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

in March 1994, insisting that Congress pass a health care reform bill that would require prescription coverage. The AARP was adamant about prescription drugs and so was I. Although the AARP intended to help us, the ad had a corrosive effect because it made people think that our plan did not contain a prescription drug provision―which, of course, it did.

I worked hard to keep the pro-reform forces together, under the umbrella of the Health Care Reform Project. But we could raise only about $15 million to run a public information campaign and to recruit speakers to fan out across the country. We were thoroughly outspent by our heavyweight corporate opponents who, according to estimates, infused at least $300 million into their campaign to defeat reform.

The insurance industry’s distortions were so effective that many Americans didn’t understand that key elements of reform―which they supported―were actually in the Clinton plan. One news story in The Wall Street Journal on March 10, 1994, summed up our dilemma under the headline MANY DON’T REALIZE IT’S THE CLINTON PLAN

THEY LIKE. The writer explained that while Americans strongly supported specific elements in the Clinton plan, “Mr. Clinton is losing the battle to define his own health care bill. In the cacophony of negative television ads and sniping by critics, foes are raising doubts about the Clinton plan faster than the President and Hillary Rodham Clinton can explain it. Unless the Clintons can cut through the confusion, the outlook for passage of major elements of their bill is in doubt.”

While Washington was caught up in health care reform and Whitewater, the rest of the world was not. In early May, the U.N. tightened sanctions on the military junta in Haiti, and a new wave of Haitian refugees headed to American shores. A crisis was building, and Bill felt he had to ask Al Gore to fill in for him on a trip to South Africa for Nelson Mandela’s presidential inauguration. Tipper and I joined Al as members of the U.S.

delegation. I was thrilled at the prospect of taking part in this momentous event. During the 1980s, I had supported the boycott of South Africa, hoping that the apartheid regime would bow to international pressure. On the day Mandela walked out of prison in February 1990, Bill woke Chelsea before dawn so together they could watch the drama unfold.

I traveled in a packed plane for the sixteen-hour flight to Johannesburg. My companions stayed up all night playing cards, listening to music and talking ecstatically about the historic change we were about to witness. After serving twenty-seven years in prison for plotting against South Africa’s apartheid government, Nelson Mandela had won that country’s first interracial election to become its first black President. The liberation struggle in South Africa was deeply linked with the American civil rights movement and supported by African American leaders, many of whom were coming with us to honor Mandela.

We landed on the outskirts of Johannesburg, a sprawling modern city in South Africa’s dry central highlands. That night we attended a performance at the famous Market Theatre, where for years Athol Fugard and other playwrights had defied government censors and depicted the agony of apartheid. Afterwards, we were treated to a buffet dinner featuring assorted African specialties along with the usual carved meats and salads. I wasn’t as adventurous as Maggie and the rest of my staff who dared one another to sample the fried grasshoppers and grubs.

Our delegation drove north to the capital, Pretoria. Because the official transition of power didn’t occur until the new President was sworn in, the President’s stately residence was still occupied by E W de Klerk. The next morning, while AI Gore met with de Klerk and his ministers, Tipper and I had breakfast with Mrs. Marike de Klerk and the wives of other outgoing National Party officials. We sat in a wood-paneled breakfast room thickly decorated with ruffled fabrics and porcelain knickknacks. A lazy Susan in the middle of a big round table was heaped with the jams, breads, biscuits and eggs of a classic Dutch farm breakfast. Although we made light conversation about food, children and the weather, the moment was subsumed in the unspoken subtext: in a few hours, the world these women inhabited would disappear forever.

Fifty thousand people attended the inauguration, a spectacle of celebration, release and vindication. Everyone marveled at the orderly transfer of power in a country that had been so ravaged by racist fear and hatred. Colin Powell, a member of our delegation, was moved to tears during the flyover of jets from the South African Defense Force. Their contrails streaked across the sky, tinted with the red, black, green, blue, white and gold colors of the new national flag. A few years earlier, the same jets were a powerful symbol of apartheid’s military power; now they were dipping their wings to honor their new black commander in chief.

Mandela’s speech denounced discrimination on the basis of race and gender, two profoundly embedded prejudices in Africa and most of the rest of the world. As we were leaving the ceremony, I saw the Rev. Jesse Jackson weeping with joy. He leaned over and said to me, “Did you ever think any of us would live to see this day?”

We returned by motorcade to the President’s residence to find it transformed. The long winding drive through green lawns, which just hours before had been lined with armed military men, was now arrayed with brightly costumed drummers and dancers from throughout South Africa. The mood was light and joyous, as if the air itself had changed in an afternoon. We were ushered into the house for cocktails and to mix and mingle with the dozens of visiting heads of state and their delegations. One of my challenges that afternoon was Fidel Castro. The State Department briefers had warned me that Castro wanted to meet me. They told me to avoid him at all costs, since we had no diplomatic relations with Cuba, not to mention a