[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book II)]
[August 10, 2000]
[Pages 1605-1620]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Discussion at the Ministers' Leadership Conference in South 
Barrington, Illinois
August 10, 2000

    Rev. Bill Hybels. It wasn't as bad as I told 
you it was going to be. [Laughter]
    The President. It's never been as bad as you told me it was going to 
be. [Laughter]
    Reverend Hybels. You know, there are some 
cynics out there that think that I'm just going to ask you a bunch of 
softball questions. They don't know me very well.
    The President. They obviously never sat in on any of our sessions. 
[Laughter]

Buddy

    Reverend Hybels. So I'm going to start with 
a tough one: How's Buddy? [Laughter]
    The President. He's doing fine. I'm not doing as well as he is. We 
took him up to Martha's Vineyard for a little family weekend, and we 
went swimming in the ocean. And he panicked and jumped on me, and I 
forgot to give him a manicure first. [Laughter] So it's a good thing 
I've got a suit on. [Laughter]

Ministers' Leadership Conference

    Reverend Hybels. All right. These folks all 
know you and I have been meeting for many years. I'd just like to ask 
you, how would you characterize for these people what our meetings are 
like?
    The President. Well, first of all, they all have certain things in 
common; then they're different from time to time. They all include you 
asking me point blank about the state of my spiritual life, and if you 
think I give you an evasive answer, then you do pointed followup 
questions. [Laughter] And then--and they all end with a prayer. Most of 
the time we both pray.
    Before we came out here, we both prayed. I prayed that you wouldn't 
give me too tough a time for asking me to come here today. And then we 
talk about things. We talk about what's going on, what's going on at the 
office. You ask about the other people that work for me and how they're 
doing. If there is some particular issue in the news, we talked about 
that, or particularly if there's a big development involving war or 
peace, we talk about that.
    And you've given me the opportunity to ask you questions about what 
you do. I mean, I was fascinated about how Willow Creek was born and 
grew and how you got into this business that I think is so important, of 
trying to build up the strength of local churches throughout the country 
and throughout the world. And I've learned about how I do my work by 
talking to you about how you do yours. And I hope that the reverse is 
true on occasion.
    But basically, they've been spiritual conversations, conversations 
between two friends. There are some things that are always the same, and 
then they change based on what's going on.
    Reverend Hybels. Now, recently, you told me 
that you think more pastors should try to help politicians; they should 
make themselves available and offer to kind of play the role that I've 
played.
    The President. Yes, I really believe that.
    Reverend Hybels. Why?
    The President. First of all, because we need it, and not just 
someone like me, who obviously does. But we do. In 1918 the German 
sociologist Max Weber wrote an essay. You and I never talked about this 
before; I just thought about it while you asked me the question. It's 
called ``Politics as a Vocation.'' And Weber was a Christian Democrat, a 
devout Catholic. And he said politics is a long and slow boring of hard 
boards. And anyone who seeks to do it must risk his own soul.
    Now, what did he mean by that? What he meant by that was, even in a 
democracy, where you draw your authority from the people, you have it 
for a limited amount of time, and it's self-circumscribed by the 
Constitution. You get the ability to make decisions which affect other 
people's lives, decisions which are beyond your own wisdom, often made 
under circumstances which are unimaginably difficult, either because 
you're under political or personal duress.
    And I just think it's--most people who don't know any people in 
public life who have to make those kind of decisions may think, well, 
they're just--they don't have a spiritual life, or they're all 
automatons, or they're not this, that, or the other thing. I can tell 
you, most of the people I've known in 30 years of public life, Democrats 
and Republicans, have been good, honest, honorable people who tried to 
do what

[[Page 1606]]

they thought was right, and when they differed, it was because they 
honestly differed. Ninety percent of the time-plus that's been true. But 
if you're not careful, when you have this kind of job, it can overtake 
you. You can believe it's even more important than it is. You can let it 
take up even more time than it should. And it can crowd out all that 
other stuff inside you that keeps you centered and growing and whole.
    And it's very important that everybody in public life has somebody 
who's talking to them who either has no interest in either playing up to 
them and telling them what they want to hear, no interest in getting 
something from them, and no interest in attacking them--that has 
anything to do with the fact that the person is in public life. And a 
pastor can do that in a way that, and you just sort of--you can't 
imagine how much time that I've spent with you and, over the last couple 
of years, the time that I've spent also with Gordon McDonald and Tony Campolo and 
Phil Wogaman--how much it means to me, 
because it sort of takes me out of all the stuff that's going on and 
forces me to look at it in a different way and to look at my own life in 
a different way. And it really kind of keeps me anchored. And you can--
all of you can do that for somebody else.

