[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[August 30, 1996]
[Pages 1425-1430]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Interview With Tabitha Soren of MTV
August 30, 1996

    Ms. Soren. Welcome, Mr. President, to our Choose or Lose bus.
    The President. Thank you.

Antidrug Efforts

    Ms. Soren. Thank you very much for taking the time to do this on 
your bus tour.
    In your speech last night you said that drugs were wrong and deadly. 
But on MTV a couple of years ago, someone asked you if you could 
inhale--if you could do it over again, would you inhale, and you said, 
``Yeah, I tried the first time.''
    The President. That was true.
    Ms. Soren. Do you wish that you had answered differently? Because 
Republicans are planning on using this to attack you.
    The President. Oh, they're using it, but all I said was--I was just 
trying to make the point that I had never--when I answered the question 
I told the truth. I just told the truth about the question.
    Ms. Soren. It was a joke?
    The President. Yes.
    Ms. Soren. The question was, in context, it was a light-hearted----
    The President. It was a light-hearted question, and it wasn't in the 
context of some sort of endorsement of drug use, and they know that. If 
you look at the record I established as Governor, the record I've 
established as President, the things I've worked on, and if you look at 
the terrible price my own family has paid and my brother's problem which 
literally nearly killed him, I think that my position on this is clear.
    I'm very concerned about it really because every so often, you know, 
years go by and we see drug use going down. We still see drug use going 
down among adults; that's the interesting thing. In the last 4 years, 
drug use among people 18 to 34 has gone down because people have begun 
to think more about their own lives, their responsibilities then when 
they have children, and they began to be concerned about the risks.
    But every few years, apparently, younger people believe it's not 
dangerous anymore and believe that the risks, if there are any, can be 
borne. The risks of, let's say, cocaine, heroin, and hallucinogens and 
marijuana are different kinds of risks, but there are real risks 
associated with all of them. And I'm very hopeful, now that General 
McCaffrey has come on and agreed to be our drug czar and we're focusing 
now--I wouldn't say exclusively but clearly primarily on people under 
18, that we and people around the country will be able to do something 
about this.

Democratic National Convention

    Ms. Soren. I wanted to ask you another question about the 
convention. I think a lot of people were confused by what they saw at 
both conventions; they saw singing Senators and delegates macarena-ing. 
Obviously it's a party, you know, but many people didn't hear the 
message coming from the conventions.
    For instance, obviously Christopher Reeve has done a lot of good for 
people who suffer from his disability, but why is his disability an 
argument to vote for you?
    The President. For two reasons. One is, Christopher Reeve made an 
impassioned plea for research. In my budget we have consistently 
invested more in research, both in health care areas like spinal cord 
disease, breast cancer, HIV, and AIDS, and also in science and 
technology. We're now building with IBM a computer, a supercomputer that 
will do more calculations in a second than a person with a hand-held 
calculator could do in 30,000 years--30,000

[[Page 1426]]

years. It's unbelievable. And I believe that it's very important to vote 
for a President who believes in the future and who is really committed 
to science and technology and research.
    The second reason is, as Christopher Reeve so eloquently told me 
when we were visiting in the Oval Office, not everyone who gets a 
serious injury and becomes disabled is wealthy; most people aren't, and 
even wealthy people can quickly be bankrupted by the cost of care. The 
Medicaid program which the Federal Government has maintained for 30 
years contains a guarantee of aid to families with disabilities who are 
middle class or below, to enable them to maintain a middle class life, 
to keep their jobs, and still give their disabled family member some 
help.
    In the budget--which I vetoed--of the Republican Congress, which 
Senator Dole and Mr. Gingrich led through Congress, they would have 
removed that guarantee, just sent some money to the States, put a lid on 
it, and then let the States decide what to do. And I think it's highly 
likely that the first people to be sacrificed would have been people 
with disabilities.
    So those are the two reasons that his being there embodied the human 
connection to the President and his actions, the Congress, and what 
happens to people's lives. And every other person that was there on 
Monday night, the same thing. The Brady bill, it was obvious because 
they talked about it. Mike Robbins, the Chicago police officer, was 
riddled with bullets by an assault weapon. The young AmeriCorps girl was 
important because the Republicans have tried to abolish AmeriCorps 
twice. The educator is important because they wanted to cut back on 
educational aid; I wanted to invest more money in education. So 
everybody there--the Toledo autoworker was important because we've 
opened new markets to Japan and other parts in the world and America is 
number one in auto production again.
    So we started our convention in a very different way. We had a whole 
series of citizens speaking to establish the connection between their 
vote and their lives.

