Bono

by Michka Assayas

  Describe the scene.

  I remember it was a hot day in D.C., and I hadn’t expected it to be. I was wearing like a blue cashmere coat, which I thought was pretty smart. I had some big boots on, but I thought the cashmere coat would be a compromise for the salubrious quarters of the White House. But because it was so hot, I had to take it off, leaving me with a T-shirt, combat pants, and boots in the Oval Office. So I looked like a member of our road crew. Our road crew are pretty stylish, but maybe not for the Oval Office.

  How were you introduced to him?

  He was waiting, sitting in his chair, in this historic office.

  Behind his desk?

  No. Smoking a cigar. Not behind his big desk, though he talked about his desk. It was President Kennedy’s desk. Now every president gets to choose the desk of one of his predecessors.

  What sort of vibe did you get when you saw him for the first time? I know you’re very instinctive and you have this ability for tuning in to people.

  I thought . . . [laughs] that he looked more like a pop star than I did. And I thought: he might be thinking that too, because I really did look like I’d come out from under a car. He looked very sharp, as he always does, and he just smiled. His staff and he himself just burst out laughing. I think they thought I was there . . .

  . . . to do the plumbing?

  I prefer carpentry.

  What was the first thing that he said to you?

  I can’t remember. “Have a cigar,” probably. But he was very busy. He was good to see me. We had pleasantries, and a bit of a laugh about probably the first time we’d met, which was very funny. We were going to a Chicago Bears game, and he had offered us to jump a ride with him in his motorcade. But I noticed his concentration was on medium, which is to say he was listening, but not intently, to these pleasantries. It was only when I asked him, did he have any good ideas regarding the millennium? After all, he was going to make the big speech. Being leader of the Free World, it’s a historic moment. What did he have planned? Then I noticed his concentration sharpening. “Because,” as I explained, “I have a really great idea.” I said to him: “The dumb parade and the fanfare, is that all we’re going to remember? Or could it really feel like History? Could it really be a new beginning for the people who needed a new beginning most, i.e., the poorest of the poor?” He got on that idea after a lot of questions in and around it, told me that he was already supporting the HIPC [Heavily Indebted Poor Countries] initiative, which was a World Bank initiative. It was a process where they were trying to ease the debt burden, but it wasn’t going far enough or quick enough. I was saying that the millennium was the hook to hang this on and to getting the Bretton Woods people, i.e., the IMF, the banks, et cetera, farther down the road. He was very interested and very supportive, but he knew he would have trouble in his treasury, because Robert Rubin, who was the secretary of the treasury at that time, was not a fan of debt cancellation. He, it turns out, was a fan of Alexander Hamilton, the very first secretary of the treasury for the United States, who, when given a choice about whether the United States after Independence should refute its old debts with Great Britain, decided to pay them, and with that, gain credibility.

  But did Clinton click on anything in particular that you said?

  It wasn’t a new concept to him. What might have been new was how popular a melody it could be, that somebody like myself was interested, and that it might actually be one he could sing on New Year’s Eve 1999.

  So you’d been trying to achieve a precise goal, there. You wanted him to mention it in his speech.

  I wanted him not to just mention it. I wanted him to follow through on it, to raid the bank, the World Bank, as it happens! [laughs] Because it was going to cost taxpayers’ money to cancel those debts. I didn’t realize how much he supported the idea. We wrote many letters, we corresponded, we talked. But until after he left office, I never knew how hard he had to fight. I remember his chief economic adviser, a wonderful man called Gene Sperling, told me just how frustrated the president was at not being able to further my proposal. At one point I had sent him a letter. Gene was called up to the top cabin in Air Force One, and the president was screaming at him at the top of his voice, pointing at my letter, going: “Why aren’t we doing this?” So, you know, that would give you faith that a person with so much on his mind and plate had not just an ear for the melody, but a heart for the world’s poor—to be in that position and have a heart for it, and be banging the table in frustration at his own civil service’s inability to work it through. So, if anyone has any doubt as to the character who sat behind that desk, which was, by the way, Irish oak . . .

