Is this Good or Bad?

Obama taps former Presidents for

Haiti relief role

03:09 PM CST on Saturday, January 16, 2010

By TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News
tgillman@dallasnews.com

WASHINGTON – A trio of presidents joined forces Saturday on behalf of Haiti, setting aside rivalries after a huge earthquake devastated the hemisphere’s poorest nation.

“Americans have always come together to lend a hand and to serve others and to do what’s right,” President Barack Obama said in the Rose Garden, flanked by George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

“By coming together in this way, these two leaders send an unmistakable message to the people of Haiti and to the people of the world: In these difficult hours, America stands united,” he said. “We stand united with the people of Haiti, who have shown such incredible resilience, and we will help them to recover and to rebuild.”

Obama is tapping the power of the ex-presidency just as Bush did five years ago when a tsunami swamped Indonesia. Then, the unlikely duo was Clinton and Bush’s father. Now, a year out of office, it was the younger Bush’s turn to work with the Democrat to blunt a humanitarian crisis.

“I know a lot of people want to send blankets or water. Just send your cash,” Bush said from the Rose Garden where he presided for eight years. “One of the things that the president and I will do is to make sure your money is spent wisely.”

Bush and Clinton spent about three hours at the White House, meeting in the Oval Office with Obama and taping five joint interviews for Sunday talk shows to draw attention to their new Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.

It was Bush’s first White House visit since Obama’s swearing-in a year ago Wednesday, and it also marked his first foray into post-presidential public service.

It took a massive temblor to set up Saturday’s shotgun wedding.

Bush campaigned in 2000 on restoring honor and dignity to the Oval Office after Clinton. In turn, he bore the brunt of Obama’s campaign rhetoric and even a few days ago, Obama was still bemoaning the sorry state of affairs he inherited.

Bush has kept his qualms about Obama to himself, though his vice president, Dick Cheney, and assorted underlings haven’t been so reticent.

As for Clinton, he openly dismissed Obama as underprepared during his wife’s 2008 presidential bid.

Such things were set aside on Saturday, though bonhomie wasn’t entirely on display either.

Bush looked uncomfortable as Clinton draped an arm around his shoulder at one point, and none of the presidents called each other by first name in public.

But there was clearly a grim sense of shared purpose.

And there were lighter moments, as when Clinton said that “I’m just grateful that President Bush wants to help, and I’ve already figured out how I can get him to do some things that he didn’t sign on for.”

Clinton and the first President George Bush raised $135 million after Katrina and other hurricanes devastated the Gulf Coast. They were widely credited with raising $1 billion after a tsunami hit Indonesia in late 2004.

As Obama noted, “This is a model that works.”

“We want to do what I did with the president’s father in the tsunami area,” Clinton said. “We want to be a place where people can know their money will be well spent; where we will ensure the ongoing integrity of the process.

“And we want to stay with this over the long run,” he said.

R. David Paulison, who led the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Bush’s last three years and now works with the Command Consulting Group, called the Bush/Clinton pairing “extremely useful” – both to demonstrate U.S. purpose and, on a practical level, make long-term efforts feasible.

“We’ve got hundreds of thousands of people who are homeless… This is going to be the toughest recovery for a country that I’ve seen,” Paulison said. “Politics makes strange bedfellows [but]… there has to be some type of a symbol that yes, the United States is committed to this and it’s not just shoved into some bureaucratic desk somewhere.”

Questions remain. How effective can Bush be at raising funds? Will Obama seek his advice or will he serve a mainly symbolic purpose?

No doubt, ex-presidents command attention.

They know how to weed out information. They have access to the White House, State Department, foreign leaders, donors, corporate titans. They have legions of well-connected former aides.

Working together across political lines adds credibility and urgency to the cause, and those involved in tsunami and hurricane efforts have no doubt Obama made a smart choice calling on his predecessors last week.

“They each asked the same simple question: How can I help?” Obama said, urging Americans to donate to the new fund at www.clintonbushhaitifund.org.

The fund will be jointly administered by the William J. Clinton Foundation in Little Rock, and the Dallas-based Communities Foundation of Texas, which manages nearly 900 funds on behalf of donors and has awarded over $1 billion in charitable grants.

The foundations will accept donations, issue receipts, manage the assets and eventually disburse the funds to the Red Cross, Salvation Army, World Vision and other groups.

“There is some flexibility to assess the needs in Haiti as they evolve,” said Communities Foundation president Brent Christopher, reached by phone Saturday.

He called it “terrific” to see the ex-presidents cooperate.

Bush’s own foundation is focused on raising money to build his library and policy institute in Dallas, so he took the same approach his father took by enlisting the Greater Houston Community Foundation for his work with Clinton.

“They generate a lot of collateral philanthropy,” said Stephen Maislin, president of Houston foundation. “The cameras follow them and they can really highlight whatever the needs are.”

And, he added, “People really like the idea that it’s bipartisan or nonpartisan, take your pick.”

Clinton and the elder Bush traveled extensively together and formed such a close bond that George W. Bush would joke that the Democrat became the son his father had always hoped for.

There are no immediate plans for them to visit Haiti.

Clinton already serves as United Nations special envoy on Haiti. He noted with visible sadness the casualties among U.N. workers and destruction of sites he has visited in Port-Au-Prince, where his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, returned to on Saturday.

As Bush put it, “Our hearts are broken when we see the scenes of little children struggling without a mom or a dad, or the bodies in the streets…

“The Haitian people have got a tough journey, yet it’s amazing how terrible tragedies can bring out the best of the human spirit,” Bush said. “We’ve all seen that firsthand when American citizens responded to the tsunami or to Katrina or to the earthquake in Pakistan. And President Clinton and I are going to work to tap that same spirit of giving to help our brothers and sisters in the Caribbean.”

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