My life

Signing the welfare reform bill was one of the most important decisions of my presidency. I had spent most of my career trying to move people from welfare to work, and ending welfare “as we know it” had been a central promise of my 1992 campaign. Though we had pursued welfare reforms through granting waivers from the existing system to most states, America needed legislation that changed the emphasis of assistance to the poor from dependence on welfare checks to independence through work. The Republicans held their convention in San Diego in mid-month, nominating Bob Dole and his choice for vice president, former New York congressman, secretary of housing and urban development, and Buffalo Bills star quarterback Jack Kemp. Kemp was an interesting man, a free-market conservative with a genuine commitment to bringing economic opportunity to poor people and an openness to new ideas from all quarters, and I thought he would be an asset to Dole’s campaign. The Republicans didn’t make the mistake of opening with harsh right-wing rhetoric as they had done at their convention in 1992. Featuring Colin Powell, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Representative Susan Molinari, and Senator John McCain, they presented a more moderate, positive, and forward-looking image to the American people. Elizabeth Dole gave an impressive and effective nominating speech for her husband, leaving the podium to speak in a conversational way as she walked among the delegates. Dole gave a good speech, too, focusing on his lifetime of duty, his tax cuts, and his advocacy of traditional American values. He derided me for being part of a baby boomer “elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned.” He promised to build a bridge back to a better past of “tranquillity, faith, and confidence in action.” Dole also took a swipe at Hillary for the theme of her book, that “it takes a village” to raise a child, saying that Republicans thought parents raised children while Democrats thought government should do the job. Dole’s attack wasn’t too harsh, and in a couple of weeks Hillary and I would have our chances to answer him. While the Republicans were in San Diego, our family went to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the second time. This time I was finishing up a short book, Between Hope and History, which highlighted the policies of my first term through stories of individual Americans who had been positively affected by them, and articulated where I wanted to take our country in the next four years. On August 12, we went back to Yellowstone National Park for the only public business of our vacation, as I signed an agreement that stopped a planned gold mine on property adjacent to the park. The agreement was the welcome result of cooperative efforts by the mining company, citizens’ groups, and members of Congress and the White House environmental team, headed by Katie McGinty. On the eighteenth, Hillary, Chelsea, and I were in New York City for a big party celebrating my fiftieth birthday at Radio City Music Hall. Afterward, I was saddened to learn that the plane carrying the equipment back to Washington from our Wyoming stay had crashed, killing all nine people on board. The next day we joined Al and Tipper Gore in Tennessee, where we celebrated the birthday Tipper and I shared by helping to rebuild two rural churches, one white and one black, that had been burned in the recent rash of church burnings.

In the last week of the month, the nation’s attention turned to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. By then our campaign, chaired by Peter Knight, was well organized, and it was working closely with the White House through Doug Sosnick and Harold Ickes, who had overseen our convention organization. I was excited about going to Chicago because it was Hillary’s hometown, had played a pivotal role in my 1992 victory, and had made good use of many of my most important initiatives in education, economic development, and crime control.