Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton (11 page)

Privately, the distrust ran in both directions. Angered by Secretary of State Colin Powell’s decision to send a lower-level delegation to the conference—rather than attend in person—the organizers responded by removing the new secretary of state’s “message of hope” from the opening ceremony schedule. Only a forceful intervention by U.S. embassy officials persuaded Nigerian and OAU officials to put Powell’s message on the program at all.

The conference concluded with the approval of a “framework for action,”
requiring African leaders to fund primary health care in their countries and create “sustainable mechanisms” to fund HIV prevention and treatment, especially to protect vulnerable women and children. The heads of state also signed an “Abuja Declaration,” taking personal responsibility for leadership in their own countries against the pandemic, and committing a “target allocation” of 15 percent of national budgets for “improvement of the health sector” as well as HIV/AIDS prevention. Not surprisingly, the declaration also pleaded for increased foreign assistance and debt forgiveness.

For the moment, Clinton was obliged to place a higher priority on his own problems—completing the transition to the new office in Harlem, shopping a book deal for his memoirs, and raising as much as a hundred million dollars for his presidential library in Little Rock. But on the list of useful functions he might still serve, leadership in the fight against the AIDS pandemic appealed to all his instincts. He instructed his staff to respond positively whenever the international community of scientists and activists requested him to appear.

When Clinton visited China a few weeks later to speak at business events in Hong Kong and Shanghai, he talked at length about AIDS in Africa and the threat posed by the pandemic to a globalizing world. Meeting for over an hour in Hong Kong with Jiang Zemin, he tried to draw out the Chinese premier on the topic of HIV and AIDS on the mainland.

While on Chinese territory, Clinton also sought to improve his relationship with the Bush administration and to ameliorate tensions between the U.S. and China—which had risen sharply after the midair collision between an American spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet over Hainan Island on April 1. Although the Chinese government had released the American plane’s pilot and crew, it was still refusing to release the downed U-2.

On the day after Jiang appeared at a forum sponsored by
Fortune
magazine, Clinton urged his listeners not to assume that present tensions would always define the relationship between China and the United States. “The world will be a better place over the next 50 years,” he said, “if we are partners.” Acknowledging the “difficulties and bumps in the road” that are inevitable between two great powers with differing cultures, he added, “The recent incident involving the airplane and—in my time—
the terrible accident in which the American plane bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade” during the 1999 Balkans war “is something I still profoundly regret.” More to the point, he echoed Jiang’s call for the World Trade Organization to admit the People’s Republic as a member: “It is imperative to complete China’s accession to the WTO at the earliest possible date.”

Well before departing for Hong Kong, Clinton had contacted Condoleezza Rice at the National Security Council to let the administration know about his plans and the likelihood that he would encounter Jiang, whom he considered a personal friend. Would President Bush prefer that he cancel the meetings and stay away from China for the moment? Or did the president and his advisers wish to send a quiet word to the Chinese at the highest level?

The White House approved Clinton’s trip and let him carry a straightforward message: If the Chinese wanted to prevent a further deterioration of relations, they should return the U-2 forthwith. According to Sandy Berger—and with Berger’s counsel—his former boss “strongly encouraged [Jiang] to give the plane back.” Jiang’s response and the content of their talks remained private. But by early July, after further bilateral negotiations, the spy craft was dismantled and shipped back in parts via Russia’s Polet airline.

At home, many Clinton critics—writers like Andrew Sullivan and outlets like the
New York Post
—continued to complain that Clinton wouldn’t go away, proving only that they could not bear to lose him as a target. Having shown little constraint while he was president, they now seemed to feel liberated in their attacks. In a June article headlined “Bubba Eyes Big Bucks,” the
Post
quoted an unnamed “celebrity booker,” who supposedly told the paper that the money-grubbing Clinton was “unlike any other former president. He’s the only one who might show up at your bar mitzvah if you paid him.”

