Living History (55 page)

“Would you rather have been somewhere else today?”

“Oh, about a million other places.”

When I was asked about the missing billing records, I told them, “I, like everyone else, would like to know the answer about how those documents showed up after all these years. I tried to be as helpful as I could in their investigation efforts.”

I waved as I climbed into the limousine for the ride back to the White House. When I walked into the Diplomatic Receiving Room, Bill and Chelsea were waiting for me with big hugs and eager questions about how it went. I told them I was just glad it was over.

In the ensuing press coverage, much was made of the flowing, embroidered black wool coat I wore that day. One reporter noted that the garment was “emblazoned on the back with a gold dragon,” which prompted the Beltway commentators to ponder its symbolic meaning: Was it a totem? Was I the dragon lady? The White House was obliged to issue a statement that the appliqued swirls on the coat made by Connie Fails, my designer friend in Little Rock, meant nothing: it was just an abstract pattern that one fashion columnist wrote looked like an “art deco rendering of seashells.” My press office reminded reporters that I had worn the coat during the 1993 inaugural events―when no one had commented on the design―but this did not end the chatter. The coat had “turned into a Washington political Rorschach test,” one reporter observed. True enough.

The following night, I forced myself to show up at yet another of Washington’s rituals, the Alfalfa Club Dinner. This is a club with only one purpose: to hold a mock presidential nomination during an annual white-tie dinner. I was seated at the dais with my husband and a covey of cabinet Secretaries and Supreme Court justices in the ballroom of the Capital Hilton Hotel. The mock nominee that year was Colin Powell. He got up to speak and greeted the dignitaries present: “Ladies and gentlemen, Republican extremists, Democrats and other nonessentials, subpoened guests.” That was, I assumed, a category of one-me. I raised my arm up in the air and laughed as Powell turned and smiled mischievously at me. After Powell finished speaking, one of Bill’s top advisers walked over to me and whispered, “Until you’ve testified at least five times before a grand jury like I have, you’re just small potatoes.”

Knowing the importance of America’s long and complex relationship with France, Bill and I were anxious about our first State Dinner for French President Jacques Chirac and his wife, Bernadette, in February 1996. Chirac, a conservative politician from the party of de Gaulle had been the mayor of Paris for eighteen years. And though Chirac is fluent in English and had traveled extensively in America as a young man, his personal affection for the U.S. did not always translate into his government’s support for our policies. Bill worked hard to win French cooperation, however, most notably in 1999 when he persuaded France to go along with NATO air strikes to reverse ethnic cleansing in Kosovo despite the lack of a specific U.N. resolution.

Diplomacy is a tricky business, even when it comes to relations with our allies. The close affiliation and mutual respect between our countries stems back to their help with our Revolution, but there are times when French and American policies diverge and relations are strained, as we’ve seen with the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which the French government vehemently and vocally opposed.

The first hurdle for the dinner was the menu. The French are legendary for their cuisine, so I fretted about the perfect meal to serve them at the White House. Our Americanborn and -trained chef, Walter Scheib, was not intimidated in the least and assured me that he would combine the best of both culinary traditions.

The round tables in the State Dining Room were draped in damask and awash with crystal, silver and roses. As a midwinter snow fell on Washington, diplomats, business leaders, artists and movie stars chattered over lemon-thyme lobster and roasted eggplant soup, rack of lamb and sweet potato puree served with the finest American wines. From this first meal to our subsequent encounters with the Chiracs, Bill and I discovered that, if the world of diplomacy is tricky, it is also filled with surprises.

“Of course, I love many things American, including the food,” said President Chirac, seated to my right. “You know, I used to work in a Howard Johnson’s restaurant”

Despite the occasional serious political differences between the United States and France, Bill and I maintained a comfortable dialogue with the Chiracs during our years in the White House, and I enjoyed a visit I made with Bernadette Chirac to central France.

The niece of General de Gaulle’s aide-de-camp, Bernadette is an elegant, cultured woman who since 1971 had been a local elected official from a constituency in the Correze region.

