    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [September 30, 1994]
    [Pages 1666-1670]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Interview With Alan Colmes
    September 30, 1994

        Mr. Colmes. President Clinton, very nice to meet you. I've been an
    unabashed supporter of yours for a very long time, to the point where my
    listeners call me up and accuse me of being on your payroll. I'd like to
    dispel any such myth right now. [Laughter]

        The President. You're not on the payroll, but I appreciate what
    you've said.

    National Public Opinion

        Mr. Colmes. Thomas Jefferson said of democracy that ``democracy is
    cumbersome, slow, inefficient, but in due time, the voice of the people
    will be heard and their latent wisdom will prevail.'' How latent is that
    wisdom at this point in our evolution?
        The President. Well, I think what's going on in our country today is
    that people desperately want circumstances to change for themselves in
    their own lives, and they see things going on

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    around them they don't like: high rates of crime and violence and drug
    abuse and family breakdown, the continued economic uncertainty and
    insecurity, a lot of working people worried about their incomes, their
    ability to finance their kids' education, the stability of their health
    care, their retirement. And they are not sure that the Government ever
    works for ordinary people. And I think that that plus the atmosphere in
    which we operate up here, which is so contentious and so full of the
    conflicting messages spawned by all the interest groups, make it
    difficult for anybody to communicate through that. But what I have to do
    is to just keep working for the American people, keep fighting for
    change.
        You know, we've made a remarkable start, I think. It's just the
    beginning, but we've made a good beginning in restoring the economy and
    fighting crime and making this Government work for ordinary people.
    That's what I got sent here to do, and that's what I'm trying to do.

    Midterm Elections

        Mr. Colmes. Midterm elections are coming up, and just the other day
    the Republicans had a photo-op at the Capitol and they gave a 10-point
    plan. I wonder if you feel the American people will buy this and change
    the balance of power legislatively this November?
        The President. Well, the Republican contract, it's--I'm so glad they
    did it because they finally told the American people what I knew all
    along, which is what they're for. What they're for is to go back to
    trickle-down economics. They made over a trillion dollars worth of
    promises to the American people in this contract. And how they're going
    to pay for it is either to explode the deficit again, after we brought
    it down, or to cut Medicare or Social Security or never pay for the
    crime bill.
        It's the same old thing they did in the 1980's, and it poses a stark
    choice for the Americans in this election: Do you want to keep going
    forward with an economic plan that has brought the deficit down for 3
    years in a row for the first time since Truman, helped to produce over
    4.3 million new jobs, has got America ranked the most productive country
    in the world for the first time in 9 years, that's provided college loan
    relief for millions of Americans and done a lot of other things that are
    growing this economy? Or do you want to go back to the same old trickle-
    down economics that exploded the debt, reduced investment in people, and
    nearly wrecked this economy? I mean, that's basically what the choice is
    in this election.
        And their contract, basically, is a contract on America, puts out a
    contract on the deficit, puts out a contract on Medicare, puts out a
    contract on the crime bill. I mean, they're going to wreck it all if
    they got to implement these ideas. It's just--it's unbelievable, but
    it's really where they are.
        Mr. Colmes. How successful do you think they'll be in their attempt
    to take over Congress?
        The President. Well, if we can get out there and tell the American
    people the truth about our record, the fact that we have made a good
    start, that we've got a long way to go and this is no time to turn back,
    I think we've got an excellent chance to defy the experts and the
    pundits.
        In all but three elections in this century, the incumbent
    President's party has always lost seats in at least one House of
    Congress. And I think there's only been one election, in 1934, when the
    incumbent President actually picked up seats in both Houses. So this is
    a natural rhythm, but what's going on now is the country is going
    through a lot of changes. People are having a tough time. They do not
    know what this administration has done to make our good first start. I'm
    going to get that out there. And they need to know that it's just the
    beginning, because a lot of people haven't felt it yet.