1958 Billy Graham Crusade

    Reverend Hybels. Something spiritual came 
into focus for you when you were just a young boy, about 10 years old. 
Tell us about that.
    The President. Well, really, it had a lot to do with how I wound up 
in public life, I think. I became a Christian in 1955, when I was 9, 
went to Park Place Baptist Church in Hot Springs, Arkansas. The 
minister's name was James Fitzgerald. He's a great, good man.
    Reverend Hybels. Now, did you like, hear a 
sermon and then--[inaudible]?
    The President. No, I had been a regular churchgoer ever since I was 
about 6. But yes, I loved this man. I haven't seen him since. I haven't 
seen him in 45 years. But I have a very vivid memory of exactly what he 
looked like and the way he talked, and he touched my heart. He convinced 
me that I needed to acknowledge that I was a sinner and that I needed to 
accept Christ in my heart, and I did. But I was 9 years old, and I was 
trying to figure out what it all meant.
    So then, when I was about 11 years old, maybe 12, the whole State 
was in an uproar. I guess I was 12; I think it was September of 1958. 
Billy Graham was coming to Little Rock to do a crusade in War Memorial 
Stadium, which is where the Arkansas Razorbacks play their football 
games when they're playing in Little Rock. And Billy Graham's the only 
person that could get a bigger crowd than the football team. [Laughter]
    So the schools in Little Rock had just been closed in the Little 
Rock integration crisis. Some of you who are older will remember it. 
Perhaps if you're younger, you read about it. But 1957 was the first big 
crisis of the school integration movement, and the Governor closed the 
schools, called out the National Guard to keep nine black children out 
of the schools and then closed them for a year, and all the kids had to 
go somewhere else to school.
    And the White Citizens Council was basically dominating the politics 
of the town. So Billy Graham scheduled these crusades years in advance, 
and he didn't plan all this. All of a sudden, he's supposed to step in 
the middle of this. And my Sunday school teacher was going to take me 
and a bunch of kids over to hear him. I never will forget it. And the 
White Citizens Council and a lot of the business people in Little Rock 
were worried about some sort of great encounter because the racial 
tensions were very high, and they asked Billy Graham to agree to give 
this crusade to a segregated audience.
    And he said that if they insisted on that, he would not come, that 
we were all children of God, and he wanted to lead everyone to Christ. 
He wouldn't do it. And it really touched me, because my grandparents, 
who had no education, particularly, and were very modest people, were 
among the few white people I knew who supported school integration. And 
all of a sudden, to have Billy Graham validating this based on his 
Christian witness had a profound impact on me. And it got me to thinking 
at that early age about the relationship between your faith and your 
work, which, of course, has been one of the most hotly debated issues in 
Christianity for 2,000 years now. What does the Book of James really 
mean, and all that?
    But I really--I can't tell you what it meant. And for a long time 
right after that I would send a little bit of my allowance money to 
Billy Graham. You know, I'm still on somebody's list

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somewhere--[laughter]--for giving next to no money, but it was a pretty 
good chunk of what I had.
    And he came back to Arkansas 30 years later to do another crusade. 
And I took him by to see my pastor, who was dying at the time and who 
had been his friend for decades, and we relived that moment, and I've 
never forgotten it. And I never will. It's just like it happened 
yesterday to me. Even now, I can hardly talk about it.

President's Church Attendance

    Reverend Hybels. Now, you and Hillary have 
been churchgoers all the time in your public service. And some people 
think that's just an act. How would you respond?
    The President. Well, at least, it's a consistent act. [Laughter] 
Well, I think I have given evidence that I need to be in church. 
[Laughter] To me, it's--you know, I don't talk about it a lot. I never 
sought to politicize it. But it was very interesting. I started off, and 
I went to church with great regularity until I graduated from college--
high school. And like a lot of people, when I went to college, my 
attendance became more sporadic.
    And actually, Hillary had been 
very active in her local Methodist church in Park Ridge, which is not 
too far from here, when she was growing up. And I remember when I was 
elected Governor, I had my dedicatory service in the church--this was 
1979--in the church in Little Rock, which I'm still a member, Emmanuel 
Baptist Church. And Hillary said to me, ``You know, we should start 
going to church again on a regular basis. We ought to do it, and you 
should join the choir. It would do you good to think about something 
besides politics.''
    So I talked to the choir director, and because I was Governor, I was 
out 3 or 4 nights a week, I couldn't go to practice. But I had been in 
music all my life, so I was a good sight reader, so he let me sing 
anyway.
    So from 1980 until the year I became President, I got to sing in my 
church choir every Sunday, and it meant a lot to me. And then after we 
came here, we both, because we wanted to go together and with our 
daughter, we both started going to the Methodist church outside here in 
Washington, Foundry Methodist Church, that Dr. Wogaman is the pastor of, and you know him, of course. And 
we've gone pretty regularly for 7\1/2\ years now.
    So I've been doing this a long time. I don't do it for anybody else; 
I do it for me. It helps me to go. It helps me--the same way it helps me 
to spend an hour talking to you. I'm sitting there in church, just like 
everybody else, except needing it maybe more, and it's one of the best 
hours of the week for me. I just let everything else go, take my Bible, 
read, listen, sing. I don't know; why does anybody go? It means 
something to me. It's a way of not only validating my faith but 
deepening it and basically replenishing it.
    One of the things I like about my observant Jewish friends--and 
you've seen a lot about this in the last few days with all the publicity 
over Senator Lieberman becoming the Vice 
Presidential nominee--is that they take a whole day, and I mean they 
really take the day. They don't go to service for an hour. I mean for a 
day they shut down and shut the whole world out and think about what's 
most important in life. Anyway, in a very small way, that's what my 
church attendance does for me.