She was the only presidential spouse I knew who had been elected on her own. I was fascinated by the independent role she had carved out for herself and her stories of walking and driving herself from house to house, asking for votes. She later invited me to accompany her to visit her constituency, and in May 1998 I spent a wonderful day touring Correze with her, meeting the people she represented.

Soon it was time to celebrate another family milestone: Chelsea’s sixteenth birthday. I could hardly believe how quickly our daughter was growing up. It seemed like yesterday that she was taking her first dance lessons and crawling into my lap to read a book. Now she was my height, and she wanted to get a driver’s license. That was scary enough, but even more frightening: her father was teaching her how to drive.

Outside of golf carts, the Secret Service never let Bill drive himself around, which was a good thing. It’s not that my husband isn’t mechanically inclined, it’s just that he has so much information running through his head at any given moment that he doesn’t always notice where he’s going. But he insisted on performing his fatherly duty, borrowing a car from the Secret Service fleet at Camp David.

After the first lesson on backing up and parallel parking, I met Chelsea as she returned to Aspen Lodge. “So! How’d it go?”

She said, “Well, I think Dad learned a lot.”

Being the child of a President is never easy, from the loss of anonymity to the roundthe-clock security. Even as she got older, Bill and I were determined that she lead as normal a life as possible. We worked hard to keep our schedules free to have dinner in the family kitchen with her so that we could catch up with one another, talk over weekend plans or family trips. No matter what else was going on, I tried to hang around the second floor when she came from ballet in case she felt like talking. At the very least, I wanted a sighting of her before she disappeared into her room.

We also did our best to shield her from the investigations and harsh media coverage, but I’m sure those added pressures made life in the White House even more challenging for Chelsea. It forced her to mature early and to become a quick judge of character, identifying and discarding fawners and false friends and building relationships with true friends who remain close to her today.

We celebrated her sixteenth birthday on February 27, 1996, with an evening at the National Theatre for a performance of Les Misérables. Then Bill and I invited a busload of her friends for a weekend at Camp David. Chelsea planned the activities, which included an afternoon game of paintball. The Marines stationed at the camp were only a few years older than the guests, so they organized opposing bands of camoclad teenagers who ran through the woods and tagged one another with paintballs. Bill kept shouting directions and battle strategies for whichever team seemed to be lagging. After the birthday dinner in Laurel Lodge, complete with a gigantic carrot cake prepared by the incomparable White House pastry chef Roland Mesnier, we regrouped in Hickory Lodge for movies and bowling in the alley installed by President Eisenhower. Sometime after midnight, Bill and I finally admitted to ourselves that we were no longer sixteen.

Chelsea and her friends already were looking beyond high school, and although it made me heartsick that we wouldn’t have her at home much longer, I tried not to burden her with my feelings about it. I just crossed my fingers that she would choose a campus close to Washington.

Every year, Sidwell Friends School hosts a “college night” for juniors and their parents.

Bill and I went along with Chelsea to hear representatives from different colleges talk about what you have to do to qualify and how to apply. Chelsea was quiet during the short drive back to the White House. Then, out of the blue, she said, “You know, I think I might be interested in visiting Stanford.”

Forgetting everything I know about reverse psychology and mother-daughter dynamics, I blurted out, “What! Stanford is too far away! You can’t go that far away. That’s all the way over on the West Coast―three time zones away. We’d never get to see you.”

Bill squeezed my arm and said to Chelsea, “Honey, you can go wherever you want.”

And, of course, I knew that if she wanted to go to Stanford and was accepted, I’d be thrilled for her. I well remembered my father ruling out choices, and Bill and I vowed never to do that. I did fervently hope, however, that she’d stay in the Washington time zone. But the conversation forced me to face reality: regardless of where she went, in a year and a half she’d be leaving us. She might have been ready, but I wasn’t, and I was determined to spend even more time with her, or at least as much as she’d let me!

The State Department had asked me to go as an emissary to Bosnia-Herzegovina to reinforce the importance of the Dayton Peace Accords, which had been signed in November.

