The culture clash made my teams job harderThey came up with a variety of strategies to break the impasse, and some progress was made after the delegations broke up into different groups to work on specific issues, but neither side had permission to go beyond a certain point

On the sixth day, Shlomo Ben-Ami and Gilead Sher, with Baraks blessing, went well beyond previously stated Israeli positions in the hope of getting some movement from Saeb Erekat and Mohammed Dahlan, younger members of Arafats team who we all believed wanted a dealWhen the Palestinians didnt offer Barak anything in return for his moves on Jerusalem and territory, I went to see Arafat, taking Helal with me to interpret and Malley to take notesIt was a tough meeting, and it ended with my telling Arafat that I would end the talks and say he had refused to negotiate unless he gave me something to take back to Barak, who was off the wall because Ben-Ami and Sher had gone as far as they had and gotten nothing in returnAfter a while Arafat gave me a letter that seemed authentic hermes to say that if he was satisfied with the Jerusalem question, I could make the final call on how much land the Israelis kept for settlements and what constituted a fair land swapI took the letter to Barak and spent a lot of time talking to him, often alone or with the NSC notetaker for Israel, Bruce ReidelEventually Barak agreed that Arafats letter might mean something

On the seventh day, July 17, we almost lost BarakHe was eating and working when he choked on a peanut and stopped breathing for about forty seconds, until Gid Gernstein, the youngest member of his delegation, administered the Heimlich maneuverBarak was a tough customer; when he got his breath back, he went back to work as if nothing had happenedFor the rest of us, nothing was happeningBarak had kept his entire delegation working with him all day long and into the night

In any process like this, there are always periods of downtime, when some people are working and others arentYou have to do something to break the tensionI spent several hours of my downtime playing cards omega pocket watches with Joe Lockhart, John Podesta, and Doug BandDoug had worked at the White House for five years while putting himself through graduate and law school at night, and in the spring had become my last presidential aideHe had an interest in the Middle East and was very helpful to meChelsea played cards, tooShe made the highest Oh Hell! score in the entire two weeks at Camp David

It was after midnight when Barak finally came to me with proposalsThey were less than what Ben-Ami and Sher had already presented to the PalestiniansEhud wanted me to present them to Arafat as UI understood his frustration with Arafat, but I couldnt do that; it would have been a disaster, and I told him soWe talked until two-thirtyAt three-fifteen he came back, and we talked another hour alone on the back porch of my cabinEssentially he gave me the go-ahead to see if I could work out a deal on Jerusalem and the West Bank that he could live with and that was consistent with what Ben-Ami and Sher had discussed with their counterpartsThat was worth staying up for

On louis vuitton pink the morning of the eighth day, I was feeling both anxious and hopeful, anxious because I had been scheduled to leave for the G-8 summit in Okinawa, which I had to attend for a variety of reasons, and hopeful because Baraks sense of timing and his enormous courage had kicked inI delayed my departure for Okinawa by a day and met with ArafatI told him that I thought he could get 91 percent of the West Bank, plus at least a symbolic swap of land near Gaza and the West Bank; a capital in East Jerusalem; sovereignty over the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City and the outer neighborhoods of East Jerusalem; planning, zoning, and law-enforcement authority over the rest of the eastern part of the city; and custodianship but not sovereignty over the Temple Mount, which was known as Haram al-Sharif to the ArabsArafat balked at not having sovereignty over all of East Jerusalem, including the Temple MountHe turned the offer downI asked him to think about itWhile he fretted and Barak fumed, I called Arab leaders for supportMost wouldnt say j12 chanel diamond watch much, for fear of undercutting Arafat

On the ninth day, I gave Arafat my best shot againIsrael had gone much further than he had, and he wouldnt even embrace their moves as the basis for future negotiationsAgain I called several Arab leaders for helpKing Abdullah and President Ben Ali of Tunisia tried to encourage ArafatThey told me he was afraid to make compromisesIt looked as if the talks were dead, and on disastrous termsBoth sides clearly wanted a deal, so I asked them to stay and work while I was in OkinawaThey agreed, though after I left, the Palestinians still refused to negotiate on the basis of the ideas I had advanced, saying they had already rejected themThen the Israelis balkedThat was in part my faultApparently I had not been as clear with Arafat as I thought I had been about what the terms of staying on should be

