Bill Clinton jokes that he felt lost when he first returned to private life in 2001, after his two terms as president, because people no longer played “Hail to the Chief” when he walked into a room.
But what he found – chronicled in his new book, “Citizen: My Life After the White House,” published Tuesday by Knopf – was that philanthropy has allowed him to continue making changes in the world to help others.
“I had a good time doing it,” Clinton told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “I am also gratified that so many people — if you go and make a rational case for doing something – will go along even though it didn’t seem to be in their immediate financial interest.”
That method established a market for generic manufacturers of HIV/AIDS treatments that lowered the price of the drugs enough to make them available to countries around the world. Lower prices, now negotiated with drug manufacturers through what has become known as the Clinton Health Access Initiative, help provide HIV/AIDS treatments to nearly 1 million children around the world and have saved the lives of tens of millions of people.
It’s one of many successes the Clinton Foundation and its numerous campaigns — including the Clinton Global Initiative which gathers political, business and philanthropic leaders in New York each year during United Nations General Assembly week — have managed in the past two decades that Clinton writes about in “Citizen.” He also recounts his experiences from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2016, his role in securing the release of two journalists from North Korea in 2009, and his reaction to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Former President Clinton also addresses some of the controversies that he and Secretary Clinton faced in the past two decades, including his meetings with sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein where he said they discussed the foundation (“I wish I had never met him,” he writes) and being accused of never apologizing to Monica Lewinsky, which he did in 1999, though not in person.
The bulk of “Citizen” is about Clinton’s philanthropic work, the people he has met through it, and how he has felt useful and fulfilled in the nearly 24 years since he left his 25-year political career. When asked which era of his life he felt was most effective, Clinton, 78, said, “I’ll leave that to the historians to evaluate,” adding that it would be almost comparing apples to oranges.
“I wanted to keep score in terms of my work life by whether people were better off when I quit than when I started and whether children had a brighter future and whether we were bringing things together instead of tearing them apart,” Clinton said. “So far, I think I’m doing okay.”
Clinton told the AP that his to-do list remains long, including making effective climate initiatives more widely implemented and helping children get healthier. The interview was edited for clarity and length.
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Q: How did you develop your measure of success?
A: Once I started thinking about a life in politics, I realized I didn’t want to be measured by (job titles) but “What did you do?” I later learned to measure both our philanthropic and political work by a rigorous, honest answer to “What were the options at the time?” Not everybody gets to be Franklin Roosevelt in the Depression. Not everybody gets to be Abraham Lincoln elected on the eve of Fort Sumter. But everybody has a time and people living in that time to serve all who have their stories and their hopes, their dreams and their fears. And there are always forces that have different ideas, that keep score in different ways. You’ve got to think about all that and not become obsessed with how you’re doing at the time, but whether you’re doing what you think you should be.
Q: In addition to the billions in commitments the Clinton Global Initiative has helped organize over the years, you helped raise $130 million for the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, and millions more for the Bush-Clinton Houston Tsunami Fund and the One America Appeal for hurricane victims in 2017. What does it mean to you to be able to mobilize that much funding?
A: It means a lot to me and I try to honor it by being 100% transparent. For example, I knew at some point in the Haiti effort we’ve made over the years, I would be criticized, maybe even demonstrated against… so we just kept scrupulous records and made them open. When people trust you with money, you can’t guarantee success, but you can guarantee the integrity of the process and the energy behind the effort. And I know that in the world we live in, you can’t always be protected from bogus campaigns because everything’s about politics for some people these days. But you can’t give up.
Q: You brought up Haiti, which you candidly discuss in the book, offering what worked and what didn’t. Can you talk about why Haiti is so important to you, especially when so many feel the government there is ?
A: I would never advise anybody to go into an area where they might get shot and then never be given a chance to do anything. But there are people in Haiti who are still running their businesses and still involved in important humanitarian work. If you can figure out a way to get them resources and help them, you should do it because it’s easy to forget. Haiti has often been shattered. The earthquake was horrible. We began to slowly go back in when President (Jovenel) Moise was in office. When he was killed and the gangs started moving in to fill the breach, I didn’t know if we’d ever get it back together again. And I’m still not sure what’s going to happen.
Q: At CGI last year, told me why they were drumming up more donors for Haiti and explaining that they knew how to get the money to the people in need – even working with the gangs to help.
A: When Haiti was the first place in our hemisphere that had a horrible AIDS problem, that’s why Dr. Paul Farmer and Dr. Bill Pape were so effective. Because people knew whatever happened to the governor, to the government there, these guys were honest as the day is long and they had enormous grassroots support. And I think that you’re making my point here. We can find a way to work nearly anywhere if you want to badly enough.
Q: Did Donald Trump’s election make the Clinton Global Initiative’s work more important? More difficult?
A: I don’t know. It may increase the demand for it if we start cutting foreign aid. But I think we just have to wait and see. There’s never been much partisanship in CGI. I’ve always had a fairly substantial number of Republican supporters, including a couple who were openly for President Trump. And I’m hopeful that means they won’t interfere with the good work that is saving lives. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m going to keep going. I’m going to keep doing what I can do as long as I can do it. And we’ll just wait and see.
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