And in an essay titled “Bill’s Big Bucks,” on the occasion of Clinton’s paid appearance at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival in Wales, Sullivan complained, inaccurately, that he had sat down with the Chinese president and talked diplomacy “without consulting his government. . . . These are the actions of someone who still, somewhere in the back of
his mind, thinks he is president—or ought to be.” Reiterating the old “Clinton fatigue” theme perennially proclaimed by his critics, Sullivan concluded: “Forgive America if it sighs a little as it sees his charm exude exponentially elsewhere—for the moment at least. After eight long years, it’s time for someone else to take the strain.”

Despite the persistent sarcasm and cynicism of media coverage, Clinton could detect signs by summer that the chill surrounding him in his homeland had finally started to thaw. He and Hillary celebrated Chelsea’s graduation from Stanford in late June, blowing kisses to her from the stands while she and 1,600 classmates danced and cavorted in the traditional “wacky walk” as they filed into the university’s stadium. She had earned a bachelor’s in history with highest honors, avoided the drinking and drugs that made so many other politicians’ children prey for supermarket tabloids—and in the fall planned to leave for Oxford, where her father was once a Rhodes Scholar, to study international relations. Even the
New York Times
carried no negative comment about the joyous occasion. ‘’We’re going to parties and dinners with her friends and their families, attending her graduation events and whatever else she wants to do,’’ Clinton told the paper. Invited to lunch at the Palo Alto home of Steve Jobs, the Clintons were among the first to see Apple’s new iPod, which would debut officially in October.

Back in New York, Karen Tramontano had been preparing the new premises in Harlem, with a big, comfortable office for Clinton that featured sweeping views of Central Park and Midtown Manhattan from its oversized south-facing windows. On August 1, the official opening date, with bands playing and residents literally dancing in the street, his new neighborhood exploded with celebration. Thousands of people filled 125th Street, waiting hours in the sun to welcome him. State and local politicians crowded onto the dais erected on a plaza nearby, where a state official presented Clinton with a proclamation from New York’s Republican governor, George Pataki, marking “William Jefferson Clinton Day” in the Harlem community.

To many Harlem residents, Clinton was still “the first black president”—a Southern white politician who had somehow come to represent their outlook and aspirations. In remarks from the stage, he spoke of his lifelong love of African American culture and recalled how, as a
young saxophone player in Arkansas, he had yearned to visit the legendary Apollo Theater. “I dreamed that one day I might be like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. Well, I never made it, to play at the Apollo. But I ain’t dead yet. I may play there yet!”

Somewhat vaguely, he promised to be a good neighbor. “You were always there for me and I will try to be there for you.” When he finished speaking, the Benny King jazz group struck up “Stand by Me,” and he sang along with feeling.

In New York, he was no longer a social pariah. As a counterpoint to the Harlem street celebration, a reporter for the
Los Angeles Times
quoted David Patrick Columbia, whose
New York Social Diary
website chronicles Manhattan society, predicting that Clinton would soon be making the rounds of the city’s most exclusive tables. “I think he’s going to charm the birds right out of the trees,” said the blogger, who confided, “I know certain unnamed hostesses are giving him dinners in September. I know they’re hot tickets.”

The summer’s most significant affirmation came a week later, when publisher Alfred A. Knopf announced that it had acquired Clinton’s autobiography. On August 6, Knopf president and editor-in-chief Sonny Mehta issued a brief statement that confirmed earlier leaks: “President Clinton is one of the dominant figures on the global stage. He has lived an extraordinary life, and he has a great story to tell.”

Represented by Washington attorney Robert Barnett—a partner of David Kendall at Williams & Connolly, whose literary clients included Prince Charles, Barbra Streisand, Hillary Clinton, and many other political and showbiz celebrities—the former president had not shopped his book around, despite expressions of interest from many publishers around the world. Nor had he put together a written proposal of any kind. Instead he had simply outlined his ideas for a personal and political memoir in a series of discussions with Mehta and other editors at Knopf.