1996 Election

    Ms. Soren. Speaking of Senator Dole and the Republicans, the 
Republicans are accusing you of theft of their values agenda, stealing 
their ideas and making them your own. How do you plead?
    The President. Well, the Republicans tried for years to convince the 
American people that only one party had values. And unfortunately--I 
believe it was unfortunate--they were too often rewarded for that. But I 
never believed that only Republicans could stand up for the American 
family. I never believed that only Republicans could be tough on crime. 
I thought those were American issues.
    But if we were going to argue that they belonged to one party or 
another--I mean, here's a fact: The first bill I signed was the Family 
and Medical Leave Act. My predecessor, my Republican predecessor, vetoed 
it twice, and Senator Dole led the fight against it. Now, who is the 
more pro-family?
    I fought the crime bill through, which put 100,000 police on the 
street, banned assault weapons, and had tougher punishment programs and 
prevention programs for young people. The bitterest, I mean really, 
literally, bitterest opponent of the crime bill in the entire Congress 
was Senator Dole. Now, who is strong against crime? We've got 4 years of 
declining crime.
    So I didn't steal their values. On welfare reform, long before they 
ever passed a bill, 3 months into my Presidency I granted the first 
waiver to a State to try a welfare-to-work experiment. We now have 1.8 
million fewer people on welfare than we did the day I took office--
before this welfare bill takes effect.
    So I didn't steal their values agenda. I believe they're American 
values, and I did something about it. And I think they're angry because 
they made so many votes for years just by talking about it and not doing 
anything about it. So we did something about it, and they're complaining 
about it.
    Ms. Soren. Are you afraid of being seen as sort of--are you afraid 
of your politics being perceived as sort of Republican-like, a less 
radical approach to their ideas?
    The President. No. Let me just take one other example.
    Ms. Soren. The only reason I ask is because people are wondering if 
you're the same person they elected in '92.
    The President. If you look at what we talked about at the 
convention, if you look at what we've done over the last 4 years--
including in the last 2 years--the budget that I passed, I put the 
Democrats on the side of deficit reduction and balancing the budget, 
because I believe that. That's what I ran on. But all the Repub-


[[Page 1427]]

licans voted against our budget because it also made the Tax Code 
fairer. It lowered taxes on 15 million working people, asked those of us 
in the highest income groups, the top one percent of us, to pay a little 
more.
    They opposed me on family and medical leave, most of them did. They 
opposed my education reforms, all progressive things. They opposed the 
crime bill. Then when we finally got some action out of this last 
Congress, there was--the health care reform proposal was a big part of 
my health care reform bill that I signed. The minimum wage bill, the 
pension relief for small businesses, was legislation that I always 
advocated. So I think it sounds good. But what was the biggest thing I 
did in the last 2 years? I vetoed their budget.
    So I don't see how they can say I'm Republican-like. I just think 
that they like saying, ``We're for a balanced budget; the Democrats are 
big spenders. We're tough on crime; the Democrats are weak on crime. 
We're for work instead of welfare; the Democrats are for welfare instead 
of work.'' And even some of our own commentators kind of got hung up in 
that.
    If we protect children and we give families the right to and the 
tools they need to make the most of their own lives, we should be for a 
balanced budget, a growing economy, work instead of welfare, and tough 
on crime. So I feel very good about it, and I don't think it's 
inconsistent.

