Living History (20 page)

Though I had expected a victory, I was overwhelmed. After President Bush called Bill to concede, Bill and I went into our bedroom, closed the door and prayed together for God’s help as he took on this awesome honor and responsibility. Then we gathered everyone up for the drive to the Old State House, where the campaign had begun thirteen months before. We joined the Gores in front of a huge crowd of ecstatic Arkansans and ardent supporters from every corner of America.

Within hours, the kitchen table in the Governor’s Mansion became the nerve center of the Clinton transition. In the next few weeks, potential cabinet nominees came in and out, phones rang around the clock, piles of food were consumed. Bill asked Warren Christopher to head his transition and to work with Mickey Kantor and Veron Jordan to vet candidates for major positions. They first concentrated on the economic team, because that was Bill’s highest priority. Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas agreed to become Secretary of the Treasury; Robert Rubin, the co-Chairman of the investment bank Goldman Sachs, accepted Bill’s offer to become the first head of a soon-to-be-created National Economic Council; Laura D’Andrea Tyson, a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley, became Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers; Gene Sperling, a former aide to Governor Mario Cuomo of New York, became Rubin’s deputy and later succeeded him; and Congressman Leon Panetta, the Democratic Chairman of the House of Representatives Budget Committee, became the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. They worked with Bill to forge the economic policy that put our nation on the path to fiscal responsibility in government and unprecedented growth in the private sector.

We were also facing the more mundane challenges of any family changing jobs and residences. In the midst of forming a new Administration, we had to pack up the Governor’s Mansion, the only home Chelsea remembered. And since we didn’t own a house of our own, everything would come with us to the White House. Friends pitched in to organize and sort, piling boxes in every room. Loretta Avent, a friend from Arizona who had joined me on the campaign after the convention, took charge of the thousands of gifts that arrived from all over the world, filling a huge section of the large basement. Periodically, Loretta would shriek up the stairs: “Wait till you see what just came.” And I’d go down to find her clutching a portrait of Bill made out of seashells and mounted on a red velvet background or a collection of stuffed dogs dressed in baby clothes sent to our now famous black-and-white cat, Socks.

We had to find a new school in Washington for Chelsea, who was almost a teenager and not happy with the prospect of dismantling her life. Bill and I wondered how we could give her a normal childhood in the White House, where her new reality would include twentyfour-hour Secret Service protection. We had already decided to bring Socks to Washington, although we had been warned that he could no longer roam free, collecting dead birds and mice as trophies. Because the White House fence was wide enough for him to slip through into traffic, we reluctantly decided he would have to be on a leash whenever he was outside.

I had taken a leave of absence to campaign, but now I resigned my law practice and started putting together a staff for the office of First Lady, while helping Bill in any way I could. We were both grappling with what my role should be. I would have a “position”

but not a real “job.” How could I use this platform to help my husband and serve my country without losing my own voice?

There is no training manual for First Ladies. You get the job because the man you married becomes President. Each of my predecessors brought to the White House her own attitudes and expectations, likes and dislikes, dreams and doubts. Each carved out a role that reflected her own interests and style and that balanced the needs of her husband, family and country. So would I. Like all First Ladies before me, I had to decide what I wanted to do with the opportunities and responsibilities I had inherited.

Over the years, the role of First Lady has been perceived as largely symbolic. She is expected to represent an ideal―and largely mythical―concept of American womanhood.

Many former First Ladies were highly accomplished, but true stories of what they had done in their lives were overlooked, forgotten or suppressed. By the time I was preparing to take on the role, history was finally catching up to reality. In March 1992, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History revised its popular First Ladies Exhibit to acknowledge the varied political roles and public images of these women. In addition to gowns and china, the museum displayed the camouflage jacket Barbara Bush wore when she visited the troops of Desert Storm with her husband and featured a quote from Martha Washington: “I am more like a state prisoner than anything else.” The exhibit’s chief curator, Edith Mayo, and the Smithsonian were criticized for rewriting history and demeaning the “family values” of the First Ladies.