President's Spiritual Life

    Reverend Hybels. Okay. So if we were having 
our regular meeting, this would be the time when I would ask the 
consistent question: What's the current condition of your spiritual 
life? Describe right now where you're at spiritually.
    The President. Well, I feel much more at peace than I used to. And I 
think that as awful as what I went through was, humiliating as it was, 
more to others than to me, even, sometimes when you think you've got 
something behind you and then it's not behind you, this sort of purging 
process, if it doesn't destroy you, can bring you to a different place.
    I'm now in the second year of a process of trying to totally rebuild 
my life from a terrible mistake I made. And I now see--I don't think 
anybody can say, ``Hey, the state of my spiritual life is great. It's 
constant, and it's never going to change.'' I think I've learned enough 
now to know that's not true, that it's always a work in progress, and 
you just have to hope you're getting better every day. But if you're not 
getting better, chances are you're getting worse. That this has to be a 
dynamic, ongoing effort.
    But you know, I had to come to terms with a lot of things about the 
fundamental importance of character and integrity. Integrity, to

[[Page 1608]]

me, means--is a literal term. It means the integration of one's spirit, 
mind, and body being in the same place at the same time with everything, 
doing what you believe is right and you believe is consistent with the 
will of God.
    It's been an amazing encounter, you know, trying to rebuild my 
family life, which is the most important thing of all--and it took a lot 
of effort that I've never talked about and probably never will, because 
I don't really think it's anybody else's concern--and then to rebuild 
the support of the people I work with to try to be worthy of the fact 
that two-thirds of the American people stuck with me. That's an 
incredible thing.
    So I wake up every day, no matter what anybody says or what goes 
wrong or whatever, with this overwhelming sense of gratitude. Because it 
may be that if I hadn't been knocked down in the way I was and forced to 
come to grips with what I'd done and the consequences of it, in such an 
awful way, I might not ever have had to really deal with it a hundred 
percent.
    This kind of thing happens to--not, maybe, this kind of thing--but 
all kinds of problems come up in people's lives all the time, and 
usually they're not played out with several billion dollars of publicity 
on the neon lights before people. But they still have to be dealt with. 
And in a funny way, when you realize there is nothing left to hide, then 
it sort of frees you up to do what you ought to be doing anyway. I don't 
know if that makes any sense, but to me, I feel this overwhelming sense 
of gratitude.
    I also learned a lot about forgiveness. I've always thought I was 
sort of a forgiving, generous person, you know, nonjudgmental in a 
negative sense, not that I don't have opinions. But I realized once 
you've actually had to stand up and ask for forgiveness before the whole 
wide world, it makes it a little harder to be as hard as I think I once 
was on other people, and that's meant something to me, too. I think I've 
learned something about that.
    Reverend Hybels. A lot of people, when they 
learned that I was going to interview you, and a lot of people who know 
that we've been meeting, have said to me, ``The guy never really 
apologized. The guy never really owned it and came clean about his 
mistakes, tried to hide it, said it didn't happen. He never came 
clean.'' Now, that's a little surprising to me, because we sent a staff 
member, one of our senior staff members, to the White House the day in 
September of '98 when you gave one of the most clear confessional 
statements that I have ever heard.
    I'm not going to ask for a hand raise or anything, but there's a 
whole bunch of people here who think you never really said it.
    The President. No, I don't know why. I just--you know, to me--I had 
to come--there was a lot of things going on at the time, as you 
remember, that were unrelated, I think, to the fact that I did something 
wrong that I needed to acknowledge, apologize for, and then begin a 
process of atonement for. And there were a few days when I basically was 
thinking more about what my adversaries were trying to do than what I 
should be trying to do.
    And finally, this breakfast we had--we're about to have it, 
actually. We're coming up on the second anniversary of the prayer 
breakfast I have every year for people of all different faiths in the 
White House that we sort of do at the start of school, because it's kind 
of a rededication period. And I've done it for 8 years, over and above 
the President's prayer breakfast, which is a--there's a whole committee 
that does that. Hillary and I just invite people to the White House, and 
we have breakfast, and we talk about whatever we're talking about that 
year. We pray together, and people get up and say whatever they want to 
say.
    But I think I gave a clear, unambiguous, brutally frank, and, 
frankly, personally painful statement to me because I had to do it. I 
mean, I finally realized that I was--it would never be all right unless 
I stood up there and said what I did and said it was wrong and 
apologized for it.
    But I think what happened was, I think anybody who was there thought 
so; I think anybody who read it thought so. I don't know what was 
covered by television, really, because I don't watch the TV news much, 
or what was written in the newspaper or who heard it. But I think that 
anyone who saw that and who observed what happened afterward would not 
doubt that there had been a full and adequate apology.
    Reverend Hybels. You sent me the text of it 
right then, and I read it, and it was--I mean, I'm an elder at this 
church, as well as the pastor, and we've had many times where people 
have had to make confessions, and this was as clean. You said, ``Not 
only am I''--you said, ``There's no fancy way--there's not a fancy way 
to say

[[Page 1609]]

it; I have sinned.'' And you went on and quoted from Psalm 51 and talked 
about the need for a broken and contrite heart, and you confessed that.
    And you went on to say that it's not enough just to say I'm sorry, 
there has to be the fruits of repentance and the gathering together of 
people who would hold you accountable for walking a new way. You 
announced that day publicly you were putting an accountability group 
together that would meet with you and help you stay on a new path. And 
you ended the speech by saying, ``Let the words in my mouth, the 
meditation in my heart, and the work of my hands be pleasing to my 
God.''
    It was about as clean as I have ever read something like that. And 
it must have been terribly frustrating for you to live on in the future 
with the sense that there's a whole bunch of people who just continue to 
believe you never came clean.
    The President. Oh, it was for a little bit. But I think one of the 
things you learn is that even a President--all you can do is be 
responsible for what you do, and what other people say about it or 
whether it gets out there--you have to work hard to get it out there, 
but--I suppose there was a time when I was upset about it. But then I 
realized that that was another form of defensiveness, that if I really 
thought about that, that was just another excuse not to be doing what I 
should be doing, which is to work on my life, work on my marriage, work 
on my parenthood, work on my work with the White House and the 
administration, and work on serving the American people.
    So believe it or not, I haven't thought about it in a long, long 
time now. I thought about it a little bit now because you asked me to do 
this, and I said, yes, and here we are in the soup together. But I don't 
think about it now, because I realize that anytime you're supposed to be 
doing something with your life and you get off thinking about what 
somebody else is saying or doing about it or to you or whatever, it's 
just a crutch for not dealing with what you're supposed to be dealing 
with. So I finally just let it go, and I hope people can see that it's 
different. You just have to hope that and go on.