I had left Madeleine and the rest of our team with a real messShe took Arafat to her farm and Barak to the famous Civil War battlefield at nearby GettysburgIt lightened them up, but nothing happened between c c purse them

History, despite its wrenching pain,

Cannot be unlived, and if faced

With courage, need not be lived again

Lift up your eyes upon

The day breaking for you

Give birth again

To the dream

Here on the pulse of this new day

You may have the grace to look up and out

And into your sisters eyes, and into

Your brothers face, your country

And say simply

Very simply

With hope

Good morning

Billy Graham ended our good morning with a brief benediction, and Hillary and I left the stage to accompany the Bushes down the back steps of the Capitol, where the presidential helicopter, Marine One, was waiting to take them on the first leg of their journey homeWe went back inside for lunch with the Congressional Committee, then drove up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the viewing stand in front of the White House for the inaugural paradeWith Chelsea, we got out of the car and walked the last few blocks of the route so that we could wave to the crowds packed several deep along the way

After the parade, we went into our new home for the first time, with only about two hours to greet the staff, rest, and get ready for the eveningMiraculously, the movers had gotten all our belongings in during the inaugural ceremonies and the parade

At cartier tank must seven, we started our evening marathon with a dinner, followed by visits to all eleven inaugural ballsMy brother sang for me at the MTV Youth Ball, and at another I played a tenor saxophone duet on Night Train with Clarence ClemonsHowever, at most of the balls Hillary and I would first say a few words of thanks, then dance to a few bars of one of our favorite songs, It Had to Be You, showing off her beautiful purple gownMeanwhile, Chelsea was off with friends from Arkansas at the Youth Ball, and Al and Tipper kept their own scheduleAt the Tennessee ball, Paul Simon regaled them with his hit You Can Call Me AlAt the Arkansas Ball, I introduced Mother to Barbra Streisand and told them both I thought theyd get alongThey did more than thatThey became fast friends, and Barbra called my mother every week until she diedI still have a picture of them walking hand in hand on that inaugural evening

When we got back to the White House, it was after 2 aWe had to be up the next morning for a public reception, but I was too excited to go right to bedWe had a full house: Hillarys parents, Mother and Dick, our siblings, Chelseas friends from home, and our friends Jim and Diane Blair and Harry and Linda ThomasonOnly our parents had retired

I wanted to look twiggy balenciaga aroundWe had been in the second-floor living quarters before, but this was differentIt was beginning to sink in that we actually lived there and would have to make it a homeMost of the rooms had high ceilings and beautiful but comfortable furnitureThe presidential bedroom and living room face the south, with a small room off the bedroom that would become Hillarys sitting roomChelsea had a bedroom and study across the hall, just beyond the formal dining room and the small kitchenAt the other end of the hall were the main guest bedrooms, one of which had been Lincolns office and has one of his handwritten copies of the Gettysburg Address

Next to the Lincoln Bedroom is the Treaty Room, so named because the treaty ending the Spanish-American War was signed there in 1898For several years it had been the private office of the President, usually configured with multiple televisions so the Chief Executive could watch all the news programs at onceI believe President Bush had four TVs thereI decided I wanted it to be a quiet place where I could read, reflect, listen to music, and hold small meetingsThe White House carpenters made me floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and the staff brought up the table on which the Spanish-American War treaty had been signedIn 1869, it had omega seamaster watch been Ulysses Grants cabinet table, with space for the President and his seven department heads to sit around itSince 1898 it had been used for the signing of all treaties, including the temporary nuclear test ban under President Kennedy and the Camp David Accords under President CarterBefore the year was out, I would be using it too

