I did not fight for the right of black people to murder other black people with reckless abandon…. There are changes we can make from the outside in; that’s the job of the President and the Congress and the governors and the mayors and the social service agencies. And then there’s some changes we’re going to have to make from the inside out, or the others won’t matter…. Sometimes there are no answers from the outside in; sometimes all the answers have to come from the values and the stirrings and the voices that speak to us from within….
Where there are no families, where there is no order, where there is no hope… who will be there to give structure, discipline, and love to these children? You must do that. And we must help you. So in this pulpit, on this day, let me ask all of you in your heart to say: We will honor the life and the work of Martin Luther King…. Somehow, by God’s grace, we will turn this around. We will give these children a future. We will take away their guns and give them books. We will take away their despair and give them hope. We will rebuild the families and the neighborhoods and the communities. We won’t make all the work that has gone on here benefit just a few. We will do it together, by the grace of God. The Memphis speech was a hymn of praise to a public philosophy rooted in my personal religious values. Too many things were falling apart; I was trying to put them together. On November 19 and 20, I went back to putting things together, flying to Seattle for the first-ever leaders’ meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization. Before 1993, APEC had been a forum for finance ministers to discuss economic issues. I had suggested that the leaders themselves should meet every year to discuss our common interests, and I wanted to use our first meeting, on Blake Island, just off the coast of Seattle, to pursue three objectives: a free-trade area covering the Americas and the Asian Pacific nations; an informal discussion of political and security issues; and the creation of habits of cooperation, which clearly were going to be more important than ever in the twenty-first century. The Asia-Pacific nations accounted for half the world’s output and presented some of its most challenging political and security problems. In the past, the United States had never dealt with the region with the kind of comprehensive approach we followed toward Europe. I thought it was the moment to do so.
I enjoyed my time with the new Japanese prime minister, Morihiro Hosokawa, a reformer who had broken the Liberal Democratic Party’s monopoly on power and who had continued to open Japan economically. I was also glad for the chance to talk at length with China’s president, Jiang Zemin, in a more informal setting. We still had differences over human rights, Tibet, and economics, but we had a shared interest in building a relationship that would not isolate but integrate China into the global community. Both Jiang and Hosokawa shared my concern about the looming crisis with North Korea, which seemed determined to become a nuclear power, something I was determined to avoid and would need their help to accomplish.
Back in Washington, Hillary and I hosted our first state dinner, for South Korean president Kim YongSam. I always enjoyed the official state visits. They were the most ritualized events to occur at the White House, beginning with the official welcoming ceremony. Hillary and I would stand at the South Portico of the White House to greet our guests as they drove up. After greeting them, we would walk out onto the South Lawn for a brief receiving line, and the visiting dignitary and I would stand onstage, facing an impressive array of uniformed men and women from our armed services. The military band would play both nations’ national anthems, after which I would escort my visitor on a review of the troops. We would then walk back to the stage to give brief remarks, often pausing on the way to wave to a crowd of schoolchildren, citizens from the visiting nation who were living in the United States, and Americans who had roots in the other country.
Before the state dinner, Hillary and I would host a small reception for the visiting delegation in the Yellow Oval Room on the residence floor. Al and Tipper, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and a few others would join us to visit with foreign guests. After the reception, a military honor guard of one man or woman from each service would escort us down the stairs past the portraits of my predecessors to a receiving line for the guests. During dinner, which was usually in the State Dining Room (with larger groups, dinner would be in the East Room or outside under a tent), we would be entertained by the U.S. Marine Corps Strolling Strings or their counterparts from the air force; I was always thrilled when they entered the room. After dinner, we had musical entertainment, often selected to suit the tastes of our guest. For example, Václav Havel wanted to hear Lou Reed, whose hard-driving music had inspired Havel’s partisans in Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution. I took every opportunity I could to bring all kinds of musicians to the White House. Over the years we had Earth, Wind and Fire, Yo-Yo Ma, Placido Domingo, Jessye Norman, and many other classical, jazz, blues, Broadway, and gospel musicians as well as dancers from several disciplines. For the entertainment, we usually had room to invite more guests than could be accommodated at the dinner. Afterward, anyone who wanted to stay returned to the foyer of the White House for dancing. Usually, the honored guests were tired and soon left for Blair House, the official guest residence. Hillary and I would stay for a dance or two, then go upstairs while the revelers stayed at it for another hour or so.
In late November, I participated in the annual tradition going back to President Coolidge, of pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey, after which Hillary, Chelsea, and I left for a long Thanksgiving weekend at Camp David. I had a lot to be thankful for. My approval ratings were rising again, and American Airlines announced the settlement of its five-day-old strike. The strike could have been quite damaging to the economy; it was settled with the intense and skillful involvement of Bruce Lindsey. I was happy that my fellow citizens could fly home for the holiday.
Thanksgiving at Camp David became an annual tradition with our families and a few friends. We always had our Thanksgiving meal in Laurel, the largest cabin on the grounds, with its big dining and conference room, a large open space with a fireplace and television, and a private office for me. And we went by the dining hall to greet the navy and marine personnel and their families who kept the camp going. At night we watched movies and bowled. And at least once over the weekend, no matter how cold and rainy it was, Hillary’s brothers, Roger, and I would play golf with whoever else was brave enough to go with us. Amazingly, Dick Kelley always played, though he was already almost eighty in 1993.
I loved every one of our Thanksgivings at Camp David, but the first one was special, because it was Mother’s last. By late November, her cancer had spread and contaminated her bloodstream. She had to have blood transfusions every day just to stay alive. I didn’t know how much longer she could last, but the transfusions made her look deceptively healthy and she was determined to live each day to the fullest. She enjoyed the football games on television, the meals, and visiting with the young servicemen and -women at the Camp David bar. The last thing she wanted to talk about was death. She was too alive to dwell on it.
On December 4, I went to California again, to hold an economic summit on the state’s continuing difficulties, and spoke to a large group of people in the entertainment community, at the headquarters of Creative Artists Agency, asking them to join me in a partnership to reduce the massive amount of violence the media directed at young people, as well as the culture’s assault on family and work. Over the next two weeks, I kept two of my commitments from the budget battle: I went to Marjorie MargoliesMezvinsky’s district for the conference on entitlements, and I appointed Bob Kerrey as co-chair, along with Senator John Danforth of Missouri, of a commission to study Social Security and other entitlements. On December 15, I hailed the joint declaration of British prime minister John Major and Irish prime minister Albert Reynolds, which proposed a framework for the peaceful resolution of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It was a wonderful Christmas present, one that I hoped would give me an opportunity to play a role in resolving a problem I had first become interested in as a student at Oxford. On the same day, I named an old friend from the McGovern days, John Holum, to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and used the occasion to emphasize my nonproliferation agenda: ratification of the convention controlling chemical weapons, achieving a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, achieving permanent extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which expired in 1995, and fully funding the Nunn-Lugar program to secure and destroy Russian nuclear weapons and material. On December 20, I signed a bill that was especially important to Hillary and me. The National Child Protection Act provided for a national database that any child-care provider could use to check the background of any job applicant. It was the brainchild of the writer Andrew Vachss, in response to stories of children subject to awful abuse in child-care centers. Most parents had to work, and therefore had to leave their preschool children in day care. They had a right to know their children would be safe and well cared for.