Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton (33 page)

When the waters withdrew, hundreds of corpses were left tangled in trees on the beaches, along with boats and vehicles. Nothing was left standing within hundreds of yards of the sea. In some villages nearly all of the victims were women and children, found later by fishermen who survived when their boats simply floated over the waves.

Later in the day, the rippling giant waves struck the Maldives islands and Somalia on the east coast of Africa, claiming hundreds more lives and ruining potable water supplies. On the west coast of Mexico, rose water levels by as much as eight feet. By early morning on December 26, Americans began to hear disturbing news of the casualties and damage inflicted by the tsunamis. But the initial reports greatly under
estimated the numbers of dead and homeless and the scale of property destruction. Tens of thousands more would soon be in danger of dying from disease and starvation.

George W. Bush, leader of the free world, was at his rural residence in Texas to celebrate the Christmas and New Year’s holidays with his family. On the day after the tsunami, he issued a statement through Trent Duffy, his deputy spokesman at the White House, expressing “his sincere condolences for the terrible loss of life and suffering caused by the earthquake and subsequent tsunamis in the region of the Bay of Bengal.” He promised “all appropriate assistance to those nations most affected.” The Agency for International Development (USAID) announced that the United States would set aside $15 million for immediate relief—provoking the United Nations undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, a Norwegian named Jan Egeland, to describe Western aid allocations as “stingy.” For comparison, as the
New York Times
noted, that $15 million was less than half the expected cost of Bush’s upcoming inaugural festivities.

In the days that followed, as the estimates of death and destruction in South Asia mounted, Bush’s decision to remain on vacation in Texas, with no public appearances or schedule, came under heavy criticism—as did the grossly inadequate commitment of American money for an unprecedented disaster, which would require billions of dollars for food, medicine, water supplies, shelter, and eventual reconstruction. With so many victims spread across such a vast geographic area, the entire world would need to mount the largest such effort in human history. The Bush White House did not seem nearly up to the task.

Into the vacuum of competence and compassion stepped Bill Clinton, whose voice could be heard warning on December 28 that without coordination of relief efforts, too little would happen too late—and that coordination would be impossible without strong leadership. “It is really important that somebody take the lead in this,” the former president told BBC Radio. “I think one of the problems is when everybody takes responsibility, it’s almost like no one’s responsibility.”

That same day, Bush decided to call together his national security team to plan American diplomatic and military responses to the tragedy, and to raise the initial U.S. relief commitment to $35 million. Yet he still remained in Texas, a decision questioned on the front page of the
Washington Post
, which reported “
complaints that the vacationing President Bush has been insensitive to a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions,” and noted that Clinton was, by default, “the predominant US voice speaking about the disaster.”

Three days after the disaster, Bush finally stopped clearing brush long enough to deliver a formal statement to the assembled press corps. Wearing a navy suit and red tie, standing next to a flag at a podium adorned with the presidential seal, the president explained, “I felt like it was important to talk about what is going to be one of the major natural disasters in world history. . . . It’s important for the world to know that our government is focused and will continue to respond to help those who suffer.”

Meanwhile, Clinton’s innocuous remarks had sparked an angry backlash from the White House. Bush aides told journalists and pundits that the president had purposely avoided mimicking Clinton’s famous public displays of empathy. Appearing on MSNBC with host Joe Scarborough,
Post
reporter Jim VandeHei said, “A lot of White House aides do point to Bill Clinton. They say, we don’t want to showboat. We don’t want to take these disasters and try to use them for our political or foreign policy advantage.” The conservative editorialists at
Investor’s Business Daily
urged Clinton to remember that he was no longer president and didn’t speak for the United States.

However gratified Bush aides may have felt in mocking Clinton’s “I feel your pain” style, someone in the White House abruptly realized that such derision was worse than pointless. Appearances mattered, especially for a president disliked and distrusted across much of the world. On this tragic occasion, it would be better for Bush to repair his image—and the image of his country—rather than inflict further damage.

