A Lovely Day for a Stroll: Bill Clinton in His Element
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: April 8, 2005
OME, April 7 - Flying into Rome as a guest passenger on what used to be his airplane, Air Force One, Bill Clinton had this to say about Pope John Paul II, even in death, "The man knows how to build a crowd."
At lunchtime on Thursday, at the foot of the famed Spanish steps about two miles from St. Peter's Basilica, Mr. Clinton proved that he still knows a bit about that art, too.
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Clearly unwilling to spend a beautiful day in Rome cooped up in his hotel, he went for a midday stroll, stopping in at a few of the luxury shops on the narrow, cobblestone streets off the square, known for its fountain and familiar to film buffs as the backdrop for a scene in "Roman Holiday."
While Romans were unlikely to catch a glimpse of President Bush - he moved only in motorcades and appeared only at a few official events - Mr. Clinton was clearly reveling in the fact that shoppers, tourists having lunch at outdoor cafes and Italian business people walking to meetings all stopped to greet him.
"Isn't this a great city?" he said. Along the streets, people starting yelling "Bill, Bill, Bill," and a few shouted "U.S.A.!" One shopkeeper raced out with a photograph of Mr. Clinton on a past visit.
Between handshakes and waves, the former president, looking thin, said that he was feeling good after two operations on his heart, but that he tired easily and planned to go back to his hotel for a rest - a change from the way he used to tour cities. He reminisced about his long walking tours of the backstreets of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, during the last long foreign trip of his presidency. "You go around the world and you see a lot of affection for Americans," he said.
There was certainly a lot of affection for Mr. Clinton, who consistently got better press here during his presidency than Mr. Bush does. But Mr. Clinton has gone out of his way to demonstrate a new closeness to Mr. Bush, who invited him to come on the official delegation to the pope's funeral and asked him to sit in on the morning intelligence briefing on Wednesday. Mr. Clinton said he thought Mr. Bush seemed more relaxed now that he had won re-election.
Mr. Clinton has appeared greatly relaxed, too, sharing with reporters aboard Air Force One his view of the pope as a politician. The report from journalists on the plane said he recalled John Paul's visit to Newark and how "he came into the back of the cathedral and shook hands all the way down the aisles and had nuns standing on the pews, screaming."
He said he told Catholic leaders at the time that he would have hated to run against the pope. "You have no ideas how good a politician he is," he said.
During the war in Bosnia, he said, the pope called him one day to ask what it would take to put forces in to stop the conflict. "He said, 'The 20th century began with a war in Sarajevo, and you can't let it end with a war in Sarajevo,' " Mr. Clinton recalled.
On Thursday, by the time Mr. Clinton made it out of the back streets and into the open square, a mob of hundreds developed. Mr. Clinton's nervous Italian bodyguards put him in a Mercedes and sped him away.
But Thursday night he was back in his old form. After the dinner with the Italian leader, he went out to a second dinner with President Viktor A. Yuschenko of Ukraine and stayed at an Italian restaurant with him until after midnight. |