I filled out the room with a late-eighteenth-century Chippendale sofa, the oldest piece of furniture in the White House collection, and an antique table bought by Mary Todd Lincoln, on which we put the silver commemorative cup from the 1898 treatyWhen I got my books and CDs in, and hung some of my old pictures, including an 1860 photo of Abraham Lincoln and Yousuf Karshs famous photograph of Churchill, the place had a comfortable, peaceful atmosphere in which I would spend countless hours in the years ahead

On my first day as President, I started out by taking Mother down to the Rose Garden, to show her exactly where I had stood when I shook hands with President Kennedy almost thirty years agoThen, in a departure from traditional practice, we opened the White House to the public, providing tickets to two thousand people who had been selected in a postcard lotteryAl, Tipper, Hillary, and I stood in line shaking hands cartier tank louis with the ticket holders, then with others who waited in the cold rain for their time to walk through the lower south entrance into the Diplomatic Reception Room to say helloOne determined young man without a ticket had hitchhiked overnight to the White House with his sleeping bagAfter six hours, we had to stop, so I went outside to speak to the rest of the crowd gathered on the South LawnThat night, Hillary and I stood in line for another few hours, to greet our friends from Arkansas and classmates from Georgetown, Wellesley, and Yale

A few months after the inauguration, a book was published filled with beautiful photographs that capture the excitement and meaning of the inaugural week, with an explanatory text written by Rebecca Buffum TaylorIn her epilogue to the book, Taylor writes:

A shift in political values takes timeEven if successful, its clarity must wait until months or years have passed, until the lens has been extended and recedes again, until far and middle distance merge with what can be seen today

The words were penetrating, and probably correctBut I couldnt wait years, months, or even days to see if the campaign and the inauguration had effected a shift in values, deepening the roots and broadening the reach of the American replica fendi spy communit

They dared Hillary to follow suit, and Ted and I urged her onOnly Jackie encouraged her to take a safer route to the waterWith her usual good judgment, Hillary listened to Jackie

I spent the next ten days hanging around Oyster Pond, catching crabs with Hillary and Chelsea, walking on the beach that bordered the pond and the Atlantic Ocean, getting to know some of the people who lived in the area year-round, and reading

The vacation ended all too quickly, and we returned to Washington to the start of Chelseas first year in high school, Hillarys campaign for health-care reform, Al Gores first recommendations for savings through his National Performance Review, and a newly redecorated Oval OfficeI loved working thereIt was always light and open, even on cloudy days, because of the tall windows and glass door toward the south and eastAt night the indirect lighting reflected off the curved ceiling, which added light and made it comfortable to work at homeThe room was elegant yet inviting, and I always felt comfortable there, alone or in large groupsKaki Hockersmith, a decorator friend from Arkansas, helped us with a new, brighter look: gold curtains in blue trim, gold high-back chairs, couches mulberry leather upholstered in gold-and-red stripes, and a beautiful deep blue rug with the presidential seal in the center, mirroring the one on the ceiling overheadNow I liked it even better

September was also the biggest foreign policy month of my presidencyOn September 8, President Izetbegovic of Bosnia came to the White HouseThe threat of NATO air strikes had succeeded in restraining the Serbs and getting peace talks going againIzetbegovic assured me that he was committed to a peaceful settlement as long as it was fair to the Bosnian MuslimsIf one was reached, he wanted my commitment to send NATO forces, including Utroops, to Bosnia to enforce itI reaffirmed my intention to do so

On September 9, Yitzhak Rabin called to tell me that Israel and the PLO had reached a peace agreementIt was achieved in secret talks the parties held in Oslo, which we were informed of shortly before I took officeOn a couple of occasions, when the talks were in danger of being derailed, Warren Christopher had done a good job of keeping them on trackThe talks were kept confidential, which enabled the negotiators to deal candidly with the most sensitive issues and agree on a set of principles that both sides could acceptMost of our work lay in the chloe white future, in helping with the immensely difficult task of resolving the tough issues, hammering out the terms of implementation, and raising the money to finance the costs of the agreement, from increased security for Israel to economic development and refugee relocation and compensation for the PalestiniansI had already gotten encouraging signs of financial support from other countries, including Saudi Arabia, where King Fahd, though still angry about Yasser Arafats support for Iraq in the Gulf War, was supportive of the peace process