When they considered who might be able to help, among the first names that came up, ironically, was Bill Clinton.

On New Year’s Eve, Doug Band called Andy Card to say that Clinton planned to raise money for the tsunami victims, much the way that he and Bob Dole had done after 9/11. The Bush chief of staff asked him to hold off for a day. When Card called Band again, he wanted to know
whether Clinton would consider a request from the president to join his father, George Herbert Walker Bush, in a fundraising campaign for aid to the tsunami victims. While the plans were still sketchy, and the White House welcomed Clinton’s ideas, the two former presidents would probably have to travel to the stricken region sometime soon.

Band knew the answer immediately, but waited until the next day, after a brief conversation with Clinton, to call Card back. Of course, he said, Clinton would be honored to assist in any way possible, especially in the company of Bush 41.

Card wasted no time, scheduling a White House appearance on the morning of January 3—the first workday after the holiday—where Bush, his father, and Clinton would announce the joint fundraising effort. Already the president had dispatched Secretary of State Colin Powell and his brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush, to assess the effectiveness of U.S. action and future needs in the region, as part of a frantic effort to regain control of the narrative. Over a few days, the early mention of an absurdly small $15 million in U.S. disaster aid had grown to $35 million, and then tenfold to $350 million, which would require a supplemental budget appropriation in Congress. (Within a few weeks, the White House would announce yet another increase, almost tripling the amount of aid to $950 million.)

But Bush aides believed their boss still needed to be seen doing more.

Flanked by the two former presidents behind a podium in the Roosevelt Room, Bush told the assembled White House press corps, “We’ve come together to express our country’s sympathy for the victims of a great tragedy. We’re here to ask our fellow citizens to join in a broad humanitarian relief effort.”

He had ordered flags across the country to fly at half-staff all week, in memory of those victims, he said, noting that the dead were estimated at 150,000—with thousands more missing, and up to five million or more homeless, without sufficient food, water, or medical care, and in danger of illness. He talked about the $350 million that he expected to spend and noted that this amount didn’t reflect the rapid, costly mobilization of American aircraft and ships in the region.

“But the greatest source of America’s generosity is not our government; it’s the good heart of the American people,” Bush continued. “I
have asked two of America’s most distinguished private citizens to head a nationwide charitable fundraising effort.” His father and Clinton would spearhead a campaign to spur donations “large and small” to “reliable charities” such as the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services, the Salvation Army, and Save the Children, among others. The president had a point: By midweek, those charities and others would tell reporters that they had already surpassed the pace and magnitude of earlier disaster appeals, raising about $337 million in the days since December 26.

Following the announcement President Bush, his wife, Laura, and the two former presidents set off in limousines to call on the embassies of the four nations most affected by the tsunami—Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Signing condolence books and visiting with embassy officials during the brief stops, Clinton embraced expatriate citizens of those countries drawn to him by his openness and sympathy. At one embassy, he met a sobbing woman who had lost both her parents and a brother in the disaster. It was a small glimpse of the tableau of horror that he and the elder Bush would soon encounter together.

On that day, however, they returned to the White House for a series of press interviews to kick off their campaign—and to bolster the international image of the president and the United States. Asked on CNN whether the younger Bush had fumbled the American response to the catastrophe, Clinton replied, “I don’t see how he could have done more.”

Enlisting the two former presidents was a stroke of public relations genius, not only for the sake of the current president’s image but because their effort seemed to energize powerful players in the media, advertising, and entertainment industries. When Steven Spielberg announced that his family would donate a million dollars to tsunami relief, dozens of Hollywood figures, athletes, and other celebrities quickly followed, with several giving much more, in a movement that would culminate in a celebrity telethon.

And within two days, Clinton and Bush were back in the White House again to tape a public service announcement backed by the Advertising Council, which had never acted so swiftly before.

