Living History by Unknown (best non fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

If there were no resolution, the real problems would begin at the end of the month, when government paychecks were due to go out. And I worried about what we would do if another national emergency or international crisis occurred.

Each side of the aisle blamed the other for the government shutdown, but Gingrich tipped his hand at a breakfast meeting with reporters on November 15. Gingrich suggested that he had sent a tougher version of the budget resolution to the White House because he felt that Bill had snubbed him on Air Force One during the return trip from Prime Minister Rabin’s funeral.

“It’s petty, but I think it’s human,” Gingrich said. “You’ve been on the plane for twentyfive hours and nobody has talked to you and they ask you to get off the plane by the back ramp…. You just wonder, where is their sense of manners? Where is their sense of courtesy?”

The next day the front page of the New York Daily News featured the enormous headline CRY BABY over a cartoon image of Gingrich in diapers. That afternoon the White House released a photograph taken by White House photographer Bob McNeely. There was Gingrich on the flight, talking with the President and Majority Leader Dole, looking perfectly content. Gingrich’s quote―and the photograph―were all over the media. With one self-indulgent remark, he punctured his credibility and ensured that the American people knew to blame Congress, not the Administration, for the government shutdown.

The fight was not over, but the field was shifting.

The government was closed for six days, the longest shutdown in history. Both sides finally agreed to another CR that would finance the government until December 15.

Many people had suffered enormous anxiety and hardship, but for the long-term sake of the country, it was essential for Bill to stand his ground.

When I look at our schedules from the last three months of 1995, it’s hard to believe how many events and issues we were tackling. I finally put the finishing touches on It Takes a Village during another Thanksgiving at Camp David surrounded by our families and good friends. Then it was time to kick off the Christmas season with the Pageant of Peace and National Tree Lighting Ceremony, which included those Ohio Scotch pines that had finally been delivered when the government reopened.

On November 28, Bill and I embarked on an official trip to England, Ireland, Germany and Spain. I first went to England in 1973 with Bill when we skipped our Yale Law School commencement. As cash-starved students, we flew on student standby fares for less than one hundred dollars apiece, stayed in cheap bed-and-breakfasts or on friends’

couches and kept whatever schedule we chose. In 1995, however, we were returning to England on Air Force One, driving the streets in an armored limousine and scheduled to the minute.

Bill’s relations with Prime Minister Major had gotten off to a rocky start when we learned that Major’s government cooperated with the first Bush Administration by attempting to unearth records of Bill’s activities in England during the student protests against the Vietnam War. No such records existed, but overt meddling in American politics by the Tories was disconcerting. Relations were further strained in 1994 when Bill granted a visa to Gerry Adams, the head of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.

No American President had ever become involved in mediating the Irish Troubles, but Bill was determined to help work toward a solution. There was no doubt that Adams had been somehow involved in IRA activities in the past, and the U.S. State Department agreed with the British government’s arguments against granting the visa. But the Irish government had decided that dealing with Adams and Sinn Fein made sense. They argued that Bill could play a role in creating an environment conducive to peace negotiations.

In this case and others, Bill was willing to take political risks to demonstrate that you don’t make peace with your friends and you can’t make peace with your enemies unless you’re willing to talk to them. He decided to grant the visa, and his bet paid off.

Northern Ireland was enjoying a cease-fire, and we would soon be on our way to Belfast to celebrate.

Of all the trips we took during the eight years of Bill’s Presidency, this one was among the most special. Bill was proud of his Irish ancestry through his mother, a Cassidy. Chelsea fell in love with Irish folk tales when she was a little girl. She first saw Ireland in 1994 in the middle of the night at Shannon Airport during a refueling stop on our flight to Russia. She asked if she could go out into the field and touch Irish soil. I watched as she picked up some sod and put it in a bottle to take home. One of Bill and Chelsea’s favorite books was Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization, which Bill gave to friends and colleagues. Yet except for the stopovers at Shannon Airport, none of us had been to Ireland, north or south.

Now we felt the emotional resonance of the beautiful traditional Gaelic greeting: Céad mile fáilte―“One hundred thousand welcomes.” Our first stop in Belfast was the Mackie plant, a factory that assembled textile machinery and one of the few in Northern Ireland that successfully integrated Catholic and Protestant employees in its workforce. Two children, a Catholic schoolgirl whose father had been murdered in 1987 and a Protestant boy, joined hands to introduce Bill. Because of the history of sectarian separatism, most people in Belfast lived in religiously segregated neighborhoods and went to church-run schools.

This joint appearance by the children was meant to symbolize a new vision for the future.

While Bill met with the various factions, I split off to meet with women leaders of the peace movement. Because they were willing to work across the religious divide, they had found common ground. At the Lamplighter Traditional Fish and Chips restaurant, I met sixty-five-yearold Joyce McCartan, a remarkable woman who had