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

help solve the country’s problems. Tipper had become controversial when she spoke out against violent and pornographic music lyrics in 1985. I admired her willingness to take a stand and empathized with the criticism she had encountered. I also admired the work she had done on behalf of the homeless and mentally ill. An accomplished photographer, she helped chronicle the campaign with her ever-present camera.

One evening in the rural Ohio River Valley, we stopped at the farm of Gene Branstool for a barbecue and a meeting with local farmers. As we were getting ready to leave, Branstool said some folks had gathered at a crossroads a few miles away and we should stop. It was a lovely summer night, and people were sitting on their tractors waving flags while children stood at the edge of fields holding signs and welcoming us. My favorite said, “Give us eight minutes and we’ll give you eight years!” In the waning light, we were astonished to see thousands of people filling the large field.

From Vandalia, Illinois to St. Louis, Missouri to Corsicana, Texas to Valdosta, Georgia, we were met by similarly huge crowds radiating a joyous intensity that I have never seen anywhere else in politics.

Back in Little Rock, the vast third floor of the old Arkansas Gazette Building served as Clinton campaign headquarters. James Carville insisted that people from each part of the campaign―including press, political and research―work together in the same large space. It was a brilliant and effective way to diminish the hierarchy and encourage the free flow of information and ideas. Every day at 7 A.M. and 7 P.M., Carville and Stephanopoulos held meetings in what was dubbed the “war room” to assess the news of the day and formulate a response to news stories and attacks from the Bush campaign.

The idea was that no attack on Bill would go unanswered. The physical setup of the war room allowed Carville, Stephanopoulos and the “rapid response” team to react immediately to correct distortions put out by the opposition and to work aggressively to get out our message throughout the day.

One night Patti Solis’s phone rang in the back of the headquarters in Little Rock. Another campaign aide, Steve Rabinowitz, rushed to pick up the receiver and, for no particular reason, blurted out: “Hillaryland!” He was embarrassed to hear my voice on the line, but I thought he had come up with a great nickname. Patti loved it, too, and tacked a sign on the wall behind her desk that said “Hillaryland.” The name stuck.

Over time, my confidence that Bill would win the election grew. Americans wanted new leadership. Twelve years of Republicans in the White House had quadrupled the national debt, produced large and growing budget deficits and led to a stagnant economy in which too many people couldn’t find or keep a decent job, or afford health care insurance for themselves and their children. President Bush had vetoed the Family and Medical Leave Act twice and had backed off women’s rights. Though a supporter of family planning when he was Ambassador to the United Nations and as a Texas Congressman, Bush became an anti-choice Vice President and President. With rates of crime, unemployment, welfare dependency and homelessness climbing, the Bush Administration seemed increasingly out of touch.

To Bill and me, no issue was more distressing than the health care crisis in America.

Everywhere we went, we heard story after story about the inequities of the health care system. Growing numbers of citizens were being deprived of necessary health care because they were uninsured and didn’t have the means to pay their own medical bills.

In New Hampshire, Bill and I met Ronnie and Rhonda Machos, whose son, Ronnie Jr., had been born with a serious heart condition. When Ronnie lost his job and his health insurance, he faced crushing medical bills to provide the care his son needed. The Gores told us about the Philpott family from Georgia, whose seven-year-old son, Brett, had shared a hospital room with young Albert Gore after his devastating car accident. Al and Tipper spoke often about the tremendous financial burden the Philpott family had faced because of Brett’s illness.

As moving as each story was, we knew that for every tragic case we heard about or witnessed, thousands more went untold.

I don’t think Bill expected that health care reform would become a cornerstone of his campaign. After all, James Carville’s famous war room slogan was “It’s the economy, stupid.” But the more Bill studied the problem, the clearer it became that reforming health care insurance and reining in skyrocketing costs were integral to fixing the economy, as well as taking care of people’s urgent medical needs. “Don’t forget about health care,” Bill told his staff over and over again. They began to collect data, including a study by Ira Magaziner, the mover and shaker I had first heard of in 1969 when we were featured in Life magazine after delivering our college commencement speeches. Bill had met Ira the same year, when Ira arrived at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.

Bill, Ira and a growing team of expert advisers began developing ideas about how to tackle health care after the election. Bill previewed those plans in a campaign book entitled Putting People First and in a speech he delivered in September setting forth his goals to address the health care crisis. The reforms he outlined included controlling spiraling health care costs, reducing paperwork and insurance industry red tape, making prescription drugs more affordable and, most important, guaranteeing that all Americans had health insurance. We knew that trying to fix the health care system would be a huge political challenge. But we believed that if voters chose Bill Clinton on November 3, it meant that change was what they wanted.

INAUGURATION

Bill and I spent the last twentyfour hours of the 1992 campaign crisscrossing the country, making final stops in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Paducah, Kentucky; McAllen and Ft. Worth, Texas; and Albuquerque, New Mexico. We