- “I made friends with a boy who collected strange creatures, and once he invited me over to see his snake. He said it was in the closet. Then he opened the closet door, shoved me into the darkness, slammed the door shut, and told me I was in the dark alone with the snake. I wasn’t, thank goodness, but I was sure scared to death. I learned that what seems funny to the strong can be cruel and humiliating to the weak.”
- “The question of secrets is one I’ve thought about a lot over the years. We all have them and I think we’re entitled to them. They make our lives more interesting, and when we decide to share them, our relationships become more meaningful. The place where secrets are kept can also provide a haven, a retreat from the rest of the world, where one’s identity can be shaped and reaffirmed, where being alone can bring security and peace. Still, secrets can be an awful burden to bear, especially if some sense of shame is attached to them, even if the source of the shame is not the secret holder. Or the allure of our secrets can be too strong, strong enough to make us feel we can’t live without them, that we wouldn’t even be who we are without them.”
- “I am a person motivated and influenced by so many diverse forces I sometimes question the sanity of my existence. I am a living paradox—deeply religious, yet not as convinced of my exact beliefs as I ought to be; wanting responsibility yet shirking it; loving the truth but often times giving way to falsity. . . . I detest selfishness, but see it in the mirror every day. . . . I view those, some of whom are very dear to me, who have never learned how to live. I desire and struggle to be different from them, but often am almost an exact likeness. . . . What a boring little word—I! I, me, my, mine . . . the only things that enable worthwhile uses of these words are the universal good qualities which we are not too often able to place with them—faith, trust, love, responsibility, regret, knowledge. But the acronyms to these symbols of what enable life to be worth the trouble cannot be escaped. I, in my attempts to be honest, will not be the hypocrite I hate, and will own up to their ominous presence in this boy, endeavoring in such earnest to be a man.”
- “I checked out the theaters and storefronts, and one bright sign caught my eye—Tad’s Steaks—advertising big steaks for $1.59. It seemed too good to pass up, so I went in, got my steak, and found a table. Sitting near me were an angry boy and his heartbroken mother. He wasgiving her a verbal beating with the words, “It’s cheap, Mama. It’s cheap.” She kept saying the salesman had told her it was nice. Over the next few minutes I pieced the story together. She had saved up enough money to buy her son a record player that he wanted badly. The problem was that it was a standard high-fidelity system, called “hi-fi,” but he wanted one of the new stereo systems that had much better sound, and apparently more status among fashion-conscious kids. With all her scrimping, his mother couldn’t afford it. Instead of being grateful, the kid was screaming at her in public, “Everything we have is cheap!I wanted a nice one!”
It made me sick. I wanted to slug him, to scream back at him that he was lucky to have a mother who loved him so much, who put food on his plate and clothes on his back with what was almost certainly a deadly dull job that paid too little. I got up and walked out in disgust, without finishing my bargain steak. That incident had a big impact on me, I guess because of what my own mother had done and endured. It made me more sensitive to the daily struggles of women and men who do things we want someone else to do but don’t want to pay much for. It made me hate ingratitude more and resolve to be more grateful myself. And it made me even more determined to enjoy life’s lucky breaks without taking them too seriously, knowing that one turn of fate’s screw could put me back to square one or worse.” - “For as long as I can remember, I have believed passionately in the cause of equal opportunity, and I will do what I can to advance it.
For as long as I can remember, I have deplored the arbitrary and abusive exercise of power by those in authority, and I will do what I can to prevent it.
For as long as I can remember, I have rued the waste and lack of order and discipline that are too often in evidence in governmental affairs, and I will do what I can to diminish them.
For as long as I can remember, I have loved the land, air, and water of Arkansas, and I will do what I can to protect them.
For as long as I can remember, I have wished to ease the burdens of life for those who, through no fault of their own, are old or weak or needy, and I will try to help them.
