by Ron Fournier
There’s not a child alive who couldn’t benefit from sturdier stuff. In her 2015 essay titled “Should Schools Teach Personality?” New York Times staff editor Anna North described new thinking in education circles that puts a higher value on student character than on intelligence.
Her piece focused on the KIPP network of charter schools, where students learn about grit, self-control, curiosity, and four other measures of character. North quoted Leyla Bravo-Willey, the assistant principal at KIPP Infinity Middle School in Harlem. “If a child happens to be very gritty but has trouble participating in class,” Willey said, “we still want them to develop that part of themselves.” Of a child’s character, she said, “We talk a lot about them as being skills or strengths, not necessarily traits, because it’s not innate.”
So there’s something that Tyler has in common with his “typical” peers: Their grit is grown.
—
Ten minutes into the conversation with Clinton, Tyler’s fingers drummed the chair and he made steady eye contact. He was accustomed to dominating conversations, and so the former president was an unfamiliar steamroller. Tyler interrupted Clinton’s soliloquy on the battle of San Juan Hill: “That was the only battle worth mentioning in the Spanish-American War.”
Clinton blinked four or five times, almost squinting, as he tried to simultaneously respond politely to Tyler and retake control of the conversation.
“Yeah,” Clinton said. “The…the…the Spanish had colonies in the Philippines and in Cuba and Puerto Rico and we basically had a protectorate in the Philippines for a while, which was once presided over by his vice president and successor, Howard Taft. So when he fought at San Juan Hill,” Clinton continued, “the idea was to not only run him out of Puerto Rico, but to run them out of Cuba, too. You know, basically keep the Americas free of colonialism.”
Clinton is like Tyler in the sense that he loves to talk about what he loves to talk about. Listening to the former president ramble through thoughts on turn-of-the-century global affairs reminded me of how Aspie author David Finch referred to his own conversational style—“the verbal equivalent of a volcanic eruption, spewing mind magma in every direction.” The difference is in the delivery: While Aspies tend to talk rat-a-tat fast and go off on tangents with little regard to a conversation partner, Clinton is famously deliberative and thoughtful—long pauses for emphasis as he connects disparate dots for his audiences, virtually willing them to follow his train of thought.
Shifting abruptly from the Rough Rider to the man from Hope, Clinton told Tyler: “After the Cold War when the Soviet Union collapsed and I was president, we were for a brief period the only military, economic, and political superpower in the world. And I kept telling people, ‘You know, as soon as somebody gets as rich as we are, whether we are the only military superpower depends on them and not us. Because if they got the money they can spend it on whatever they want, and we better use this time to try to pull the world together.’ And so that’s what I tried to do.”
Clinton bit his lower lip and reflected a moment, looking out the window—and not at Tyler or at me. “But I always liked Roosevelt. I liked him because he liked action and he liked reading. You know, he read a lot. He wrote more books, I think, than any president we ever had. He was very smart and he made the most of his time. And I think he was one of our 10 best presidents. He was always, I thought, wrongly…”
Clinton paused. “The one thing I disagreed with him on: He was also a bit too bellicose to suit me, because he was always thinking that he could never go down in history as a truly great president because he hadn’t been involved in a really big war.
“He actually tried,” Clinton continued on Roosevelt, “even though he died in 1919, young, he was only 61, but he’d suffered a lot. You know, he had a lot of health problems as a young child—”
“He got blind in one eye,” Tyler interrupted, speaking so fast that neither Clinton nor I could quite follow.
“Yeah,” Clinton said. “He tried to talk Woodrow Wilson…into giving him a military commission so he could fight in World War I. [He] lost one of his children in World War I.”
“Quentin,” Tyler said, squeezing in the name of Roosevelt’s son. Clinton didn’t break stride.
“And his son Ted junior, who was a brigadier general, won the Medal of Honor in World War II on D-Day,” the ex-president said. “Anyway, I always liked Teddy Roosevelt and I’m glad you do. He was really a very good president.”
