    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [August 25, 1996]
    [Pages 1344-1352]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Interview With Wolf Blitzer, Jill Dougherty, and Claire Shipman of CNN
    August 25, 1996

    Teenage Drug Use

        Mr. Blitzer. Mr. President, first of all, thank you so much for
    spending some time with us.
        You've asked the American public to give you credit for your
    achievements. The budget deficit has gone down, there have been millions
    of new jobs created, the crime rate has gone down, but are you also
    willing to accept responsibility for the dramatic increase in drug use
    among young people since you've taken office?
        The President. Well, I'm certainly willing to say that our best
    efforts have not turned it around, and I'm very concerned about it.
        I talked about this in the State of the Union Address. I've been
    telling the American people for over a year that--myself, before we had
    a study--I've been making full disclosure here that we had a crime rate
    going down but a youth crime rate going up; we had a drug use rate going
    down but a youth drug use going up. Now, finally, the youth crime rate
    has started to go down. So about the only trend in all of America,
    whether it's economic or social, that's going in the wrong direction is
    this youth drug use. And it began, apparently, with a change in
    attitudes about 1990. The patterns, interestingly enough, are the same
    in Canada and in several European countries where both drug and tobacco
    use are going up among young people who either don't think it's
    dangerous or think they can take the risks. And I'm very, very concerned
    about it.
        Mr. Blitzer. Well, the accusation that Bob Dole and many other
    Republicans, of course, make is that someone was asleep on the job
    during these past 3\1/2\, 4 years while there's been this explosion in
    drug use among young people.
        The President. Well, that's not true, because we were not asleep on
    the job. And that's why I've been talking about it. Like I said, I've
    been talking about it a lot longer than they have; they waited for a
    study and an election season. I have been telling the American people in
    all these community stops I've been making for months and months and
    months, going back a year, that the one thing that's not going right in
    this country is that the drug use rate among young people is going up.

    [[Page 1345]]

        I don't blame them for it--Senator Dole and Mr. Gingrich--even
    though I think they're partly responsible for not supporting my safe and
    drug-free schools program and the other education, prevention, and
    treatment programs I've asked them for. But this is a very complicated
    thing. It's obviously going on in other countries, and it obviously
    started--all the experts say it began in 1990 with a change in attitudes
    about how dangerous these drugs are. We've done--it is true that we cut
    back the drug office in the White House, but I don't think anybody
    believes 100 people in a Washington bureaucracy control what happens in
    drug use.
        We have been more aggressive at interdiction than previous
    administrations. We have tried to support--we have, in fact, supported
    more school-based programs like the D.A.R.E. program for law enforcement
    officials. I have tried to be as active as I could in lifting up these
    programs that work at the community level and in helping people. But
    whatever we've done has not worked, and we all need to face that. But I
    don't know that placing political blame helps us very much. If anybody
    has got a better idea, I'd be happy to look at it. We have got to do
    something to turn it around.
        But it's clear--if you just talk to young people, it's clear that
    there has been in the last 5 years or so a real change in attitudes
    among a core of young people about whether it's dangerous or not, and
    that seems to be right at the root of what the problem is.