  How could you tell it was Irish oak?

  I told you I was a carpenter. No, because he told me. It was Kennedy’s desk. I just wanted to put that on the record. [laughs]

  Let’s fast-forward a few years. You’re entering the Oval Office, and this time, it’s George W. Bush. What are your feelings? Are you nervous?

  Err . . . I’m never nervous when I go to meet heads of state. I feel they should be nervous, because they are the ones who’ll be held accountable for the lives that their decisions will impact the most.

  What was your gut feeling the first time you came face-to-face with President Bush?

  I’m trying to remember the first time in there. I always give a gift when I have to ask or, in his case, have been asking somebody for a lot of money. [laughs] They can’t accept expensive gifts, but I give them, you know, something small: a book of Seamus Heaney’s poetry. He was much more amusing than I expected. Like, he was very funny and quick. Just quick-witted. With him, I got pretty quickly to the point, and the point was an unarguable one—that, you know, 6,500 people dying every day of a preventable and treatable disease would not be acceptable anywhere else in the world other than Africa, and that before God and history this was a kind of racism that was unacceptable. And he agreed: “Yeah, it’s unacceptable.” He said: “In fact, it’s a kind of genocide.”

  Did he use that very word?

  He used the word “genocide,” which I took to imply our complicity in this, which I absolutely agree with. Later, his staff tried to take the edge off the word. But in the Rose Garden, there was press, and I already had used the word.

  It was too late to stop you.

  Right. [laughs] He really helped us in using that word. He knew it was hyperbole, but it was effective. You know, we had corresponded before this, and I had to get through many doors before I got to President Bush. He was very formal, and I was wearing a suit. No tie, mind you. [laughs] I’m just remembering now. He commented on my glasses—that’s right!—and he says: “Wow! They’re kind of flashy.” And I said: “Are you envious? You want a pair?” It was that kind of easy banter. As I told you before, he was just about to write a check for ten billion dollars, new money to the world’s poor. So he’d done the right thing. It was all very good-humored, because I wasn’t pitching him on that. On the Millennium Challenge, he was delivering. He was agreeing to the pitch, so it was a different mood. I was laying the ground for the next pitch, a historic AIDS initiative, but I didn’t want to be too overt. Now, getting a politician to sign a check and cash a check are two completely different things. Our organization, DATA, and other NGOs have to work very hard to make everyone keep their commitments. Every year there’s a budget, and our money could end up on the cutting-room floor.

  So have they come through?

  Not as much as I’d like, but yes, they have. If he makes good on his promises, President Bush will have doubled foreign assistance to Africa, the single biggest increase in forty years. Because of the deficit, though, it’s like pulling teeth getting to the right numbers. I have to say the person who has put the most time into all of this and the person who, if they deliver, deserves a place in the history books along with the President is Condoleezza Rice. Condi gave the keys to her office to a bunch of English activists, Jamie Drummond and Lucy Mathew from DATA—not just the rock star and the Ken
nedy.

  When Bush went to Africa, we advised on some of the sights, organized some of the people for him to meet, made sure he got to meet some of the real stars of this struggle. There’s a nurse called Agnes Nymura from Uganda. I know her testimony brought him to tears. He put his arms around her after hearing how AIDS had devastated her family. In the embrace, she whispered in his ear: “I know you’ve done a lot for us, but what about putting some more money in Kofi Annan’s Global Health Fund for TB, AIDS, and malaria?” She’s amazing, a powerful woman in such a quiet way, but . . . maybe someone whispered something in her ear.

  How did he react?

  I wasn’t there, but I’m sure it was a groan. It’s a sore subject. We’re always asking for more, but we’re right. United States, in the list of the twenty-two richest countries in the world, comes in at twenty-two in the percentage of national income spent on the poorest countries. And fifty percent of that goes to two countries: Egypt and Israel.

