Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton (43 page)

Looming beyond the controversy over 9/11 and the intensity of midterm elections, the second annual conference of the Clinton Global Initiative was set to commence on September 20, with the opening address to be delivered by Laura Bush. Her game attempt to persuade the liberal-leaning audience in the Sheraton ballroom that her husband’s administration was engaging the world with compassion—by emphasizing his multibillion-dollar PEPFAR program—earned a standing ovation.

The first lady concluded her remarks by announcing a $16 million commitment to provide thousands of African villages with “play pumps”—clever merry-go-round devices that used the energy of children to pump clean water. (Years later, the play pumps proved to be a development fiasco, but that wasn’t her fault.) Standing next to her with AOL chairman Steve Case, who had agreed to help underwrite the pumps, Clinton beamed with bipartisan pride.

With climate change as a principal theme, however, the second iteration of CGI represented a profound rebuke to the priorities of the Bush administration, which scarcely acknowledged global warming. The morning after Laura Bush’s speech, Clinton introduced billionaire Virgin Group magnate Richard Branson to announce an extraordinary commitment. Over the coming decade, Branson promised that Virgin Airlines and Virgin Rail would devote all corporate profits, estimated at $3 billion, to research and investment in clean energy technologies, with an emphasis on environmentally benign automobile and airline fuels.

In a burst of enthusiasm he would later have cause to regret, Clinton said, “No matter how cynical you are, that’s serious money.”

On the same day, Al Gore delivered a passionate address calling climate change the challenge of a generation. And in a moment stage-managed by Clinton, political adversaries Rupert Murdoch and Barbra Streisand rose to that challenge by publicly pledging donations of $500,000 and $1 million, respectively, to the Clinton Climate Initiative. By the second day, thanks to Branson and dozens of others, CGI had more than doubled the first year’s commitments of $2.5 billion; by the final day, the tally had reached nearly $7.5 billion, “or so my staff swears,” said Clinton.

Branson’s commitment alone had spurred dozens of headlines around the world. The wave of favorable CGI coverage included a story on page A5 of the
New York Times
, under Celia Dugger’s byline.

For the first time, CGI’s plenaries and panels had been made available via webcast, and more than fifty thousand people around the world had watched. And at the conference’s gala dinner, the food was “sustainable” and organic, eaten from dishes made from biodegradable bamboo.

The only sour note was sounded a day or two later, when Clinton appeared on
Fox News Sunday
to talk about CGI—
or so he believed. Sitting in a studio at the Sheraton, host Chris Wallace instantly departed from the agreed topic. “Why didn’t you do more to put bin Laden and al Qaeda out of business when you were president?” he asked.

Speaking calmly, with a slight smile, Clinton never raised his voice—nor did his face redden, as critics later claimed—but he didn’t attempt to conceal his anger at this ambush.

“OK, let’s talk about it,” he replied.

Now, I will answer all those things on the merits, but first I want to talk about the context in which this arises. I’m being asked this on the Fox network. ABC just had a right-wing conservative run their little
Pathway to 9/11
[
sic
], falsely claiming it was based on the 9/11 Commission report, with three things asserted against me directly contradicted by the 9/11 Commission report.

And I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans, who now say I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was too obsessed with bin Laden. All of President Bush’s neo-cons thought I was too obsessed with bin Laden. They had no meetings on bin Laden for nine months after I left office. All the right-wingers who now say I didn’t do enough said I did too much—same people.

I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country [counterterror director Richard] Clarke, who got demoted. So you did Fox’s bidding on this show. You did your nice little conservative hit job on me.

Wallace tried to protest his own innocence, but Clinton leaned forward and cut him off.

“And you’ve got that little smirk on your face and you think you’re so clever,” he went on. “But I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it. But I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could. . . . And so, I left office. And yet, I get asked about this all the time.”

In closing he noted that the Bush administration had “three times as long” as his government to retaliate against al Qaeda for the terrorist
bombing of the USS
Cole
in October 2000, but “nobody ever asks them about it. I think that’s strange.”