Leadership

    Reverend Hybels. Let's switch subject 
matters and go over to leadership. I mean, you know a lot about 
leadership. And you've been the leader of the most powerful country in 
the world for almost 8 years now. So okay, leadership questions, are we 
all right on that, or is there anything more you wanted to say on other 
stuff?
    The President. I thought you'd never change the subject. [Laughter]
    Reverend Hybels. All right, then. When did 
you first recognize that you were a leader? It's not a trick question. 
I'm just asking it. [Laughter]
    The President. I know. I'm just trying to remember. When I was 
young--I don't know, in grade school--I used to often be the person who 
sort of organized the games and got people to do things and all that 
kind of stuff. But I don't know that I ever thought about it in 
leadership terms. And I began to get interested in all this when I got 
interested in politics as a kid.
    We got a television when I was 9, I think, or 10. We didn't have a 
television until I was about 10. I watched the 1956 Republican and 
Democratic conventions. I was just fascinated by it. And then by 1960, I 
began to think, ``Well, maybe I could actually do this someday, because 
I'm real interested in people; I care a lot about these issues.''
    But I think the first things I actually did were when I was in high 
school and I was the president of my class and the head of the band and 
I used to organize the State Band Festival with the band director. And 
one time I remember a young man came to school; he came to our school. 
He hadn't been there very long, and he was in the band. And he had a 
fight with a teacher, and he said a very intemperate thing. At least, 
back then, you couldn't do that kind of thing, and she suspended him.
    So he was going to miss this big band trip we were taking over the 
weekend. And this kid had come to our town; he had no friends; he was 
all alone. Anyway, I decided that he ought to go. And the teacher, by 
blind coincidence, was a woman I very much admired. Her husband had been 
a plumber, and she was a housewife and a genius. And they both went back 
to school in their mid-thirties. And they lived across the street from 
me, just by coincidence.
    So I went to her house, and I told her why she ought to reinstate 
this kid. And I said, ``I want to bring him to you and let him 
apologize.'' But, I said, ``I don't know what's going on in

[[Page 1610]]

his life, but he's a decent kid. And he's absolutely in the wrong, and 
you're absolutely right to suspend him. But you ought not to do it 
anyway, because he just got here, and this will be good for him if he 
takes this trip; he'll make friends and everything.''
    So she agreed to let me bring this kid to see her. And he apologized 
and cried, and she cried, and they became--it was great. He went on the 
trip. I never saw him again after I graduated from high school until I 
ran for President in 1992. But that made me want to be a leader. I don't 
know if that meant I could be. I was about--I don't know--I was 15 or 16 
years old. But it made me understand that you could do things that would 
make a difference in other people's lives if you just thought about it 
in the right way.
     Reverend Hybels. All right. So you started 
realizing you had leadership skills or talents in you. But then at some 
point you said, ``I'm going to direct this leadership toward the 
political arena.'' I mean, you could have been a leader in business; you 
could have been a leader in academia; you could have been a leader in 
ministry, probably. [Laughter]
    The President. You will find this funny, in light of all that's 
happened. When I was about 11, I gave my grandmother a big speech about 
civil rights. I was just going on and on, waving my arms and everything. 
My grandmother looked at me, and she said, ``You know, Billy, I think 
you could be a preacher if you were just a little better boy.'' 
[Laughter] True story.
     Reverend Hybels. But anyway, you decided to 
choose--I'm not going to follow up on that one. I'm letting that one go.
    The President. Thank you.
     Reverend Hybels. I mean, that was a free 
shot for me, and I took a pass. [Laughter] So please acknowledge.
    The President. I owe you one.
    Well, like I said, I was about 16, I guess, that I really decided 
that if I could do this kind of work, I would like to do it, this 
political work.
    And the only other thing I had--I had thought about being a doctor, 
and I was very interested in it. But I knew I wouldn't be great at it. I 
thought about being a musician, and I was really quite good when I was 
in high school. And I knew I would be very good. But I didn't think I 
could be the best. Especially then, you know, 40 years ago, if you were 
a saxophone player, there weren't any saxophone players like there are 
up here on this church stage. And there was certainly nobody like Kenny 
G making a living just making records.
    I mean, if you wanted to make a living doing that, you had to get 
your days and nights mixed up. You had to go to some club, stay up all 
night playing jazz; you'd sleep all day. How was I going to have a 
family? How was I going to have a life? And it certainly wouldn't be 
worth it unless you literally were the greatest person doing it.
    And I knew I was real good but not great. I thought to myself, I can 
do this really well, what I'm doing now, and I love it. And it's like 
the only thing I could ever think of where every day you're getting up 
and peeling another slice off the onion of human existence. There's like 
an endless layer of exposure to different people and different problems 
and different dreams.
    So I decided when I was about 16 that if I could do it, I would. And 
I would do it because I could do it better than I could do anything 
else. And I must say it was a great advantage to me in life. It's like 
there are all these great stories coming out now on Tiger Woods and how 
he's done things younger than anybody else has ever done and how he used 
to keep Jack Niklaus' golf records taped on his bedstead, you know. He 
decided younger than I did what he was going to do. It's a huge 
advantage.
    You pay a little price for it, too. None of these decisions are free 
in life, but I think it is a big advantage. And I've always been 
grateful that I just knew when I was young.
     Reverend Hybels. There's always that 
picture of you shaking hands with John Kennedy. Was that as momentous in 
your mind at the time as people have made it out to be since?
    The President. Yes, but not in the way they make it out to be. I 
mean, that is, I think if I had never gone in and shaken his hand, I 
still would have tried to go into politics because it's what I wanted to 
do. But I admired him, and I supported him when I was 14. He was running 
for President--we used to have these great debates in my ninth-grade 
class. And my very best friend as a child, who is still one of my 
closest friends--we stay in touch all the time and he sends me an E-mail 
once a week. He's in the computer business in Arkansas and comes to see 
me and tells me when he thinks I'm all wet. But he was there. He came 
from

