Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton (9 page)

The decision to bar the media was more than slightly ironic, because the sponsor of the Danish event was
Børsen
, that country’s premier financial daily, while the sponsor of the German event—where Schroeder would receive the German Media Award—was a marketing research company that polled the nation’s editors-in-chief to select the annual winner. Having received the German Media Development Award in 2000 at the White House, Clinton had been invited by media executive Karlheinz Kögel to attend the luncheon for Schroeder as the guest of honor.

Awkward or not, the contracts for his speeches clearly gave him the right to control any media presence on the premises. So the embarrassed sponsors dutifully dispatched messages to scores of journalists who had signed up to attend, officially disinviting them. “We did everything we could to create a workable situation for the press,” said the sheepish letter sent out by the Dutch public relations firm handling Clinton’s speech. “Unfortunately that didn’t work.” Leo van der Kant, director of the Assemblee Speakers Bureau that brought the former president to the Netherlands, explained frankly that the speech had been closed to the press due to the “uproar over Clinton’s pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich.”

Apart from the squall over press access, however—which didn’t at all trouble Clinton or his staff, who tended to hold journalists in dim regard—the three-day European tour was a success, setting a pattern for his peripatetic career as the world’s best-paid public speaker. Don Walker, president of the legendary Harry Walker Agency that booked all his speeches, would tell any reporter who asked: “This is our 55th year in business, and Clinton is the most sought-after speaker ever in the lecture industry.”

In The Hague, he sat down for lunch before the speech with a group
of a dozen or so high-rolling businessmen, each of whom had reportedly paid as much as $10,000 for the privilege. (A ticket for the speech itself, held in the auditorium of the capital’s Crowne Plaza hotel, was priced at a mere $1,000.) Relaxed and casual, he chatted about life after the presidency—he was getting much more sleep, he confided—as well as U.S. relations with Europe, his disapproval of Bush’s tax cuts, and the future condition of the American economy. After lunch, he posed for a photograph with each guest.

Somewhat predictably, perhaps, Clinton’s speech betokened a bright future for the West, with the rapid development of the Internet and electronic commerce. But he went on to remind several hundred well-heeled listeners that in the rest of the world, most people still could not afford reliable electric power. Unless Western firms invested in developing countries, acknowledging both a moral duty and economic necessity, he warned, the promise of the twenty-first century would never be fulfilled. If the content sounded slightly bland, the force of Clinton’s personality and intellect left his paying audiences gratified.

“He’s certainly very charismatic,” said the founder of the discount European airline Easyjet, who attended the speech, “and his knowledge of foreign policy is formidable.”

From the hotel, he went on to an afternoon tea with Queen Beatrix, then to a brief, cordial meeting with another old Social Democratic ally and friend, the Dutch prime minister Wim Kok. That night, Clinton flew to Baden-Baden, the famed German spa town, where his speech was scheduled at lunchtime the following day. His last visit to the Federal Republic had occurred less than a year earlier, in June 2000, when Schroeder had given him the Charlemagne Prize for promoting “European unity and values” at the ancient cathedral in the city of Aachen.

When he arrived at the awards luncheon in Baden-Baden, the Germans had arranged a musical greeting by a band of high school saxophonists, playing Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel.” Touched by this gesture, Clinton quickly wiped away a tear. On this occasion reporters were present, and he opened his remarks with a joking jab at the press.

“I really wanted to come here because everyone in America found it astonishing that anyone in the media anywhere would give me a prize for anything,” he said as the audience laughed. “Although at home they might give me a prize for having survived them.”

The remainder of the speech outlined the opportunities and perils of globalization, again appealing to the Europeans to provide more aid and investment to developing nations. Such an admonition might have offended any listener who understood that Europe provides far more in foreign aid per capita than the United States, but somehow Clinton could say it without provoking any complaint. Walking back to his hotel along the resort town’s streets, he was “mobbed by people wanting to get close to him,” according to Myron Cherry, a Chicago lawyer and Clinton friend present at the luncheon, who later said, “I felt like I was in a Fellini movie and I was walking along with Mick Jagger.”