—
Teddy was a good father. That’s my takeaway from a collection of Roosevelt’s letters to his children. Edited by a Roosevelt friend shortly before the former president’s death in 1919, the letters show Teddy struggling to balance his expectations against the reality of his kids’ independent paths.
“This devoted father and whole-hearted companion found time to send every week a long letter of this delightful character to each of his absent children,” wrote the collection’s editor, Joseph Bucklin Bishop. “As the boys advanced toward manhood, the letters…contain much wise suggestion and occasional admonition, the latter always administered in a loving spirit accompanied by apology for writing in a ‘preaching’ vein.”
Roosevelt touches upon all the expectations boxes. In a letter to Ted junior on October 4, 1903, the sport-loving president tells his oldest child to keep athletics in context. “I am delighted to have you play football. I believe in rough, manly sports. But I do not believe in them if they degenerate into the sole end of any one’s existence. I don’t want you to sacrifice standing well in your studies to any over-athleticism; and I need not tell you that character counts for a great deal more than either intellect or body in winning success in life.”
Kermit received a similar letter the same month. “I would rather have a boy of mine stand high in his studies than high in athletics, but I could a great deal rather have him show true manliness of character than show either intellectual or physical prowess; and I believe you and Ted both bid fair to develop just such character,” the president wrote from the White House.
Teddy constantly reminds his kids about the importance of good grades and a solid education. And yet he suggested to Kermit in November 1903 that average is acceptable. “I rather suspect that you will be behind in your studies this month,” Roosevelt wrote. “If so, try to make up next month, and keep above the middle of the class if you can.”
He had strong opinions about his boys’ careers, all delicately shared. “If you have definitely made up your mind that you have an overmastering desire to be in the Navy or the Army, and that such a career is the one in which you will take a really heartfelt interest—far more so than any other,” he wrote Ted junior on January 21, 1904, “and that your greatest chance for happiness and usefulness will lie in doing this one work to which you feel yourself especially drawn—why, under such circumstances, I have but little to say.”
—
When Clinton paused to reset the conversation, I noticed Tyler’s fingers again. They were carving slow, gentle circles into the chair’s leather. He was comfortable with the silence. Not me. I felt that familiar tightening in my gut—worried that we were wasting Clinton’s time. I wondered what he thought of Tyler, and if he was second-guessing the decision to do me this favor. I panicked. I blurted out, “What did you like about Teddy Roosevelt, Ty?”
“He had asthma and all that when he was a kid, but when he grew up he became famous for like, like, being real tough,” Tyler said.
I wrote in my notebook, Two bullied boys—TR is hope, because that’s where these two lines in my life crossed: Clinton, a man who succeeded despite a troubled youth, and Tyler, a troubled young man struggling to be a success. TR is more than their political hero. He’s their role model.
“Yeah, you know, he was very frail,” Clinton told Tyler.
At last, they were engaged in a real conversation, although the former president didn’t seem to realize that he was repeating Tyler’s points. Clinton launched again: “H
e had asthma as a child, and then he basically decided he would make his body strong. He became very broad and he studied boxing. And then he went out and lived in the West, lived in North Dakota, and did something that I’m particularly grateful for, because I worked hard on this when I was president: He saved the buffalo. We were down to 20 known buffalo head in the entire country and Theodore Roosevelt created the Buffalo National Park; and when I was president we lost 750 buffalo to disease in Yellowstone Park alone, and it was only half the population of Yellowstone. You know, we slowly and surely rebuilt it. And they’re such a symbol of the plains, Indians, and that part of our history, it would have been tragic; and he personally saved them. If he hadn’t made that park, they would have all been killed.”
—
After 45 minutes with one of the world’s most famous men, Tyler now sat with his hands folded calmly in his lap, fingers intertwined, and knees crossed—mirroring Clinton’s posture. Relaxed, confident. I thought, He’s growing before my eyes, and now I felt guilty for all the worry, the doubts I harbored about Tyler. Damned if my stomach didn’t tighten again.