With consummate professionalism, the ex-presidents knocked off ten-second, thirty-second, and sixty-second versions of their scripted
pleas in under forty-five minutes, overseen by a director from the McCann Erickson Worldwide advertising agency. Taking turns speaking, they urged viewers to donate through USA Freedom Corps, a website set up after 9/11 to encourage volunteer efforts. Clinton voiced the kicker: ‘’No one can change what happened. But we can all change what happens next.’’ The Ad Council anticipated that television and radio networks would donate in excess of $100 million worth of airtime for the Bush-Clinton ads.

In early February, Clinton agreed to a request from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that he serve as a “special envoy” for tsunami relief, in the hope that his star power would continue to focus world attention over the longer term. “The secretary-general wants to make sure that once the television cameras leave, the world will not forget the victims,” said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard. The envoy position would also engage Clinton’s diplomatic skills, and not just in dunning developed countries to fulfill their donor commitments. Annan hoped that with his encouragement, the disaster’s aftermath might compel warring factions in Sri Lanka and Indonesia to engage in peace talks. He would also assume leadership of a $45 million appeal by UNICEF to ensure clean water supplies in the tsunami region.

As events propelled him forward—and into the global spotlight—the most daunting problem that Clinton faced was his own failure to recover fully from his heart surgery after five months. In a complication that occurs in only a very small number of bypass patients, bloody fluid and then scar tissue had collected around the lower lobe of his left lung. The excess tissue, which doctors described as a thick “rind” of scarring around the lung, caused difficulty breathing and reduced his lung capacity by more than 25 percent. He would need another operation, and soon, in order to avoid the threat of infection.

The symptoms had begun to occur before Thanksgiving, and surgery had been scheduled for early in the New Year. But he had postponed the operation, with his doctors’ consent, when he agreed to assist with tsunami relief. He felt well enough to work and travel, and the risk seemed small compared with the responsibility he had been asked to undertake.

On February 20, a blue-and-white Boeing 757 emblazoned with the words “United States of America” landed briefly at Houston’s Hobby
Airport to pick up George Herbert Walker Bush and his aides Jean Becker and Tom Frechette. From Houston it flew on to Los Angeles, where Bill Clinton, his chief of staff Laura Graham, Doug Band, and Justin Cooper boarded. Before 10 p.m. Pacific Time, the plane had refueled and departed on the first leg of a long flight that would land the presidential party in Thailand, to begin a four-day tour of the worst devastation seen anywhere on earth since the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The former presidents and their aides had assumed the wrenching scenes they all watched on television would prepare them for this ordeal.

They were wrong.

CHAPTER TEN

On the morning of February 19, 2005, Bill Clinton, George Herbert Walker Bush, their aides, and several Secret Service agents finally deplaned in Phuket, Thailand, exhausted from nearly two days’ travel with only refueling stops. Before descending the long flight of stairs onto the sweltering tarmac, Clinton waited politely for his older, slower companion. Over a few days in close quarters this new “odd couple,” as Barbara Bush dubbed them, would establish not only a modus vivendi but a warm friendship. While they had gotten along just fine in recent years, the level of intimacy they both felt now was something new.

Even before their aircraft left Burbank Airport in California, Clinton had won Bush over by making sure that the older man occupied the plane’s comfortable VIP stateroom, which featured the only proper bed and private bath on board. Bush later told reporters and friends how Clinton’s concern about the sleeping arrangements had touched him.

“He was very considerate of the old guy, meaning me. . . . I mean, like the room on the plane. There was every reason in the world he should have had equal time if not priority, but he insisted. That’s a tiny little thing . . . that meant a lot to me.”

At the time Clinton was still recovering from heart surgery. He felt twinges of discomfort and shortened breath due to the scar tissue that still covered part of his left lung. But surrendering the stateroom for a few days was a tolerable hardship. He took the air mattress that Bush had brought along, placed it on the floor, and then spent most of the trip talking and playing cards in his habitual, endless way, sleeping only a few hours a night.