  And what about private philanthropy?

  Well, counting private philanthropy—and Americans are very generous privately—and adding to it the otherworldly generosity of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who are doing more on this than anybody ever, the United States still comes in at number fifteen. Now you tell that to Americans and their jaws drop open in disbelief.

  So would you reckon America’s about to change?

  Well, I think Americans are about to re-describe themselves, re-brand themselves through some of these development problems.

  How’s that?

  These AIDS drugs are great advertisements for what we in the West do best: our ingenuity, our science. For a small price, you can transform communities, millions of lives. I told President Bush: “Paint them red, white, and blue if you like, but where they go, they will also transform the way these communities see us.”

  America has been re-branding itself in Iraq. Isn’t brand USA in trouble?

  There is deep suspicion, not just in the Islamic world, but in the rest of the world about what we in the West stand for.

  The problem is that way too often they think we don’t stand for anything.

  As the United States got richer in the eighties and nineties and reached unimaginable prosperity—it’s the richest most powerful nation ever—it gave less and less per capita to the trouble spots in the world. The feeling was: Our military is keeping the world safe for democracy. We paid at the office already. But you can’t talk tough on terror and not talk tough on poverty. They balance each other, they’re a perfect rhyme. Colin Powell has been saying this for years, and he’s a military man. Maybe we should pay attention when the military admit the war against terror cannot be won by might.

  It seems to me, with perspective, that 9/11 actually revealed a phenomenon a minority was actually paying attention to: how widespread the disliking, even the hatred, for the U.S. was.

  America received two shocks that week—the shock of an attack, and the second, that there was so much support for that attack in certain quarters of the Islamic world. Pictures from Palestine, Indonesia, Pakistan, of regular men and women jumping up and down, celebrating the Twin Towers turning to dust will, I believe, be seen as a turning point. After the disgust, after the anger we all felt, there was some questioning: how did it come to this? Greatest nation on Earth, the country that fought fascism and sacrificed so much for freedom was so despised.

  Do you think war in Iraq—I mean its objectives—has a chance to make the situation any better someday?

  There are those who believe in the long term that establishing a beachhead for democracy in the Middle East is the only way to bring peace in the region. I’m not one of them. I only have to look to my own country to see what the presence of a foreign military can do for swelling the ranks of terrorism. The pictures of mistreatment in Abu Ghraib will have convinced many reasonable young Arab men and women that if they take up arms, they are the ones fighting for freedom. That makes me so sad and sick to the very pit of my stomach.

  So I’m asking you for the last time. Do you really like George W. Bush?

  We get on very well. As I told you, I couldn’t come from a more different place. We disagree on so many things. But I’m telling you he was moved by my account of what was happening in Africa. He was engaged. I think, when I’m sitting two feet from someone, I could tell if this was just politics. This was personal. I think, for all the swagger, this Texan thing, he has a religious instinct that keeps him humble.

  You mean that right-wing fundamentalist neo-con scary stuff?

  Actually, he’s a Methodist. It has to be said that most of the people in the Cabinet are not religious extremists.

  But you must have disagreed with him at some point.

  He banged the table at me once, when I was ranting at him about the ARVs [AIDS drugs] not getting out quick enough. You see, I’m Irish. When we get excited, we don’t pause for breath, no full stops or commas. He banged the table to ask me to let him reply. He smilingly reminded me he was the president. It was a heated debate. I was very impressed that he could get so passionate. And, let’s face it, tolerating an Irish rock star is not a necessity of his office.

  Many heads of state have tolerated you in their office. Let’s review them while we’re at it. Did Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard Shröder catch on to a melody you sang to him?

