Because I was helpless to stop them, all I could...

Posted at 12:00, 2010-Feb-11

Because I was helpless to stop them, all I could do was stand by her, telling the press that America would be a better place if everybody in this country had the character my wife hasHillary and I explained to Chelsea what was going on; she didnt like it but seemed to take it in strideShe knew her mother a lot better than her assailants did Still, it was wearing on all of usI had been struggling for months to keep my anger from interfering with my work, as I dealt with the budget fight, Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and Rabins deathBut it had been very hard; now I was anxious for Hillary and Chelsea as wellI was also concerned about all the other people being pulled into the congressional hearings and into Starrs net who were being hurt emotionally and financially Five days after the billing records were turned over, Hillary was scheduled to do an interview with Barbara Walters so that she could discuss her new book, It Takes a VillageInstead, the interview turned into a session on the billing recordsIt Takes a Village became a bestseller anyway, as Hillary bravely set out from Washington on a book tour across the country and found legions of friendly and supportive Americans who cared more about what she had to say about improving childrens lives than about what Ken Starr, Al DAmato, William Safire, and their friends had to say about her Those boys certainly seemed to get a big kick out of beating up on HillaryMy only consolation was the sure knowledge, rooted in twenty-five knock off chanel handbags years of close observation, that she was a lot tougher than they would ever beSome guys dont like that in a woman, but it was one of the reasons I loved her In early February, as the presidential campaign kicked into high gear, I returned to New Hampshire to highlight both the positive impact of my policies there and my commitment not to forget about the state after I took officeAlthough I had no primary opponent, I wanted to carry New Hampshire in November, and I needed to deal with the one issue I thought could keep me from doing it: guns One Saturday morning, I went to a diner in Manchester full of men who were deer hunters and NRA membersIn impromptu remarks, I told them that I knew they had defeated their Democratic congressman, Dick Swett, in 1994 because he voted for the Brady bill and the assault weapons banSeveral of them nodded in agreementThose hunters were good men who had been frightened by the NRA; I thought they could be stampeded again in 1996 only if no one presented them with the other side of the argument in language they could understandSo I gave it my best shot: I know the NRA told you to defeat Congressman SwettNow, if you missed a day, or even an hour, in the deer woods because of the Brady bill or the assault weapons ban, I want you to vote against me, too, because I asked him to support those billsOn the other hand, if you didnt, then they didnt tell you the truth, and you need to get even A few days later, at the Library of Congress, I signed the louis vuitton knockoffs Telecommunications Act, a sweeping overhaul of the laws affecting an industry that was already one-sixth of our economyThe act increased competition, innovation, and access to what Al Gore had dubbed the information superhighwayThere had been months of sparring over complex economic issues, with the Republicans favoring greater concentration of ownership in media and telecommunications markets, and the White House and the Democrats supporting greater competition, especially in local and long-distance telephone serviceWith Al Gore taking the lead for the White House and Speaker Gingrich in his positive entrepreneurial mode, we reached what I thought was a fair compromise, and in the end the bill passed almost unanimouslyIt also contained a requirement that new television sets include the V-chip, which I had first endorsed at the Gores annual family conference, to allow parents to control their childrens access to programs; by the end of the month, executives from most of the television networks would agree to have a rating system for their programs in place by 1997Even more important, the act mandated discounted Internet access rates for schools, libraries, and hospitals; the so-called E-rate would eventually save public entities about $2 billion a year The next day, the bloom came off the Irish rose, as Gerry Adams called to tell me the IRA had ended its cease-fire, allegedly because of foot-dragging by John Major and the Unionists, including their insistence on IRA arms pink chanel bag replicas decommissioning in return for Sinn Feins participation in the political life of Northern IrelandLater that day a bomb exploded at Canary Wharf in London The IRA would keep it up for more than a year, at great cost to themselvesWhile they killed two soldiers and two civilians and injured many others, they suffered the deaths of two IRA operatives, the breakup of their bombing team in Britain, and the arrest of numerous IRA operatives in Northern IrelandBy the end of the month, peace vigils were being held all over Northern Ireland to demonstrate the continuing support of ordinary citizens for peaceJohn Major and John Bruton said they would resume talks with Sinn Fein if the IRA reinstated its cease-fireWith John Humes support, the White House decided to maintain contact with Adams, waiting for the moment when the march toward peace could resume The peace process in the Middle East was also threatened in late February, as two Hamas bombs killed twenty-six peopleWith elections coming up in Israel, I assumed Hamas was trying to defeat Prime Minister Peres and provoke the Israelis to elect a hard-line government that would not make peace with the PLOWe pushed Arafat to do more to prevent terrorist actsAs I had told him when we signed the original agreement back in 1993, he could never be the most militant Palestinian again, and if he tried to keep one foot in the peace camp and the other on the terrorist side he would eventually be undone We also had trouble closer to home when Cuba wholesale gucci messenger bag shot down two civilian planes flown by the anti-Castro group Brothers to the Rescue, killing four menCastro hated the group and the leaflets critical of him that it had dropped over Havana in the pastCuba claimed the planes were shot in its airspaceThey werent, but even if they had been, the downings still would have violated international law I suspended charter flights to Cuba, restricted travel by Cuban officials in the United States, expanded the reach of Radio Mart, which beamed pro-democracy messages into Cuba, and asked Congress to authorize compensation out of Cubas blocked assets in the United States to the families of the men who were killedMadeleine Albright asked the United Nations to impose sanctions and went to Miami to deliver a fiery speech to the Cuban-American community, telling them that the shootdown reflected cowardice, not cojonesHer macho remarks made her a heroine among South Floridas Cubans I also committed to signing a version of the Helms-Burton bill, which stiffened the embargo against Cuba and restricted the Presidents authority to lift it without congressional approvalSupporting the bill was good election-year politics in Florida, but it undermined whatever chance I might have if I won a second term to lift the embargo in return for positive changes within CubaIt almost appeared that Castro was trying to force us to maintain the embargo as an excuse for the economic failures of his regimeIf that wasnt the objective, then Cuba had made a colossal replica louis vuitton wallet err