[[Page 1611]]

a Republican family, and I came from a Republican county. So he was for 
President Nixon, and I was for President Kennedy. And we'd have our 
little debates in the ninth grade.
    And for me, it was basically about civil rights, which I felt very 
strongly about. So when I got to go to Boys Nation, the American Legion 
did a great thing for me. It was a huge deal for me--I was a 16-year-old 
kid from Arkansas--to get on an airplane, go to Washington, go to the 
White House, stand in the Rose Garden. And we all were standing there in 
alphabetical order by State, so Arkansas was near the front. And 
President Kennedy gave this little speech and complimented us on what 
we'd done in civil rights legislation, because it was a mock Senate 
program, this Boys Nation program. He said we were doing better than the 
real Senate, which is probably still true. [Laughter]
    And anyway--Trent Lott will make me pay for 
that. [Laughter] Anyway, so then he comes down, and he starts shaking 
hands. I was the biggest kid from any of the States that started with A, 
so I just sort of muscled my way up there and got to shake hands. But he 
was kind enough to stand there for many minutes and shake hands with all 
the kids.
    And I think in every year but one--this year, because I had an 
emergency, or a very important thing I had to do, and we had to slot the 
Boys Nation and Girls Nation people in--every year except this one, I've 
actually stood there and shaken hands with and had a picture taken with 
every one of those kids, because you just never know when something you 
do to some child from a small hamlet in North Dakota or an inner-city 
neighborhood in L.A., or anywhere else--just by taking a little bit of 
time, that the child might imagine that he or she could do something 
that otherwise they hadn't imagined.
    So what Kennedy, meeting him, I think, did for me is it gave me--
first of all, I was just touched that the President was seeing us and 
paying a little attention to us, but it gave me the ability to imagine 
that I might have this life that I knew I wanted.
     Reverend Hybels. All right. Characterize 
your leadership style. Would you say like you're a visionary leader, a 
strategic leader, team-building leader?
    The President. Well, you probably ought to ask the people who came 
with me today. They would probably say, an exhausting one. [Laughter] 
Let me try--first of all, I think the vision is the most important 
thing. I mean, to me, what you have to have, if you want to really lead 
in any endeavor you've got to say, ``Okay, what is my objective? What 
are the facts here? What are the facts on the ground? Here's my 
vision.'' Then you need a strategy for how you're going to achieve your 
vision. Then you have to have all these tactics that explain it. Then 
you have to put together a team that can do what you can't do.
    And so what I have tried to do is to focus on the vision thing, as 
some politicians say. I mean, it's not for nothing that the Scripture 
says, ``Where there is no vision, the people perish.'' I mean it is the 
most important thing. Otherwise you get--remember that great old Yogi 
Berra line, ``I may not know where I'm going, but I'm making good 
time.'' I mean, that happens to everybody in life, and part of it is 
when you lose your vision.
    But I also--I think that team-building is very important because a 
lot of the things that I get credit for, the good things that have 
happened have been done by somebody else that I empowered to act, 
consistent with an agreed upon plan that we started with. I mean, one of 
the things that frustrates me--it's no different from everybody else 
that's had this position, but Vice President Gore doesn't get near enough credit for a lot of the things 
that I've done that he was the main executor on.
    I've been very fortunate. I've had one Secretary of Education, Dick 
Riley, the former Governor of South 
Carolina, and there's been a dramatic amount of improvement in the 
schools that we've been an integral part of because of him. I've had one 
Secretary of Health and Human Services; one Secretary of the Interior, 
Bruce Babbitt, who has probably made the 
greatest impact on the interior in a positive way since the days of 
Harold Ickes in Roosevelt's administration or Gifford Pinchot before 
that in Teddy Roosevelt's administration.
    So the team is very important. If you don't have the people around 
you that are good, you can have the vision, and you can have the 
strategy, but if you're doing anything that requires more than one 
person to do it, if you're doing something besides writing a book, 
you've got to have somebody else to help you.
     Reverend Hybels. When I first started 
seeing you, you had quite a few Arkansas folks in the early days or 
friends that you brought with you