Although neither Barnett nor Mehta spoke publicly about money, Clinton was reported to have gotten an advance of no less than $10 million, and as much as $12 million. Either of the reported figures would have made Clinton’s the largest book advance in the history of publishing, a record previously held by Pope John Paul II at $8.5 million. In return, according to Knopf, he had agreed to produce “a thorough
and candid telling of his life, with a primary focus on the White House years”—although as every reporter apparently felt obliged to mention, that description left unclear how much he would reveal about his disastrous romance with Monica Lewinsky.

In a
Newsweek
column, Jonathan Alter fretted that Clinton’s book was likely to be as “boring” as most presidential memoirs. According to Alter, Clinton was telling friends that the book “may not be as mean as some people want it to be. This shouldn’t be about settling scores but setting the record straight.” The only way to avoid the “memoir curse” of predictable dullness, urged the columnist, would be a searching self-examination of his failures in and out of office. Vulnerability and candor would lend credibility to any boasting about his accomplishments.

“I don’t want a book that’s either turgid and boring or unduly defensive,” he quoted Clinton telling friends privately. “I want to explain to people who I am and what I tried to do in public life—the good things we did and the mistakes I made. And I want to make it come alive.” That was the least he could do for $15 million—the actual price paid by Knopf for all rights, foreign and domestic.

By the first week of September, with summer fading, Clinton was up in the air again—soaring toward a week of speeches, dinners, and golf in Australia. The round of events began with a major Saturday evening gala in Sydney to benefit a children’s hospital, pulled together by friends of the moderately left-wing Australian Labor Party—and a more intimate dinner on the same evening with a group of forty-four business executives that reportedly netted more than $1.5 million for the party. Two nights later, he was in Melbourne for a speaking event overseen by Liberal Party stalwarts and chaired by Andrew Peacock, who had served as Australia’s ambassador to the United States during Clinton’s presidency. His earnings in the two Australian cities came to nearly half a million dollars.

At the luncheon speech in Melbourne on September 10, Clinton took questions from the audience of business leaders, as he often did at small gatherings. Asked about international terrorism, he brought up the name of Osama bin Laden, describing the al Qaeda chief as “a very smart guy,” before continuing.

“I spent a lot of time thinking about him. And I nearly got him once.
I nearly got him. And I could have killed him,” the former president went on, “but I would have had to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan, and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn’t do it.”

Before midnight, he boarded a jet in Melbourne that took him, Band, Justin Cooper, and his Secret Service contingent to Cairns Airport—the jumping-off point for the little town of Port Douglas and the Great Barrier Reef. He had longed to return there ever since he and Hillary had visited in 1996, as he told the crowd waiting to greet him at the hangar.

“I’ve got two friends with me who have never been to Australia before, so I told them they had to go to Port Douglas, they had to go to the reef.” For the next couple of days, Clinton had nothing on his agenda except snorkeling, eating crayfish, and playing golf.

Relaxing in a Pacific time zone, fourteen hours ahead of New York City, Clinton and his companions were spared the shocking sight of the fall of the Twin Towers until very late on the evening of September 11. They had been relaxing in a pub, celebrating Cooper’s birthday and Band’s passing the bar exam in Florida, his home state.

In Clinton’s suite at the Sheraton Mirage, a luxurious hotel surrounded by palm trees, he turned on the television to see the nightmarish images that would soon become a historic symbol of horror for Americans. Across the bottom of the screen, a crawling ticker listed the names of passengers on the four flights hijacked by the al Qaeda terrorist teams. Suddenly, Clinton saw the name of a friend, someone who had worked with him for years, a man with a family of his own. “Oh my God,” he breathed.

He knew Chelsea was in New York City, visiting a friend before her scheduled departure for England. Now he had to find out exactly where she was and who was with her, but nobody had been able to find her yet. When Hillary finally got through to his room, she pretended to know already that their daughter was safe, hoping to calm him—even though she felt inwardly frantic as her Senate staff continued to try to locate their daughter.