    1996 Election

        Ms. Dougherty. Mr. President, in his acceptance speech at the
    Republican Convention, Bob Dole indicted your administration for what he
    called, and I'll quote here, ``a corps of the elite who never grew up,
    never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never
    learned.'' Do you look upon that as a generational attack or an attack
    on you personally, and how do you answer it?
        The President. Probably a little bit of both. And a lot of it is
    just pure politics. Just take the young people--he's attacking the young
    people in the White House. One of the young men who works for me lived
    in a house trailer when he was a boy. George Stephanopoulos' people were
    Greek immigrants and clergy. And they're not all young. Leon Panetta is
    the son of Italian immigrants, a walnut farmer--he's a walnut farmer.
        I just think it's just another example of the kind of political
    rhetoric that's all too prevalent in our society today. If you can't
    defend your record and you can't run against the other person's record
    and their proposals, attack them personally, demean them, smear them,
    try to get other people to look down on them. I don't want to do that.
    And I have given our people strict instructions that we are to talk
    about the differences in our record and the differences in our proposal.
    We are not to attack them in that way.
        Ms. Dougherty. But isn't age an issue in this campaign?
        The President. Well, I don't know if he was making age an issue. You
    know, I've got a lot of older people working in the White House as well.
    General McCaffrey is part of the White House staff, and he's a four-star
    general and, before he left uniform, was the most decorated serving
    American soldier. So they're not all young. We're--none of us are as
    young as we used to be or nearly as young as we were when we showed up
    there. I think I'm the oldest man my age in America now.
        Ms. Dougherty. But is the age of Mr. Dole an issue?
        The President. No. I think the age of his ideas should be an issue.
    I think that people should evaluate which one of us can best lead them
    to the future. But there is no evidence that he is not in good health.
    There is no evidence that he was not able to physically discharge the
    duties of the Senate majority leader. He was in the Congress for 35
    years. There was never any evidence--he had one health problem, and by
    all accounts he seems, thankfully, to have completely rebounded from it.
        I think he would have to govern in a different way, perhaps, than I
    do. But you can be an effective President without putting in the hours I
    do. You don't have to do it exactly the way I do. And he wouldn't have,
    probably, the same agenda I would; it might not require that kind of
    time. But I think--I have no evidence that he could not serve
    effectively. I want to run on the differences in our ideas and our
    records, not on his age.
        Ms. Shipman. Mr. President, how do you assess Bob Dole as a
    politician? Imagine yourself for a moment a political strategist working
    for Bob Dole's opponent; how would you assess his strengths and
    weaknesses as a politician?

    [[Page 1346]]

        The President. Well, that's hard for me to do. But I think that his
    strengths are that he was in the Congress for 35 years and he knows how
    the system works. And he has a certain, probably, credibility and
    acquaintance with the people with whom he'd have to deal with if he were
    President and who would communicate him to the rest of the country. So I
    would say that is a strength. I also believe, as I've said many times, I
    think he genuinely loves our country and is often--not always but often
    right on his foreign policy instincts. Sometimes I think he's dead
    wrong, but a lot of times he's been right--not nearly as isolationist as
    some members of his party, some of the leaders.
        I think that the weakness I think he has is that I don't--from my
    perspective, I think his--I don't know that he thought through why he
    wanted to be President, what he wanted to do, so that here, right before
    the general election, long after he was the nominee, he adopts an
    economic theory that he had rejected all of his public life, this big
    tax cut which we can't afford, which will cause a big increase in the
    deficit and also cause bigger cuts in education, the environment, and
    the medical programs than we can afford. So I would say the idea, the
    theory of his campaign, is the biggest weakness.
        The other weakness, I think, is the record that he and Mr. Gingrich
    established in the 2 years when they were in control of Congress. I
    think they were wrong on a lot of things. And in the 2 years when I
    was--the first 2 years of my administration, the things they fought me
    on, I think the evidence has proved that I was right and they weren't.
        The economic plan--they said it would increase the deficit and break
    up the economy. It reduced the deficit by 60 percent and cut interest
    rates, and we got 10 million jobs. The crime bill--they said we were
    going to take people's guns away and the 100,000 police was a bad idea.
    And the crime rate is going down for 4 years in a row. They fought the
    family leave law; 12 million people have taken family leave, not lost
    their jobs, and taken care of their families and no harm to the economy.
    So I'd say those are the weaknesses.
        Ms. Shipman. But you mentioned as a weakness, for example, his
    economic plan that he just announced. And the polls show that his
    numbers have gone up after he's been talking about the tax cut.
        The President. Oh, no, I don't mean that it's bad politics, but I
    think it's bad for the country. Although I think the country will figure
    it out. I think they'll figure it out.
        You know, we did this before, and it didn't work. As I told the
    people here, there's not any individual watching this interview that
    would go to the bank and borrow money to give himself or herself a tax
    cut. And why would they hire someone to do it? Most middle class people
    will pay almost as much money as they get in tax cuts in higher interest
    rates.
        The Republicans--not me, the Republicans--last year put out a
    document which said if we don't get under a balanced budget plan,
    interest rates will be at least 2 percent higher. So if their plan
    prevails over mine, their interest rates will be 2 percent higher. We
    already know that. Wall Street doesn't believe in this plan. None of the
    business magazines believe in it. None of the commentators believe in
    it. Everybody knows that it's not going to do anything but blow up the
    deficit.
        If interest rates go up 2 percent, by the time people get through
    paying their home mortgage payments, their car payments, their credit
    card payments, they're going to eat up almost all the tax cut they get.
    They'd be better off under my tax cut, which is targeted to education
    and childrearing and IRA savings for first-time homebuying and health
    care and is fully paid for and will keep interest rates coming down and
    the economy going. That's my answer to that. His is popular at first
    blush, and a lot of the component parts of it I like immensely myself,
    but we cannot afford it. It's more than we can afford. It's better to do
    my targeted tax cut and balance the budget and grow the economy than do
    his big old blown-up tax cut and blow up interest rates and wreck the
    economy. That's the choice.