Political Consultant Dick Morris

    Ms. Soren. Dick Morris helped you make a political comeback over the 
last 2 years, and he's been running, according to just about everyone, a 
phenomenal campaign. Now he's resigned. Will you still be talking to him 
on the phone about politics?
    The President. I don't plan to do that, no. But we do have a good 
team, and we all work together.
    Ms. Soren. You're not worried at all with him not being there?
    The President. No, because we have a good team. And everybody had a 
role to play, and we all agreed early on on a strategy. And then when 
we--we had a decisionmaking process which I think is very good, which 
I'm just going to keep in place. I'm going to keep the team I've got. 
I'm going to keep the decisionmaking process in place. And I think we'll 
do very well.
    Ms. Soren. So you won't be communicating with him anymore?
    The President. I don't have any plans to do that. I don't say I 
won't communicate with him. My wife and I and the Vice President all 
called him and just had a purely personal conversation.
    But this campaign is now the product of a record we have made and 
the proposals we have out there and the fact that we--our administration 
stood against what Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Dole tried to do in '95 and 
early '96. And those will be the salient elements that the American 
people will have to decide on, and we'll do the best we can. But I feel 
good about it.

1996 Election

    Ms. Soren. There's talk in Republican circles of renewing character 
attacks on you because of their opinion that you surround yourself with 
questionable people. How are you going to respond?
    The President. I'm not. I'm going to keep doing my job. I think the 
reason that talk is there, though, is that way they don't have to talk 
about over 10 million new jobs; they don't have to talk about the fact 
that my Democratic administration is the first one to reduce the deficit 
in all 4 of its years, since before the Civil War; that our budget would 
be in surplus today if it weren't for the interest we pay on the debt 
run up in the 12 years of the Republican Presidencies before me; that we 
have made college loans more available and more affordable, and they 
tried to cut back on it; that the crime rate has come down under our 
strategy, and they opposed it. They don't have to talk about those 
things, but I'm going to talk about what is right for the American 
people.
    The American people will make their judgments about--and probably 
already have made their judgments about that. And I do not intend to 
respond in kind. I'm going to keep saying what I said before: I like 
Senator Dole. I've had a good relationship with him. I honor the 35 
years he gave this country in Congress, and I respect him for the way he 
fought back from his injury in the war. And I just don't think that it's 
good for America, and I'm going to try to make this election about big 
things that touch the people we just saw on the side of the road there.
    Ms. Soren. Or little things that touch them, too.

[[Page 1428]]

    The President. And the little things that touch them.
    Ms. Soren. You captured the imagination of young people in 1992, 
along with their votes. I saw young people at the MTV Inaugural Ball 
weeping when you arrived. Maybe their expectations were too high, but 
even with national service and all your educational programs, a lot of 
them feel just as disconnected today as they did 4 years ago. Do you 
feel like you've let people down? Have you not gotten your message out 
as clearly as you could have?
    The President. Well, I think the campaign will help. But all I can 
say is----
    Ms. Soren. Were their expectations too high?
    The President. I don't know, because I don't know what their 
expectations were. I want them to be high. But if you look at what 
happened on this train trip, that was my first real--I don't think polls 
can tell you these things. I don't think you can poll this. But when we 
were out there, and on this train trip we stopped--most of our rallies 
were in very small towns. We only had 2 stops where there were fewer 
than 10,000 people there. There were more than 150,000 total people who 
came to our rallies in those 3 days on the train. And then there were 
hundreds and hundreds of people, place after place after place, just on 
the side of the road as we were going. We had 30,000 in Cape Girardeau, 
Missouri, today, our first bus stop.
    I think people do feel connected. Look, I think they feel like 
they're part of something bigger than themselves. I think they think the 
country is moving again. I do believe in the first 2 years that--one of 
the things that I've learned over many years is that there is a time lag 
between when a President or a Governor or a Congress takes an action and 
when it can be felt in the lives of the American people. So that we saw 
real economic growth coming from 1993 on, but there was no evidence 
until really about 8 months ago that the American people were beginning 
to feel it in their own lives, when paychecks finally started to go up 
again, when people saw that there were enough new jobs to make a 
difference in the local economy.
    It's the same thing with education. Now we're beginning--we've got a 
critical mass of young people who have been either in national service 
or even many, many more are getting the new college loans, the direct 
loans that they can pay back as a percentage of their income. We've 
reduced the welfare rolls by enough now that people are beginning to 
perceive it. The crime rate has come down now 4 years in a row so that 
people are finally beginning to perceive it. Their streets are safer, 
even though the crime rate in America is far too high still.
    I think that's a part of it. And so I think that my obligation is to 
go back to the young people of America and say, here's what I said I'd 
do 4 years ago; here's what we've done; here's what we're going to do in 
the next 4 years. And that's a lot of what we tried to do at our 
convention.