[[Page 1612]]

in the early days into the office. And then my perception--and I don't 
think we've ever talked about this, actually--my perception is some of 
them found out that the job was over their heads, and eventually you had 
to ask some people who started with you to do something else.
    The President. The truth is, though, most of the people that came 
with me from home have done very well. The most popular member of the 
Cabinet, I think, is James Lee Witt, the head 
of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And he was the county judge 
in this little rural county in Arkansas where my stepfather was born. He 
was my head of the Emergency Management Agency, and the reason he's 
popular is we've had a lot of disasters since I've been President--
natural disasters, I mean. [Laughter] We've had a lot of natural 
disasters, and he's the first guy that ever had that job that got it not 
as a political appointment. He really knows it.
    The person who does all my appointments, Bob Nash, is from Arkansas. It's one of the most difficult and 
sensitive jobs in the Government. Nancy Hernreich, whom you know and work with, she's obviously from 
Arkansas. So I've had a huge number of people I brought up with.
    The only two that I can think of just off the top of my head--some 
of the others have come and gone, but they came and went for the same 
reasons others come and go. The only two I can think of that really 
changed their jobs or that left their jobs under less than optimum 
circumstances, one of them, principally, was Vince Foster who, as you 
know, in a heartbreaking incident actually killed himself, apparently 
partly because of criticism he was receiving in the press that he 
thought was unfair and unjust and untrue.
    And I must tell you, that had a big impact on me and my wife. I had 
gone to kindergarten with him. Everybody thought at home that he was 
maybe not only the best but the most ethical lawyer they ever knew. And 
he had this self-image of himself that was completely assaulted from day 
one in Washington, and he took it seriously. I'll never forget talking 
to him a day or so before he died. And I said, ``You know, how can you 
take this seriously? These people, they don't know anything about you.'' 
And I said, ``Everybody that reads this editorial page is against us 
anyway. None of these people are going to vote for us.'' And for me, I 
was so used to being beat on, I was insensitive to the fact that a man 
that I had lived next door to when I was 4 years old was dying inside, 
literally.
    And it's something that I think pastors--maybe this has happened to 
you before, and if it hasn't, I hope it never will, but it's something 
you've got to be sensitive to. I thought he was receiving all this 
incoming fire in the way that I was receiving it. And instead, he was 
receiving it the way Woodrow Wilson talked about when he was President. 
He said that words could wound more than bullets and that it took an 
extraordinary courage to bear up under it.
    I'd been in public life and debates so long, I was so used to people 
saying things for whatever reason; I missed it. So I tried to joke him 
out of this, instead of being sensitive to it. He performed very well, 
but he didn't understand the Washington culture.
    When Mack McLarty, who went to 
kindergarten with me and was a big time automotive executive, became my 
Chief of Staff, he didn't want to do it. He said, ``You need somebody 
with Washington experience.'' But we had put most of those people that 
we had into the Cabinet. And so, I knew he was a good manager. It's 
interesting. So after a couple of years he moved on and became my 
Special Envoy to the Americas, where he helped to, basically, 
dramatically improve and broaden our relationship with all the countries 
south of our border and where he still does work for me, even though 
he's returned. He and Henry Kissinger 
have gone into business together. So McLarty has done very, very well. 
But he didn't want to be Chief of Staff. It's just that, at the time 
they were fixing to swear me in, and I had to have somebody. And I had 
to have somebody that actually knew how to run things.
    And you might be interested to know that Bob Rubin--whom everybody considers sort of a consummate 
insider, you know, was my Secretary of the Treasury and, before that, 
head of the first National Economic Council and clearly one of the two 
or three most important architects of our economic revival--says that 
McLarty did more than anybody else to establish the spirit of teamwork 
that we've had.
    In 1995, after we lost the Congress, I had a couple of Presidential 
scholars from Harvard come in. And one of these men--I didn't even know 
him--he said, ``Don't worry. You're going

[[Page 1613]]

to be reelected.'' No one thought I was going to be reelected in 1995. I 
said, ``Why do you say that?'' He said, ``You have the most loyal 
Cabinet since Thomas Jefferson's second administration.'' He said, ``I 
never saw anything like it.'' He said, ``There's no backbiting. They 
work with the White House. You all work together.'' He said, ``I don't 
know how you all did it, but you're all devoted to each other.'' And he 
said, ``Believe me, in the end, in ways that no one can quantify, it 
will work out.'' So I think the guy's a genius now, even though I never 
knew him before. [Laughter]

