In my second term, and after I left office, I did what I could to help the Rwandans put their country and their lives back together. Today, at the invitation of President Paul Kagame, Rwanda is one of the countries in which my foundation is working to stem the tide of AIDS. On April 22, Richard Nixon died, one month and a day after writing a remarkable seven-page letter to me about his recent trip to Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and England. Nixon said I had earned the respect of the leaders he visited and could not let Whitewater or any other domestic issue “divert attention from our major foreign policy priority—the survival of political and economic freedom in Russia.” He was worried about Yeltsin’s political position and the rise of anti-Americanism in the Duma, and he urged me to keep my close relationship with Yeltsin, but also to reach out to other democrats into Russia; to improve the design and administration of our foreign aid program; and to put a leading businessman in charge of getting more private investment into Russia. Nixon said the ultra-nationalist Zhirinovsky should be exposed “for the fraud he is,” rather than suppressed, and that we should seek “to keep the bad guys—Zhirinovsky, Rutskoi, and the Communists—divided, and to try to get the good guys—
Chernomyrdin, Yavlinski, Shahrai, Travkin—to coalesce if possible in a united front for responsible reform.” Finally, Nixon said I should not spread directed aid dollars all over the former Soviet Union, but concentrate our resources beyond Russia on Ukraine: “It is indispensable.” The letter was a tour de force, Nixon at his best in the eighth decade of his life.
All the living former Presidents came to President Nixon’s funeral on the grounds of his presidential library and birthplace. I was somewhat surprised when his family asked me to speak, along with Bob Dole, Henry Kissinger, and California governor Pete Wilson, who as a young man had worked for Nixon. In my remarks, I expressed appreciation for his “wise counsel, especially with regard to Russia,”
and I remarked on his continuing vigorous and clearheaded interest in America and the world, mentioning his call and letter to me a month before his death. I referred to Watergate only by indirection, with a plea for reconciliation: “Today is a day for his family, his friends, and his nation to remember President Nixon’s life in totality . . . may the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to an end.” Some of my party’s Nixon-haters didn’t like what I said. Nixon had done a lot more than Watergate with which I disagreed—the enemies list, the prolongation of the Vietnam War and the expanded bombing, the Red-baiting of his opponents for the House and Senate in California. But he had also opened the door to China, signed bills establishing the Environmental Protection Agency, the Legal Services Corporation, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and had supported affirmative action. Compared with the Republicans who took over the party in the 1980s and 1990s, President Nixon was a wild-eyed liberal. On the day after the funeral, I called in to the Larry King show because he was interviewing Dick Kelley and James Morgan about Mother’s book,
On April 29, with virtually the entire cabinet in attendance, I hosted Native American and Native Alaskan tribal leaders on the South Lawn, apparently bringing them to the White House for the first time since the 1820s. Some of them were so wealthy from Indian gaming that they flew to Washington in their own planes. Others, who lived on isolated reservations, were so poor they had to “pass the hat”
among their tribes to collect enough money for a plane ticket. I pledged to respect their rights of selfdetermination, tribal sovereignty, and religious freedom, and to work hard to improve the federal government’s relations with them. And I signed executive orders to guarantee that our commitments would be kept. Finally, I pledged to do more to support education, health care, and economic development for the poorest tribes.
By the end of April, it was clear that we had lost the health-care communications battle. A
The baby’s scream is anguished, the mother’s voice desperate. “Please,” she pleads into the phone as she seeks help for her sick child.