As I studied the marriages of previous Presidents, I recognized that Bill and I were not the first couple who relied on each other as partners in life and politics. Because of research done by the Smithsonian and historians such as Carl Sferrazza Anthony and David McCullough, we now know about the political advice Abigail Adams provided her husband, which earned her the derogatory nickname “Mrs. President”; the behind-the-scenes role Helen Taft played in pushing Theodore Roosevelt to choose her husband as his successor; the “unofficial Presidency” run by Edith Wilson after her husband’s stroke; the political firestorms ignited by Eleanor Roosevelt; and the painstaking review by Bess of Harry Truman’s speeches and letters.

Like those of many previous White House inhabitants, the relationship that Bill Clinton and I had built was rooted in love and respect, shared aspirations and accomplishments, victories and defeats. That wasn’t about to change with an election. After seventeen years of marriage, we were each other’s biggest cheerleaders, toughest critics and best friends.

Yet it wasn’t clear to either of us how this partnership would fit into the new Clinton Administration. Bill couldn’t appoint me to an official position, even if he had wanted to.

Anti-nepotism laws had been on the books since President John F. Kennedy appointed his brother Bobby to be Attorney General. But there were no laws to prevent me from continuing my role as Bill Clinton’s unpaid adviser and, in some cases, representative. We had worked together for so long, and Bill knew he could trust me. We always understood that I would contribute to my husband’s administration. But we didn’t know precisely what my role would be until late in the transition, when Bill asked me to oversee his health care initiative.

He was in the process of centralizing economic policy in the White House and wanted a similar structure for health care. With so many government agencies claiming a stake in reform, he worried that turf wars could stifle creativity and new approaches. Bill decided that Ira Magaziner should coordinate the process inside the White House to develop the legislation, and he wanted me to head up the initiative to make it law. Bill intended to announce our appointments right after the inauguration. Because of our experience in Arkansas, where Bill had appointed me to lead committees on rural health care and public education, neither of us spent much time worrying about reactions my involvement might provoke. When it came to political spouses, we certainly didn’t expect the nation’s capital to be more conservative than Arkansas.

We were running late when we left Little Rock on the evening of January 16, 1993.

Thousands of our friends and supporters jammed into a huge hangar at Little Rock Airport for an emotional farewell ceremony. I was excited about what lay ahead of us, but my enthusiasm was tinged with melancholy. Bill was on the verge of tears as he recited the lyrics of a song to the crowd of well-wishers, “Arkansas runs deep in me, and it always will.” What seemed like a thousand hugs and waves later, we boarded our chartered plane. Once we were airborne, the lights of Little Rock disappeared beneath the clouds, and there was nothing to do but look ahead.

We flew to Charlottesville, Virginia, to continue the journey to Washington by bus, following the 121-mile route Thomas Jefferson had taken to his inauguration in 1801. I thought it was an appropriate way to initiate the Presidency of William Jefferson Clinton.

The next morning, we met up with Al and Tipper and toured Monticello, the great house Jefferson designed. Then we boarded another bus together, just as we had during the campaign, and headed north to Washington. Route 29 was lined with thousands of people cheering us on, waving flags, holding balloons and banners. Some held homemade signs to encourage us, congratulate us or chastise us: “Bubbas for Bill.” “We are counting on you.” “Keep your promises―AIDS won’t wait.” “You’re socialists, stupid.”

My favorite was a plain, hand-lettered sign with two words: “Grace, Compassion.”

The sky was still clear, but the temperature was dropping as we pulled into Washington, D.C. By some act of providence, the punctuality-impaired President-elect was running on time, and we arrived at the Lincoln Memorial five minutes early for the first official event―a concert on the steps in front of an enormous crowd that stretched down the Mall. Harry Thomason, Rahm Emanuel and Mel French, another friend from Arkansas, were the impresarios of the inaugural festivities. Harry and Rahm were so relieved to see us that they hugged each other.