    President's Record

        Mr. Blitzer. Mr. President, a lot of the criticism, though, that he
    and others have lashed against you is that there was one Bill Clinton
    the first 2 years of your administration, more traditional Democrat with
    a Democratic majority in Congress, and that another Bill Clinton emerged
    these last 2 years--a new Democrat going back to your campaign of '92.
        The President. There's a huge problem with that argument. You can't
    marshal facts to support it.

    [[Page 1347]]

        Mr. Blitzer. Well, the health care initiative seemed--the accusation
    is that it was a Federal takeover of the health care system.
        The President. Wait, wait. Let's take the health care.
        Mr. Blitzer. That's the accusation.
        The President. Yes, and when did that accusation gain concert? After
    the interest groups that didn't want anything to be done to the health
    care system and spent $300 million against it.
        When the health care plan was first--first--released and only
    experts who knew something about what they were talking about commented
    on it, there wasn't a single, solitary soul said it was a Government
    takeover of the health system. Everybody says, ``This is a moderate
    plan; this is a mainstream plan; this is a market-oriented plan.''
        Mr. Blitzer. But your enemies succeeded in creating the impression--
    --
        The President. Well, they had lots of money on their side. They
    had--all the vested interest groups were campaigning against us because
    they didn't want change. So I just point out--you can't give me another
    example. Let me give you some examples.
        First 2 years, Democratic Congress, we reduced the deficit, gave 15
    million working families a tax cut, radically reformed the student loan
    program to lower costs and improve the repayment terms, passed the
    national service program, something I campaigned on. We passed the Brady
    bill. We passed the family and medical leave law. We passed the toughest
    crime bill in American history, with the Republican leadership fighting
    against us. It had 60 death penalties; it had 100,000 police; it had a
    ban on assault weapons. They were fighting against all that. That is
    what we did. We passed a bill to protect the pensions of 40 million
    workers; it was all private sector stuff.
        So if you look at our record in the first 2 years, it was a
    moderate, mainstream, progressive record. And the economy is in the
    shape it's in today mostly because of what we did in the first 2 years,
    not what we've done in the last 2.

    Education and Job Creation

        Mr. Blitzer. All right. Very briefly, if you had to pick two or
    three priorities, unfinished business for a second term, what are the
    two biggest--two or three biggest priorities, specific ones?
        The President. Okay. I'll give you one big one with two component
    parts. We've got our economic house in order today, and we're facing our
    social problems. That is, welfare is down; child support collections are
    up. We've already stipulated the only bad social indicator is teen drug
    use. The other things are moving in the right direction. But we don't
    have a country where every person can take advantage of this new global
    economy.
        So my first priority is education, is making community college as
    universal in 4 years as high school is today, with a $1,500 refundable
    tax credit for the first 2 years of education after high school, and
    making college available to everybody by a $10,000 tax deduction,
    hooking up all the classrooms to the information superhighway, and
    passing our other educational initiatives.
        My second priority--for the same purpose, to hook everybody into
    it--is devising ways to move people from welfare to work, so that this
    doesn't turn out to be just a cruel budget cut--welfare reform--but we
    actually create jobs for people to move from welfare to work and other
    unemployed people, and creating incentives to focus on the inner cities
    and the isolated rural areas which have been left behind. Those are two
    big priorities we have to focus on, and we can make a real difference if
    we do.