We were still a long way from a comprehensive solution, but the Declaration of Principles was a huge step forwardOn September 10, I announced that the Israeli and Palestinian leaders would sign the agreement on the South Lawn of the White House on Monday, the thirteenth, and that because the PLO had renounced violence and recognized Israels right to exist, the United States would resume its dialogue with themA couple of days before the signing, the press asked me if Arafat would be welcome at the White HouseI said that it was up to the parties directly involved to decide who would represent them in the ceremonyIn fact, I badly wanted Rabin and Arafat to attend and urged black gucci bag them to do so; if they didnt, no one in the region would believe they were fully committed to implementing the principles, and, if they did, a billion people across the globe would see them on television and they would leave the White House even more committed to peace than when they arrivedWhen Arafat said he would be there, I again asked Rabin to comeHe accepted, though he was still a bit on edge about it

In retrospect, the leaders decision to come may look easyAt the time, it was a gamble for both Rabin and Arafat, who couldnt be sure how their people would reactEven if a majority of their constituents supported them, extremists on both sides were bound to be inflamed by the compromises on fundamental issues inherent in the Declaration of PrinciplesRabin and Arafat showed both vision and guts in consenting to come and speakThe agreement would be signed by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Mahmoud Abbas, better known as Abu Mazen, both of whom had been intimately involved in the Oslo negotiationsSecretary Christopher and Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev would witness the accord

On the morning of the thirteenth, the atmosphere around the White House was alive with excitement as well as roxanne mulberry tensionWe had invited more than 2,500 people to the event, which George Stephanopoulos and Rahm Emanuel had labored overI was especially happy Rahm was working on this because he had served in the Israeli armyPresident Carter, who had negotiated the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, would be thereSo would President Bush, who, with Gorbachev, had co-sponsored talks in Madrid in 1991 involving Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab statesPresident Ford was invited but couldnt get to Washington before the celebration dinner in the eveningAll former secretaries of state and national security advisors who had worked for peace over the past twenty years were also invitedChelsea was taking the morning off from school, as were the Gore childrenThis was something they didnt want to miss

The night before, I had gone to bed at ten, early for me, and awakened at three in the morningUnable to go back to sleep, I got my Bible and read the entire book of JoshuaIt inspired me to rewrite some of my remarks, and to wear a blue tie with golden horns, which reminded me of those Joshua had used to blow down the walls of JerichoNow the horns would herald the coming of a peace that would return Jericho to the dior rasta bag Palestinians

But the goalposts had been moved: unless Hillary and I could prove ourselves innocent of whatever charges any adversary could come up with, most of the questions would be asked, and the stories written, in a tone of intense suspicion; the underlying current was that we must have done something wrong

For example, as our financial records found their way into the press, the New York Times reported that, starting with a $1,000 investment, Hillary had made $100,000 in the commodities market in 1979, with the help of Jim BlairBlair was one of my closest friends; he did help Hillary and a number of his other friends in trading commodities, but she took her own risks, paid more than $18,000 in brokerage fees, and, following her own instincts, got out of the market before it droppedLeo Melamed, the Republican former chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, on which agricultural commodities are traded, reviewed all of Hillarys trades and said there was nothing wrong with themFor years, the critics would refer to Hillarys commodity profit as prima facie evidence of corruption

The presumption of wrongdoing was reflected in a Newsweek story saying Hillary did not put up her own money for her sweet deal, with an analysis that it said was based on the expert opinion of Professor Marvin Chirelstein of Columbia Law School, one of the nations leading authorities on corporate law and contracts, who had taught me at Yale and who had been asked by our lawyer to review our tax returns for 197879, the period of the Whitewater investmentChirelstein disputed the Newsweek cambon chanel story, saying, I never said anything like that, and that he was outraged and humiliated

