Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton by Joe Conason

demand in other countries, where tickets for his appearances—priced from $200 and up, and as high as $10,000 to sit with him at dinner—quickly sold out. Speeches were booked in cities large and small, from Norway, Poland, and Ireland to China, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia. More than a thousand tickets for a hospital fundraiser in Hamilton, Ontario, sold out in a single day. Certain that they could attract many more paying guests, the organizers seriously considered moving to a venue that would accommodate 3,500 seats. On the global platform, “Bill Clinton” was a stellar brand.
    Karen Tramontano had hired a speechwriting team, including Jeff Shesol and Paul Orzulak, former Clinton White House staff wordsmiths who had formed a company called West Wing Writers after leaving government. They came up to Chappaqua several times with her to discuss the tone, frame the subjects—settling, very broadly, on globalization and the future of humanity—and begin crafting a draft. The speech, which would be delivered in slightly varying forms over the coming months to many audiences, “had to be tops,” she told them. They all knew from years of experience how Clinton would rework their prose until it could not be regarded as belonging to anyone but him. Ultimately he used little of the speechwriters’ work at all, building a speech informally titled “Our Common Humanity,” arguing why what binds people together is more important than what divides them. He would use and adapt the same basic text, with appropriate introductions and fresh wonkish digressions, for well over a decade in most of his paid appearances.
    Before leaving for Europe, he conferred by telephone with both Sandy Berger and former secretary of state Madeleine Albright. They agreed that as an ex-president, he should be careful in his remarks and conversations not to step too hard on his successor in the White House. Already Bush was becoming widely disliked in Europe for his administration’s abrupt decision to kill the Kyoto treaty on reducing carbon pollution, without consulting America’s allies, among other offenses of substance and style.
    Especially sensitive on this trip would be Clinton’s visit to Germany, where he was scheduled to deliver the keynote address at an event honoring Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. As president, he had enjoyed a close relationship with Schroeder, a Social Democratic reformer sometimes known as “the German Clinton.” But the U.S. relationship with Germany was changing under Bush, owing to strong disagreements over climate change, missile defense, and relations with Russia.
    Just before he departed New York on a private jet, Clinton’s staff let the organizers of his European speeches know that they were imposing one final requirement: No reporters or photographers would be admitted to any of his appearances on the continent. That demand proved extremely awkward, since members of the press had already received invitations to attend his talks in The Hague and Copenhagen.
    The decision to bar the media was more than slightly ironic, because the sponsor of the Danish event was Børsen , that country’s premier financial daily, while the sponsor of the German event—where Schroeder would receive the German Media Award—was a marketing research company that polled the nation’s editors-in-chief to select the annual winner. Having received the German Media Development Award in 2000 at the White House, Clinton had been invited by media executive Karlheinz Kögel to attend the luncheon for Schroeder as the guest of honor.
    Awkward or not, the contracts for his speeches clearly gave him the right to control any media presence on the premises. So the embarrassed sponsors dutifully dispatched messages to scores of journalists who had signed up to attend, officially disinviting them. “We did everything we could to create a workable situation for the press,” said the sheepish letter sent out by the Dutch public