My life

Our partisan differences extended even to the nuclear test ban treaty, which had been supported by every Republican and Democrat President since Eisenhower. The Joint Chiefs were for it, and our nuclear experts said tests weren’t necessary to check the reliability of our weapons. But we didn’t have the votes of two-thirds of the senators necessary to ratify the treaty, and Trent Lott tried to get me to promise not to raise it for the rest of my term. I couldn’t figure out whether the Senate Republicans had really moved that far to the right of their own party’s traditional position or just didn’t want to give me another victory. Regardless, their refusal to ratify the test ban treaty weakened America’s ability to argue that other nations shouldn’t develop or test nuclear weapons.

I continued doing political events for Al Gore and the Democrats, including two with gay activists who were strongly supportive of both Al and me because of the substantial number of openly gay and lesbian citizens serving in the administration, and because of our strong support of the Employment Nondiscrimination Act and the hate crimes bill, which made crimes committed against people because of their race, disability, or sexual orientation a federal offense. I also went to New York whenever I could to support Hillary. Her likely opponent was New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was a combative, controversial figure but was much less conservative than the national Republicans. I had had a cordial relationship with him, largely because of our shared support for the COPS program and gun safety measures.

George W. Bush seemed well on his way to winning the Republican nomination, as several of his challengers dropped out, leaving only Senator John McCain with any chance of stopping him. I had been impressed with Bush’s campaign since I first saw him articulate his “compassionate conservative” theme in a farm setting in Iowa. I thought it was a brilliant formulation, virtually the only argument he could make to swing voters against an administration with approval ratings in the 65 percent range. He couldn’t dispute the fact that we had 19 million new jobs, the economy was still growing, and crime was down for the seventh year in a row. Instead, his compassionate conservative message to the swing voters was this: “I’ll give you the same good conditions you have now, with a smaller government and a bigger tax cut. Wouldn’t you like that?” On most issues, Bush was in line with the conservative congressional Republicans, though he had criticized their budget for being harsh to the poor because it raised taxes for low-income Americans by cutting back on the Earned Income Tax Credit, while reducing taxes on the wealthiest Americans.