For as long as I can remember, I have been saddened by the sight of so many of our independent, industrious people working too hard for too little because of inadequate economic opportunities, and I will do what I can to enhance them. . . “ - “New Hampshire is a small state, less than half the size of Arkansas, with very well-informed primary voters who take seriously their responsibility to carefully evaluate the candidates and their positions.To compete effectively, a good organization and persuasive television ads are necessary, but nowhere near sufficient. You must also do well in an endless stream of small house parties, town meetings, rallies, and unscheduled handshaking. A lot of New Hampshire citizens won’t vote for anyone who hasn’t personally asked for their support. After all my years in Arkansas politics, that kind of campaigning was second nature to me.”
- “Before he became President, Abraham Lincoln suffered from debilitating episodes of depression. Once he was unable to leave his house for a whole month. If he had had to run under modern conditions, we might have been deprived of our greatest President.”
- ““We have gone from first to thirteenth in the world in wages since Reagan and Bush took office.” . . . “Four years ago he promised 15 million new jobs by this time, and he’s over 14 million short.” . . . “The incumbent President says unemployment always goes up a little before a recovery begins, but unemployment only has to go up one more person before a real recovery can begin. And Mr. President, you are that man.””
- “After trade we went to the deficit, then to negative campaigning. Bush hit me again for demonstrating against the Vietnam War in England. I replied, “I’m not interested in his character. I want to change the character of the presidency. And I’m interested in what we can trust him to do and what you can trust me to do and what you can trust Mr. Perot to do for the next four years.””
- “Polls can be helpful in telling a President what the American people think, and which arguments may be most persuasive at a particular time, but they cannot dictate a decision that requires looking down the road and around the corner. The American people hire a President to do the right thing for our country over the long run.”
- “I also endorsed the policy of requiring school uniforms for elementary and middle school students. Almost without exception, school districts that required uniforms experienced higher student attendance, less violence, and increased student learning. The distinctions between poor and wealthier students diminished as well. Some of my critics ridiculed my emphasis on what they called “small bore” issues like curfews, uniforms, character education programs, and the V-chip, saying it was all politics, as well as a reflection of my inability to pass big programs in the Republican Congress. That was inaccurate…
I knew that federal money and laws could only give Americans the tools to make their lives better; the real changes still had to be effected by citizens at the grassroots level. Partly as a result of our promotion of school uniforms, more and more school districts embraced them, with positive results.” - “My acceptance speech was easy to give because of the record: the lowest combined rate of unemployment and inflation in twenty-eight years; 10 million new jobs; 10 million people getting the minimum wage increase; 25 million Americans benefiting from the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill; 15 million working Americans with a tax cut; 12 million taking advantage of the family leave law; 10 million students saving money through the Direct Student Loan Program; 40 million workers with more pension security.”
- “Our motorcade traveled an empty highway to the Presidential Palace for a meeting with General Musharraf and his cabinet and a televised address to the people of Pakistan. In the speech, I noted our long friendship through the Cold War and asked the Pakistani people to turn away from terror and nuclear weapons toward a dialogue with India on Kashmir, to embrace the test ban treaty, and to invest in education, health, and development rather than arms. I said I had come as a friend of Pakistan and the Muslim world who had stood against the slaughter of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo, spoken to the Palestinian National Council in Gaza, marched with the mourners at the funerals of King Hussein and King Hassan, and celebrated the end of Ramadan at the White House with American Muslims. The point I tried to make is that our world was not divided by religious differences, but between those who chose to live with the pain of the past and those who chose the promise of the future.”
- “After some pleasant small talk, I asked Dennis to spread out the maps I had studied carefully in preparing for our talks. Compared with his stated position at Shepherdstown, Barak was now willing to accept less land around the lake, though he still wanted a lot, 400 meters (1,312 feet); fewer people at the listening station; and a quicker withdrawal period. Assad didn’t want me even to finish the presentation. He became agitated and, contradicting the Syrian position at Shepherdstown, said that he would never cede any of the land, that he wanted to be able to sit on the shore of the lake and put his feet in the water. We tried for two hours to get some traction with the Syrians, all to no avail. The Israeli rebuff in Shepherdstown and the leak of the working document in the Israeli press had embarrassed Assad and destroyed his fragile trust. And his health had deteriorated even more than I knew. Barak had made a respectable offer. If it had come at Shepherdstown, an agreement might have emerged. Now, Assad’s first priority was his son’s succession, and he hadobviously decided that a new round of negotiations, no matter how it came out, could put that at risk. In less than four years, I had seen the prospects of peace between Israel and Syria dashed three times: by terror in Israel and Peres’s defeat in 1996, by the Israeli rebuff of Syrian overtures at Shepherdstown, and by Assad’s preoccupation with his own mortality. After we parted in Geneva, I never saw Assad again.”