  I only met him a few times. We drank beer the first time. I had the impression that on another occasion he might be fun to have beer with. He was relaxed, smiling. On other occasions, he wasn’t so relaxed. I suppose it’s hard to relax when someone like me has their hand in your pocket. He guards Germany’s wallet after all. His finance minister’s a legend: Hans Eichel. He seems to have the chancellor on a very short leash. But East Germany cannot continually be blamed for lack of German leadership in development issues. The way they talk, you think it’s them that needed foreign assistance. On a serious note, I implored him not to be on the wrong side of history here. There are moments when a country has to step up to the plate for people outside of their borders, and this is one of them. I think we’re getting somewhere now. Fischer, the foreign minister, is an inspiring character, and I’ve had a lot of encouragement from the corporate sector. They think it’s time for Germany to take its place in the world again.

  Have you tried to put your hand in Putin’s pocket? I hear he’s a black belt of karate.

  He did ask me to go to work for him on Russia’s debt. He was joking, and I laughed, creating one of the worst moments for me ever captured in a photograph. Tony Blair had introduced me and Bob Geldof to him. It was a G8 meeting in Genoa. The city looked like a war zone. A lot of people got hurt in riots. A young man lost his life to an Italian policeman, and I was documented the other side of the riot line, laughing with the politicians. I did not know about this tragedy at the time, but it is an example of how my glad-handing and discussion approach can be badly misinterpreted and how sometimes I’m not as smart as I think. He was an expert. He was meticulously turned out, not a nose hair out of place, obviously a very big brain, and very charming. I wasn’t there to talk about Chechnya. Maybe I shouldn’t have been there at all.

  Do you get a lot of flak from the aggressive Left? In those moments, you’re a long way from the barricades.

  I know it would look much better for me to be standing handkerchief over my nose and a Molotov cocktail in my hand. But, you know, my deepest conviction is that making our intellectual case rigorous and keeping our support broad by a large peaceful grassroots movement is the only way we’ll get this job done. It doesn’t belong to the Left or the Right.

  But isn’t the Left more your friend than the Right?

  Not necessarily so. The Left may offer more money to fight AIDS or deal with the debt burden, but they scuttle off when we talk to them about trade reform. The CAP [Common Agricultural Policy] of Europe so supported by the Left denies African products access to our supermarket shelves while we flood them with subsidized produce.

 
Speaking of the CAP, I wonder what you make of my president [Chirac]. He certainly defends the French agricultural rights.

  Trade is a touchy and complicated issue. French farmers enjoy a lot of protection for their way of life. French cows have more money spent on them per day than most Africans earn. But you know what? This is one issue this rock star just cannot take on.

  Why is that?

  Cowardice. They’ll be throwing sheep over the walls of my nice villa. I don’t take a fight I can’t win.

  So you diplomatically avoided the topic when you talked with Chirac. Or maybe he pretended not to hear you on that.

  No. He acknowledged some things are going to have to change. My question was: “When?” He didn’t reply to that. What he promised me was that France would continue to act as interface between Europe and Africa. He seemed to know the terrain well. He has visited Africa many more times than any other non-African head of state.

  That’s for obvious reasons: former colonies.

  Yes, he admitted that. He seemed to genuinely have a feel for what was happening, and understanding. He rarely turned to advisers in our meetings. He was passionate. I told the assembling press corps outside that the purpose of my visit was to turn that passion into cash.

  He was passionate. But was he optimistic?

  Yes.

  Was he serious?

  Yes.

  So who’s your favorite politician?

  It would have to be Gorbachev, a genuinely soulful man who, following the courage of his convictions, left himself so open to criticism in what was the USSR. Some people despise him for the dismantling of that old giant. But without him, the twentieth century might have had a very different end.

  How often have you met him?

  Lots of times, and we talk every few months, even now. He came to Ireland once, and I forgot to tell Ali he might call. It was Sunday lunch in Temple Hill. Sundays, it’s like a train station in our house. People call over to sit around, eat lunch, drink wine. The front doorbell rang upstairs. Ali answered the door, not expecting to see the former head of the Soviet Bloc standing with a giant—I mean giant—teddy bear, his present for baby John.