I had never sat in an enclosure of bulletproof glass―a strange sensation and somewhat alienating. I was grateful, though, for the little heaters by our feet because the temperature had dropped precipitously. Pop diva Diana Ross sang a spectacular rendition of “God Bless America.” Bob Dylan played to the packed Mall, just as he had on that August day in 1963 when Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the same steps. I felt extremely fortunate to have seen Reverend King speak when I was a teenager in Chicago, and now here I was listening to my husband honor the man who helped this nation overcome its painful history:

“Let us build an American home for the twentyfirst century, where everyone has a place at the table and not a single child is left behind,” Bill said. “In this world and the world of tomorrow, we must go forward together or not at all.”

The sun was setting when Bill, Chelsea and I led thousands of swaying, singing celebrants in a march across Memorial Bridge.

We stopped on the other side of the Potomac River to ring a replica of the Liberty Bell, touching off a celebration in which thousands of “Bells of Hope” were rung simultaneously across the country and even aboard the space shuttle Endeavor as it circled the planet. We lingered a while as fireworks lit up the night sky over the capital. Then it was off to another event, and still another. By then all the celebrations were blending together in a kaleidoscope of faces and stages and voices.

During inaugural week, our families and personal staff stayed with us in Blair House, the traditional guest residence for visiting heads of state and Presidents-elect. Blair House and its professional staff run by Benedicte Valentiner, known to all as Mrs. V, and her deputy, Randy Baumgardner, made us feel welcome in the quietly elegant mansion that became an oasis during a hectic week. Blair House is famous for being able to accommodate any special need. Our crew was tame compared to certain visiting heads of state who demanded that their guards be nude to ensure they carried no weapons, or imported their own cooks to prepare everything from goat to snake.

Bill gave a lot of speeches that week, but he still hadn’t finished writing the biggest one of his life: the inaugural address. Bill is a wonderful writer and gifted speechmaker who makes it look easy, but his constant revisions and last-minute changes are nerveracking.

He’s never met a sentence he couldn’t fool with. I was used to his constant tinkering, but even I could feel my anxiety rise as the day grew nearer. Bill worked on the draft whenever there was a moment between events.

My husband likes to pull everybody around him into his creative tumult. David Kusnet, his main speechwriter; Bruce Reed, his Deputy Domestic Policy Adviser; George Stephanopoulos, his Communications Director; Al Gore and I all put our two cents in.

Bill also called in two longtime friends: Tommy Caplan, a marvelous wordsmith and novelist who had been one of his roommates at Georgetown University, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, who had worked with us in Texas for the McGovern campaign. In the midst of the process, Bill received a letter from Father Tim Healy, the former President of Georgetown and head of the New York Public Library. He and Bill shared a Georgetown connection, and Father Healy had been writing the letter to Bill when he died suddenly of a heart attack as he returned home from a trip. The letter was found in Father Healy’s typewriter and sent on to Bill, who found in this posthumous message a wonderful phrase. Father had written that Bill’s election would “force the spring” and lead to a flowering of new ideas, hope and energy that would reinvigorate the country. I loved his words and his apt metaphor for Bill’s ambitions for his Presidency.

It was fascinating to watch my husband that week as he literally became President before my eyes. Throughout the inaugural festivities, Bill received security briefings to prepare him for the historic responsibilities he was about to assume. With remarkable agility, he was already shifting his attention from a major speech to news of U.S. planes that were bombing Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein’s contempt for U.N. demands to briefings about the worsening conflict in Bosnia.

He was still writing his speech the day before inauguration. To give him time to work, I agreed to fill in for him at his afternoon events, although I had to keep my own schedule, too. That afternoon I also squeezed in an appearance at events sponsored by my alma maters, Wellesley College and Yale Law School. On the way back from the Mayflower Hotel, my car got stuck in a gridlock of inaugural crowds and out-of-state vehicles on Pennsylvania Avenue, within sight of Blair House. I was so late and frustrated that I jumped out and took off running through the traffic. Capricia Marshall, who was watching from a window in Blair House, still laughs when she describes the sight of me darting between cars, wearing heels and a snug gray flannel dress, with my alarmed Secret Service detail scrambling behind.