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

public arena. Bill’s electoral success was due to a combination of his political skills, his understanding of how stale the Democratic Party had become and the remedies he proposed.

The party had led the country through the Depression, World War II, the Cold War and the civil rights revolution. Now its leaders needed to rethink how our core values could be translated into modern solutions for the global security challenges we face at the beginning of the twentyfirst century and the changing patterns of work and family in American life. Bill tried to move Democrats beyond what he called the “brain-dead politics of the past”―right versus left, liberal versus conservative, business versus labor, growth versus environment, pro-government versus antigovernment―to craft a “dynamic center.” Working with the Democratic Leadership Council and its founder and leader, Al From, among others, Bill became one of the first Democrats in the 1980s to offer a new Democratic philosophy and to organize the party around a modern vision of how government should work. They advocated a partnership with the private sector and citizens to promote economic opportunity, individual responsibility and a greater sense of shared community.

In his effort to reform the Labour Party, Blair was outlining similar themes on the other side of the Atlantic. I remember being in London in the late 1980s and watching the annual Labour Party Convention on television. I was struck by how many speakers referred to one another as “comrades,” a linguistic throwback to a discredited past. After nearly two decades of Conservative Party dominance, Blair emerged in the 1990s as an energetic, charismatic new face of the Labour Party. After his election as Prime Minister in May 1997, Blair invited Bill to London for an official visit, where we found ourselves in nonstop conversation.

Tony and Cherie, both barristers, the English term for trial lawyers, had met as clerks at one of the Inns of Court. A mother of three in 1997 when her husband became Prime Minister, Cherie continued her legal work, taking on difficult criminal cases as well as representing clients in the European Court of Human Rights. In 1995, she was named a QC (Queen’s Counsel)―a great honor―and served from time to time as a judge. I admired the way she pursued her profession, even taking on cases where she had to argue against the government. She specialized in employment litigation, and several of her clients were notable, even controversial. In 1998, she represented a gay worker employed by the national railroad in his claim to equal rights with his non-gay peers. I could not imagine a First Lady suing the government of the United States under comparable circumstances!

As the spouse of a new Prime Minister, Cherie suddenly faced an onslaught of public demands and responsibilities, and she had no extra staff help, except two part-time aides to handle scheduling and correspondence. The wife of a Prime Minister has a less symbolic role than a First Lady because the Queen or other members of the Royal Family perform many of those duties. When Cherie and I met, she was eager to discuss with me any ideas about how she could manage her responsibilities. I encouraged her to be herself, a difficult undertaking, I’d discovered, and tried to reinforce her instincts to shield her children, keeping them as far out of the tabloid spotlight as possible. Cherie had already been baptized by fire when, early the morning after the election, she opened the door of her private home to collect a flower delivery, only to be photographed in her nightclothes.

When she, Tony, Bill and I met over a long dinner at Le Pont de la Tour, a restaurant near the Tower of London on the Thames River, the conversation never stalled. We shared ideas about problems in education and welfare and our concerns about the pervasive influence of the media. Over the course of dinner, we decided to initiate a discussion among our advisers to explore common ideas and strategies.

Organizing the first meeting took months, because of resistance from officials in each of our countries. The National Security Council and British Foreign Office worried that we would offend other friendly nations and governments by holding meetings that included only the United States and Britain. I countered that if the socalled special relationship between our countries meant anything, surely bilateral, informal meetings should not offend our other allies. Bill and I persevered because we knew that each of our countries could learn from the other and create a constructive political environment. We did make concessions, however. In order to limit attention, Bill would not attend the first meeting that Tony wanted to host at Chequers. We also decided to focus on domestic issues, skirting the possible foreign policy implications of bilateral meetings and recognizing that in an era of globalization, domestic policy now has significant international consequences.

The final list of participating Americans included Melanne; Al From; Sid Blumenthal, by then an Assistant to the President; Andrew Cuomo, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Larry Summers, then Deputy Secretary of the Treasury; Frank Raines, Director of the Office of Management and Budget; speechwriter and consultant Don Baer and Professor Joseph Nye from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Blair invited Anthony Giddens, Director of the London School of Economics, and members of his government, including Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Peter Mandelson, Minister without Portfolio; Baroness Margaret Jay, Deputy Leader of the House of Lords; and David Miliband, Director of Policy.

I left Washington on October 30, stopping first in Dublin and Belfast. The new Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, hosted a large reception in St. Patrick’s Hall at Dublin Castle.

Ahern, a savvy and affable politician, was proving to be an effective Prime Minister and strong supporter of the peace process. He had been separated from his wife for a number of years and maintained a long-term relationship with a lovely and lively woman, Celia Larkin. Their involvement was one of those public secrets that everyone knew but no one