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About midway through the process, when I had...
Posted on 2010-Mar-3 at 11:17
About midway through the process, when I had stepped outside to take a call, Rabin came out and said, We have a problemOn one of the maps, Arafat had spotted a stretch of road that was marked as under Israeli control but that he was convinced the parties had agreed to turn over to the PalestiniansRabin and Arafat wanted me to help resolve the disputeI took them into my private dining room and they began to talk, with Rabin saying he wanted to be a good neighbor and Arafat replying that, as descendants of Abraham, they were really more like cousinsThe interplay between the old adversaries was fascinatingWithout saying a word, I turned and walked out of the room, leaving them alone together for the first timeSooner or later, they had to develop a direct relationship, and today seemed the right moment to begin
Within twenty minutes they had reached an agreement that the disputed crossing should go to the PalestiniansBecause the world was waiting for the ceremony and we were already late, there was no time to change the mapInstead, Rabin and Arafat agreed to its modification with a handshake, then signed the maps before them, legally binding themselves to the incorrect prada evening bags designation of the disputed road
It was an act of personal trust that would have been unthinkable not long beforeAnd it was risky for RabinSeveral days later, with Israelis evenly divided on the West Bank accord, Rabin survived a no-confidence vote in the Knesset by only one voteWe were still walking a tightrope, but I was optimisticI knew the handover would proceed according to the handshake, and it didIt was the handshake even more than the official signing that convinced me that Rabin and Arafat would find a way to finish the job of making peace
The fiscal year ended on September 30, and we still didnt have a budgetWhen I wasnt working on Bosnia and the Middle East, I had spent the entire month traveling the country campaigning against the Republicans proposed cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, food stamps, the direct student-loan program, AmeriCorps, environmental enforcement, and the initiative to put 100,000 new police officers on the streetThey were even proposing to cut back the Earned Income Tax Credit, thus raising taxes on lower-income working families at the same time they were trying to cut taxes for the wealthiest AmericansAt virtually every stop, I pointed chanel knockoff out that our fight was not about whether to balance the budget and reduce the burden of unnecessary government, but how to do itThe big dispute involved what responsibilities the federal government should assume for the common good
In response to my attacks, Newt Gingrich threatened to refuse to raise the debt limit and thus put America in default if I vetoed their budget billsRaising the debt limit was merely a technical act that recognized the inevitable: as long as America continued to run deficits, the annual debt would increase, and the government would be required to sell more bonds to finance itIncreasing the debt limit simply gave the Treasury Department authority to do thatAs long as Democrats were in the majority, Republicans could cast symbolic votes against raising the debt limit and pretend that they hadnt contributed to the necessity to do itMany Republicans in the House had never voted to raise the debt limit and didnt relish doing so now, so I had to take Gingrichs threat seriously
If America defaulted on its debt, the consequences could be severeIn more than two hundred years, the United States had never failed to pay its debtsDefault would shake louis vuitton fabric investor confidence in our reliabilityAs we headed into the final showdown, I couldnt deny that Newt had a bargaining chip, but I was determined not to be blackmailedIf he followed through on his threat, he would be hurt, tooDefault ran the risk of increasing interest rates, and even a small increase would add hundreds of billions of dollars to home mortgage paymentsTen million Americans had variable-rate mortgages tied to federal interest ratesIf Congress didnt raise the debt limit, people could pay what Al Gore called a Gingrich surcharge on their monthly mortgage paymentsThe Republicans would have to think twice before letting America go into default
In the first week of October, the pope came to America again, and Hillary and I went to meet him at Newarks magnificent Gothic cathedralAs we had in Denver and at the Vatican, His Holiness and I met alone and mostly talked about BosniaThe pope encouraged our efforts for peace, with an observation that stuck with me: he said the twentieth century had begun with a war in Sarajevo, and I must not allow the century to end with a war in Sarajevo
When our meeting concluded, the pope gave me a lesson in politicsFirst, he left chanel body jewelry the cathedral for a spot a couple of miles away so that he could drive back in his popemobile, with its roof of clear, bulletproof glass, waving to the people who had crowded the streetsBy the time he reached the church, the congregation was seatedHillary and I were in the front pew with local and state officials and prominent New Jersey CatholicsThe massive oak doors opened, revealing the pontiff in his resplendent white cassock and cape, and the crowd stood and began to clapAs the pope began to walk down the aisle with his arms spread out to touch hands with people on either side of the aisle, the applause turned into cheers and roarsI noticed a group of nuns standing on their pews and screaming like teenagers at a rock concertWhen I asked a man near me about it, he explained that they were Carmelites, members of an order that lived a cloistered existence completely apart from societyThe pope had given them a dispensation to come to the cathedralHe sure knew how to build a crowdI just shook my head and said, Id hate to have to run against that man
On the day after I met with the pope, we made progress on Bosnia, as I announced that all the parties had agreed to a balenciaga most popular bag cease-
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