    Health Care Reform

        Mr. Colmes. You've had an incredible string of accomplishments and
    perhaps the best first year legislatively of any President since
    Eisenhower. You've also cited Johnson's second year as a very successful
    year for him.
        The President. Yes.
        Mr. Colmes. But even your detractors, like Newt Gingrich, said
    you've had a great first year legislatively. Is it going to be more
    difficult in the second half of your first term, if there are more
    Republicans in Congress, for you to get things forth, like health care?
        The President. Well, sure it is, unless they decide that they want
    to get something done for America instead of something done for their
    party.
        Mr. Colmes. Is health care dead?
        The President. No, not at all. Look, we didn't get it in the first
    year, and I think the main reason we didn't get it is that the
    Republicans

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    decided they didn't want it to happen. I was willing to compromise; I
    reached out to them. But let me just give you the evidence.
        When I introduced my plan, I said, ``Look, folks, all I want to do
    is to help people control health care costs, protect the health
    insurance of people who have it so they don't lose it, and provide
    coverage for those who don't. Here's the best way to do it, I think. If
    you've got a better idea, let me know.'' When we started, there were 24
    Republican Senators on a bill to provide health care for all Americans;
    they did it in a different way. When we got to the end of the
    legislative debate, that number 24 had dropped to zero.
        Meanwhile, a Republican Congressman from Iowa said that the
    Republican leader in the House, Mr. Gingrich, had threatened them all
    that they must not cooperate. A Republican Senator was quoted in a major
    newspaper saying, ``We killed health care; now we can't get our
    fingerprints on it.'' And the guy who gives them all their ideas, Mr.
    Kristol, said that the one thing you can't do is to pass health care
    reform while a Democrat is President; it'll ruin the party. So they put
    party ahead of the health care interests of the country.
        But we can still get it. You know, things sometimes take longer
    around here. You just quoted Thomas Jefferson. I got the family leave
    bill on my desk to give people some time off from work without losing
    their job if a child is born or a parent is sick; it took 7 years for
    that. I had the opportunity to sign the Brady bill, which took 7 years
    to pass. The crime bill was around for 6 years. I signed a banking
    reform bill yesterday that's going to cut a billion dollars a year in
    regulatory costs, and it was around for 10 years. So sometimes these
    bills take longer. I think we can get health care reform, but the
    Republicans are going to have to be willing to cooperate and put their
    country ahead of politics.

    President's Approval Rating

        Mr. Colmes. Given these lists of accomplishments, is it incredibly
    frustrating for you when you see approval ratings not being where you
    feel they should be?
        The President. Well, I think--no, I think it's absolutely
    understandable, because people can only vote on what they know and what
    they feel. And you know, this country--I'll say again, these social
    problems that we have in our country, the crime, the family breakdown,
    the violence, the drugs, they've been developing over 30 years. The
    economic problems have been developing over 20 years. And the other
    party was in power for 12 years. I've been here 20 months. So, we've
    made a good step, but a lot of people haven't felt it.
        And because I have tried to change so much so fast, all the news the
    American people get is dominated by the conflicts, the process, the
    interest groups and all that kind of stuff, and the intense partisanship
    of the opposition. This election gives us an opportunity, gives me an
    opportunity to go out there and say, ``Hey, here's our record; here's
    what we've done; here's a good first start. They want to go back to
    trickle-down economics. You decide.'' Then the American people are the
    boss; let them decide.

