As I thanked him and got up to leave, I noticed on one side of his desk a portrait of Churchill, the great twentieth-century master of political theater, and flanking it, on the other side, a framed piece of sheet music, a march written for Ulysses S. Grant by a composer who also wrote music for the wedding of Grant's daughter. A souvenir of Grant might seem an odd choice for a Southerner like Clinton, but it made sense to me. Grant is the president I most associate with Clinton, who shares Grant's commitment to the principle of the separation of Church and State: With judicious tact, Clinton never once that I heard during this trip invoked the name of God in nations where this might be construed as condescending celestial imperialism. Like Grant's, his second term was scandal-ridden. Grant's successor, too, ascended to the presidency after a controversial election, prompting Grant to comment, "No man worthy of the office of president should be willing to hold it if counted or placed there by fraud." Grant, like Clinton, was a champion of civil rights. Grant saw the future of his wilderness country in creating unifying transportation and trade throughout its borders, knitting coast to coast. Clinton sees the same opportune necessity in integrating the United States fully into a world in which every country begins to share borders. And, like Grant's, Clinton's popularity has soared since he left the White House. But above all, Clinton is Grant's descendant as a Reconstruction president; as Grant struggled with reuniting the North and South, famously accepting his nomination for president with the words, "Let us have peace," Clinton struggled with the aftermath of the civil war that the Appomattox of Vietnam created in the United States. In 1968, one hundred years after Grant took office, the process of Reconstruction was fulfilled, if not concluded. It will be at least as long, especially now that Vietnam has been refracted through the prism of Iraq, before the reconstruction Clinton intended is complete.

Clinton's aspirations are now even greater than his political ambitions, and far harder to achieve. To make permanent changes in people's lives through philanthropy requires the most disciplined balance of knowledge and self-knowledge, the most precisely calibrated examination of the consequences that might follow from every action. The work of philanthropy is the work of wrestling with an angel. I thought about this as I watched Clinton climb Mount Meru in Angkor Wat, the symbolic ladder from earth to heaven. In 2001, when he left office, he repeated his famous folksy promise, "I'll be with you until the last dog dies." Now, I think, he will not let you go unless you bless him.