[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
[October 12, 1994]
[Pages 1733-1737]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Interview With Ellen Ratner
October 12, 1994

    Ms. Ratner. I just want to say, President Clinton, on behalf of all 
the radio stations I work with and the Talk Radio News Service, it's 
really a pleasure to have an opportunity to meet with you. And I 
recently read your interviews in Talkers magazine. I'm delighted and 
glad that things are better with talk radio.
    The President. I like talk radio. I just think that it's like 
anything else; it depends on how you communicate. What I'm more 
concerned about is the way communication in America has stopped being 
communication and started being more not just advocacy but just sort of 
attack, attack, attack. I think that radio is kind of an intimate 
medium. People can imagine being there talking with you when they're 
listening to us. And I think it ought to be used to explore what we have 
in common as well as what divides us.

Foreign Policy

    Ms. Ratner. I would agree with that. And in terms of what we have in 
common, it's interesting, the last 2 weeks I've been around the White 
House covering what you've been saying. We've had President Mandela 
here, Gerry Adams has been in the United States, what's going on in the 
Mideast, I mean, this has really been an amazing time. What's it feel 
like?
    The President. Well, it has been a truly amazing time just to be 
here in the last 10 days. You mentioned that. It's a great tribute, in a 
way, to the United States that we're working for peace and making 
progress in so many areas.

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We had President Mandela. We had President Yeltsin. We had Gerry Adams. 
We had the Arab boycott lifted by Saudi Arabia and the other GCC 
countries. We had the Chinese Foreign Minister here, and we made some 
real breakthroughs there on getting their agreement not to sell 
missiles. We made a new trade agreement with Japan that I think is 
better than anything we've done with them in a very long time. It's been 
a very exciting 10 days.

Religion and Politics

    Ms. Ratner. You're also a man of faith. I know lately you have been 
meeting with religious leaders across the country, and they've been 
coming to the White House. What's going on? What is being accomplished? 
What are you trying to find out?
    The President. Well, ever since I've been here, I have met on a 
periodic basis with either ministers and rabbis or scholars about a 
number of questions but mostly relating to the concerns of religion and 
the concerns of the political sphere and how they overlap and what the 
role of faith is for citizens today. And we talk about it, because I 
think that on balance most people who have strong religious convictions 
are good citizens. Most of them pay their taxes, obey the law, raise 
their kids well, and show up when their country needs them in war or 
peace.
    And it bothers me that the only way that we think about religious 
people being active in politics is now under the guise of what's been 
called the Christian Coalition and involves people sort of signing off 
on an agenda, a certain agenda of political positions. Whereas I believe 
that people of faith come in all sizes, shapes, colors, political 
convictions and ought to be able to bring their concerns and their 
attempts to do God's will into the public arena. And so I just tried to 
do what I could both to gain more personal insight for myself but 
largely for my fellow Americans, to encourage people to get into being 
good citizens and to be active but also to be tolerant of those who have 
views that are different from theirs.

President's Inauguration

    Ms. Ratner. This has been a question that I've personally wanted to 
ask you since the Inauguration. You had the song ``Simple Gifts'' sung 
at your Inauguration. It's a personal favorite of mine. Why did you 
select that? What does it mean?
    The President. I think most of the great things in life are pretty 
simple and straightforward. And even though I guess I had a reputation 
as a policy wonk, which was probably well-deserved, I ran for President 
to do some fairly simple things. I wanted to restore the dreams of our 
children that they could be or do whatever they wanted to be or do. And 
I wanted people to believe that this was a country where we could come 
together instead of come apart. And that song seemed to capture that, 
the idea that the great things in life which flow from God are simple, 
profound, and they may be difficult to achieve, but they're simple and 
that we need not overcomplicate them to appreciate them and revel in 
them.

Administration Accomplishments

    Ms. Ratner. The print media now has begun slowly, I think, to 
discuss some of your successes.
    The President. Yes, it's amazing, reassessment or something.
    Ms. Ratner. The legislative session now is coming to an end. How 
would you evaluate it?
    The President. It's almost like a tale of two Congresses. The first 
one, Congress was one of the most productive in modern history. And it 
occurred mostly but not entirely last year, where we adopted a new 
economic plan which reversed trickle-down economics, brought the deficit 
down, asked the wealthiest 1.2 percent of our people to pay higher tax 
rates but lowered taxes on about 15 percent of our working families, 15 
million people. We brought the deficit down dramatically 3 years in a 
row for the first time since Mr. Truman was President because of that 
economic plan, with $255 billion worth of tax cuts--I mean, spending 
cuts and cuts in over 300 Government programs.
    Last year produced a dramatic expansion of trade with NAFTA and with 
the GATT agreement we got, which the Congress hasn't passed yet, but 
they will after the election. They'll come back and pass that.
    The third thing we tried to do was to increase investment in people 
and technology, and the Congress did a good job of that. We put 200,000 
more kids in Head Start. We're going to immunize 2 million children 
under the age of 2 by 1996. We passed a bill called Goals 2000 to have 
national world-class standards education for our classes, but have more 
local control of the schools at the same time. We passed a bill to

