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

thousands of gifts I received in my eight years in the White House, few were more welcome and needed than these twelve intangible gifts of discernment, peace, compassion, faith, fellowship, vision, forgiveness, grace, wisdom, love, joy and courage. Over the coming months and years, these women faithfully prayed for and with me. I appreciated their concern and their willingness to ignore Washington’s political divide to reach out to someone in need of support.

I often pulled out their little book. Susan Baker visited and wrote me, offering encouragement and empathy about events ranging from the loss of my father to the political storms surrounding Bill’s Presidency.

As the administration neared its one-hundred-day mark at the end of April, it was obvious that we would not meet our self-imposed deadline for a health care package, and it wasn’t because I had spent two weeks in Little Rock. Information about every proposal under consideration to pay for universal health care coverage ended up in the press, agitating members of Congress about strategies before any decisions had been made. We were already on the defensive before we had a plan. I was surprised how readily people leaked information to journalists. Some believed they were influencing events; others seemed to crave the feeling of self-importance, even if they were only quoted as anonymous sources.

The nation was still reeling from the ghastly outcome of the standoff in Waco, Texas, when the Branch Davidians shot and killed four Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents and wounded twenty others as they tried to serve warrants. In the confrontation that followed on April 19, members of the group set the compound on fire, and at least eighty Branch Davidians were killed, including children. It was a devastating loss of life, and though an independent investigation concluded that the Branch Davidian leadership was responsible for the fires and gunshots that resulted in so many deaths, it could do nothing to mitigate the regret we all felt over the violence and death caused by a perversion of religion.

In the former Yugoslavia, Bosnian Serbs were besieging the Muslim town of Srebrenica in a frenzy of “ethnic cleansing.” Another example of the misuse of religious differences for purposes of political power. The news media were sending back horrific pictures of civilian massacres and emaciated prisoners, reminiscent of the Nazi atrocities in Europe. The situation became more agonizing as the death toll mounted, and I was disgusted by the failure of the United Nations to intervene or even to protect the Muslim population.

In the shadow of these events, Bill and I hosted twelve Presidents and Prime Ministers at the White House who had come to Washington for the dedication of the Holocaust Museum on April 22. Some of the visiting leaders were pressuring the United States to get more involved in the U.N. effort to stop the slaughter in Bosnia. The most eloquent messenger of this viewpoint was Elie Wiesel, who delivered an impassioned speech about Bosnia at the museum dedication. Wiesel, a Nazi death camp survivor and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, turned to Bill and said: “Mr. President … I have been in the former Yugoslavia. … I cannot sleep since what I have seen. As a Jew I am saying that.

We must do something to stop the bloodshed in that country.” I had read Night, Wiesel’s chilling account of his experiences in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, the death camps in Poland and Germany. I admired his writing and dedication to human rights, and since that day, he and his wife, Marion, have been friends.

Sitting in the gray drizzle, I agreed with Elie’s words, because I was convinced that the only way to stop the genocide in Bosnia was through selective air strikes against Serbian targets. I knew that Bill was frustrated by Europe’s failure to act after it had insisted that Bosnia was in its own backyard and was its own problem to solve. Bill met with his advisers to consider American involvement in the peacekeeping effort and other options to end the conflict. The situation became more agonizing as the death toll mounted.

We were adjusting to the roller-coaster ride of good and bad news at home and around the world. On the Hill, Republicans had mounted a filibuster in the Senate and defeated the President’s economic stimulus package after the House had passed it. With so much going on, some of the administration’s best moments were eclipsed. To commemorate Earth Day, April 22, Bill pledged to sign an important international biodiversity treaty that President Bush had rejected. The following week, he announced a national service program, AmeriCorps, that would revive the idealism of the Peace Corps and VISTA and direct the energy of young volunteers to tackle the needs of our own country.

Whatever our public demands, Bill and I tried never to lose sight of our obligations as Chelsea’s parents. We went to every school event and stayed up with her while she finished her homework. Bill could still help with her eighthgrade algebra, and if he was traveling out of town, she would fax him her problems and then they would talk over solutions.

We also continued to insist on her privacy, to the dismay of some in the media and on Bill’s staff. The White House Press Office had convinced Bill to let NBC follow him around to film A Day in the Life of the President, which would air in early May. I agreed to participate but said Chelsea was off-limits. Bill’s staff tried to persuade me that it would be good for our image to be seen with Chelsea at breakfast or talking over homework. When that didn’t work, the show’s producer tried to persuade me. Finally, anchorman Tom Brokaw called. To Tom’s credit, when I said, “Absolutely not,” he told me he respected my decision.

We were also in the middle of making the private quarters a real home. This meant painting and wallpapering and installing bookshelves wherever we could. In the midst of the dust, paint and other