    Russia

        Ms. Dougherty. Mr. President, we wanted to try to get an
    international question in here and, quickly, one concerning Russia. And
    the essence of the question is, who is in charge in Russia right now?
    And there's a quick incident last week, where you had General Lebed, the
    security adviser, getting orders, some very important orders on
    Chechnya, and he said he didn't think that those orders had come from
    the President at all, that perhaps they came from somebody else. Now, do
    you have any explanation for that, and who has their finger on the
    button in Russia?
        The President. Well, I believe that President Yeltsin is in charge
    in Russia. That's my best information. I think we all know that he was
    exhausted after the campaign, that he's had some health problems. But I
    want to assure everybody that's what they are, they're health problems.
    Keep in mind, when he was not in the best health he waged a campaign for
    President through 11 time zones. We in America

    [[Page 1348]]

    have three, except in Alaska and Hawaii. So he is clearly in charge.
        Now, the Russian system has always been, for the last 2 or 3 years,
    somewhat chaotic compared to what we normally think of as ours. But I
    believe that they're making--and they seem to be making a little
    progress in Chechnya now. But what we all want for President Yeltsin is
    to get the rest he needs, get the medical treatment he needs, and return
    to full health and full steam. But there's no question that he's making
    the big decisions there.
        Ms. Dougherty. Do you think he should come to the U.S. or maybe to
    Europe for some treatment?
        The President. Oh, I think that's entirely up to him and his
    doctors; they can make that decision.

    Whitewater Investigations

        Ms. Shipman. Mr. President, for the last 2 or 3 years you and the
    First Lady have been under almost constant attack for Whitewater, to
    some extent, Travelgate. You have made the case that there has been no
    evidence, no proof of any criminal wrongdoing on either account to this
    point. But putting that aside for a minute----
        The President. No proof of civil wrongdoing. The Republican law firm
    hired by the Resolution Trust Corporation, at a cost of nearly $4
    million of the taxpayers' money, said that there was no ground to
    believe--not criminal but anything you could even bring an ordinary
    lawsuit against me or the First Lady or her law firm. It was not her law
    firm that was fined by the Resolution Trust Corporation; it was Kenneth
    Starr's law firm, the special counsel, who did not reveal that his law
    firm was under investigation by the RTC at the time he took over.
        Now, nobody in America knows that, for reasons I--I would have
    thought that was big news when this big Government agency comes out and
    says we didn't do anything wrong.
        Ms. Shipman. But we're still waiting for the special counsel's
    report, so we'll put----
        The President. Well, we may be waiting a long time for that.
        Ms. Shipman. Put all of that aside for a minute.
        The President. That's why we got a new special counsel, so it would
    go on past the election and into next year. That was the whole purpose.
        Ms. Shipman. Putting that aside, at least a dozen or more of your
    close friends, people you've worked with, your staff, have been pulled
    into this, have troubles because of the investigations into this. Some
    have lost their jobs; some face financial ruin; some are serving time.
    What do you think about that? How does that make you feel? And do you
    feel in any way responsible for their fate?
        The President. Oh, sure, I feel terrible about it. And I feel
    terrible that the abuse of the special counsel law that we have seen has
    taken place. I sure do.
        And Senator D'Amato--Senator Dole's national cochairman and Senator
    Dole's choice to be the ethics spokesman of the Senate--I feel bad that
    he could say the kind of things they said to a woman like Maggie
    Williams, who passed two lie detector tests, and still they stand up and
    smear and smear. I feel bad that totally innocent people can have their
    lives upset and have massive legal bills, only on a bunch of charges,
    and that now we've turned everything upside down in our legal system.
    Now you have to prove yourself innocent. There's no presumption of
    innocence. Somebody makes a charge; you prove yourself innocent; the
    next story is the new charges, not that you've proved yourself innocent.
        And I think this whole thing is turned badly upside down, and I
    think it has distorted America's system of government. I think a lot of
    injustice has been done. I certainly do. I have continued to cooperate.
    I have done everything I could. But this is not good for America. And
    there are a lot of Americans who will not serve in public life, I'll
    bet, because they've seen this now.
        Ms. Shipman. You don't feel any personal responsibility for their
    fate, that----
        The President. Of course I do. How could I know when I ran for
    President that the Republicans would actually get the press, some people
    in the press, to go along with the first special counsel in history that
    had nothing to do with the President's campaign, nothing to do with the
    President's administration, and where there was no evidence of
    wrongdoing by the President or the First Lady, and then proceed to
    report things so that half the people would think we had done something
    wrong and were covering something up? How could any person in their
    right mind have known that?

