Clio and the Clintons (December 1994 | Volume: 45, Issue: 8)

Clio and the Clintons

AH article image

Authors: Carl Sferrazza Anthony

Historic Era: Era 10: Contemporary United States (1968 to the present)

Historic Theme:

Subject:

December 1994 | Volume 45, Issue 8

On a busy Wednesday morning last August, President and Mrs. Clinton found an hour to speak with me in the Oval Office of the White House. Defense Secretary William Perry and Attorney General Janet Reno were preparing for a live noontime conference in the West Wing press room to announce new legal policy regarding Cuban refugees; the taken-for-dead crime bill would finally pass the following day; the tumult over the future of the President’s health-care proposals was still very much in the air. We discussed none of these things, however, instead talking about history, its lessons and comforts, and what it has meant to the first couple.

When the editors at American Heritage magazine and I were talking and thinking about this article, we decided we wanted to look at the forces of history that may have influenced both of you, that may nourish you now, that may provide support and a sense of direction and perhaps a sense of comfort in difficult times.

So, particularly this complicated week, the first question I might ask you is, have you looked to other Presidents who have had difficulty getting legislation through Congress, presidents like Woodrow Wilson, for example, with his particular dream for the League of Nations?

Yes, of course. Wilson didn’t actually live to see his dream fulfilled, because we mismanaged our affairs after World War I. Sometimes you can be too far ahead of your time. But after World War II we did have the United Nations. And for all its limitations and all its problems, it’s played a major role, I think, in making the world a more peaceful and more human place.

I think the period in modern American history most comparable to this is probably the one right after World War II. At the end of any era, people are called upon to look to the future, and yet there’s a tendency to look inward, to relax, to just be thankful that the old order is gone away without thinking about what the new world must look like.

At the end of World War I, we made the wrong choice. You know, we wound up with all kinds of problems, not only the Depression and World War II and all of that, but we gave in to some of our darker impulses. So we had the first big Red Scare, and the Ku Klux Klan was doing well.

And at the end of World War II, Truman took a terrible beating and didn’t get everything done he tried to do. He never did pass health care, for example, for all Americans. But he did lay the foundations for economic recovery at home and for a commitment to more racial equality and for the institutions that led to the recovery of Europe and Japan and the system that ultimately permitted us to win the Cold War.

But when you’re challenging people to make changes, changes that have a long-term future benefit against entrenched forces,