My life

Five days after that I went to New York for the opening session of the UN General Assembly, to deliver a speech on the world’s shared obligations to fight terrorists: to give them no support, sanctuary, or financial assistance; to bring pressure on states that do; to step up extradition and prosecutions; to sign the global anti-terror conventions and strengthen and enforce the ones designed to protect us against biological and chemical weapons; to control the manufacture and export of explosives; to raise international standards for airport security; and to combat the conditions that breed terror. It was an important speech, especially at that time, but the delegates in the cavernous hall of the General Assembly were also thinking about events in Washington. When I stood up to speak, they responded with an enthusiastic and prolonged standing ovation. It was unheard of for the normally reserved UN, and I was profoundly moved. I wasn’t sure whether the unprecedented act was more a gesture of support for me or opposition to what was going on in Congress. While I was speaking to the UN about terrorism, all the television networks were showing the videotape of my grand jury testimony. The next day, at the White House, I held a reception for Nelson Mandela with African-American religious leaders. It was his idea. The Congress had voted to give him the Congressional Gold Medal and he was to receive it the following day. Mandela called to say he suspected the timing of the award was no accident: “As the President of South Africa I cannot decline this award. But I would like to come a day early and tell the American people what I think about what the Congress is doing to you.” And that’s exactly what he did, saying that he had never seen a reception at the UN like the one I had received, that the world needed me, and that my adversaries should leave me alone. The pastors applauded their approval.

As good as Mandela was, the Reverend Bernice King, Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, stole the show. She said that even great leaders sometimes commit grievous sins; that King David had done something far worse than I had in arranging the death in battle of Bathsheba’s husband, who was David’s loyal soldier, so that David could marry her; and that David had to atone for his sin and was punished for it. No one could tell where Bernice was going until she got to the closing: “Yes, David committed a terrible sin and God punished him. But David remained king.”

Meanwhile, I kept working, pushing my proposal for school modernization and construction funds in Maryland, Florida, and Illinois; talking to the National Farmers Union about agriculture; giving an important address on modernizing the global financial system at the Council on Foreign Relations; meeting with the Joint Chiefs on the readiness of our armed forces; drumming up support for another minimum wage increase at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union; receiving the final report of the President’s Advisory Commission on Race from John Hope Franklin; holding a dialogue with Tony Blair, Italian prime minister Romano Prodi, and President Peter Stoyanov of Bulgaria on the applicability to other nations of the “Third Way” philosophy Tony and I had embraced; having my first meeting with the new Japanese prime minister, Keizo Obuchi; bringing Netanyahu and Arafat to the White House in an attempt to get the peace process going; and appearing at more than a dozen campaign events for Democrats in six states and Washington, D.C. On September 30, the last day of the fiscal year, I announced that we had run a budget surplus of about