The next day, Clinton flew into Copenhagen to address the six hundred members of a businessmen’s club sponsored by
Børsen
, a daily newspaper whose name means “stock exchange,” at a beautiful, century-old theater in the city’s center. Before departing for home he stopped by Marienborg, the eighteenth-century residence of Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, for a pleasant lunch with Rasmussen, the U.S. ambassador, and their wives. For those few hours in Denmark, he was paid $125,000. All told, his two weeks crossing the continent would net well over a million dollars.

The European jaunt had been ideal from his point of view, with plenty of appreciative citizens in his audiences and seeking his autograph on the streets, not to mention the lucrative fees—and no pestering questions from journalists. He didn’t mind the frequent flying or the grueling pace. He valued the meetings with world leaders. He took great joy in his newfound freedom to walk around Europe’s cities, many of them places he had visited in his youth, without a presidential schedule. And of course he loved to talk and talk, whether at a podium or a dinner table. But he knew that his post-presidential existence could not be defined by a banal, mercenary routine of speechifying. He needed to
do something
.

In Gujarat, he had found a compelling cause—with donors so enthusiastic and generous that the American India Foundation increased its fundraising goal to $50 million and scheduled a weeklong visit to the subcontinent, led by Clinton, primarily to assess conditions in the desolated western region. His experience as governor and president had
afforded him considerable expertise in dealing with disasters, both natural and man-made.

Returning to India little more than a year after his historic March 2000 state visit, Clinton’s itinerary included a couple of days touring the damage in Gujarat state, a morning at the late Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Calcutta, and a banquet hosted by the prime minister in New Delhi. No paid speeches were on the schedule. With a far smaller entourage (including a dozen AIF leaders) and a humanitarian rather than geopolitical agenda, the trip established a post-presidential style that would serve as the template for many of his foreign tours. Usually he would enjoy all the perquisites and comforts due a visiting head of state: traveling via sleek private aircraft, staying in the very finest hotel suites, eating at the best tables in the best restaurants, riding in black Chevy Suburban SUVs with his Secret Service detail, flanked by local police vehicles and motorcycles. His staff made a valiant effort to uphold that standard, as did his hosts. It wasn’t always possible.

When Clinton stepped off the Indian Airlines plane that had taken him from New Delhi to Bhuj, one of the largest and most heavily damaged cities in the state of Gujarat, the temperature under the glaring sun was 41 degrees Celsius—or just under 106 Fahrenheit. Wearing only a dark green T-shirt and khaki slacks, he jumped into a blue Jeep with Doug Band, joining a slow crawl of two dozen vehicles—somehow without air-conditioning or bottled water—that were packed with members of the AIF contingent and local dignitaries. The perspiring convoy headed out from Bhuj’s airport for the towns of Ratnal and Anjar, a trip of less than thirty miles that would take nearly two hours to complete. Along the roads, thousands of men, women, and children had lined up to greet the motorcade, applauding loudly and crying “Clinton! Clinton!” as it arrived an hour late.

What they found in the flattened villages left Clinton and his companions stunned, stricken, overwhelmed. There simply wasn’t much left of those places, their small stone houses and concrete storefronts all tumbled into a jagged rubble of rocks, broken red roof tiles, and smashed wood beams, all strewn amid streets that nobody had cleared, two months after the quake. Yet the people of the towns, furious that the government had so far failed to restore their villages or homes, were nevertheless thrilled to see the tall white-haired man from America,
an important man whose presence would, they hoped, draw fresh attention to their dismal living conditions. Dozens of young women and children greeted him with tossed rice and flower petals, as an elderly woman anointed his forehead with a reddish dot of blessing. Their energy lifted Clinton as he spoke.

