All Too Human: A Political Education (32 page)

Smiling, he handed me the folder, which contained a Xerox copy of “REGO Action #39,” a $2 million government project to clean the air by cutting bovine flatulence. Two million bucks to fight the cow-farting crisis. I left the Oval laughing, convinced I wasn't crazy to keep an eye on REGO.

I always wore a beeper on my belt. Just in case he needed anything — anything at all, at any time. One Sunday evening, Chelsea was having trouble with her homework, a project on immigration, so Clinton paged me. From the restaurant pay phone, I tracked down the information on border guards she needed and passed it to Chelsea through her dad. But when my belt buzzed at ten minutes to midnight on Saturday, October 2 — “
PLEASE CALL
628–7087
FOR PRES US
” — I assumed it was more serious.

So much was going on. American troops were searching the streets of Mogadishu for Aideed, the Somali warlord. Old-line Communist foes of Boris Yeltsin had barricaded themselves inside the Russian parliament building. Back home, we had spent much of the morning in the Oval discussing the case of Admiral Frank Kelso — the chief of naval operations during the Tailhook scandal. The president wanted to ensure that Kelso got a fair shake without interfering in the Pentagon review process, but he seemed most intrigued by exactly what happened at Tailhook: “What do you mean,
leg shaving?
”

Could it be about Woodward's letter?
Bob Woodward was writing a book about the economic plan and had passed on a written interview request to the president through me. All Clinton said then was, “Maybe I should do it to get him off our ass for the next four years.”
Maybe he wants to discuss it some more
. Whatever he wanted, it's hard to be blasé about a midnight call from the leader of the free world, especially when you're walking home from dinner with your best friend as a witness to the welcome intrusion. Although I was only three blocks from home, I stopped at the pay phone by the Twentieth Street Safeway and held for the president.

“Hey, you doin' OK? I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm really worried about this Red Mass tomorrow. I don't think I should go.”

Each year, on the Sunday before the traditional first-Monday-in-October opening of the Supreme Court term, the John Carroll Society sponsored a mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral to seek “God's blessing and guidance for those who administer justice.” Every president since Eisenhower had attended at least once, and it had been on the Clintons' schedule for weeks.

But now Hillary wanted out, a conclusion I reached from hearing her in the background, coaching Clinton. She had picked up a rumor that anti-abortion activists were planning a protest, and that Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago might take the occasion to criticize the president from the pulpit. But a last-minute cancellation would create an even bigger story — “
CLINTON SNUBS CATHOLICS
” — and from the tone of Clinton's voice, I sensed that he knew he couldn't cancel but needed some answers to calm her nerves.

“I can't imagine that Cardinal Bernardin is going to do that, Mr. President,” I said. “He's got a good reputation. You might get some protesters, but what matters is how you handle them. It doesn't hurt to show respect and stand up for what you believe.” We went back and forth awhile, and he agreed to attend before he said good night. I was concerned enough, however, to skip Sunday services at my own church and go with the Clintons instead. If anything happened now, it would be my fault.

As I walked to the residence the next morning, the television hanging in the corner of the lower press office caught my eye. CNN was going live with pictures of anti-Yeltsin protesters poised to seize the state television station and storm the Russian parliament. I called the situation room for Tony Lake, and they connected me to his home so I could get briefed before seeing the president. He assumed I was calling about news that hadn't broken yet: Several American soldiers had been killed a few hours earlier in Somalia. But the first he heard about Moscow was from me. Once again, CNN beat the CIA. As soon as he stopped cursing our intelligence, Tony and I quickly agreed on a “we're monitoring the situation” placeholder response for the president, and I sprinted to meet the Clintons.

They were already downstairs, and the president was engrossed in his red folder from the situation room — a bulletin on the fighting in Mogadishu.

“Are you ready for the questions?” I asked.

“About Somalia?”

“No, Russia.”

