Living History Unknown (best books to read fiction .txt) 📖

presidential nomination during an annual white-tie dinner. I was seated at the dais with my husband and a covey of cabinet Secretaries and Supreme Court justices in the ballroom of the Capital Hilton Hotel. The mock nominee that year was Colin Powell. He got up to speak and greeted the dignitaries present: “Ladies and gentlemen, Republican extremists, Democrats and other nonessentials, subpoened guests.” That was, I assumed, a category of one-me. I raised my arm up in the air and laughed as Powell turned and smiled mischievously at me. After Powell finished speaking, one of Bill’s top advisers walked over to me and whispered, “Until you’ve testified at least five times before a grand jury like I have, you’re just small potatoes.”

WAR ZONES

Knowing the importance of America’s long and complex relationship with France, Bill and I were anxious about our first State Dinner for French President Jacques Chirac and his wife, Bernadette, in February 1996. Chirac, a conservative politician from the party of de Gaulle had been the mayor of Paris for eighteen years. And though Chirac is fluent in English and had traveled extensively in America as a young man, his personal affection for the U.S. did not always translate into his government’s support for our policies. Bill worked hard to win French cooperation, however, most notably in 1999 when he persuaded France to go along with NATO air strikes to reverse ethnic cleansing in Kosovo despite the lack of a specific U.N. resolution.

Diplomacy is a tricky business, even when it comes to relations with our allies. The close affiliation and mutual respect between our countries stems back to their help with our Revolution, but there are times when French and American policies diverge and relations are strained, as we’ve seen with the U.S.-led war in Iraq, which the French government vehemently and vocally opposed.

The first hurdle for the dinner was the menu. The French are legendary for their cuisine, so I fretted about the perfect meal to serve them at the White House. Our Americanborn and -trained chef, Walter Scheib, was not intimidated in the least and assured me that he would combine the best of both culinary traditions.

The round tables in the State Dining Room were draped in damask and awash with crystal, silver and roses. As a midwinter snow fell on Washington, diplomats, business leaders, artists and movie stars chattered over lemon-thyme lobster and roasted eggplant soup, rack of lamb and sweet potato puree served with the finest American wines. From this first meal to our subsequent encounters with the Chiracs, Bill and I discovered that, if the world of diplomacy is tricky, it is also filled with surprises.

“Of course, I love many things American, including the food,” said President Chirac, seated to my right. “You know, I used to work in a Howard Johnson’s restaurant”

Despite the occasional serious political differences between the United States and France, Bill and I maintained a comfortable dialogue with the Chiracs during our years in the White House, and I enjoyed a visit I made with Bernadette Chirac to central France.

The niece of General de Gaulle’s aide-de-camp, Bernadette is an elegant, cultured woman who since 1971 had been a local elected official from a constituency in the Correze region.

She was the only presidential spouse I knew who had been elected on her own. I was fascinated by the independent role she had carved out for herself and her stories of walking and driving herself from house to house, asking for votes. She later invited me to accompany her to visit her constituency, and in May 1998 I spent a wonderful day touring Correze with her, meeting the people she represented.

Soon it was time to celebrate another family milestone: Chelsea’s sixteenth birthday. I could hardly believe how quickly our daughter was growing up. It seemed like yesterday that she was taking her first dance lessons and crawling into my lap to read a book. Now she was my height, and she wanted to get a driver’s license. That was scary enough, but even more frightening: her father was teaching her how to drive.

Outside of golf carts, the Secret Service never let Bill drive himself around, which was a good thing. It’s not that my husband isn’t mechanically inclined, it’s just that he has so much information running through his head at any given moment that he doesn’t always notice where he’s going. But he insisted on performing his fatherly duty, borrowing a car from the Secret Service fleet at Camp David.

After the first lesson on backing up and parallel parking, I met Chelsea as she returned to Aspen Lodge. “So! How’d it go?”

She said, “Well, I think Dad learned a lot.”

Being the child of a President is never easy, from the loss of anonymity to the roundthe-clock security. Even as she got older, Bill and I were determined that she lead as normal a life as possible. We worked hard to keep our schedules free to have dinner in the family kitchen with her so that we could catch up with one another, talk over weekend plans or family trips. No matter what else was going on, I tried to hang around the second floor when she came from ballet in case she felt like talking. At the very least, I wanted a sighting of her before she disappeared into her room.

We also did our best to shield her from the investigations and harsh media coverage, but I’m sure those added pressures made life in the White House even more challenging for Chelsea. It forced her to mature early and to become a quick judge of character, identifying and discarding fawners and false friends and building relationships with true friends who remain close to her today.

We celebrated her sixteenth birthday on February 27, 1996, with an evening at the National Theatre for a performance of Les Misérables. Then Bill and I invited a busload of her friends for a weekend at Camp David. Chelsea planned the activities, which included an afternoon