Campaign Financing

    Ms. Soren. Young people are alienated from politics. Young people 
think politics is rigged by money, and they're right. Democrats received 
tens of millions of dollars in corporate contributions. What are those 
corporations getting for their money?
    The President. Well, I think it's fair to say that most of the 
corporations that contribute to either party agree with their policies. 
But keep in mind, almost all the wealthy individuals and some of the 
corporations that contributed to the Democratic Party are doing so even 
though their tax bills went up, because only the top 1.2 percent of 
individuals and corporations with incomes over $10 million a year had an 
income tax increase under our tax bill. And a lot of them supported us 
anyway, first of all because they knew I was right, that to get the 
deficit down, get interest rates down--they'd all do better with a 
healthier economy. I don't believe that any of them have supported me 
for some sort of bad or unseemly reason.
    On the other hand, I think it would be better if we had a campaign 
finance reform system that would enable people in public life to spend 
less time raising money and to be less dependent on it. But the only way 
you can do it is to give greater access to the airwaves, to candidates 
or parties, because it just costs so much to communicate.
    Ms. Soren. So it's our fault. [Laughter]
    The President. No, no, it's not your fault. No, no, I don't mean it 
that way.
    Ms. Soren. I'm just kidding.
    The President. Look, here's a country with a $1.5 trillion budget, 
an annual income of over $6 trillion. So you talk about a party raising 
and spending $150 million in a year and a half for an election, it 
sounds like a lot of money.

[[Page 1429]]

Against that, it doesn't sound like so much money. It just costs a lot 
of money to communicate. The communications costs--not just on 
television--radio, print, mail, travel, it's very high.
    Ms. Soren. Right. Do you think--so corporations aren't getting 
access? I read a report that they get to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom 
once in a while, CEO's or----
    The President. Well, the people who sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom are 
people I personally invite, who have been my friends, and a lot of them 
have supported me. But I don't think any President has made a habit of 
inviting his opponents to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom. I mean, I think 
you normally invite your supporters.
    Ms. Soren. Sure.
    The President. But I can say this: There's never been any attempt to 
raise any money with the promise that you can spend the night in the 
Lincoln Bedroom. I have invited people who have been helpful to me to 
spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom, but it was never a quid pro quo 
there.

Politics and Personal Attacks

    Ms. Soren. No, I'm not trying to imply that.
    You're doing really well in the polls, but there's a certain 
percentage of people who not only don't support you but they seem to 
actively dislike you. Why do some people dislike you so much? Nobody 
is----
    The President. Well, I think--there's a sign on the side of your 
bus; it's a quote of Bill Cosby's that I just love. He says, ``I don't 
know the secret of success. But I know the secret of failure is trying 
to please everybody.'' And I have always believed that in public life, 
when you were given an office, you should outline the major challenges 
and go after them and really try to get something done. And you should 
enlist the energies of people and try to bring them together and do it.
    And I have always had a certain core of people who have opposed me. 
When I was Governor of my State, I got elected five times and would 
regularly get nearly two-thirds of the vote. There would always be a 
core of people who were intensely opposed to my policies.
    Ms. Soren. But people didn't necessarily like Reagan's policies, 
either, but it didn't seem to get as personal. Do you think it has to do 
with your generation?
    The President. Perhaps. And it may be--well, I just don't know. I 
don't know. It may have more to do with the comparative tactics of the 
two parties. I have no idea. It may have more to do with the way people 
are talked about now.
    One of the reasons I have tried so hard--especially since the 
Oklahoma City bombing, which I say had a profound impact on our country 
and on me--I have really tried hard to bring a sense of civility and 
decency back into public discourse. I went back and read some of my own 
speeches in '92, and while they're not rough at all by the standards of 
today, I thought, well, I want to elevate what I'm saying and how I'm 
saying it a little more now.
    I just think that politics has always been a rough-and-tumble 
business, and people have always disagreed. And if you go back to the 
early 1800's, for example, it's a period of real tumult in our country, 
what was said and done and how much people had it pretty rough. I mean, 
when Thomas Jefferson was elected President, the John Adams party--
because Mr. Adams was trying to hold onto the Presidency--said that he 
would kill religion in America, he would end godliness among the 
American people. So we've always had some of this, but I think we need 
to resist it.
    Ms. Soren. I remember a very proud group of your inner circle of 
friends at the convention 4 years ago walking around boasting FOB pins. 
How does it make you feel that bad things have happened to those who 
have helped you get where you are today: Jim Guy Tucker, Vince Foster, 
Webb Hubbell, even the First Lady?
    The President. Well, I feel very badly, obviously, about Vince 
Foster because he was my longtime friend, and it's always tragic when 
someone commits suicide. And I do feel that a lot of people were 
targeted just because they were from Arkansas. Governor Tucker, for 
example, had--he was my Lieutenant Governor, we had been friends for a 
long time, but he'd never been part of my political life. But he was 
targeted, and I feel badly about that. And the country is going to have 
to evaluate, when this whole thing is over and there will be time for a 
fair accounting, whether they think it was the right thing to do. And I 
feel very badly about Hillary and a lot of her staff have been subject 
to, because it was just pure naked politics from the get-go.