Polls

     Reverend Hybels. Sometimes it appears as 
though you live by simply taking the pulse or looking at polling 
numbers. Other times you seem to step out and lead by conviction, deep 
conviction. Is that a fair characterization of your leadership?
    The President. No. And I'll explain why. First of all, the role of 
polls is widely misunderstood, so let me tell you a little about at 
least how I see polls. Let's begin with a poll in a campaign. Who is 
ahead? Vice President Gore or Governor 
Bush, right? The Gallup poll says one day 
Bush is 19 points ahead. Vice President Gore names Joe 
Lieberman. The next day he's 2 points 
ahead. Believe me, 17 percent of the people did not really change their 
mind in one day.
    That doesn't mean that Mr. Gallup's organization didn't tell the 
truth; that is, that they called what they thought was a representative 
group of people one day, and they called another representative group 
the other day. But the first thing you need to remember about every poll 
is, if it's an election, it's a picture of a horserace that's not over. 
And if you've ever watched a horserace and you see the replays, they 
always show how it was at the first turn, how it was in the back 
stretch, how it was at the final turn. Every picture is a poll. That's 
what--you should keep that in your mind.
    So when you see the polls unfold in this Presidential race, you 
should remember that. And therefore, it's like a horserace. How big is 
their lead? is one issue. Second is, what is it based on? Like if one 
horse is stronger than another, even he may just be a half--may be a 
head or even a nose ahead, but if he's a stronger horse, he's going to 
win anyway. But otherwise, there could be--if the horse has got a lot of 
juice running third, the horse running third may win.
    Now, on the issues, which is what Bill's asking me about, there's 
something else you need to remember about polls. First of all, they may 
be totally misleading. I'll explain that. Second, they may change. I'll 
tell you what I normally use polls for as President. If you go back and 
look at what I did--in 1992, I issued a booklet called ``Putting People 
First'' and said ``If you vote for me, this is what I'm going to do.'' 
In 1995, Thomas Patterson, the Presidential scholar, said that I had 
already kept a higher percentage of my commitments than the previous 
five Presidents, even though I'd made more commitments.
    So what do I use polls for on the issues? What I primarily use polls 
for is to tell me how to make the argument that's most likely to 
persuade you that I'm right about what I'm trying to do.
     Reverend Hybels. Give us an example.
    The President. Okay. I'll give you an example where, according to 
the polls I have the unpopular position, okay? The Congress passes a 
repeal of the estate tax, an outright repeal. Now, I can--and I'm going 
to veto it if it comes to my desk, okay? Now, I can say the following. I 
can say, ``I'm going to veto this because it only helps less than 2 
percent of the people and half of the relief goes to one-tenth of one 
percent of the people, and it's an average $10 million.'' That is a 
populist explanation.
    I can say, ``I'm going to veto it because we only have so much money 
for tax cuts, and I think it's wrong to do this and say this is our 
highest priority, when we have done nothing to lower the income taxes of 
low-income working people with three kids or more or to help people pay 
for child care or long-term care for their elderly or disabled relatives 
or to get a tax deduction for college tuition.''
    Or I could say, ``I think there should be estate tax relief.'' I do, 
by the way. ``I don't care if it does help primarily upper income 
people. The way so many people have made so much money in the stock 
markets in the last 8 years, there are a lot of family-owned businesses 
that people would like to pass down to their family members, that would 
be burdened by the way the estate tax works, plus which the maximum rate 
is too high. When it was set, income tax rates were higher, but there 
was a lot of ways to get out of it. Now the rates are lower, but

[[Page 1614]]

you have less ways to get out of it. You have to pretty much pay what 
you owe more.'' So I could say that.
      
    So it's not fair to totally repeal it. Like even Bill Gates has 
said, ``Why are you going to give me a $40 billion tax break?'' And he's 
going to give away his money, and I applaud him and honor him for it.
    So I could make either of those three arguments. It's helpful to me 
to know what you're thinking. I know what I think is right. I'm not 
going to change what I think is right. But in order to continue to be 
effective, you have to believe I'm right. So that's kind of what I use 
polls for.
    Also, if you know that you've only got time--let's say Congress is 
going to be in session 3 more months, and you know you can get two 
things done, and there's five things you want to do. And you like them 
all five more or less the same, but you just know you can't get it all 
done, the system won't absorb that much change at once.
    It may help you to do a survey to see--for example, the Patients' 
Bill of Rights that I've been trying to pass for 2 years. One of the 
reasons that I have felt good about trying to push it--and we keep 
making progress and the House of Representatives passed it--is that 70 
percent of Republicans, Democrats, and independents outside Washington 
support it. It's helpful to know that, because then you're not asking 
if--in other words, the Congress is a majority Republican. So if I give 
them a bill that's got 60 percent of the Democrats for it and 60 percent 
of the independents for it, when 60 percent of the Republicans are 
against it, I'm really asking them to make a sacrifice.
    But if I give them a bill that Democrats, Republicans, and 
independents are all for, even though there may be some organized groups 
against it, I'm not asking them to hurt themselves to do something that 
I think is good for America. That's how I use polls.
    Now, let me just say one other thing. Polls can be misleading.
    Reverend Hybels. He loves this stuff. I 
mean, just listen to this. [Laughter]
    The President. No, no, but you need to understand it. Polls can be 
misleading. For example, the polls show that people normally support the 
positions I took on the Brady bill, banning assault weapons, closing the 
gun show loophole. Does that mean it's a good thing to do politically? 
Absolutely not; not necessarily.
    One of the reasons the Republicans won the House in 1994 is that I 
got Democrats to vote for the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban. 
Why? Let's say people--I'll exaggerate--let's say people are 80 percent 
for my position and 20 percent for the NRA position. Okay? But if the 80 
percent who are for my position are interested in a dozen issues, and 
it's only a voting issue for 5 percent, and of the 20 percent of the NRA 
members who are against my position if it's a voting issue for 10 
percent, for 15 percent, it means you lose 10 percent of the vote. See 
what I mean?
    So the polls can be totally misleading. Therefore, even though it 
looked like the public was for us, when we took on guns, when we took on 
tobacco interests, when we took on a lot of these other things, it was 
very risky.
    And the final thing I want to tell you is, sometimes you have to do 
things that are unpopular because you know they're right and you're 
absolutely convinced time will tell. The most unpopular decision I made 
as President, at the moment I made it, was to give financial aid to 
Mexico when they were going broke. Remember that a few years ago? On the 
day I made that decision the polls said that by 81 to 15--81 to 15, you 
couldn't get those numbers for the proposition that the Sun will come up 
tomorrow--[laughter]--by 81 to 15, the public thought that I should not 
do that.
    It took me 5 minutes to make the decision to do it. It was not a 
hard decision. We did it right away. Why? Because I knew that no matter 
what you thought about whether I was doing something wrong, I couldn't 
allow Mexico to go bankrupt if I could stop it because it was an 
important trading partner for us; because if they went down, then 
Argentina and Brazil might go down; countries half way around the world 
might down; we would be flooded with more illegal immigrants; we'd have 
more trouble on our border than we could say grace over; and that even 
if everybody got mad at me and wanted to vote against me, I owed it to 
you to do what I had more evidence and knowledge of than most voters and 
go ahead and do what I thought was right. So I did.
    You should use polls and you should follow them, but neither those 
who follow nor those who use should take them too seriously or fail to 
understand their limits.