Clinton’s monologue had shifted from one obsession to another: coral reefs, leadership, polarization, gridlock, terrorism, national service, the joys of being a governor, the perils of new media, and the broken business models of book publishers. It was brilliant, fascinating material for a journalist like me. It was a tad boring for Tyler. Clinton didn’t seem to notice or care, which struck me as odd because I knew better. I knew that Clinton is wired to connect with people—large masses of people, anyhow. But here he was: spewing mind magma…obsessed with certain topics…dominating the conversation…misreading a conversation partner…
Could it be? No, of course not, but still…I wrote in my notebook, IS BC AN ASPIE????
Suddenly I saw Tyler in another light. If the man who made empathy his calling card (“I feel your pain”) can miss obvious social cues, why worry so much about my son? There is no perfect social animal—not even Bill Clinton! Maybe the autism spectrum is broader than we care to admit, and we’re all on it?
I thought of something Andrew Solomon had written in Far from the Tree, his book about parents who struggle with their children’s uniqueness. “Though many of us take pride in how different we are from our parents,” Solomon wrote, “we are endlessly sad at how different our children are from us.” I decided, right there in Clinton’s suite, never again to regret Tyler’s uniqueness.
—
Clinton pulled himself out of the chair. “I’m really glad to see you, Tyler,” he said. “I have another present for you. Before I give it to you, you do not have to feel bad about it because I obtained two copies of this. It’s one of my favorite books: It’s the letters Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his children.”
“Wow,” Tyler said.
Clinton reached into a massive bookcase and pulled down a green first edition from 1919, then picked up a Sharpie, wrote inside the cover, “From another fan of Theodore Roosevelt,” and signed it.
Handing it to Tyler, he repeated, “It’s a very old book, but you don’t have to feel bad about taking it because I have another copy, okay?” His voice was noticeably softer, reassuring—almost cooing when he hit the “okay.”
“So I want you to take it and I want you to read it,” Clinton continued. “You know the other thing Theodore Roosevelt did, which he would get in real trouble for today with conservatives, is he let his kids play in the White House with the animals they had. He let goats run around the White House.”
Clinton laughed. Small talk wasn’t his thing. “And, man, that’s a great sweater.” Tyler was wearing the same black-and-gray striped sweater he’d worn to visit Obama a year earlier. Lori called it “the presidential sweater,” and Tyler would wear it again in just eight days.
Clinton and Tyler shook hands and looked each other in the eye. There was even a certain kinship.
“Nice guy,” Tyler whispered to me on the way out. “He talked a lot about himself and his stuff.”
“Like you, son?”
“Yep.”
EMPATHY
“He’s a Good Kid, Fournier”
Dallas, Texas—In a cozy reception area, orange leather chairs line the walls beneath pictures of the 43rd president of the United States hosting assorted world leaders at Camp David. Tyler points to former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi and asks, “Was he an Elvis fan?” I wonder to myself, How did he know that about Koizumi?
Tyler is 14. He doesn’t read newspapers or watch news on TV. I certainly don’t talk about my job at home—and yet at some point somebody told him that the Japanese prime minister had an Elvis fixation. Tyler locked it away in a mind that seems to operate like a computer—quick, nimble, and literal. Yes, I reply, he was an Elvis fan.
“He ain’t nothing but a hound dog,” Tyler says, and laughs.
I see something else in the pictures. They evoke memories about my years on the road chasing presidential candidates and presidents, a career I loved even as it stole time from my kids and, in two important ways, brought me here to Bush’s office. First is the obvious fact that I used my connections to arrange the visit. Second is the painful knowledge that I might have been a better father had I put my family first—had I kept the promise I made Lori when we left Arkansas.
I can’t use the job as an excuse. Far more important and busy people keep their priorities in order. I recall a steamy summer day in 1999 when I was at the neighborhood pool with the kids. My cell phone rang. It was Bush, then the governor of Texas and a candidate for president, returning my call about some story that seemed incredibly important at the time. (Now I can’t even recall what it was about.) Bush interrupted my first question. “What is all that noise in the background, Fournier?”