Later, Wallace suggested that Clinton had tried to intimidate him, saying, “former President Clinton is a very big man. As he leaned forward—wagging his finger in my face, and then poking the notes I was holding, I felt as if a mountain was coming down in front of me. The President said I had a smirk. Actually, it was sheer wonder at what I was witnessing.” But the liberal blogs erupted in glee at Clinton’s combative response to Fox, where Democrats rarely get the final word.

The event that almost entirely escaped notice, amid much tabloid commotion over
The Path to 9/11
, Richard Branson, the Clinton Global Initiative, and Fox News, was a rather quiet announcement on September 19 at the United Nations. On that day, representatives of four countries, led by France, told reporters that they had agreed to impose a surcharge on international airline tickets—an “international solidarity levy”—to fund treatment for children with HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. Its main partner in that endeavor, seeking to shape the worldwide market for pediatric medicines and diagnostics, would be CHAI.

Hosted by the World Health Organization at the U.N., this new multinational entity, which promised to raise $300 million annually, would be called UNITAID.

The man responsible for the creation of UNITAID was French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, under the direction of Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. But the inspiration for its mission, according to the French minister, was Clinton. During the summer of 2005, Chirac had decided that he wished to create an international legacy as he neared retirement, and deputized Douste-Blazy, his newly appointed foreign minister, to set to work on a suitably significant project. When Douste-Blazy prepared to visit the United States for the first time a few months later, he told the French ambassador, “I want to meet with the world’s greatest living politician.” He meant Clinton.

Their meeting in Chappaqua was casual, with Clinton in jeans and a yellow Lacoste polo shirt. In a meandering discussion that touched
on the Mideast peace process and the next Olympic Games, Douste-Blazy finally got down to business. He wanted to talk about “innovative financing” to advance humanitarian projects in the developing world, specifically about an airline passenger tax, which he believed could eventually generate up to $600 million annually, perhaps more.

“What do you think I should do with the money?” asked the French minister.

“I know what you have to do,” Clinton said. “You have to do on a big scale what I do with my foundation. You have to work on drugs to fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.” He paused. “You have to say to the drug companies, ‘I’m giving you money, not for one year but for several years—for example, $300 million per year for five years. How much do you agree to reduce the price?’ ”

According to Douste-Blazy, that conversation was the beginning of the process that brought UNITAID to fruition. “Thank you very much, Mr. President,” he said. “I knew I could find an idea here.” In his memoir, Douste-Blazy wrote, “The meeting with Bill Clinton left me energized and eager to move forward.”

Many months later, by the time that UNITAID was ready for its unveiling in New York by Chirac and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the French foreign ministry had recruited several other countries to join the airline tax regime (although the resolutely antitax Bush administration had rejected it for ideological reasons). With a charge of $51 on every first-class ticket and about $5 on every economy seat, the officials in the Quai d’Orsay estimated that the first year would bring in an estimated $250 million—to be topped up with $25 million from the United Kingdom, Brazil, Chile, and Norway, and as many as nineteen other countries were expected to join.

At the same press conference, UNITAID announced that it would engage the experts at CHAI to negotiate prices of diagnostics and drugs, in exactly the way Clinton had suggested. Buying in bulk at reduced prices would permit the organization to finance treatment of 100,000 children with AIDS immediately, as well as 100,000 adults and children who needed so-called second-line AIDS drugs, whose cost CHAI was also working to reduce—plus as many as 150,000 children suffering from tuberculosis, and 28 million infected with malaria.

Magaziner, who spoke with reporters at the U.N. press conference, was elated. “We’ll have a sustainable way to assure a supply of drugs and tests for the long term.” Jean Dussourd, the French official who had implemented Douste-Blazy’s vision and negotiated the deals from which UNITAID emerged, was blunt. “We would not permit thousands of children to die in the United States and France,” he said. ‘’Why should we allow that in Asia and Africa?”