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improve apprenticeships in every State, so that more kids could leave 
high school and go to work and get good jobs if they didn't go to 
college. Perhaps the most important thing we did was we reformed the 
student loan program and made 20 million people eligible for lower 
interest student loans at longer repayment. And we, of course, passed 
national service, which allows young people to earn college credit by 
doing community service or earn money to go to college. So that was 
very, very good.
     We passed this crime bill after 6 years of haggling. And it's very 
tough in terms of ``three strikes and you're out'' and 100,000 more jail 
cells and 100,000 more police on the street. But it also has some good 
prevention programs that give our kids something to say yes to, drug 
treatment, drug education, job training, wholesome and constructive 
community-based recreation programs. So that was very good.
    With this reinventing Government initiative, it's been astonishing. 
We're reducing the size of the Federal Government to its smallest point 
since Kennedy was President. That's something Republican conservatives 
always said they were for, but we did that.
    Ms. Ratner. When I talk about it on talk radio, people say it 
doesn't happen. I mean, why doesn't this message sink in?
    The President. I don't know. I think because--that's why I think 
talk radio should be important to educate people, because so much of the 
press that comes out of here is based on conflict, process, the 
emergency of the moment. So a lot of the big things we do doesn't get a 
lot of press.
    But anyway, we reduce the size of the Federal Government by 272,000 
over this budget cycle. Now, we've already reduced it, already, just in 
20 months, by more than 70,000. But in the 5-year period, 270,000 will 
be taken off. That's the smallest Federal Government since Kennedy. 
We're giving all the money to local communities to fight crime, every 
cent of it. We adopted a procurement reform bill I'm going to sign in a 
couple of days, which means the end of the $500 hammer. It says 
Government gets to buy things at the cheapest, best price, and must do 
it.
    Ms. Ratner. I know. I saw it; it was great.
    The President. We just adopted a reform of the Agriculture 
Department to reduce it by thousands and thousands of people. You can 
apply for a small business loan now on a one-page form and get an answer 
in 3 days. These are things that were unheard of before. So that's been 
very good.
    So I would say in the area of the economy, in the area of crime, in 
the area of reinventing the Government, in the area of education and 
training, and finally in the area of just making Government work for 
ordinary people--we adopted the family and medical leave law, the motor 
voter bill to make it easier to vote, the Brady bill--things that 
matter, we have done a very good job.
    For the cities--a lot of your listeners live in urban areas--we've 
been trying to bring free enterprise to cities. The other party talked 
about it all the time, but they never did much. We have passed two major 
bills, one to create----
    Ms. Ratner. Actually, I've seen the results of that in Cleveland, 
Ohio, recently.
    The President. Yes, and it's beginning to work. We passed bills for 
empowerment zones. We passed bills to reform the way public housing 
works. We passed initiatives to set up community development banks to 
make loans to poor people. So all of that's been good.
    Now, what's the second part of Congress? What did we fail to do? We 
didn't pass health care reform; we didn't pass lobby reform; we didn't 
pass campaign finance reform; we didn't pass a bill to make Congress 
live under the laws they imposed on private employers. We haven't passed 
the safe drinking water act; we haven't passed the California desert 
bill; we haven't passed the Superfund bill, which is supported by 
everybody from the chemical companies to the Sierra Club.
    Why have we not passed those bills? Because there's strong special 
interest opposition, of course, but also because the leaders--the 
congressional leaders of the other party decided they wouldn't permit 
any of those bills to pass. And we've had--there's never been as many 
filibusters ever as there have been in the last 2 years. There have 
never been as much delaying tactics. So next year, we're going to have 
to come back on political reform, health care reform, welfare reform, 
and keeping the economy going.

Midterm Elections

    Ms. Ratner. Do you think if there's that slight possibility that 
Republicans gain control of the House or the Senate, that you're going 
to be