Gains on the ground by the Croat-Muslim coalition that the U.S. had helped support, coupled with the NATO airstrikes that Bill had advocated, finally forced the Serbs to negotiate a settlement. I was also scheduled to make stops at U.S. military bases in Germany and Italy, and spend a week in Turkey and Greece, two important U.S. and NATO

allies that had a difficult, tense relationship over Cyprus and other unresolved issues.

Bill and I discussed whether Chelsea should skip the Bosnia leg of the trip. We weighed the security risks and decided that if we took appropriate precautions, she and I would be fine. She was mature enough to grow from the experience. Besides, we’d be traveling with a USO troupe including singer Sheryl Crow and comedian Sinbad, all of whom were willing to take the risks associated with the trip.

I thought Bill, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and his special envoy, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke had pulled off a miracle in Dayton convincing Serbs, Croats and Muslims to end the fighting and agree to a new governing framework. In order to isolate the warring groups and establish basic security, the United States had sent over eighteen thousand peacekeeping troops, who would join forty thousand from other countries.

The administration wanted to send a strong signal that the peace accords were to be honored and would be enforced. My staff used to tease me, suggesting that the State Department had a directive: If the place was too small, too dangerous or too poor―send Hillary. That was fine with me, because the out-of-the-way and dicey venues were often the most compelling. I was honored to go to Bosnia.

On Sunday, March 24, our converted 707 arrived at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, near Baumholder, home to the First Armored Division, which provided most of the U.S.

forces in Bosnia.

The German people had warmly welcomed Bill and me to a celebration of German unity in Berlin two years earlier, when we walked through the Brandenburg Gate with Chancellor and Mrs. Kohl and stood on ground that, until 1989, had been part of Communist East Germany. An engaging, emotional and even playful man, Helmut Kohl became Bill’s friend and political partner. Kohl was dedicated to transcending forty years of division in his country and merging East and West into one German nation. He was also instrumental in building the European Union, adopting a common currency and supporting U.S. efforts to end conflict in the Balkans. Cooperation between our countries was a vivid example of the postwar alliance working to achieve peace and security in Europe.

After arriving at Baumholder, Chelsea and I attended church services, met with the families of our troops, and enjoyed a brief performance in the mess hall by Sheryl and Sinbad. Around 6:30 the next morning, our entourage boarded a C-17 transport plane and took off for Tuzla Air Base, Bosnia-Herzegovina. In addition to the entertainers, we brought pallets of mail and gifts for the troops, including donations from American companies of 2,200 long-distance calling cards and 300 movies on video. The White House contributed six cases of M&M’s with the presidential seal on every box. For the children in Bosnia, who had lost years of schooling because of the fighting, American companies donated school supplies and toys.

I spent the hour-and-forty-minute flight wandering around the cavernous metal belly of the huge transport plane, chatting with the crew and members of the press corps, who were strapped into benchlike jump seats. It was like touring the inside of a blimp, but louder. The pilot, then one of just four female C-17 pilots in the Air Force, kept the plane cruising high over the devastated countryside, above the reach of surface-to-air missiles and sniper fire. As a reminder of the dangers that remained despite the official cease-fire, each of us was required to wear a flak jacket on the plane, and the Secret Service moved Chelsea and me up to the armored cockpit for the landing. Above the airstrip, the captain dipped a wing and made a near-perpendicular landing to evade possible ground fire.

Security conditions were constantly changing in the former Yugoslavia, and they had recently deteriorated again. Due to reports of snipers in the hills around the airstrip, we were forced to cut short an event on the tarmac with local children, though we did have time to meet them and their teachers and to learn how hard they had worked during the war to continue classes in any safe spot they could find. One eight-year-old girl gave me a copy of a poem she had written entitled “Peace.” Chelsea and I presented the school supplies we had brought, along with letters from seventh-grade children at Baumholder whose parents and teachers had initiated a pen pal program. We were then hustled off to the fortified American base at Tuzla, where over two thousand American, Russian, Canadian, British and Polish soldiers were encamped in a large tent city.