He didn't know either. So we decided it was best to say nothing now. I would get an update from Tony during the mass, and after the service Clinton would take a few questions from the reporters staked outside the cathedral.

The mass was blessedly uneventful. Cardinal Bernardin did address the sanctity of life from conception to death, but his homily's theme was the “common good” and the need for virtue in American life. Only a few silent protesters held signs by the cathedral steps. In Moscow and Mogadishu, however, things were deteriorating. Riot police were firing on the Russian protesters, and more American soldiers had been killed or captured in Somalia. Tony beeped me just before the end of church, and I left my pew for “Roadrunner” — the mobile communications van in the president's motorcade.

The press still didn't know about the firefight in Somalia, but reporters were clamoring for a Clinton comment on Russia. Tony and I didn't think it was smart, however, to address a volatile crisis on sketchy reports from the steps of a church, so I pulled the president aside after he thanked the cardinal and said we needed to return to the White House for a briefing before he faced the press. He nodded and guided me to the limo, where Hillary was waiting.

Her worries of the night before had been wiped away. Sitting in the backseat, sipping from a bottle of water, Hillary was bubbling with ideas, refreshed from the morning's worship. On the ride back, as Clinton offhandedly waved to the small groups who stopped on the sidewalks at the sight of the presidential motorcade, Hillary tied the lessons of Bernardin's homily back to her work on health care. Clinton talked about how it related to the rest of his agenda and instantly started to compose a speech he now wanted to give on “common ground and the common good.”

As we rode, Clinton recalled that the Catholic Church hadn't always taught that human life begins at conception, and I responded with what I remembered from my theological studies. The morning crises faded as we discussed Augustine and Aquinas, and their debates over when the body was “quickened” by being joined to a soul. “Garry Wills wrote a good article on this in the
New York Review
,” I said; promising to get him a copy. The president then asked me to dig up some statistics on abortion and adoption as he slid into a moist-eyed reflection on their overnight guest from Arkansas, Connie Fails, who had “brought home a beautiful little girl” from Korea who had been born without arms. Without interrupting, Hillary illustrated his commentary with a photo from her purse, and Clinton wrapped up the conversation by observing how brilliantly Congressman Barney Frank had captured the hypocrisy of those conservatives who acted as if they believed that “life begins at conception and ends at birth.”

Tony joined us in the private sitting room between the kitchen and the Clintons' bedroom, and the president played host. “Would you like some coffee?” Normally, the waiters offered it on their own, and I almost preferred to be taken for granted. But today I took Clinton's solicitous gesture as a thank-you for how I had handled last night's phone call. It was also a way to avoid the matter at hand, if only for a moment.

Tony was having a terrible morning, and it showed. He was normally restrained in the president's presence, but now he complained bitterly that he couldn't get straight answers from our embassy in Moscow, and he suspected that our sources in Mogadishu were deliberately keeping information from the situation room. I had hoped to keep the conversation focused on Russia because the press had been waiting for the president's response all morning. But although the situation in Russia was critical, early signs indicated that Yeltsin could handle it, and it didn't pose an immediate threat to American lives. Six U.S. soldiers were already dead in Mogadishu, and the firelight was still raging.

“We're not inflicting pain on these fuckers,” Clinton said, softly at first. “When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers.” Then, with his face reddening, his voice rising, and his fist pounding his thigh, he leaned into Tony as if it were his fault: “I believe in killing people who try to hurt you, and I can't believe we're being pushed around by these two-bit pricks.”

I couldn't tell whether this outburst was the product of forethought or pure frustration, but I understood the president's .anxiety. Since August, the situation in Somalia had been creeping out of control. What had started out as a humanitarian effort had become a futile manhunt. Now the president felt trapped between two bad options: accepting failure by abandoning an ill-conceived operation, or avenging today's losses by going in with “decisive force” to defeat the Somali warlords. Once today's casualties were public, neither course would be easy to pursue. Congress would vote to “bring the boys home” while attacking Clinton for causing a humiliating American defeat. Retreating under fire would also end a humanitarian intervention that had saved thousands from starvation.

