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And then there were the scandals involving his personal financial dealings. So complicated were his many business interests that he found it impossible to put his assets into a blind trust when he took office. During the past four years, he endured a variety of separate investigations into his finances. Although none of the charges were ever proved (the most recent Justice Department case was dropped last week after his death), the scrutiny was capitalized on by G.O.P. budget cutters who were targeting the Commerce Department for elimination. The unsavory news stories also made it unlikely that Clinton would tap Brown to run the 1996 campaign. Between June and December of last year, he was largely frozen out of the White House's re-election effort. In January, however, Clinton decided to invite him into the Wednesday-night strategy sessions in the private residence.
Last Tuesday, Brown and Labor Secretary Robert Reich were attending a two-day Group of Seven conference in the French city of Lille. Poised to descend the grand stairway at their hotel, both men suddenly realized they were being watched by a crowd of reporters and photographers below. Brown leaned over to Reich and offered the kind of quip that captured his instinct for politics, his sense of timing and his self-deprecating humor. "The only way people will think we are doing something important," he told Reich, "is if we stand up straight, walk fast and let our arms swing." So they did.
Many admirers referred to those qualities last week, but Mario Cuomo's son Andrew probably captured them best when he recalled a visit to Los Angeles in March 1993, when Brown and Cuomo were delivering an aid package to the city. Outside a sporting-goods shop staffed by former gang members, Cuomo and Brown played basketball with the ex-gangsters for the benefit of the TV cameras. "The gang people were big," said Cuomo. "This was not going to be much of a contest. So Ron took the ball, and with the cameras rolling, he set up at half court and sent a single shot at the hoop." Swish. The gangsters cheered. Ron Brown turned and walked away. Game over.
--Reported by Ann Blackman, Margaret Carlson, Michael Duffy and Mark Thompson/ Washington and Eric Pooley with Clinton