    [[Page 1349]]

        Yes, I feel terrible about it. And I'll tell you what I'm going to
    do----
        Ms. Shipman. Some of these investigations have turned up wrongdoing
    on the part of some of the people.
        The President. Well, let me tell you something. If you go to any
    town in America and you would give a special counsel no other job but to
    look into a person and anybody that person ever knew and you gave them
    more FBI resources than were used in the World Trade Center bombing--
    more FBI resources than were used in the World Trade Center bombing--and
    an unlimited amount of time and an unlimited checkbook, I'll bet you
    they could find some things wrong elsewhere, too. I'll bet you could.
        And I think everybody--sooner or later, everybody is going to know
    that. But there has still not been a single, solitary shred of evidence
    of wrongdoing by me, by my wife, by her law firm, by my administration.
    And if you look at the evidence in the D'Amato committee of my record as
    Governor, witness after witness after witness after witness said, ``This
    man did not do wrong. He went out of his way to do the right thing, the
    ethically right thing, even when he had to tell his supporters no.''
        Now, that wasn't news. So we have created a climate here where any
    old charge goes and you've got to prove yourself innocent. And then when
    you do, you don't even get credit for that; there's a new charge there.
    Now, that's the climate we're living in.
        Do I feel terrible about the completely innocent middle class people
    who have been wrecked financially by this? I certainly do. But I didn't
    abuse them. And it's high time that the people who abuse have to take
    responsibility for what they do. I will take responsibility for my
    actions, but the people who have abused them should be held accountable
    by somebody, somewhere, sometime.
        Meanwhile, I'm going to help them pay their legal bills if it's the
    last thing I ever do and I stay healthy.
        Mr. Blitzer. You're going to pay legal bills out of your pocket?
        The President. I'm going to spend whatever. When I'm not President
    anymore, if those people have legal bills, when I can, I'm going to do
    everything I can to help raise the money or to earn it myself and pay
    it. I think it is outrageous that these middle class people have had
    their lives wrecked by pure, naked, raw politics. It is wrong.

    White House Travel Office

        Ms. Shipman. Mr. President, do you want to see then some sort of
    legislation your staff has indicated similar to the legislation they're
    drafting in Congress that would pay the legal expenses of Billy Dale?
        The President. No. Well, see, here's the deal. Some of the people
    actually, ironically, can get their legal fees paid. This is an
    interesting thing. Some of the people can get their legal fees paid if
    they've ever been a target of the investigation. But the people that
    they're really working over are people they just keep calling as
    witnesses, just over and over and over and over again; they've never
    accused them of doing anything wrong. They're just playing with them,
    just having a big time, letting them run up one hundred, two hundred,
    and three hundred thousand dollars in legal bills. They don't care;
    they've got all the money in the world. They have no evidence they did
    anything wrong.
        I mean, if the American people really knew what had gone on in this
    thing, they would be appalled--appalled. But they haven't found out
    what's going on, and I don't know that they ever will.
        Ms. Shipman. But you don't support legislation to help pay those
    sorts of legal bills?
        The President. It depends on what the facts are. Yes, if people have
    never been accused of doing anything wrong, there's no evidence that
    they did anything wrong, they never agreed to plead guilty to any crime,
    they never agreed to do anything, and they got big bills just because
    Mr. D'Amato's committee called them three or four or five times, you
    bet, I would support legislation to pay their bills.
        But I think you have to be very careful about whose legal bills you
    reimburse for what purpose. You have to be very careful that you're not
    reimbursing the legal bills of people who admitted wrongdoing, I think,
    in this case or any other. But I think that there is a strong case to be
    made when these people--you know, I don't know how people defend
    themselves. The American people can't be sure that some people now don't
    plead guilty to crimes in the face of a special prosecutor because they
    can't afford to defend themselves.

