My life полностью

T he next year involved an amazing combination of major legislative achievements, frustrations and successes in foreign policy, unforeseen events, personal tragedy, honest errors, and clumsy violations of the Washington culture, which, when combined with compulsive leaking by a few staffers, ensured press coverage that often resembled what I’d experienced during the New York primary. On January 22, we announced that Zoë Baird had withdrawn her name from consideration for attorney general. Since we had learned about her employment of illegal immigrant workers and her failure to pay Social Security taxes for them during the vetting process, I had to say that we had failed to evaluate the matter properly, and that I, not she, was responsible for the situation. Zoë had not misled us in any way. When the household workers were hired, she had just gotten a new job, and her husband had the summer off from teaching. Apparently, each assumed the other had handled the tax matter. I believed her and kept working for her nomination for three weeks after she first offered to withdraw it. Later, I appointed Zoë to the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where she made a real contribution to the work Admiral Crowe’s group did.

On the same day, the press became infuriated with the new White House when we denied them the privilege, which they’d had for years, of walking from the press room, located between the West Wing and the residence, up to the press secretary’s office on the first floor near the Cabinet Room. This strolling allowed them to hang out in the halls and pepper whoever came by with questions. Apparently, a couple of people high up in the Bush administration had mentioned to their new counterparts that this arrangement impeded efficiency and increased leaks, and the decision was made to change it. I don’t recall being consulted about it, but perhaps I was. The press raised the roof, but we stuck with the decision, figuring they’d get over it. There’s no question that the new policy contributed to freer movement and conversation among the staff, but it’s hard to say it was worth the animosity it engendered. And since, in the first few months, the White House leaked worse than a tar-paper shack with holes in the roof and gaps in the walls, it’s impossible to say that confining the press to quarters did much good.

That afternoon, the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I issued executive orders ending the Reagan-Bush ban on fetal-tissue research; abolishing the so-called Mexico City rule, which prohibited federal aid to international planning agencies that were in any way involved in abortions; and reversing the Bush “gag rule” barring abortion counseling at family planning clinics that receive federal funds. I had pledged to take these actions in the campaign, and I believed in them. Fetal-tissue research was essential to finding better treatments for Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and other conditions. The Mexico City rule arguably led to more abortions, by reducing the availability of information on alternative family planning measures. And the gag rule used federal funds to prevent family planning clinics from telling pregnant women—often frightened, young, and alone—about an option the Supreme Court had declared a constitutional right. Federal funds still could not be used to fund abortions, at home or abroad. On January 25, Chelsea’s first day at her new school, I announced that Hillary would head a task force to come up with a comprehensive health-care plan, working with Ira Magaziner as the lead staff person, domestic policy advisor Carol Rasco, and Judy Feder, who had led our health-care transition team. I was pleased that Ira had agreed to work on health care. We had been friends since 1969, when he had come to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar a year after I did. Now a successful businessman, he had worked on the campaign economic team. Ira believed delivering universal health coverage was both morally and economically imperative. I knew he would give Hillary the kind of support she needed for the grueling task ahead of us.