    Republican Opposition

        Mr. Colmes. Do you feel the intense opposition you talk about is
    stricter or more strident against you than it's been against other
    Presidents, and why?
        The President. Well, I don't know the--a lot of the studies have
    said that this is the most highly partisan opposition that's ever been
    recorded. All I can tell you is what they've done. The Republican
    Senators voted 42 to 2 for the crime bill last year, when it wasn't an
    election year. And it came back this year, and they said all these
    prevention programs were pork. Well, they all voted for them last year,
    and they went from 42 to 2 for it, to 38 to 6 against it.
        We've got an important piece of environmental legislation right now
    pending in the Senate--it's passed the House of Representatives--the
    Superfund bill for cleanup of toxic dumps. Everybody in America, believe
    it or not, from the Sierra Club to the chemical companies, is for this
    bill, from the most extreme environmental groups to the industry groups.
    The only people who are against it are the Republican Senators who don't
    want us to have one more legislative accomplishment before the election.
    That is the fact.
        What I've got to do is just keep fighting for change, keep going
    forward. The American people are going to have to decide whether they
    want to keep going on a path that is bringing the deficit down and the
    economy up, that's addressing crime, that has--unlike the Republicans
    who talked about this, we've actually reduced the size of the Federal
    Government, the

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    Government's already 70,000 smaller than when I got here, and the law
    requires us now to take it down 270,000--or whether they're going to
    just go for that same old rhetoric where you promise everybody the Moon
    and explode the deficit and run the economy into the ditch. Now that's
    the clear choice in this election, and it's the--I think the American
    people, once they have a chance to think about it, will have a different
    view.

    Haiti

        Mr. Colmes. I would guess the most difficult decision a President
    would ever have to make would be whether or not to send young people in
    this country into war. As you've struggled over this, vis-a-vis the
    Haiti situation, what kind of internal conflict have you gone through?
        The President. Well, I think first of all, the President's first
    responsibility is to the security and safety of the American people. At
    the end of the cold war when our interests, our--excuse me, our security
    doesn't seem so imminently threatened by nuclear weapons, I still have
    to work hard on that. That's what I worked hard with President Yeltsin
    on; that's why we're so engaged in these very tough negotiations with
    the North Koreans.
        But there are other things that affect our interests as well as our
    values. And one of the things that makes us secure today is that nearly
    everybody in our neighborhood, that is, in the Caribbean and Latin
    America, are democracies, and they're trading with us and working with
    us, and they're going to help us move into the next century. There are
    only two exceptions, and Haiti is the only country where a
    democratically elected President was overthrown by military dictators
    who proceeded to launch a reign of terror.
        So, I'd thought about it for a long time, and I worked for over a
    year and a half to give those people every single solitary opportunity
    to leave power peacefully, to restore democracy, to stop a flood of
    refugees coming for this country, and to give that country a chance.
    Meanwhile, we fed a million Haitians every day, we sent medicine down
    there, and we exhausted all diplomatic alternatives. So that's--when I
    decided to use military force there, it was because I thought there was
    no other alternative. Having made the decision, I decided that I would
    give the peace mission a chance to go down there and tell them, ``The
    President has made this decision. Now you have a decision about which
    way you are going to leave and under what circumstances and whether you
    are going to try and keep the country peaceful and whole.''
        I'm glad that the peace mission worked out, although, as you know,
    we already had over 60 planes in the air at the time that they finally
    agreed to leave. It was a difficult decision, but I thought in light of
    the human rights violations and the interest that we have in protecting
    our own borders and the interest we have in stability and democracy and
    growth in our area, it was the right one. And I might say, I'm very,
    very proud of what our soldiers have done there. If you look, just this
    week, we've got the Parliament meeting, the mayor has returned from
    hiding, electricity has been doubled, we've got refugees going back from
    Guantanamo to Haiti, and we started the gun buy-back program. So I feel
    good about what they're doing. You ought to be proud of them.
        Mr. Colmes.  What will happen if Cedras refuses to relinquish power,
    or if the Parliament doesn't vote the amnesty which is part of the pact
    that was made? What happens then?
        The President. Well, the pact said that we would do our best to
    reconstitute the Parliament and encourage them to vote an amnesty bill
    but that, in any case, they would have to leave on October 15th, they
    would have to give up power, whether or not they got the amnesty bill in
    fact passed.
        We committed to support the amnesty bill last year when Mr. Cedras
    came here and made his agreement with the United States and with Haiti
    and with the United Nations. And when the time came--and President
    Aristide put out the amnesty proclamation and told the Parliament he
    expected them to vote for it, and he would sign it. And when the time
    came, he wouldn't leave. So a lot has happened between now and then, and
    they've got to work through this.
        But I think the Parliament will do the right thing. I think that
    they will work through--they're debating not only whether to give it but
    what the terms of it ought to be, what the reach of it is. All these
    things are for the Haitians to resolve. But regardless, they are going
    to have to leave power.
        Mr. Colmes. Is there a contingency plan in case Cedras doesn't
    leave, once again?
        The President. Well, the contingency plan is that they will leave
    power on the 15th, regard-

