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

and the press corps as the election campaign unfolded, the effort went far beyond the opposition research typically conducted by political campaigns―not only in its secretiveness and its single-mindedness, but also in its lack of fidelity to any standard of proof, principle or propriety. These activities … were a very early hint of how far the political right would go in the coming decade to try to destroy the Clintons.”

Along with other members of Scaife’s secret Arkansas Project, Brock took on the task of planting and nourishing seeds of doubt about Bill Clinton’s character and his fitness to govern. According to Brock’s memoir, the “country was being conditioned to see an invention made up entirely by the Republican right…. from virtually the first moment that they stepped out of Arkansas and onto the national stage, the country never again saw the Clintons.”

One frosty morning between Christmas and New Year’s, Maggie Williams and I were having coffee in our favorite spot in the residence: the West Sitting Hall in front of a large fan-shaped window. We were talking and leafing through the newspapers. Most front pages were wall-to-wall Whitewater.

“Hey, look at this!” said Maggie as she handed me a copy of USA Today. “It says you and the President are the most admired people in the world.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. All I could do was hope that the American people would maintain their reserves of fairness and goodwill, as I struggled to maintain my own.

INDEPENDENT COUNSEL

The sound of a telephone ringing in the middle of the night is one of the most jarring in the world. When our bedroom phone rang long after midnight on January 6, 1994, it was Dick Kelley calling to tell Bill that his mother had just died in her sleep at her home in Hot Springs.

We were up for the rest of the night, making and taking phone calls. Bill spoke twice with his brother, Roger. We reached out to one of our closest friends, Patty Howe Criner, who had grown up with Bill, and we asked her to work with Dick on the funeral arrangements.

Al Gore called at about three in the morning. I woke Chelsea and brought her into our bedroom so Bill and I could tell her. She had been very close to her grandmother, whom she called Ginger. Now, she had lost two of her grandparents in less than a year.

Before dawn, the White House Press Office put out the news of Virginia’s death, and when we turned on the television set in our bedroom, we saw the first news item flash on the screen: “The President’s mother died early this morning after a long battle with cancer.”

It made her death seem terribly final. We almost never watched the morning news, but the background noise was a relief from our own thoughts. Then Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich appeared on the Today show for a previously scheduled appearance. They began talking about Whitewater: “It to me cries out for the appointment of a regulatory, independent counsel,” Dole said. I looked over at Bill’s face. He was utterly stricken. Bill was raised by his mother to believe that you don’t hit people when they’re down, that you treat even your adversaries in life or politics with decency. A few years later, someone told Bob Dole how much his words had hurt Bill that day, and to his credit, he wrote Bill a letter of apology.

Bill asked the Vice President to deliver a speech scheduled for Milwaukee that afternoon so he could go to Arkansas right away. I stayed behind to contact family and friends and help with their travel arrangements. Chelsea and I flew to Hot Springs the next day and went straight to Virginia’s and Dick’s lakeside home, where we found friends and family members squeezed into the modest rooms. Barbra Streisand had flown in from California, and her presence added a touch of excitement and glamour that Virginia would have loved. We stood around drinking coffee and eating the mountains of food that show up after any death in Arkansas. We swapped stories about Virginia’s amazing life and her appropriately titled autobiography that was moving toward publication, Leading with My Heart. She would never see it published, but what a remarkable and honest story it tells. I am convinced that if she had lived to promote it, not only would it have been a best-seller, but it might have helped some people understand Bill a little better.

Hours later the house was still as packed as a church on Easter Sunday, but without Virginia’s presence, it felt as though the whole choir were missing.

There wasn’t a church in Hot Springs big enough to accommodate a lifetime’s worth of Virginia’s friends. The memorial service would have to be held at the Convention Center in downtown Hot Springs. Bill told me, “If the weather were better, we could have used Oaklawn racetrack. Mother would have loved that!” I smiled at the thought of the track filled with thousands of racing fans cheering one of their own.

As the funeral procession drove through Hot Springs the next morning, the roads were lined with people who silently paid their respects. The service celebrated Virginia’s life with stories and hymns, but nothing could capture the essence of this unique woman who had shared her love of life with anyone who crossed her path.

After the service, we drove to the cemetery in Hope where Virginia would be laid to rest with her parents and first husband, Bill Blythe. Virginia had come home to Hope.

Air Force One picked us up at the airport in Hope for the sad flight back to Washington.

The plane was filled with family and friends who tried to lift Bill’s spirits. But even on the day he buried his mother, Bill couldn’t escape being hounded about Whitewater.

White House staff members and lawyers huddled with the President. Everyone was concerned that the drumbeat for appointing a special prosecutor was drowning out Bill’s