Stern Constitutions Needed for Globe-Trotting With Bill Clinton
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Wednesday, August 6, 2008; Page C08
DAKAR, Senegal, Aug. 3 -- Horns blaring, the press vans hurtled through the oncoming traffic here at dusk, racing to the airport to deposit their passengers on a third international flight of the day. We had arisen in Rwanda at 3 a.m., flown 2,800 miles across the African continent for a brief drop-by in Liberia, then headed 700 miles north to Senegal for the foreign equivalent of an airport campaign rally.
An idle witness might have thought this was some sort of urgent international mission -- shuttle diplomacy, across time zones, on methamphetamines.
But no. This was just a day on the road with former president Bill Clinton, global philanthropist.
While in office and sometimes on the campaign trail for his wife earlier this year, Clinton conveyed a chaotic urgency, always late to events, always overprogrammed, always moving from announcement to activity to long rap session after dinner.
After a four-day, 19,000-mile journey with him to Africa -- or, more accurately, chasing him across Africa, like some geopolitical version of "The Amazing Race" -- it is clear that Clinton is every bit as frenetic as an ex-president and an ex-candidate's spouse, even less measured in his pace and as undisciplined about his schedule as ever.
And his logistics, at least on this particular visit, were a mess.
To be fair, it was not the fault of the William J. Clinton Foundation staff that there were a wildly disproportionate number of mechanical airplane problems this year, on the annual trip Clinton makes to the countries where his charity operates. Between last Monday and Sunday, over the span of a week, there were two aborted takeoffs, more than seven mechanical failures on two planes and three last-minute aircraft swaps, forcing his panicked staff to revamp an already-crazed schedule halfway around the world.
Yet the lack of built-in cushion time -- not to mention the astonishing lack of rich-friend resources; weren't the Clintons supposed to know people with smoothly functioning private jets? -- struck some observers on the trip as strangely counterproductive. Clinton is eager to show he has left the primary battle behind and returned to the fight to provide AIDS patients with reduced-priced drugs and to bring sustainable-growth programs to poor populations. Yet he whizzed through Ethiopia, Rwanda, Liberia and Senegal so quickly that the humanitarian gains seemed obscured in a cloud of dust.
The trip began with all the requisite excitement. Camera-clutching, safari-gear-clad delegation members arrived by Lincoln Town Car at the private air terminal in Newark: Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen; Terry McAuliffe and his wife; former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack and his wife, Christie; Bruce Lindsey, now chief executive of the foundation; Joe Wilson, the former ambassador whose fact-finding trip to Niger before the Iraq war became a cause celebre for opponents of the war; other wealthy, charity-minded Democrats, including Cathy Lasry and J.B. Pritzker, the hotel billionaire. Eventually, Chelsea Clinton arrived, along with Roger Clinton, the former president's brother.
The group split into two: the A-list passengers (mentioned above) who would go on the plush 767 lent by Google executives; and the B-list passengers, including the reporters, a documentary film crew sent by Clinton's Hollywood friend Steve Bing, and Rodney Slater, the former transportation secretary.
But being on the B-list did not just mean an inferior transatlantic flight, with fewer moist towelettes. It meant a mind-boggling 55-hour delay because of mechanical problems. These included a shattered window, a broken air-conditioning valve, an electrical fire, a problematic oxygen valve and a nonworking fuel system part. By the time the Clinton staff had found a replacement aircraft -- a 707 so old its twin is on display at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library as an example of relics presidents used to fly -- we had spent two nights at the Newark Marriott. People were bailing out of the excursion left and right.
Ethiopia, when the traveling press corps finally arrived, was a blur. On Friday, the entourage packed up again and went to Rwanda. In midair, another emergency struck: The Google 767 had engine failure during takeoff. So the B-list plane turned around to fetch the former president from Addis Ababa, leaving the A-list behind (they later arrived in Kigali on an Ethiopian Airlines flight).
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Jean-Louis Kayitenkore
Procurement Consultant
Gsm: +250-08470205
Home: +250-55104140
P.O. Box 3867
Kigali-Rwanda
East Africa
Blog: http://www.cepgl.blogspot.com
Skype ID : Kayisa66
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