So far, the public had supported our presence in Somalia, but Clinton believed opinion would turn fast at the sight of body bags. “Americans are basically isolationist,” he said then. “They understand at a basic gut level Henry Kissinger's vital-interest argument. Right now the average American doesn't see our interest threatened to the point where we should sacrifice one American life.” By the end of that Sunday we were beyond that: Eighteen Americans were dead and seventy-four were wounded. All day Monday, CNN showed footage of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, along with the videotape of a captured American pilot.

By Sunday afternoon, the president had decided to go ahead with a scheduled trip to California, but the entire week was consumed by the crisis in Somalia. On conference calls from the road and behind closed doors at the White House, Clinton complained mercilessly about being blindsided by his national security team, insisting that he had never been fully briefed on how the original mission had evolved at the UN and on the ground. He never forgot Defense Secretary Les Aspin's failure to approve the military's September request for more tanks to protect the troops. But in public, the president accepted full responsibility, resisted congressional calls for an immediate pullout, and announced instead a plan for a temporary troop buildup followed by a March 31, 1994, deadline for disengagement. In an October 7 Oval Office address, he struck a defiant note: “We started this mission for the right reasons, and we're going to finish it in the right way.”

In quieter moments, Clinton questioned himself, wondering whether he had been tough enough. One Friday evening late in the month, he walked into my office looking exhausted, the bags under his eyes bunched up like the skin on a chicken's neck. “This is what I'm worried about,” he said, dropping a red folder on my desk. It was a report on renewed interclan fighting in Somalia that was threatening the food supply. “I hope I didn't panic and announce the pullout too soon.”

“Listen,” I said, “you had no choice. You got six more months. If you had tried for more, Congress would have forced a vote to end it now, and they would have won. You did the best you could.”

As we talked, Clinton spied a copy of former Secretary of State Dean Acheson's memoir,
Present at the Creation
, on my desk, so I told him why I had it. The night before, taking the shuttle to New York to campaign for Mayor Dinkins, I had sat next to R. W. “Johnny” Apple of the
Times
. Our talk had turned to books, and I mentioned that the president and I had both recently read Reeves on JFK. Apple said that Clinton should really be reading Acheson's classic account of post-WWII American diplomacy because “it's much more like what he's going through right now.” That morning, I had asked Heather to order it from the White House library.

Pushing out his lower lip, Clinton nodded twice as he picked up the book and headed back to his office. Halfway through the dining-room door, he swiveled around with a sudden thought. It was his turn to comfort me.

“We'll figure this out, George. Good night.”

Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti — foreign policy was a mess. In each case, we were caught between critics who said we should use American power for humanitarian purposes and those who insisted that “we can't be the world's policeman” so we shouldn't even try. Safire captured the predicament in a rare defense of the president:

We, the media, hoot at the president for demeaning American power by entering the arena with such puny pugilists. We fault him for narrowly limiting the missions; for not foreseeing setbacks before we do; for making the American, military look like a pitiful helpless giant; or for putting the flower of our youth needlessly “in harm's way.”

Clinton shared Safire's conclusion that part of America's “new impotence is the unwillingness of too many Americans to expend blood and treasure” beyond our borders. But in his study, as he waggled an old wooden-shafted niblick (a gift from President Bush), he told me to call Safire and remind him that “even though we're a volunteer army, we're not a mercenary army. That's the big difference.” In public interviews, he joked about the good old days — ”Gosh, I miss the cold war” — when our foreign policy was filtered through the anti-Soviet framework. But in private he railed against liberal critics, like
Times
columnist Anthony Lewis, who were making his life miserable by pushing him to send troops to Bosnia and Haiti: “Lewis has to accept the fact that he's been against every American intervention for thirty years, and now he's the biggest hawk in world.” Sometimes he just exploded in frustration: “What would they have me do? What the fuck would they have me do?”