[[Page 1430]]

    But that's what I'm talking about. That's sort of the way of the 
cycle. It's the cost of doing business in Washington. I mean, the 
people----
    Ms. Soren. Was that a surprise to you, that it was as harsh as it 
was?
    The President. Well, it's just gotten worse and worse. It's been 
deteriorating over time. Yes, it surprised me that you could be 
exonerated from one thing after another and it would never be noticed 
and then just another set of charges just to keep these going. That 
bothered me.
    But you know, the thing I think is important that I'd ask the 
American people to look at is that all these folks in our administration 
sustained all these hits, and we kept producing for the American people. 
We said, we can't control this, we can't do anything about it; all we 
can do is get up tomorrow and try to do our job. Why did we come here? 
We came here to help move the country forward and bring the country 
together, and that's what we're going to do. And our convention showed 
how productive our administration had been and our country had been in 
the last 4 years. And I think the fact that we could do it while having 
people like Senator D'Amato on us day-in and day-out I think is a 
tribute to the character and the public devotion of the people in this 
administration. I'm proud of them.
    Ms. Soren. That's what I wanted to ask you. If you can just--try to 
take this in the way that I mean it, but you've suffered incessant 
character assassination over the past 4 years. Your family has been 
maligned. You get up, there's another funeral; you've probably only had 
a couple hours of sleep that night. Between the funeral, a scandal, 
another country maybe going to war, why do you want 4 more years? I 
mean, what are you thinking?
    The President. Well, first of all, there's been a lot more good than 
bad.
    Ms. Soren. Really?
    The President. Oh, yes. It is the most rewarding thing in the world 
for a citizen of our country, who loves our country and believes in the 
promise of its people, to be President. To look back on the last 4 years 
and to go out here as I did on the train ride or on this bus trip, and 
you look into the eyes of people and you go through these crowds, and 
somebody will say, ``I've got a home because of one of your programs''; 
``I've gotten a job since you were here''; ``I'm on one of your college 
loans''; ``I'm an AmeriCorps student''--when you see how the country is 
changing for the better, it's immensely rewarding.
    And in this day and time--you know, as I said, we've had periods 
like this in our politics before. In the early 1800's, Mr. Jefferson 
faced many of the same things. When you live in a time which is really 
rough, with no holds barred, and a lot of people seek personal advantage 
by what I call the politics of destruction, you have to be always, 
always, always defining yourself and the quality of your life by what is 
inside. And you can't confuse who you are and the quality of your own 
life with whatever is going on in the day-to-day headlines. It's 
destructive. Otherwise, you shrivel and become little.
    The President should always be trying to be bigger than he is and 
lifting the country up. And you just have to keep putting that out of 
your mind; you just have to let it go. I can't do anything about 
anything that happened yesterday or even an hour ago; you just have to 
let that stuff go and keep trying to lift the country up.
    Ms. Soren. Well, thank you very much.
    The President. Thank you.

Note: The interview began at 6:12 p.m. aboard the MTV Choose or Lose 
bus. In his remarks, the President referred to Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, 
USA (Ret.), Director, Office of National Drug Control Policy; actor 
Christopher Reeve; comedian Bill Cosby; and Jim Guy Tucker, former 
Arkansas Governor. A tape was not available for verification of the 
content of this interview.