About the same time, Time magazine ran a cover photograph purporting to show George Stephanopoulos peering over my shoulder as I sat at my desk fretting over WhitewaterIn fact, the photo captured an earlier routine scheduling meeting at which several people were presentAt least two others were in the original pictureTime simply cropped them out

In April, Hillary held a press conference to answer questions about her commodity trades and WhitewaterShe did a fine job and I was proud of herShe even got a laugh from the press corps when she acknowledged that her belief in a zone of privacy might have made her less responsive to press questions about her past personal dealings than she should have been, but that after resisting for a long time, Ive been rezoned

The presumption of guilt imposed on us was extended to othersFor example, Roger Altman and Bernie Nussbaum were both heavily criticized for discussing criminal referrals issued against Madison Guaranty by the Resolution Trust Corporation, because the RTC was a part of the Treasury Department and Altman was overseeing it temporarilyPresumably, the critics thought Nussbaum could have been trying to influence the RTC proceedingsIn fact, the discussions were a result of the need to answer press questions arising out of leaks about the Madison investigation, and they had been approved by the Treasury Departments ethics counsel

Edwin Yoder, an old-fashioned progressive columnist, said Washington was being overtaken by ethical gucci horsebit hobo cleansersIn a column on the Nussbaum-Altman meeting, he said:

I wish someone would begin by explaining to me why it is so very wicked for White House staff to want information from elsewhere within the executive branch about charges and rumors concerning the president

Robert Fiske found the contacts between the White House and the Treasury Department to be legal, but that didnt stop the smearing of Nussbaum and AltmanBack then, all our political appointees needed to be read their Miranda warnings three times a dayBernie Nussbaum resigned in early March; he never got over my foolish decision to ask for an independent counsel, and he didnt want to be a source of further problemsAltman would leave government service a few months laterThey were both able, honest public servants

In March, Roger Ailes, a longtime Republican operative who had become president of CNBC, accused the administration of a cover-up with regard to Whitewater that includes land fraud, illegal contributions, abuse of power suicide cover-uppossible murderSo much for the credible evidence of wrongdoing standard

William Safire, the New York Times columnist who had been a speechwriter for Nixon and Agnew, and who seemed determined to prove that all their successors were just as bad as they were, was especially avid in his unsupported assertions that Vinces death was linked to illegal conduct by Hillary and meOf course, Vinces suicide note had said exactly the reverse, that we had done nothing wrong, but that didnt prevent Safire from speculating that Vince had improperly kept records black and white chanel damaging to us in his office

We now know that a lot of the so-called information that fueled the damaging but erroneous stories was fed to the press by David Hale and the right-wingers who adopted him for their own purposesIn 1993, Hale, the Republican municipal judge in Little Rock, was charged with defrauding the Small Business Administration of $900,000 in federal funds that were supposed to have been used to make loans to minority businesses through his company, Capital Management Services (a later GAO audit indicated he had defrauded the SBA of $3Instead, he gave the money to himself through a series of dummy corporationsHale discussed his plight with Justice Jim Johnson, the old Arkansas racist who had run against Win Rockefeller for governor in 1966 and against Senator Fulbright in 1968Johnson took Hale under his wing, and in August put him in contact with a conservative group called Citizens United, whose principals were Floyd Brown and David BossieBrown had produced the infamous Willie Horton ads against Mike Dukakis in 1988Bossie had helped him write a book for the 1992 campaign entitled Slick Willie: Why America Cannot Trust Bill Clinton, in which the authors gave special thanks to Justice Jim Johnson

Hale claimed that I had pressed him to lend $300,000 from Capital Management to a company owned by Susan McDougal, for the purpose of giving it out to leading Arkansas DemocratsIn return, McDougal would lend Hale more than $800,000 from Madison Guaranty, enabling him to get another million dollars from the Small Business AdministrationIt was an absurd vintage omega watches and untrue story, but Brown and Bossie peddled it hardApparently, Sheffield Nelson also helped, by pushing it to his contact at the New York Times, Jeff Gerth

