My life

• By the year 2000, American students will leave grades four, eight, and twelve having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter including English, mathematics, science, history, and geography; and every school in America will ensure that all students learn to use their minds well, so they may be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our modern economy.

• By the year 2000, U.S. students will be first in the world in science and mathematics achievement.

• By the year 2000, every adult in America will be literate and will possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

• By the year 2000, every school in America will be free of drugs and violence and will offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning.

On January 31, I sat in the gallery of the House of Representatives as President Bush announced these goals, said they were developed jointly by the White House and the Governors’ Task Force on Education, and reported that they would be part of a more comprehensive goals-and-objectives statement that we would present to all the governors at their winter meeting the next month. The document the governors adopted in late February was a worthy successor to the 1983 Nation at Risk report. I was proud to have been a part of it, impressed by the knowledge and commitment of my fellow governors, and grateful to the President, John Sununu, and Roger Porter. For the next eleven years, as governor and President, I worked hard to reach the national education goals. We had set the bar high. When you set a high bar and reach for it, even if you fall short, you wind up well ahead of where you started.

I spent the last months of 1989 trying to decide what to do with the rest of my life. There were good arguments against running for a fifth term. I was discouraged by my inability to raise the funds necessary to keep moving forward in education, early-childhood development, and health care. I could stop after ten years, look back on a decade of real accomplishments under difficult circumstances, and leave open the option of running for President in 1992. Finally, if I ran again, I might not win. I had already served longer than anyone but Orval Faubus. And the polls indicated that a lot of people wanted a new governor.

On the other hand, I loved both politics and policy. And I didn’t want to leave office with the bad taste of 1989’s money failures in my mouth. I still had an able, energetic, and extremely honest team. The whole time I was governor, only twice had I been offered money to make a decision a particular way. A company that wanted to win the bid to provide medical services in the prison system offered me a substantial amount through a third party. I had the company taken off the bid list. A county judge asked me to see an elderly man who wanted a pardon for his nephew. The old fellow had had no contact with state government in decades and obviously thought he was doing what he had to do when he offered me

$10,000 for the pardon. I told the man it was lucky for him I was hard of hearing, because he might have just committed a crime. I suggested that he go home and give the money to his church or a charity, and said I’d look into his nephew’s case.

On most days, I still looked forward to going to work, and I had no idea what I’d do if I gave it up. At the end of October, I went out to the state fair, as I did every year. That year, I sat at a booth for several hours and talked to anyone who wanted to see me. Along toward the end of the day, a man in overalls who looked to be about sixty-five dropped by to visit. It was an enlightening experience. “Bill, are you gonna run again?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I replied. “If I do, will you vote for me?” “I guess so. I always have,” he answered. “Aren’t you sick of me after all these years?” I inquired. He smiled and said,

“No, I’m not, but everybody else I know is.” I chuckled and answered, “Don’t they think I’ve done a good job?” He shot back, “Sure they do, but you got a paycheck every two weeks, didn’t you?” It was a classic example of another of Clinton’s laws of politics: All elections are about the future. I was supposed to do a good job, just like everyone else who worked for a living. A good record is helpful mostly as evidence that you’ll do what you say if reelected.