I limped into October with approval ratings of around 40 percent, but good things would happen that month to improve my standing and apparently to increase the Democrats’ election prospects. The only sad development was the resignation of Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy. Janet Reno had asked for a court-appointed independent counsel to look into allegations of wrongdoing by Espy involving acceptance of gifts, such as sports tickets and trips. Judge Sentelle’s panel appointed Donald Smaltz, another Republican activist, to investigate Espy. I was heartsick about it. Mike Espy had supported me through thick and thin in 1992. He had left a safe seat in Congress, where even the white voters of Mississippi supported him, to become the first black agriculture secretary, and he had done an excellent job, including raising the standards for food safety.
The October news was mostly positive. On October 4, Nelson Mandela came to the White House for a state visit. His smile always brightened even the darkest days, and I was glad to see him. We announced a joint commission to promote mutual cooperation, to be headed by Vice President Gore and Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, Mandela’s likely successor. The joint commission idea was working so well with Russia that we wanted to try it in another country that was important to us, and South Africa certainly was. If Mandela’s reconciliation government succeeded, it could lift all of Africa and inspire similar efforts in trouble spots around the world. I also announced assistance for housing, electricity, and health care for South Africa’s poor, densely populated townships; rural economic initiatives; and an investment fund to be headed by Ron Brown.
While I was meeting with Mandela, the Senate followed the House in passing, with broad bipartisan support, the last important piece of my education agenda from the campaign, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The bill ended the practice of uncritically giving poor children a watered-down curriculum; too often, children from disadvantaged backgrounds were put in special education classes, not because they lacked normal learning capacity, but because they had fallen behind in poor schools and had too little support at home. Dick Riley and I were convinced that, with smaller classes and extra attention from teachers, they could catch up. The bill also contained incentives to increase parental involvement; gave federal support to allow students and parents to choose a public school other than the one to which they were assigned; and funded public charter schools designed to promote innovation and allowed to operate free of school district requirements that can stifle creativity. In just two years, in addition to the ESEA, bipartisan supporters in Congress had enacted Head Start reform; put the National Education Association goals into law; reformed the student loan program; created the national service program; passed the school-to-work program to create apprenticeships for high school graduates who don’t go on to college; and dramatically increased our commitment to adult education and lifelong learning.
The education package was one of the most important achievements of my first two years in office. Although it would increase the quality of learning and economic opportunities for millions of Americans, almost no one knew about it. Because education reforms had broad support in both parties, the efforts to pass them generated relatively little controversy, and therefore weren’t considered particularly newsworthy.
We ended the first week of the month on a high note, when the unemployment rate fell to 5.9 percent, the lowest since 1990 (down from over 7 percent when I took office), with 4.6 million new jobs. Later in the month, economic growth in the third quarter of the year was pegged at 3.4 percent, with inflation at 1.6 percent. NAFTA was making a contribution to the growth. Overall exports to Mexico were up 19
percent in just a year, with car and truck exports up 600 percent.
On October 7, Iraq massed a large number of troops just two and a half miles from the Kuwait border, raising the specter of another Gulf War. With strong international support, I rapidly deployed 36,000