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seen more as a man of the people whose agenda really needs to----
    The President. Yes, in a funny--[laughter]--I suppose in a funny 
way, if people really got a dose of the alternative, they'd like me 
better, but that's just a part of the process of politics.
    But what I want the American people to focus on in this election 
coming up is the choice for them: not between Democrats or Republicans 
or Bill Clinton or not, it's what's good for them. The fact is that I 
set out to do three things: to get the economy going again, to take on 
the tough problems, and to make the Government work for ordinary people. 
We have made real progress in all those areas. We have the lowest 
unemployment rate in 4 years; 4.6 million new jobs; the highest number 
of high-wage new jobs in this last year, more than in the previous 5 
years.
    Ms. Ratner. More manufacturing, as I understand it.
    The President. Yes. We've got more high-wage jobs in this recovery 
than in the past 5 years combined. We've got 10 years of manufacturing 
job growth--10 months, excuse me, of manufacturing job growth in a row 
for the first time in a decade. So we're moving that way; we're making 
progress.
    Now if you look at what the Republicans have promised, they signed 
this little contract. They call it a Contract With America. I call it a 
contract on America.
    Ms. Ratner. That's what some people in talk radio are calling it 
also.
    The President. It's amazing. I mean, it's just what they did in the 
eighties. They promised everybody the Moon. They tell them what they 
want to hear. It's a good way to get popular and a bad way to wreck the 
country. I mean, it's a trillion dollars in unfunded promises. So if 
they give everybody these tax cuts, if they start Star Wars again, if 
they increase defense again, if they do all the stuff they promised to 
do, what will happen? The deficit will go up instead of down, Medicare 
will have to be cut drastically, the crime bill will never be funded, 
and jobs will be lost.
    Now, right now, we've got the deficit going down and the economy 
going up, a tough assault on crime, and a real attempt to deal with 
people's problems. Sure, we have not done everything; yes, we have a 
long way to go. But the answer is to keep going toward the future, not 
to go back to the eighties. That's what these people want. And I think 
that--what I want to do in the next month is to have an honest 
conversation about that. Why should we go back and try what failed 
before when what we're doing now is working and we need more change, not 
less?

President's Management Style

    Ms. Ratner. In closing, Mr. President, the broadcast media, some of 
them have been, I would say, almost brutal about your management style, 
but it's clearly working. I mean, there are some things that are 
happening. Some other people are saying that your management style 
actually reflects sort of a new philosophy of management. What is your 
management philosophy?
    The President. I believe in, first of all, delegating to my Cabinet 
Departments decisions that are made consistent with my policies but 
which don't need to be made here. I believe in making big policy 
decisions myself, after you get everybody in with the best possible 
ideas and let them argue them out. I think the idea that somehow a 
President should be able to know off the top of his head and be able to 
make a snap decision on how to reverse 12 years of economic policies, 20 
years of stagnant wages, and 30 years of social decline is a naive way 
of looking at things.
    And if you look at people--whatever people want to say about my 
management style, last year, according to Congressional Quarterly, we 
got more done with Congress than any administration since World War II, 
except for President Eisenhower in '53 and President Johnson in '65. We 
have reduced the Federal Government when the Republicans couldn't. We 
have increased the performance of the Federal Government. And we got the 
economy going again. So I think our management style is producing pretty 
good results. We've got Russian missiles that are no longer pointed at 
the United States for the first time since World War II.
    Ms. Ratner. Some people are saying it's a new model.
    The President. We've got a lot of things going. And I just think 
that part of it is, people think in patterns, and they think with 
preconceived notions of how decisions should be made. And a lot of our 
preconceived patterns are rooted in the organization of our thoughts and 
attitudes and actions that came out of World War II and the cold war. 
Now we're moving toward

[[Page 1737]]

the 21st century, when things are changing much more rapidly, when it 
requires a whole lot of knowledge from different sources to make good 
decisions, and when you're dealing with problems that developed over a 
long period of time and therefore may need some period of time to solve. 
In that sort of environment, a whole different decisionmaking process 
has to take hold. And you need to deal with different kinds of people 
and work in different ways to make things happen.
    But I think if I get scored based on what we actually did, I'll be 
satisfied. I just want the American people to know what kind of changes 
we're trying to effect. And I don't want them to turn back; I want them 
to keep going with us. Give us 2 more years to make these changes; then 
they can make a judgment about whether we did what we said we'd do.

Life in Washington, DC

    Ms. Ratner. One last question: How's it been living in Washington? 
You're new to this area; I'm fairly new to the area. I find it a tough 
place to be sometimes.
    The President. Well, you know, Harry Truman said if you want a 
friend here, you ought to buy a dog. [Laughter] But I must say first, 
it's a beautiful place; it's a magnificent place.
    Ms. Ratner. It certainly is.
    The President. Secondly, it is an honor--with all the difficulties, 
it is still an honor and a joy to come to work in this office every day. 
Next, my wife and I have a lot of good friends here. And our daughter 
has done wonderfully well. She's been blessed with a terrific school, a 
very difficult, challenging, but good school and wonderful friends. So I 
have no complaints about living here. I've enjoyed it very much, and I'm 
just trying to get up here every day and do the job the American people 
hired me to do.
    Ms. Ratner. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
    The President. Thank you.

Note: The interview began at 3:23 p.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House. A tape was not available for verification of the content of this 
interview.