All things considered, I felt pretty good, personally and politically, about the first one hundred days. Still, I was under a lot of stress. So was Hillary. For all our excitement and commitment, we were tired going in, not having taken any real time off after the election. Then we were denied the honeymoon traditionally given new Presidents, partly because of the way the gays-in-the military issue surfaced early, perhaps because we made the press angry by restricting access to the West Wing. Hillary’s father’s death was a painful loss to her. I missed Hugh, too, and for a while, it was harder for both of us to operate at the top of our games. Though we very much enjoyed the work, the physical and emotional toll of the first hundred days was considerable.
THIRTY-THREE
W hile deficit reduction was essential to my economic strategy, it was not sufficient to build a sustained, widely shared recovery. In the early months, we filled out the agenda with initiatives to expand trade, increase investment in education and training, and promote a host of micro-economic issues aimed at particular trouble spots or targets of opportunity. For example, I offered proposals to help military and civilian personnel who had lost their jobs as a result of the post–Cold War decline in defense spending; urged our major federal research labs—Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico, and Livermore in California—to use the massive scientific and technological resources that had helped win the Cold War to develop new technologies with commercial applications; announced a micro-loan program to support budding entrepreneurs, including welfare recipients eager to get off the rolls, who often had good ideas but couldn’t meet the credit standards of traditional lenders; increased the volume of Small Business Administration loans, especially to women and minorities; and named a National Commission to Ensure a Strong and Competitive Airline Industry, chaired by former Virginia governor Jerry Baliles. The airline manufacturers and carriers were in trouble because of the economic downturn, fewer orders for military planes, and stiff competition from the European manufacturer Airbus. I also offered plans to help communities develop commercial uses for the military facilities that would be closed as defense was downsized. As governor, I had dealt with the closing of an air force base, and I was determined to give more aid to those facing the same challenge now. Since California was, by itself, the world’s sixth-largest economy, and it had been hit especially hard by defense downsizing and other problems, we developed a special plan to promote recovery there. John Emerson had the responsibility of riding herd on the project and other matters of concern to his native state. He was so unrelenting in doing so that he became known around the White House as the “Secretary of California.”
One of the most effective things we did was to reform the regulations governing financial institutions under the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act. The law required federally insured lenders to make an extra effort to give loans to low-and modest-income borrowers, but before 1993 it had never had much impact. After the changes we made, between 1993 and 2000, banks would offer more than $800 billion in home mortgage, small-business, and community development loans to borrowers covered by the law, a staggering figure that amounted to well over 90 percent of all the loans made in the twenty-three years of the Community Reinvestment Act.
May was an interesting month, and valuable for my continuing political education. On the fifth, I awarded my first Presidential Medal of Freedom to my old mentor Senator Fulbright on his eightyeighth birthday. Al Gore’s father was at the ceremony, and when he reminded Fulbright that he himself was only eighty-five, Fulbright replied, “Albert, if you behave yourself, you’ll make it, too.” I admired both men for what they’d done for America; I wondered if I would live as long as they had; if so, I hoped I could wear the years as well.
