For the last time, I introduced the people sitting with Hillary who represented what we were trying to accomplish: the father of one of the students killed at Columbine, who wanted Congress to close the gun show loophole; a Hispanic father who proudly paid child support and who would benefit from the tax-relief package for working families I had proposed; an air force captain who had rescued a downed pilot in Kosovo, to illustrate the importance of finishing our work in the Balkans; and my friend Hank Aaron, who had spent his years after baseball working to help poor children and bridge the racial divide

I closed with an appeal for unity, getting a laugh when I reminded Congress that even Republicans and Democrats were genetically 99I said, Modern science has confirmed what ancient faiths have always taught: the most important fact of life is our common humanity

The speech was criticized by one congressman who said I sounded like Calvin Coolidge in wanting to make America debt-free, and by some conservatives who said I was spending too much money on education, health care, and the environmentMost citizens seemed to be reassured that I was going to work hard in my last year, interested in the new ideas I was advancing, and supportive of my efforts to keep them focused on the future

The last time America seemed to be sailing on such smooth seas was in the early sixties, with the economy booming, civil rights laws promising a more just future, and Vietnam a distant blip on the screenWithin six years the economy was sagging, there were race riots in the streets, omega aqua terra watch John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jrhad been killed, and Vietnam had consumed America, driven President Johnson from office, and ushered in a new era of division in our politicsGood times are to be seized and built upon, not coasted through

After a stop in Quincy, Illinois, to hit the high points of my agenda, I flew to Davos, Switzerland, to address the World Economic Forum, an increasingly important annual gathering of international political and business leadersI brought five cabinet members with me to discuss the popular uprising against globalization that we had witnessed in the streets of Seattle during the recent WTO meetingThe multinational corporations and their political supporters had largely been content to create a global economy that served their needs, believing that the growth resulting from trade would create wealth and jobs everywhere

Trade in well-governed countries had helped lift many people out of poverty, but too many people in poor countries were left out: half the world still lived on less than $2 a day, a billion people lived on less than a dollar a day, and more than a billion people went to bed hungry every nightOne in four people had no access to clean waterSome 130 million children never went to school at all, and 10 million children died every year of preventable diseases

Even in wealthy countries, the constant churning of the economy was always dislocating some people, and the United States wasnt doing enough to get them back in the workforce at the same or higher payFinally, the global financial institutions had not been prada clutch able to head off or mitigate crises in developing countries in a way that minimized damage to working people, and the WTO was perceived as being too captive to wealthy countries and multinational corporations

In my first two years, when the Democrats were in the majority, I had gotten more money for training displaced workers and signed the NAFTA side agreements on the environment and labor standardsAfterward, the Republican Congress was less sympathetic to such efforts, especially those designed to reduce poverty and create new jobs in poor nationsNow it seemed to me that we had a chance to build a bipartisan consensus on at least three initiatives: the New Markets program, the trade bill for Africa and the Caribbean, and the Millennium Debt Relief effort

The larger question was whether we could have a global econ-omy without global social and environmental policies and more open governance by the economic decision makers, especially the WTOI thought the anti-trade, anti-globalization forces were wrong in believ-ing that trade had increased povertyIn fact, trade had lifted more people out of poverty and pulled more nations out of isolationOn the other hand, those who thought all we needed were unregulated flows of more than $1 trillion a day of capital and ever increasing trade were wrong, too

I said globalization imposed on its beneficiaries the responsibility of sharing its gains and its burdens and empowering more people to participate in itEssentially, I advocated a Third Way approach to globalization: trade plus a concerted effort to give people and nations the cheap chanel purses tools and conditions to make the most of itFinally, I argued that giving people hope through economic growth and social justice was essential to our ability to persuade the twenty-firstcentury world to walk away from the modern horrors of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction and the old conflicts rooted in racial, religious, and tribal hatreds

When the speech was over, I couldnt know if Id succeeded in getting the thousand business leaders there to agree with me, but I felt that they had listened and at least were wrestling with the problems of our global interdependence and their own obligations to create a more unified worldWhat the movers and shakers of the world needed was a shared visionWhen good people with energy act on a shared vision, most of the problems get worked out

Back home, it was time for my last National Prayer BreakfastJoe Lieberman, the events first Jewish speaker, gave a fine talk on the values common to all faithsI discussed the practical implications of his remarks: if we are admonished not to turn away strangers, to treat others as we would like to be treated, and to love our neighbors as ourselves, who are our neighbors, and what does it mean to love them? If we were virtually the same genetically, and our world was so interdependent that I had a cousin in Arkansas who played chess twice a week on the Internet with a man from Australia, we obviously had to broaden our horizons in the years ahead

The direction of those years, of course, would be shaped by the outcome of this years electionBush had both won handily in Iowa, as chanel logo earrings expectedThen the campaign moved on to New Hampshire, where voters in both parties primaries delight in upsetting expectationsAls campaign had gotten off to a rocky start, but when he moved his campaign headquarters to Nashville and began doing informal town hall meetings in New Hampshire, he really started connecting with voters, got better press coverage, and pulled ahead of Senator BradleyAfter the State of the Union, in which I featured some of his important accomplishments, he picked up a few more points in the bounce we always received from the speechThen Bradley began to attack him harshlyWhen Al didnt respond, Bradley cut into his lead, but Al held on to win 5247 percentAfter that, I knew he was home free for the nominationHe was going to carry the South and California big, and I thought he would do well in the large industrial states, too, especially after the AFL-CIO endorsed him

John McCain defeated George WBush in New Hampshire 4931 percentIt was a state tailor-made for McCainThey liked his independent streak and his support for campaign finance reformThe next big contest was in South Carolina, where McCain would be helped by his military background and the endorsements of two congressmen, but Bush had the backing of both the party establishment and the religious right

On Sunday afternoon, February 6, Hillary, Chelsea, Dorothy, and I drove from Chappaqua to the State University of New Yorks campus in nearby Purchase for Hillarys formal announcement of her Senate candidacySenator Moynihan introduced herHe said that he had known Eleanor Roosevelt and that she would love new omega watches