a red dress, normally worn only by murderers and child molesters. After a few months of that, she was put in a Plexiglas cell in the middle of a jail pod; she couldn’t talk to other inmates, watch television, or even hear outside sounds. On the prison bus to her court appearances, she was put in a separate cage otherwise reserved for dangerous criminals. Her Hannibal Lecter–like confinement
