| I knelt at the spot where my friend Bert Jeffriess name was, touched it, and said a prayer
I knew it would be a tough event, full of people for whom the Vietnam War continued to be the defining moment in their lives and to whom the thought of someone like me as Commander in Chief was abhorrentBut I was determined to go, to face those who still held my views on Vietnam against me, and to tell all Vietnam veterans that I honored their service and that of their fallen comrades and would work to resolve the still-open cases of prisoners of war and soldiers still listed as missing in action
Colin Powell introduced me with conviction and class, strongly signaling the respect he thought I should receive as Commander in ChiefNevertheless, when I got up to speak, loud protesters attempted to drown me outI spoke to them directly:
To all of you who are shouting, I have heard youI ask you now to hear meSome have suggested that it is wrong for me to be here with you today because I did not agree a quarter of a century ago with the decision made to send the young men and women to battle in VietnamWell, so much the betterJust as war is freedoms cost, disagreement is freedoms privilege, and we honor it here todayThe message of this memorial is quite simple: these men and women fought for freedom, brought honor to their communities, loved their country, and died for itTheres not a person in this crowd today who did not know someone on this wallFour of my high school classmates are thereLet us continue to disagree, if we must, about the warBut let us not let fake chanel bag it divide us as a people any longer
The event started roughly, but ended wellRobert McNamaras prediction that my election had ended the Vietnam War wasnt quite accurate, but maybe we were getting there
June began with a disappointment that was both personal and political, as I withdrew my nomination of Lani Guinier, a University of Pennsylvania professor, a longtime lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and my law school classmate, to be the first career civil rights lawyer to head the Civil Rights DivisionAfter I named her in April, the conservatives went after Guinier with a vengeance, attacking her as a quota queen and accusing her of advocating the abandonment of the constitutional principle of one man, one vote because she had supported a system of cumulative voting, under which each voter would get as many votes as there are contested seats on a legislative body, and could cast all the votes for a single candidateIn theory, cumulative voting would dramatically increase the odds of minority candidates being elected
At first, I didnt pay too much attention to the rantings of the right, thinking that what they really disliked about Guinier was her long record of successful civil rights fights, and that, as she made the rounds of the Senate, she would win enough votes to be confirmed easilyMy friend Senator David Pryor came to see me and urged me to withdraw Lanis nomination, saying that her interviews with the senators were going poorly, and reminding me that we also had an economic program to pass and not a vote to spareMajority Leader chanel logo earrings George Mitchell, who had been a federal judge before he came to the Senate, strongly agreed with David; he said Lani couldnt be confirmed and we needed to end it as soon as possibleI was informed that Senators Ted Kennedy and Carol Moseley Braun, the Senates only African-American member, felt the same way
I decided I had better read Lanis articlesThey made a persuasive case for her position, but were in conflict with my support for affirmative action and opposition to quotas, and seemed to abandon one man, one vote in favor of one man, many votes: spread them out however you like
I asked her to come see me so that we could talk it throughAs we discussed the problem in the Oval Office, Lani was understandably offended by the battering she had taken, amazed that anyone would see the academic musings in her articles as a serious obstacle to her confirmation, and dismissive of the difficulties her nomination presented to the senators whose votes she needed, perhaps through several filibustersMy staff had told her we didnt have the votes to confirm her, but she declined to withdraw, feeling she had a right to be voted onFinally, I told her that I felt I had to withdraw her nomination, that I hated to do it, but we were going to lose, and though it was cold comfort, her withdrawal would make her a heroine in the civil rights community
In the aftermath, I was heavily criticized for abandoning a friend in the face of political pressure, mostly by people who didnt know what was going on in the backgroundEventually, I nominated Deval Patrick, another omega deville watch brilliant African-American lawyer with a strong civil rights background, to lead the Civil Rights Division, and he did a fine jobI still admire Lani Guinier, and regret that I lost her friendship
I spent much of the first two weeks of June picking a Supreme Court justiceA few weeks earlier, Byron Whizzer White had announced his retirement after thirty-one years on the High CourtAs I said earlier, I first wanted to appoint Governor Mario Cuomo, but he wasnt interestedAfter reviewing more than forty candidates, I settled on three: my Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who had been attorney general of Arizona before becoming governor; Judge Stephen Breyer, chief judge of the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, who had compiled an impressive record on the bench; and Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, a brilliant woman with a compelling life story whose record was interesting, independent, and progressiveI met with Babbitt and Breyer and was convinced they both would be good justices, but I hated to lose Babbitt at Interior, as did large numbers of environmentalists who called the White House to urge that I keep him there, and Breyer had a minor nanny problem, though Senator Kennedy, who was pushing him hard, assured me that he would be confirmed
Like everything else that happened in the White House in the early months, my interviews with both men leaked, so I decided to see Ginsburg in my private office in the residence of the White House on a Sunday nightI was tremendously impressed chanel purse white with herI thought that she had the potential to become a great justice, and that, at the least, she could do the three things I felt a new justice needed to do on the Rehnquist Court, which was closely divided between moderates and conservatives: decide cases on the merits, not on ideology or the identities of the parties; work with the conservative Republican justices to reach consensus when possible; and stand up to them when necessaryIn one of her articles, Ginsburg had written: The greatest figures of the American judiciary have been independent thinking individuals with open but not empty minds; individuals willing to listen and to learnThey have exhibited a readiness to reexamine their own premises, liberal or conservative, as thoroughly as those of others
When we announced her appointment, it hadnt leakedThe press had written that I intended to appoint Breyer, based on a tip from a leaker who didnt know what he was talking aboutAfter Judge Ginsburg made her brief but moving statement, one of the reporters said her appointment gave the impression that my decision to appoint her, rather than Breyer, reflected a certain zig-zag quality to the process of decision making in the White HouseHe then asked whether I could refute that impressionI didnt know whether to laugh or cryI replied, I have long since given up the thought that I could disabuse some of you of turning any substantive decision into anything but political processApparently, when it came to appointments, the name of the game wasnt supposed to be follow the leader but follow the new chanel bags leake |
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