By March 1994, the media was wringing its hands about some documents shredded by the Rose firm; one of the boxes that held the papers had Vince Fosters initials on itThe firm explained that the shredding involved material unrelated to Whitewater and was a normal procedure involving papers that were no longer neededNo one in our White House knew about the routine destruction of unneeded records unrelated to Whitewater at the Rose firmMoreover, we had nothing to cover up, and there still wasnt a bit of evidence to indicate that we did

It got so bad that even the highly respected journalist David Broder referred to Bernie Nussbaum as unfortunate for allegedly tolerating arrogance and abuse of power that led to the all-too-familiar wordsinvestigation, subpoena, grand jury, resignation that had echoed through Washington again this past weekBroder even compared the war rooms that managed our campaigns for the economic plan and NAFTA to Nixons enemies list

Nussbaum was unfortunate, all right; there would have been no investigation, subpoenas, or grand jury if I had listened to him and refused to give in to the demands for an independent counsel to clear the airBernies real offense was that he thought I should abide by the rule of law and accepted standards of propriety, rather than the constantly shifting standards of the Whitewater media, which were designed to produce the very results they professed to fendi spy replica dep

The two heroes of the budget battle in the House met different fatesMarjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky lost her wealthy suburban Pennsylvania district, but Pat Williams survived in rural Montana

I was profoundly distressed by the election, far more than I ever let on in publicWe probably would not have lost either the House or the Senate if I had not included the gas tax and the tax on upper-income Social Security recipients in the economic plan, and if I had listened to Tom Foley, Jack Brooks, and Dick Gephardt about the assault weapons banOf course, if I had made those decisions, I would have had to drop the EITC tax cut for lower-income working families, or accept less deficit reduction, with the attendant risk of an unfavorable response from the bond market; and I would have left more police officers and children at the mercy of assault weaponsI remained convinced that those hard decisions were good for AmericaStill, too many Democrats had paid a big price at the hands of voters who nevertheless would later reap the benefits of their courage in greater prosperity and safer streets

We might not have lost either house if, as soon as it became clear that Senator Dole would filibuster any meaningful health reform, I had announced a delay in health care until we reached a bipartisan consensus, and had taken up and passed welfare reform insteadThat would have been popular with alienated middle-class Americans who voted in droves for Republicans, and, unlike different decisions on the economic plan and the assault weapons ban, this course of action would have helped the Democrats without hurting the American people

Gingrich had proved to be a chanel white watches better politician than I wasHe understood that he could nationalize a midterm election with the contract, with incessant attacks on the Democrats, and with the argument that all the conflicts and bitter partisanship in Washington the Republicans had generated must be the Democrats fault since we controlled both Congress and the White HouseBecause I had been preoccupied with the work of the presidency, I hadnt organized, financed, and forced the Democrats to adopt an effective national counter-messageThe nationalization of midterm elections was Newt Gingrichs major contribution to modern electioneeringFrom 1994 on, if one party did it and the other didnt, the side without a national message would sustain unnecessary lossesIt happened again in 1998 and 2002

Though far more Americans had received tax cuts than income tax increases, and we had reduced the government to a much smaller size than it had been under Reagan and Bush, the Republicans also won on their same old promises of lower taxes and smaller governmentThey were even rewarded for problems they had created; they had killed health care, campaign finance reform, and lobbying reform with Senate filibustersIn that sense, Dole deserves a lot of credit for the Republican landslide, too; most people couldnt believe that a minority of forty-one senators could defeat any measure except the budgetAll the voters knew was that they didnt yet feel more prosperous or more secure; there was too much fighting in Washington and we were in charge; and the Democrats were for big government

