My life

I ended the month by signing a health-care appropriations bill that ended so-called drive-by deliveries, by guaranteeing a minimum of forty-eight hours of coverage to mothers and newborns; provided medical assistance to children of Vietnam veterans who were born with spina bifida, as I mentioned earlier; and required the same annual and lifetime coverage limits in health insurance policies for mental and physical illness. The breakthrough in mental-health care was a tribute not only to the work of mentalhealth advocacy groups but also to the personal efforts of Senator Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, and Tipper Gore, whom I had named my official advisor on mental-health policy.

I spent the first two days of October with Netanyahu, Arafat, and King Hussein, who had agreed to join us to try to get the peace process back on track. At the end of our talks, Arafat and Netanyahu asked me to field all the press questions. I said that while we had not yet resolved the tunnel issue, both sides had agreed to begin immediate talks in the region with a view toward ending the violence and returning to the peace process. In our meeting, Netanyahu had reaffirmed his commitment to implement the agreements made before he took office, including the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Hebron. Not long afterward, the tunnel was sealed again, consistent with the commitment both parties had made to do nothing to change the status quo in Jerusalem until it was negotiated. On the third, I was back on the campaign trail again, stopping for a rally in Buffalo, New York, a city that had always been good to me, on the way to Chautauqua, to prepare for my first presidential debate with Bob Dole in Hartford, Connecticut, on October 6. Our whole team was there, including my media advisor, Michael Sheehan. George Mitchell came in to play Bob Dole in the mock debates. He cleaned my clock at first, but I got better with practice. In between sessions, Erskine Bowles and I got in a round of golf. My golf game was getting better. In June, I had finally scored below 80 for the first time, but I still couldn’t beat Erskine when his game was on.

The debate itself turned out to be civilized, and educational for people who were interested in our different philosophies of government and positions on the issues. There were a few fireworks when Dole hit me for scaring seniors with my ads criticizing the Medicare cuts in the Republican budget I had vetoed, and he repeated his claim from his convention speech that I had filled the administration with young elitists who “never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned” and who wanted “to fund with your earnings their dubious and self-serving schemes.” I shot back that one of the young “elitists” who worked for me in the White House had grown up in a house trailer, and as for the charge that I was too liberal, “that’s what their party always drags out when they get in a tight race. It’s sort of their golden oldie . . . I just don’t think that dog will hunt anymore.”

The second debate was scheduled ten days later in San Diego. In the interim, Hillary, Al, Tipper, and I visited the massive AIDS quilt that covered the Mall in Washington, with separate squares in honor of people who had died; two of those commemorated were friends of Hillary’s and mine. I was gratified that the death rate from AIDS was coming down, and I was determined to keep pushing for more research to develop lifesaving medicines.

Mickey Kantor had negotiated a town hall format for the San Diego debate. On the sixteenth, citizens at the University of San Diego asked good questions, and Dole and I answered them without hitting each other until the end. In his closing statement, Dole appealed to his base, reminding people that I opposed term limits as well as constitutional amendments to balance the budget and to protect the American flag, and forbid restrictions on voluntary school prayer. I closed with a summary of my proposals for the next four years. At least people knew what the choice was.