No matter how far President Clinton travels, home is never far away.
Sometimes that can be frustrating, even embarrassing, for a president who would prefer to talk about such topics as hemispheric trade, global warming, and peace and harmony between the U.S. and Latin America.
At a joint news conference Tuesday with Brazil’s president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, he found himself answering questions about the fundraising investigation, his personal relationship with Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, the line-item veto and the energy-wasting habits of Americans.
He wound up on the defensive, apologizing for the problems his security requirements have created on his trip and for a report by his Commerce Department that called Brazilian corruption “endemic.”
Clinton attempted to preclude fundraising questions at the Cardoso press conference by answering them Monday night on Air Force One. But the first question Tuesday was about Reno’s decision to extend for up to 60 days the investigation into Clinton’s role in the fundraising controversy.
Cardoso seemed bewildered and amused at the probing queries. “No one is asking me these touchy questions,” he said.
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Clinton seemed nervous and frustrated by the questions. When a reporter asked whether such queries embarrassed him in a foreign country, the president said he couldn’t control the questions, but added, “I think other people sometimes in other countries wonder what it’s all about. . . . I can’t be embarrassed about how you decide to do your job.”
If White House officials had any thought that Clinton could escape domestic concerns by traveling to Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina for a week, they have been wrong. No longer does foreign travel keep a president’s problems at bay, if it ever did.
A White House official said the focus on scandal and domestic concerns is part of what he called the “gotcha” media culture in the U.S. He added that Clinton and Cardoso achieved more in repairing U.S.-Brazilian relations “than has been done in a long, long time.”
At the same time, Clinton didn’t hesitate to defer foreign policy for a moment and exercise his domestic powers.
He decided to use his line-item veto against 13 projects in the defense appropriations bill, saving $144 million in fiscal 1998, in another challenge to Congress’ control over the federal purse.
He acknowledged that many members of Congress “wonder whether they did the right thing (in approving the line-item veto), now that I’m exercising it. But I’d like to remind you that, again, I have deferred, in great measure, to Congress” by allowing 750 projects to go forward.
One of the projects vetoed is money for the SR-71 spy plane, which the president said wouldn’t make a “significant contribution” to military capability.
The emphasis on domestic issues detracted from a Clinton-Cardoso attempt to finesse tensions over trade and other issues that have created friction in recent days.
At a news conference outside Brazil’s modernistic Alvorada Palace, with emus frolicking on the grounds, both leaders said there is no conflict over Clinton’s call for a hemisphere-wide free-trade zone and Brazil’s membership in the South American regional trade group, Mercosur.
Brazil has indicated it wants to go slow in expanding free trade throughout the Americas, even as Mercosur cuts its own trade deals with the rest of the world. Clinton, rather than argue about the issue on a state visit, said he has no trouble with a regional trade group as long as the U.S. can trade with it.
One of Clinton’s missions is to focus U.S. attention on a long-neglected region and to show how increased trade would create jobs in America.
He hoped to use the trip to build public support for the “fast-track” negotiating authority now before Congress, so he could sign new free-trade deals.
The two presidents also signed several agreements expanding cooperation in energy development, drug trafficking, education, environmental research and space exploration.
The U.S. put up $10 million to help improve conservation of the Amazon.
But most of the news has dealt with a controversy created by a U.S. Commerce Department report calling corruption in Brazil “endemic.”
Brazilians complained that the word suggested that corruption is part of their culture; the report was quickly toned down to read “widespread.”
Clinton said Tuesday, “I regret very much that it happened. . . . I assure you that no Brazilian could have been any more upset about it than I was.”
Brazilians also have criticized the heavy security that follows the president, especially the authority demanded by the Secret Service to carry assault weapons when Clinton visits a Rio de Janeiro shantytown Wednesday.
“We’ve never had problems with our presidents’ security in a foreign country but we’ve had enough problems at home over the last 35 years and . . . I hope you will at least understand that,” Clinton said.
As Clinton left the Congress building in Brasilia, his car was pelted with manure by a small group of protesters. Later, the president joked, “I’ve had a lot worse thrown at me recently.”
On global warming, Clinton said he will come up with a “credible plan” to reduce so-called greenhouse gases to present at a Dec. 6 conference in Japan.
“Right now, it may be a lot easier to sell it to the environmentalists and to the business community than to sell it to the Congress, but I’ll do my best.”
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