    [[Page 1350]]

    Teen Pregnancy

        Mr. Blitzer. Mr. President, let me switch gears a little bit. I
    think we've exhausted the subject for now, but I'm sure we'll get back
    to it at some point in subsequent interviews.
        A very interesting conversation I had this morning in Chicago on the
    way to the airport--an African-American cab driver from the inner city
    in Chicago knew I was about to interview you, and he said, ``You know, I
    have one question I'd like to ask the President.'' And I said, ``Go
    ahead, what is it?'' He said, ``You know, I dread every day--I have a
    13-year-old daughter--I dread every day this conversation that I'm going
    to have with her. One day she's going to come home and say to me,
    `Daddy, I'm pregnant.' I know it's going to happen, and I don't know
    what to tell her if she tells me that. I know he has a daughter.'' If
    your daughter were to come home from school some day and say, ``Daddy,
    I'm pregnant,'' what would you do? What would you tell her?
        The President. Well, first of all, I want to compliment you and the
    other members of the press corps for permitting me to have a private
    family life and permitting my daughter to have a private life. And I
    think if I were to answer that question in just the way you asked it, I
    would be violating the very thing that I've asked you to give her. So I
    can't do that.
        But I can tell you this--two things. One, I've worked as hard as I
    know how to try to reduce the teen pregnancy rate with things that I
    know work and by promoting things that I know work. And we now have this
    national commission that's going to try to make it outlive my
    administration and go on.
        And secondly, I would hope that every daughter would feel that she
    could come home and tell her father that. I would say to that cab driver
    that he should be talking to his daughter now about all this in the hope
    that she never will get pregnant, but that if she ever did, God forbid,
    he should be able to thank his lucky stars that she wanted to come home
    and tell her daddy that. And they'll figure out what to do. They'll do
    the right thing. That's what families are for. And he ought to look his
    daughter in the eye and say, ``I don't want this to happen to you, and
    we ought to talk about it. But if it ever does, please come home and
    tell me. I'm the first person you ought to come to.''

    Adoption

        Mr. Blitzer. As a father, I can totally relate. Now, let me follow
    up a comment that the First Lady made. She mused recently about possibly
    adopting, now that Chelsea's getting ready to go to college. Is that
    something you've seriously thought about, a man 50 years old?
        The President. Yes, well, we've talked about it on and off over the
    years. I'll bet you we first discussed it, oh, probably 10 years ago,
    10, 11, 12 years ago, just the two of us, because we always wanted more
    children. Although we've been immensely happy with Chelsea, we've always
    wanted more children, and it just never worked out.
        We also are both intensely committed to adoption. Hillary was
    ecstatic when, in the minimum wage bill, that $5,000 tax credit for
    adoption and the bill banning cross-racial adoption prejudice, you know,
    all that passed. She was so happy.
        So we talk about it. But I think we need to, first of all, get this
    election by us, and then we need to really sit there and seriously think
    about what the implications of this would be for a child. Do you want to
    bring a child into the White House? I mean, adopted kids have enough
    trouble adjusting as it is, unless they're just infants. And I wouldn't
    want us to go in front of anybody else. I wouldn't want any kind of
    special treatment. We've got too many young couples out there trying to
    raise a family. And then if we decided we ought to wait until we get out
    of the White House, would we be too old--me especially; she's younger
    than I am.
        So those are the things we'd have to think about. But in general, I
    find it very appealing, and I think that--you know, we talk a lot about
    abortion and what could be made to make abortion more rare. And I think
    if we had a climate in this country of really--an adoption climate that
    was trusted by people, and we didn't have these hundreds of thousands of
    kids just trapped in foster care forever and a day, that the whole idea
    of adoption as an alternative to abortion might gain a little more
    currency in our country.

    Democratic Party

        Ms. Dougherty. We have just a very short amount of time, Mr.
    President, but a quick question. You're off to Chicago, and when the
    Republicans were out in California, they were depicted as a party that
    was split down the

    [[Page 1351]]

