Living History by Unknown (the lemonade war series txt) 📗

I had to work through my feelings carefully, on my own timetable. I desperately needed someone to talk to so I called a friend who was also a counselor to seek guidance. This was the most devastating, shocking and hurtful experience of my life. I could not figure out what to do, but I knew I had to find a calm place in my heart and mind to sort out my feelings.

Thankfully there were no public appearances on my schedule that weekend. We were supposed to be on vacation, but we had delayed our departure for Martha’s Vineyard until after Bill’s grand jury appearance. Despite the emotional wreckage all around him, Bill had to prepare his testimony and work on a statement to make to the nation.

As we struggled with this personal and public crisis, the world provided another cruel reality check: In Omagh, Northern Ireland, a renegade Irish Republican gang detonated a car bomb in a crowded market, killing twenty-eight, wounding more than two hundred and badly damaging the peace process that Bill had worked so long and hard to nurture with Irish leaders. As reports of the casualties came in that Saturday afternoon, I remembered the times I’d sat with women in all parts of Ireland to talk about the Troubles and to look for a way to achieve peace and reconciliation. Now that’s what I had to try to do in the midst of my own heartrending troubles.

Bill gave his fourhour testimony on Monday afternoon in the Map Room. Starr had agreed to withdraw the subpoena, and the voluntary session was videotaped and relayed on closed circuit to the grand jury chamber. This spared Bill the indignity of appearing in court as the first sitting President summoned before a grand jury, but it was the only humiliation dispensed with that day. When it was over, at 6:25 P.M., Bill emerged from the room composed but deeply angry. I had not been present for his testimony, and I was not ready to talk to him, but I could tell from his body language that he had been through an ordeal.

David Kendall had alerted the TV networks that Bill would briefly address the nation at to P.M. eastern standard time. Some of Bill’s most trusted advisers―White House Counsel Chuck Ruff, Paul Begala, Mickey Kantor, James Carville, Rahm Emanuel, Harry and Linda Thomason―gathered in the Solarium to help him work on his statement.

David Kendall was there, as was Chelsea, who was trying to make sense of what was happening. I stayed away, at first. I didn’t much want to help Bill compose his public statement on a matter that violated my sense of decency and privacy. Finally, though, out of habit, maybe curiosity, perhaps love, I went upstairs. When I walked into the room at about 8 P.M., someone quickly switched off the sound on the television set. They knew I couldn’t stand to hear whatever was being said. When I asked how things were going, it was clear that Bill still hadn’t decided what to say.

He wanted people to know that he deeply regretted misleading his family, his friends and his country. He also wanted them to know that he did not believe he had lied during the Jones deposition because the questions had been so clumsy―but that sounded like legalistic hairsplitting. He had made a terrible mistake, then tried to keep it a secret, and he needed to apologize. At the same time, he didn’t think he could afford to appear vulnerable to his political enemies or to those of the nation. In the days before his confession to me, we had discussed the dangerous standoff looming in Iraq, precipitated on August 5

by Saddam Hussein’s announcement of a ban on continued weapons inspections. And only Bill and 1, along with his foreign policy team, knew that within hours of his statement about his personal transgression, the United States would launch a missile strike against one of Osama bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan, at a time when our intelligence indicated bin Laden and his top lieutenants would be there, to retaliate for the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. With the whole world watching―much of it wondering what the fuss was about―Bill felt that the President of the United States couldn’t afford to appear on television looking weak.

As the hour for his statement approached, everyone was putting in his or her two cents, and this was not helping Bill. He wanted to use this opportunity to point out the unfairness and excesses of Starr’s investigation, but there was a vigorous argument over whether he should take a shot at the independent counsel. Even though I was furious with him, I could see how upset he was, and it was awful to watch. So I finally said, “Well, Bill, this is your speech. You’re the one who got yourself into this mess, and only you can decide what to say about it.” Then Chelsea and I left the room.

Eventually everyone else left Bill alone, and he finished writing the statement by himself.

Immediately after his speech, Bill was criticized for not apologizing enough (or, rather, for appearing less than sincere in his apology because he also criticized Starr). I was still too upset to have an opinion. James Carville, who may be the most contentious, inyour-face, don’t-give-’em-an-inch friend we have, thought it was probably a mistake to attack Starr. This was a moment to admit wrongdoing and leave it at that. I still don’t know who was right. The press hated the statement, but over the next days reactions from most Americans indicated that they considered a consensual relationship between adults a private matter, and they did not believe that it affected a person’s ability to do a good job, whether in the courtroom, the operating room, the Congress or the Oval Office. Bill’s standing in public opinion polls remained high. His standing with me had hit rock bottom.

The last thing in the world I wanted to do was go