“I’m at the pool with my kids, governor.”
Bush replied, “Then what the hell are you doing answering your phone?”
Damn good question, sir.
I could be so smug about the ways in which I tried to strike a work-life balance. Like the habit of buying Holly and Gabrielle a doll from every foreign country Clinton and Bush took me to—Bosnia, Britain, China, Chile, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Haiti, Hungary, Mexico, Romania, Russia, Spain, Turkey, and so on. I remember sliding my green American Express card across a scuffed wooden counter at a Warsaw store in the late 1990s. “I’ll take these,” I told the clerk, placing two porcelain blond-wigged dolls on the counter. My cell phone rang.
“When will you be home?” It was Lori. She sounded tired. “I’ve been up all night crying,” she said. The kids were running high fevers. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Did you call the doctor?”
“Yes. He told me to give them Tylenol and go to the hospital if the fevers don’t break by noon.”
“What do you want me to do?” That was the wrong question. Lori detected an edge of frustration in my voice. She suspected (correctly) that I was preoccupied with the story I was chasing in Poland—and that at this exact moment I was checking the time to see how far behind her phone calling was putting me. But she didn’t know (why would she?) about the familiar internal war I was waging: professional ambition vs. parental guilt. Lori needed me, the kids needed me, and this damn dream job was keeping me away.
“Nothing,” Lori snapped. “There’s nothing I want you to do.” She hung up so loudly that I feared the two White House aides in line behind me had heard it. So I pretended to keep talking.
“I love you, too, babe,” I said into a silent cell phone receiver.
As I slunk past the White House aides, both of them young fathers, one of them frowned, shook his head slowly, and softly said, “Been there, Dad.”
Bush greeted us from behind his neat desk. He was tilted back in his chair with his feet propped on the desktop and a coffee cup marked POTUS in his hands. Something about the Texan immediately put Tyler at ease. After a quick handshake, Tyler settled into his chair, striking the same confident, relaxed po
se that, with Clinton, had taken him 45 minutes to settle into: hands folded in his lap, fingers intertwined, his legs crossed at the knees.
Bush got down to business. “Going to school?”
“Yes,” Tyler replied.
“Do you like school?”
“Pretty good.”
“Favorite subject?”
“American studies.”
“Do you like to read?”
“Yeah. I read all the time. I don’t have a favorite topic.”
“Fiction? Nonfiction? Sports?”
“I don’t know much about sports.”
“Mysteries?”
“I really don’t like mysteries.”
“Most 14-year-olds don’t like to read,” Bush said, stretching to compliment Tyler. His conversational style brought to mind a field of Texas oil drills, each one probing, probing, probing, methodically and relentlessly, until hitting pay dirt. “Are your grandparents alive?”
Yes, Tyler said. Before he could continue, I asked Bush about his parents. “The aging process is hard to observe,” he said, then paused, his smile tight. “And endure.” Bush took back the conversation, asking Tyler if he liked to travel.
“As far west as I’ve been is Las Vegas,” Tyler said. “Long story.” The short answers bothered me. Were we wasting Bush’s time? I interrupted again, reminding Tyler that Clinton had asked him for a favor.
“Oh yeah,” Tyler said to Bush. “Bill Clinton sends his best.”
Bush smiled warmly. “We’ve been friends,” he said. “We’ve shared experiences. We’re like twins.”
Bush said he had a funny story to tell about Clinton—a warm memory that reflected well on the Democrat. But this wasn’t a political interview. Pointing to my tape recorder, Bush said, “Turn that off a minute.”
—
My actions on September 11, 2001, the most historic and horrific day of Bush’s presidency, exposed a rift between Lori and me and showed me the depths of her sacrifice. I started the day at the White House, pulling a dog-eared index card from my pocket and scanning the list of names and cell phone numbers of my best sources. I punched in a number. Mindy Tucker Fletcher, a longtime aide to Bush who headed the Department of Justice’s communications team, picked up on the first ring. “Turn on CNN,” she said. “A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.”