- “By this time, I had gotten to understand Barak better. He was brilliant and brave, and he was willing to go a long way on Jerusalem and on territory. But he had a hard time listening to people who didn’t see things the way he did, and his way of doing things was diametrically opposed to honored customs among the Arabs with whom I’d dealt. Barak wanted others to wait until he decided the time was right, then, when he made his best offer, he expected it to be accepted as self-evidently a good deal. His negotiating partners wanted trust-building courtesies and conversations and lots of bargaining.”
- “My friends, fifty-four years ago this week I was born in a summer storm to a young widow in a small southern town. America gave me the chance to live my dreams. And I have tried as hard as I knew how to give you a better chance to live yours. Now, my hair is a little grayer, my wrinkles are a little deeper, but with the same optimism and hope I brought to the work I loved so eight years ago, I want you to know my heart is filled with gratitude. My fellow Americans, the future of our country is now in your hands. You must think hard, feel deeply, and choose wisely. And remember . . . keep putting people first. Keep building those bridges. And don’t stop thinking about tomorrow.”
- “I thought Sharon should have been greeted with flowers by Palestinian children and told that when the Temple Mount was under Palestinian control, he would be welcome anytime.”
- “Bush v. Gore will go down in history as one of the worst decisions the Supreme Court ever made, along with the Dred Scott case, which said that a slave who escaped to freedom was still a piece of property to be returned to its owner; Plessy v. Ferguson, upholding the legality of racial segregation; the cases in the twenties and thirties invalidating legislative protections for workers, like minimum wage and maximum workweek laws, as violations of the property rights of employers; and the Korematsu case, in which the Supreme Court approved the blanket internment of Japanese-Americans in camps after Pearl Harbor. We had lived through and rejected the premises of all those previous reactionary decisions. I knew America would also get beyond this dark day when five Republican justices stripped thousands of their fellow Americans of their votes, just because they could”
- “Right before I left office, Arafat, in one of our last conversations, thanked me for all my efforts and told me what a great man I was. “Mr. Chairman,” I replied, “I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you have made me one.”
Nearly a year after I left office, Arafat said he was ready to negotiate on the basis of the parameters I had presented. Apparently, Arafat had thought the time to decide, five minutes to midnight, had finally come. His watch had been broken a long time.” - “I was looking forward to my new life, to building my library, doing public service work through my foundation, supporting Hillary, and having more time for reading, golf, music, and unhurried travel. I knew I would enjoy myself and believed that if I stayed healthy I could still do a lot of good. But Mark Knoller had hit a soft spot with his question. I was going to miss my old job. I had loved being President, even on the bad days.”
- “On my last night in the now-barren Oval Office, I thought of the glass case I had kept on the coffee table between the two couches, just a few feet away. It contained a rock Neil Armstrong had taken off the moon in 1969. Whenever arguments in the Oval Office heated up beyond reason, I would interrupt and say, “You see that rock? It’s 3.6 billion years old. We’re all just passing through. Let’s calm down and go back to work. That moon rock gave me a whole different perspective on history and the proverbial “long run.” Our job is to live as well and as long as we can, and to help others to do the same. What happens after that and how we are viewed by others is beyond our control. The river of time carries us all away. All we have is the moment. Whether I had made the mostof mine was for others to judge. It was almost dawn when I returned to the residence to do some more packing and share some private moments with Hillary and Chelsea.”
- “The interdependent world we live in is inherently unstable, full of both opportunity and forces of destruction. It will remain so until we find our way from interdependence to a more integrated global community of shared responsibilities, shared benefits, and shared values. Building that kind of world, and defeating terror, cannot be done quickly; it will be the great challenge of the first half of the twenty-first century. “
Tarek Naim's Blog 