All he knew was what he read and saw The...
All he knew was what he read and saw

The Cleveland encounter and the haircut and Travel Office fiascoes were object lessons about how little all of us outsiders knew about what mattered in Washington, and how the failure of understanding could blot out our efforts to communicate what we were doing to improve what really mattered to the rest of AmericaA few years later, Doug Sosnik, one of my wittiest staffers, coined a phrase that captured the buzz saw we had walked intoWhen we were about to leave for Oslo on a trip to promote the Middle East peace process, Sharon Farmer, my lively African-American photographer, said she wasnt looking forward to the trip to cold NorwayThats okay, Sharon, Doug repliedIts not a home game for youNobody likes the away gamesMidway through 1993, I was just hoping my entire term wouldnt be one long away game

I did some serious thinking about the trouble I was inIt seemed to me that the roots of the problem were these: the White House staff had too little experience in, and too few connections with, Washingtons established power centers; we were trying to do too many things at once, creating an impression of disarray and preventing the people from hearing what we had actually accomplished; our lack of a clear message made otherwise minor issues look as if I was governing on the cultural and political left, not from the dynamic center, as I had promised; the impression was being reinforced by the one-note Republican attack that my budget plan was nothing but a big tax increase; and I had been blind to the considerable political obstacles I facedI was elected with 43 percent of the chanel j10 watch knockoff vote; I had underestimated how hard it would be to turn Washington around after twelve years on a very different course, and how politicallyeven psychologicallyjarring the changes would be to Washingtons main players; many Republicans never considered my presidency legitimate in the first place and were acting accordingly; and the Congress, with a Democratic majority with its own way of doing things and a Republican minority determined to prove I was too liberal and couldnt govern, was not about to pass all the legislation I wanted as quickly as I wanted to pass it

I knew I had to change, but just like everyone else, I found that was harder to do myself than to recommend to othersStill, I managed to make two changes that were particularly helpfulI persuaded David Gergen, a friend from Renaissance Weekend and veteran of three Republican administrations, to come into the White House as counselor to the President, to help us with organization and communicationNews　World Report column David had given some thoughtful advice, some of it quite critical, with which I agreed; he liked and respected Mack McLarty; he was a bona fide member of the Washington establishment who thought and kept score the way they did; and for the sake of the country, he wanted us to succeedFor the next several months, David had a calming impact on the White House, immediately moving to improve relations with the press by restoring their direct access to the communications office, something we should have done long before

Along with Gergens appointment, we made some other staff changes: Mark Gearan, Mack McLartys able and popular deputy dior chief of staff, would replace George Stephanopoulos as communications director, with Dee Dee Myers staying as press secretary and taking over the daily briefings; and George would move to a new senior advisor position, to help me coordinate policy, strategy, and day-to-day decisionsAt first he was disappointed not to be doing the daily press briefings any longer, but he soon mastered a job much like the one he had done in the campaign, and he did it so well that his influence and impact within the White House increased

The other positive change we made was to unclutter my day, providing two hours in the middle of most days for me to read, think, rest, and make phone callsIt would make a big difference

Things were looking up by the end of the month, when the House passed my budget, 219213The Senate then took it up, and immediately scrapped the BTU tax in favor of a 4-cents-a-gallon increase in the gasoline tax and more spending cutsThe bad news was that the gas tax would promote less energy conservation than the BTU tax; the good news was that it would cost middle-class Americans less, only about $33 a year

On May 31, my first Memorial Day as President, after the traditional ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery, I went to another ceremony at the newly opened section of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a long black marble wall with the names of all the members of the Uarmed forces who had been killed or were missing in the war etched on itEarly that morning I had jogged over to the wall from the White House to look at the names of my friends from Hot SpringsI knelt at the spot where my friend Bert Jeffriess black balenciaga bag name was, touched it, and said a prayer

I knew it would be a tough event, full of people for whom the Vietnam War continued to be the defining moment in their lives and to whom the thought of someone like me as Commander in Chief was abhorrentBut I was determined to go, to face those who still held my views on Vietnam against me, and to tell all Vietnam veterans that I honored their service and that of their fallen comrades and would work to resolve the still-open cases of prisoners of war and soldiers still listed as missing in action

Colin Powell introduced me with conviction and class, strongly signaling the respect he thought I should receive as Commander in ChiefNevertheless, when I got up to speak, loud protesters attempted to drown me outI spoke to them directly:

To all of you who are shouting, I have heard youI ask you now to hear meSome have suggested that it is wrong for me to be here with you today because I did not agree a quarter of a century ago with the decision made to send the young men and women to battle in VietnamWell, so much the betterJust as war is freedoms cost, disagreement is freedoms privilege, and we honor it here todayThe message of this memorial is quite simple: these men and women fought for freedom, brought honor to their communities, loved their country, and died for itTheres not a person in this crowd today who did not know someone on this wallFour of my high school classmates are thereLet us continue to disagree, if we must, about the warBut let us not let it divide us as a people any longer

The event started roughly, but ended wellRobert McNamaras prediction that my cheap chanel knock off bags election had ended the Vietnam War wasnt quite accurate, but maybe we were getting there

June began with a disappointment that was both personal and political, as I withdrew my nomination of Lani Guinier, a University of Pennsylvania professor, a longtime lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and my law school classmate, to be the first career civil rights lawyer to head the Civil Rights DivisionAfter I named her in April, the conservatives went after Guinier with a vengeance, attacking her as a quota queen and accusing her of advocating the abandonment of the constitutional principle of one man, one vote because she had supported a system of cumulative voting, under which each voter would get as many votes as there are contested seats on a legislative body, and could cast all the votes for a single candidateIn theory, cumulative voting would dramatically increase the odds of minority candidates being elected

At first, I didnt pay too much attention to the rantings of the right, thinking that what they really disliked about Guinier was her long record of successful civil rights fights, and that, as she made the rounds of the Senate, she would win enough votes to be confirmed easilyMy friend Senator David Pryor came to see me and urged me to withdraw Lanis nomination, saying that her interviews with the senators were going poorly, and reminding me that we also had an economic program to pass and not a vote to spareMajority Leader George Mitchell, who had been a federal judge before he came to the Senate, strongly agreed with David; he said Lani couldnt be confirmed and we needed to end it as soon as new prada replica handbags possi