“Today I have come to look, listen, learn, ask questions, see what we can do to help,” he said. “The people of this place have lived through an unimaginable tragedy. The most important thing is to see whether this can be rebuilt.” He said the world had not forgotten them, and promised that soon much more help would be forthcoming, a message he repeated at every stop. “He’s a big personality in the world,’’ a dazzled truck driver told the
New York Times
. ‘’Something good will come of his visit, though we don’t know what it will be.’’ (The
Times
headline on the trip, featured on page one, treated him like a down-market showbiz personality: “Whatever Happened to Bill Clinton? He’s Playing India.”)

Gujarat state officials handed out a glossy brochure in every town Clinton visited, which claimed that following the earthquake, “the state government immediately swung into action and mobilized all available resources. . . . The entire machinery of the state responded to the calamity with fortitude and determination.” That blatantly aggrandizing message contrasted distinctly with what the survivors told Clinton and his friends. Government at all levels had failed them so far, providing little more than a $40 stipend along with some sheet-metal shelters and plastic tents. After two months, many thousands remained destitute and homeless.

“Nothing has been done, and nothing is going to be done. This is all for show,” complained a teacher, as he waited to see the former president. “If Clinton stayed here a month, maybe then we would get some proper help.”

Reaching Anjar, their main destination, the visitors from America went straight to a street where one of the most horrific incidents had occurred. More than two hundred elementary school students were parading on the morning of January 26 to celebrate Republic Day, a national holiday, when the temblor suddenly toppled buildings from both sides of the narrow lane and killed all of them. He was supposed to un
veil a memorial plaque there, but that plan—like the relief efforts in general—had gone wrong. The memorial assemblage had been placed mistakenly on private property whose owner, irritated because the authorities had not first asked whether his land could be used, had removed the plaque, leaving only the modest stone pedestal.

Rotting garbage and ponds of sewage surrounded the area, a situation that local workers had tried to remedy by hastily covering the ponds with dirt and broken stones. The smell combined with the heat was almost overpowering. In remembrance of the dead children, Clinton set a bouquet of roses down on the stone pedestal and bowed his head for a moment of silence.

There were no words adequate to this tragedy, but he had to try. “We will raise funds to help the people of Anjar to confront their loss,” he promised. “We have a plan to see if money can be given to people to rebuild their lives. We are interested in seeing results.”

Sweat running down their faces and soaking their clothes, Clinton and his companions piled into their cars for the long, hot drive back to Bhuj, where the International Red Cross was operating a makeshift medical clinic to replace the city’s badly damaged Jubilee Hospital. A CNN reporter at the clinic described Clinton as “visibly shaken” by what he had seen already. At the Red Cross site, located on the ruined hospital premises, he held a news conference with a crowd of mostly Indian reporters.

Saying that much of the money raised for disaster relief had not been deployed “very well” in years past, Clinton explained that the AIF planned to collaborate with other nongovernmental organizations and the Indian government on focused action to restore jobs, education, and housing to Gujarat. They would develop a program based largely on what he and his colleagues had witnessed. In the years ahead, Clinton would try repeatedly to improve the world’s response to the desolation and trauma of such vast disasters.

Now, his voice quavering slightly with emotion, he mentioned the March 2000 state visit. “I will never forget it. I have always wanted to come back, but this sad event has brought me back earlier than expected.” Before climbing into his Jeep, Clinton made another vow that he repeated at every stop: “I intend to come back to India for the rest of my life.”

He met with relief officials from the Red Cross and other agencies the next morning in Ahmedabad, to discuss what they needed in Gujarat and how the AIF could be most helpful. By then, the scale of the destruction and suffering that they had witnessed was spurring him and his AIF companions toward more and more ambitious plans. Later that day, they announced that AIF had raised its fundraising goal for Gujarat to $100 million, with tentative plans to adopt one hundred villages for reconstruction.

In his meeting with the relief agencies, Clinton seemed to be grasping at larger aspirations for himself as well. According to Vimala Ramalingam, the secretary general of the Indian Red Cross, he expressed a desire in that meeting to support other humanitarian work across India—particularly to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. He also talked about discovering new ways to solve problems in Gujarat that could improve the lives of people in poor villages around the world.