Clinton Bids Long, Slow Farewell to White House

For Bill Clinton, it was a long, slow goodbye. He stayed up all night packing, worked until the last minute, lingered in the Oval Office and, as he walked out of the White House, sat down at a piano and swayed along as a musician played "Our love is here to stay."

"You gave me the ride of my life, and I've tried to give as good as I got," Clinton told about 2,000 members of his administration and supporters at a departure ceremony at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington on Saturday.

Clinton then flew to New York City and headed to the family's home in the suburb of Chappaqua, which will be his base for the next few months as he decides what to do with the rest of his life.

"Thank you for being here today in this cold weather with this cutting wind to welcome citizen Clinton home," he told another crowd of well-wishers at John F. Kennedy airport. "I am grateful to be here."

Aides said Clinton was in a good mood as he and several dozen friends and staffers left Washington on one of the Air Force's two presidential 747s, but they acknowledged some melancholy was inevitable.

"He loved being president. He absolutely loved the job," Clinton friend Terry McAuliffe told reporters on the plane, saying Clinton had stayed up all night packing and soaking in the White House. "He'll miss it greatly."

Aides wandered the plane taking snapshots and reminiscing as as they made their last flight, which the Air Force designated Special Air Mission 28000 rather than Air Force One, which belongs only to the airplane carrying the sitting president.

"DON'T BE SAD"

In his final half hour in the Oval Office, Clinton wrote a note to his successor, President George W. Bush, and consoled some of his aides who were crying after eight years at the White House.

"Don't be sad. This is a good day," Clinton told the aides, according to his chief of staff John Podesta. "We're leaving with our heads up."

As he left the Oval Office, Clinton turned around to gaze out its windows at the manicured White House lawn a last time before joining his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, to greet Bush and his wife, Laura.

In an old ritual, the outgoing president and his successor sipped coffee together in the White House Blue Room and then rode to the Capitol for the swearing-in ceremony that formally ended the Clinton presidency and began the Bush era.

As the two men stood in the White House Grand Foyer, waiting to stroll to their bullet-proof limousine, Clinton could not resist sitting down at the piano to listen to a rendition of "Our love is here to stay."

For many Clinton supporters, the song's refrain rings true.

Most of Clinton's Cabinet came out to Andrews Air Force Base to send him off to New York, joining several thousand people in a cavernous aircraft hangar, some carrying signs that read "Please Don't Go."

Gesturing at the signs, Clinton suggested he would continue to play a role in public life, although he has promised to stay out of the spotlight for a while to leave the stage to Bush.

"I left the White House, but I'm still here. We're not going anywhere," he said. "If you really believe in what we did these last eight years, you do not have to be in the position of power in government to advance those causes."

He also appeared to hand the mantle of leadership to his wife, saying, "We've got a senator here who will be a voice for you."

"WE DID A LOT O? GOOD"

He recalled the words of Podesta as the two left the Oval Office for the last time. "He was tearing up a little bit, and he said, 'We did a lot of good. We did a lot of good. We did a lot of good.'"

Making good on his vow to keep working to the last hour of his presidency, Clinton announced pardons and sentence commutations for 176 people, declared a national monument on Governors Island in New York, and announced funding to add 1,400 police officers nationwide.

Clinton left office with an approval rating of about 65 percent, but is held in low regard personally because of scandals such as his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

He reached a deal with independent prosecutor Robert Ray on Friday to avoid being indicted on perjury charges in the Lewinsky case. In a related deal to avoid losing his Arkansas law license, Clinton accepted a five-year suspension of the license and paid a $25,000 fine.

Clinton, at 54, is the youngest ex-president since Theodore Roosevelt, who was 50 when he left office in 1909.

He has not announced any plans for what he will do next. Aides said he planned to spend the next week hanging around the house in Chappaqua, playing golf and relaxing.

Despite an icy rain and a biting wind, Clinton lingered to shake dozens of hands at the airport and then retreated to a black Ford van, where he signed autographs for another 15 minutes.

Finally, as the crowd began to disappear, Clinton's long motorcade pulled away with the president, his wife and their daughter Chelsea ensconced in the van rather than the long black limousine he has enjoyed for the past eight years.

Within minutes, the Secret Service agents had disappeared, the Air Force 747 had headed back to Washington and the hangar was all but empty.






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