    middle over the issue of abortion. And here you are, off to Chicago,
    facing, we think, demonstrators from your own party who will be angry
    about welfare, about same-sex marriages. Here in Kentucky, there was
    some demonstrators today angry about--tobacco people angry about your
    decisions on smoking. Aren't the Democrats as divided as the
    Republicans?
        The President. No, no, no, not nearly. First of all, I think that
    there will always be issues, some cutting edge issues that will divide
    political parties. I think we all understand that. And the three you
    mentioned have caused us some division, I think particularly the welfare
    issue.
        I think most of our Democrats--even a lot of Kentucky Democrats came
    up to me today and said, ``You did the right thing. You're just trying
    to protect our children; we can live with this.'' It was really touching
    to see these people from Kentucky say that. So I think it'll be all
    right. And regardless, I did it because I thought it was right, so we'll
    just see.
        But on the welfare issue, we have Democrats, good Democrats, who are
    genuinely concerned that the way this bill is written, the States may be
    just trying to pocket money and walk away from the poor and their
    children and that they will be able to do that. Now, I just don't
    believe that. I think the same people that vote for us in Washington
    vote for these people at the State level. I think that--you know, we're
    putting up half the money, the Federal Government is, so we have the
    right to monitor this. We're going to monitor it very closely.
        And I think what this welfare reform bill does, because we put more
    money into child care and because we saved health care and because we
    saved aid to disabled children and because we saved the food stamp
    program and the school lunch program and because we're going to have
    other training funds that welfare people will now be eligible for, other
    Government funds that are already in the budget--I think that if we
    really work at it, we can create millions of new jobs for people who are
    hard to place and it will be wonderful.
        But I don't mind those people being there if what they really want
    is to take care of those folks, because I'm going to say to them, okay,
    who do you trust to implement this, Bill Clinton or Bob Dole?

    Terrorist Attack in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and TWA Flight 800

        Mr. Blitzer. Mr. President, we only have a few minutes, a quick
    question. You promised the American people that once you found out who
    was responsible for the bombing of the U.S. barracks in Saudi Arabia
    and, if it was a bombing, the TWA Flight 800, they would be held
    accountable. Are you any closer today to knowing who was responsible for
    either one of those incidents?
        The President. Well, I think it's fair to say we've made some
    significant progress in working with our friends in Saudi Arabia on the
    Khobar bombing. What we do not know is what all the connections are. We
    can't answer all the questions yet. So all I can tell you is, when I
    know what I believe the facts are, I will take whatever I think is
    appropriate action, based on the facts.
        With the TWA, the press reports I've seen are fairly accurate. We
    have some indication, limited, that there may have been an attack on the
    plane, but it is not conclusive. And the experts are working as hard as
    they can. They generally have a very good record of, in the end, being
    able to determine the cause. We've still got divers down there working,
    trying to bring up more wreckage. They believe they'll get it worked
    out.
        But I know it's an agony for the family members of the people who
    were killed, and it is certainly frustrating for me, too. But they're
    good people; they're working hard; they're doing their best. And I just
    don't think it would be responsible for me to jump the gun on this deal.
    We've got to know what the evidence says.
        Mr. Blitzer. Mr. President, we have to take a quick commercial
    break. We'll be back with some final thoughts from President Clinton
    right after this.

    [At this point, the network took a commercial break.]

    President's Future Plans

        Mr. Blitzer. Mr. President, you're either going to be a 50-year-old
    ex-President or a 54-year-old ex-President, and you're still a young
    man. Have you thought about what you're going to do?
        The President. Only a little. And I say that because when I ran for
    President, I ran knowing that this was a time of big transition and
    under-

    [[Page 1352]]

    standing fully that there was no way I could do what I needed to do in 4
    years. So I just have always in my mind planned about what we would do
    over 8 years. And I planned it out that way, not taking my reelection
    for granted but just knowing that we're going through this huge
    transition in how we work and live and relate to the world.
        So I haven't given it a lot of thought because I want to get America
    in good shape into the 21st century. But there are a lot of things I
    considered doing. I've considered practicing law with Hillary again,
    just hanging up the shingle and doing the things we wanted to do just
    for kicks. I've considered writing. I've considered teaching. I've
    considered trying to be useful in dealing with select problems at home
    and around the world that seem somehow intractable, that we don't show
    the kind of progress on I think we should. I just want to try to be
    useful to my country for the rest of my life without getting in
    anybody's hair. And sometimes on my real dreamy days, I even think I
    might get good enough at my golf game to play on the senior tour. But I
    think it's highly unlikely. [Laughter]
        Mr. Blitzer. Yes, I think you're probably right. It is highly
    unlikely.
        Mr. President, thank you so much for spending some time with us on
    your train trip on the way to Chicago. For my colleagues Jill Dougherty
    and Claire Shipman, we're very grateful to you in making this stop, and
    I hope we'll do it again.
        The President. Thank you. Me too.

    Note: The interview began at 5:19 p.m. aboard the 21st Century Express.
    Ms. Shipman referred to former White House Travel Office employee Billy
    Dale, and Ms. Dougherty referred to Security Council Secretary Aleksandr
    Lebed of Russia.