I felt much as I did when I was defeated for reelection as governor in 1980: I had done a lot of good, but no one knew buy chanel bags itThe electorate may be operationally progressive, but philosophically it is moderately conservative and deeply skeptical of governmentEven if I had enjoyed more balanced press coverage, the voters probably would have had a hard time sorting out what I had accomplished in all the flurry of activitySomehow I had forgotten the searing lesson of my 1980 loss: You can have good policy without good politics, but you cant give the people good government without bothI would not forget it again, but I never got over all those good people who lost their seats because they helped me dig America out of the deficit hole of Reaganomics, made our streets safer, and tried to provide health insurance to all Americans

On the day after the election, I tried to make the best of a bad situation, promising to work with the Republicans and asking them to join me in the center of the public debate where the best ideas for the next generation of American progress must comeI suggested we work together on welfare reform and the line-item veto, which I supportedFor the time being, there was nothing more I could do

Many of the pundits already were predicting my demise in 1996, but I was more hopefulThe Republicans had convinced many Americans that the Democrats and I were too liberal and too tied to big government, but time was on my side for three reasons: because of our economic plan, the deficit would keep coming down and the economy would continue to improve; the new Congress, especially the House, was well to the right of the American people; and, despite their campaign promises, the Republicans would soon be proposing cuts in education, health care, and aid to the chanel 2.55 bag environment to pay for their tax cuts and defense increasesIt would happen because thats what ultra-conservatives wanted to do, and because I was determined to hold them to the laws of arithmetic

W ithin a week of the election, I was hard at work again, as were the RepublicansOn November 10, I named Patsy Fleming as national AIDS policy director, in recognition of her outstanding work in developing our AIDS policy, which included a 30 percent increase in overall AIDS funding, and I outlined a series of new initiatives to combat AIDSThe announcement was dedicated to the guiding light of the AIDS fight, Elizabeth Glaser, who was desperately ill with AIDS and would die in three weeks

The same day, I announced that the United States would no longer enforce the arms embargo in BosniaThe move had strong support in Congress and was necessary because the Serbs had resumed their aggression, with an assault on the town of Bihac; by late November, NATO was bombing Serb missile sites in the areaOn the twelfth, I was en route to Indonesia for the annual APEC leaders meeting, where the eighteen Asian-Pacific nations committed themselves to creating an Asian free market by 2020, with the wealthier nations doing so by 2010

On the home front, Newt Gingrich, basking in the afterglow of his big victory, kept up the withering personal attacks that had proved so successful in the campaignJust before the election, he had taken a page from his pamphlet of smear words, calling me the enemy of normal AmericansOn the day after the election, he called Hillary and me counterculture McGovernicks, his ultimate condemnation

The epithet Gingrich hurled at us was correct in some costume chanel jewelry respectsWe had supported McGovern, and we werent part of the culture that Gingrich wanted to dominate America: the self-righteous, condemning, Absolute Truthclaiming dark side of white southern conservatismI was a white Southern Baptist who was proud of my roots and confirmed in my faithBut I knew the dark side all too wellSince I was a boy, I had watched people assert their piety and moral superiority as justifications for claiming an entitlement to political power, and for demonizing those who begged to differ with them, usually over civil rightsI thought America was about building a more perfect union, widening the circle of freedom and opportunity, and strengthening the bonds of community across the lines that divide us

Even though I was intrigued by Gingrich and impressed by his political skills, I didnt think much of his claim that his politics represented Americas best valuesI had been raised not to look down on anyone and not to blame others for my own problems or shortcomingsThats exactly what the New Right message didBut it had enormous political appeal because it offered both psychological certainty and escape from responsibility: they were always right, we were always wrong; we were responsible for all the problems, even though they had controlled the presidency for all but six of the last twenty-six yearsAll of us are vulnerable to arguments that let us off the hook, and in the 1994 election, in an America where hardworking middle-class families felt economic anxiety and were upset by the pervasiveness of crime, drugs, and family dysfunction, there was an audience for the Gingrich message, especially when we didnt offer a competing balenciaga bag one