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    less. That's what the United States is doing there.
        Mr. Colmes. But there's no chance that Cedras will refuse to leave
    power?
        The President. Well, I believe he will honor his agreement, but if
    he doesn't, he'll have to leave anyway.
        Mr. Colmes. A lot of people who otherwise are supportive of taking
    democracy and helping to install it in a place like Haiti have problems
    with the fact that the spearhead at the top of this is Aristide and that
    he does not represent the best hope for democracy--he's been called a
    Marxist, he's been accused of necklacing--and that even those who might
    support such a policy toward Haiti have a more difficult time because of
    who the person is who's President of Haiti.
        The President. I think he would say that given the long history of
    violence and bloodshed and all the animosity that existed in Haiti at
    the time he became President, he may have said some things, or his
    supporters may have said some things that they would just as soon not
    have said. But the international human rights monitors who have been in
    Haiti say that during the months when he was President, the human rights
    record in Haiti was better than it was before he became President and
    much better than it's been since he left office.
        Moreover, in the years he's been out of Haiti, he has made repeated,
    consistent commitments to avoid violence, avoid retribution, avoid human
    rights violations. Furthermore, keep in mind, this time when he goes
    back into power, he will have forces from 29 or 30 countries there
    monitoring the situation, preventing human rights violations. And if he
    wants to succeed as President, which I believe he does, he needs the
    international aid package and the help in conducting parliamentary
    elections, all of which require an observance of human rights and not
    abusing the rights and interests and the lives of the minority.
        So I think the American people and the people of the world can have
    a pretty high level of confidence that President Aristide will do what
    he says. So far, in all my dealings with him, he has kept every
    commitment he has made. And that's all you can ask of anybody. And he's
    made an ironclad commitment that he will not support violence.

    The Presidency

        Mr. Colmes. Mr. President, I know your time is limited, and I thank
    you very much for spending some time with us, but you know, I do have to
    in conclusion ask a really tough question. Is being President fun? Are
    you having a good time doing this?
        The President. Yes, I am. Believe it or not, it's not all--when
    people's lives are at stake, it's not always fun. When you're fighting a
    tough battle where you think you're fighting for something good and
    you're willing to compromise with the other side and they're playing
    politics, that's not always fun.
        But it is a real joy and a profound honor to just have the
    opportunity to come into this office every day and try to stick up for
    ordinary Americans and fight their fight and make their lives a little
    better. And whether they know it or not is not so important; it's not so
    important what they think of me on a daily basis. What is important is
    that I think of them on a daily basis, that I keep fighting for them.
    And I think the end will bring us out all right.
        Mr. Colmes. How do you get them to know that, though, so they
    appreciate what they may not know about your day-to-day machinations?
        The President. In part, that's what the elections are all about.
    That's what interviews like this are all about. I have to--I may have
    worked too hard on too many things for the last 2 years and spent too
    little time trying to directly communicate. I've worked hard at it, but
    I'm going to work even harder.
        But the main thing is that I show up for work every day and fight
    other people's fights. And then when elections come, I go out and make a
    report to the people; they make their own judgment.
        Mr. Colmes. Thank you very much, sir, for communicating here with us
    and our audience.
        The President. Thank you.

    Note: The interview began at 2:40 p.m. in the Cabinet Room at the White
    House.