Throughout that autumn, Clinton fulfilled an intense schedule of political appearances for Democrats, although he would later say that Hillary’s possible presidential candidacy had “surprisingly little to do” with how he allocated his time, “because I didn’t know whether she was going to run.”

Her own race for reelection to the Senate was more of a leisurely stroll. She trounced an energetic but unknown opponent from the left with 87 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary. Early polls made her look invincible, and the New York state Republican Party—chaired by Nixon son-in-law Edward Cox—was unable to find a viable November challenger.

After a prolonged comedy of errors, culminating in a GOP primary that attracted the lowest turnout in thirty years, Clinton defeated John Spencer, a former upstate mayor, winning 67 percent of the vote in the general election. With her victory, Hillary had fulfilled a promise to serve a full term, and could resume the fitful discussions with her staff, friends, supporters, and husband about whether to run for president in 2008.

“She adored being a Senator from New York,” Clinton later said of his wife. “She remained ambivalent about whether to run for president for a long time.”

Over the New Year’s holiday, the Clintons went to Anguilla, where they stayed at the vacation home of Robert Johnson, the billionaire founder of Black Entertainment Television. On the beach, she asked him what he thought she should do.

“I told her I thought she should run, because I thought she would be the best president. But I told her she should only run if she believed that too.” In his mind, neither the campaign nor the presidency would be easy. “I
knew we had huge structural problems with the economy, [and] we had to unwind what we had done in Iraq. America was already in trouble and people were already hurting.”

He also recalled making a prediction: “If you run, either you or Obama will be the nominee.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In the brief video that launched her as a candidate for president, after months and years of public anticipation, Hillary Rodham Clinton perched on a sofa in the sunroom of her Washington home, gazing directly at the camera.

Smartly attired in a maroon jacket over a simple black top, she said: “I announced today that I’m forming a presidential exploratory committee. I’m not just starting a campaign, though. I’m beginning a conversation with you, with America.” For just under two minutes, she talked about the war in Iraq, Social Security and Medicare, universal health care, energy policy, women’s rights, her middle-class background, and the ill effects of “six years of George Bush.”

Sitting alone, she did not mention her husband, the former president. From the outset, her campaign—presenting its candidate without surname as “Hillary!”—kept Bill Clinton mostly in the background as a matter of policy. During the year to come, his schedule would devote well over a third of his waking hours to political trips, appearances, and fundraisers for her, according to records later tallied by his aides. But the persistent concern that he would overshadow her meant directing the spotlight away from him, with few exceptions. Bill and his top aides were rarely asked to participate in meetings of her campaign staff, although he maintained a back channel into their deliberations via Mark Penn, the pollster and strategist who had helped to guide his 1996 reelection campaign. And Band, who feared the likely damage a political campaign would inflict on his boss, stayed in constant contact with Hillary’s closest aide, Huma Abedin.

The same records show that Bill Clinton spent somewhat less time on foundation business than politics in 2007, but the first few months of the year saw him increasingly preoccupied with the foundation’s growing pains. After more than five years, Clinton had overcome most of the early problems of his post-presidency, from paying off personal
and library debt to largely restoring his reputation and popularity. He had found a compelling mission—indeed, more than one—that excited him. But perhaps inevitably, the foundation’s rapid growth brought complications and conflicts.

Not only was the progress undeniable but, in many respects, it was accelerating. The Clinton Presidential Center was no longer in debt and would welcome its millionth visitor before year’s end. The Clinton Global Initiative had logged almost six hundred commitments, with an estimated value above $10 billion, assisting people in more than one hundred countries—such as the thirty thousand schoolchildren in Nicaragua vaccinated against the deadly rotavirus by Merck & Co., and the scores of nonprofit groups awarded “Google Grants” of free advertising by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the company founders who had supported CGI in the concept stage. The Alliance for a Healthier Generation had established new guidelines for better drinks and snacks in schools across the country, and reached out to nearly a million students directly to engage them in improving their eating and exercise habits.