[[Page 1615]]

Race Relations

    Reverend Hybels. If I asked you what are two 
or three issue-oriented convictions that you are going to stand for from 
here to the grave, you just go, ``This one goes down into my soul''?
    The President. The first is the whole question of race. You know, 
I'm a southerner; I grew up in the segregated South. The most important 
thing to me is that we learn to live together.
    Let me say, for one thing, I'm quite sure that some of my positions 
are wrong. I'm quite sure some of your positions are wrong. That is, if 
you know enough and have enough opinions, some of them are going to be 
wrong.
    In a way, one of my very favorite Bible verses is the 12th chapter 
of the--12th verse of the 12th chapter of First Corinthians: ``Now we 
see through a glass darkly, but then face to face. Now we know in part, 
but then we shall know even as we are also known. Now abideth faith, 
hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love''--or charity or 
charitable love or whatever. Why? Because we see through a glass darkly.
    But I'm quite sure that what I am right about is our common humanity 
and that our common humanity is more important than the things that 
divide us. The human genome project has discovered that we are 
genetically more than 99.9 percent the same. Furthermore, it has 
discovered that if you take--let's say we took four groups. Let's say we 
take a hundred Chinese, a hundred Indians from South Asia--not Native 
American--a hundred Indians, a hundred Norwegians, and a hundred West 
Africans. That the genetic differences between the groups would be less 
than the genetic differences among the individuals within each racial 
group--stunning.
    Basically, science is confirming what our faith has taught us. And 
so, to me, if I could have one wish for America it would not be that the 
economic recovery would go on another decade, it would not be even that 
the crime rate would be lowered or that we would all--that all of our 
children would have a chance at a good life. It would be that we would 
find a way to live together as one America, because we'll figure out how 
to solve all the problems if we'll stop getting in each other's way. So 
that's what I believe.
    Reverend Hybels. It's funny, when you start 
going in on this genetic thing--I went to Washington. I think it was a 
day after you had done all that reading. I walked in the door. You could 
not wait--[laughter]--to tell me the findings of these genetic 
differences and similarities. And I was thinking, I flew all the way 
there, sat and listened for an hour and 15 minutes, flew all the way 
back, and never said a word. [Laughter]
    The President. But somebody has got to do that to him, right? 
[Laughter]
    Reverend Hybels. I think you're two down 
now.
    The President. Boy, I'll pay for that, I'll tell you. I'll pay for 
that.

Influences on the President

    Reverend Hybels. Yes, you're two down now. 
[Laughter] Okay. Dividing your life into thirds, like zero to 20, 20 to 
40, 40 until now, which leaders had the most important influence on you 
in each of those thirds?
    The President. Well, when I was very young, my mother was a role 
model to me and for lots of reasons. She was a good mother, a good 
provider; she got up early, worked late, put us first--my band director, 
my high school principal, President Kennedy, a couple of my college 
professors. Between 20 and 40, I think I admired Martin Luther King, 
Robert Kennedy, a lot of people in public life. Between 40 and 60, 
especially after I got to be President, I spent more time studying 
Abraham Lincoln and Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt. And I've been very 
influenced by Nelson Mandela, who is a good friend of mine and my 
family; and Yitzak Rabin, the late Prime Minister of Israel, whom I 
loved very much and was very close to and, as you know, lost his life 
because he was working for peace in the Middle East, the same thing 
we're still struggling with.
    And I kind of drew something from each of them. But I would say 
those are the people that have really influenced me.

Presidential Decisions

    Reverend Hybels. Okay. What are the toughest 
one or two decisions you've had to make during your Presidency? When did 
you just go, ``Oh, my goodness gracious, there is no good way this is 
going to come out, but I've got to make the call.''
    The President. Well, any time you put Americans into battle, you do, 
because you know the chances are some of them will die. And even if they 
don't, they're going to kill somebody

[[Page 1616]]

else. And you can't use all those big fancy weapons--I don't care how 
good the computers are, how accurate the weapons are--without some 
people getting killed that you didn't want to kill.
    So the decision to go--the conflict in Kosovo--when I first got 
elected I had to take a military action against Saddam Hussein because he had authorized an assassination plot on 
President Bush. I don't know if you all remember that, back in 1993, 
after President Bush had left office, and he went to the Middle East, 
and they authorized an assassination squad. Thank goodness it failed. 
But I couldn't just walk away from that and pretend it didn't happen and 
pretend the people who were responsible for that thought they could kill 
an American President who had done something that we all--most of us 
supported in the Gulf war.
    But every time you do that, every time you unleash a missile or send 
a pilot, and you know that it's life and death, you just have to pray 
you're right. We did it in actions--there were other times when we took 
actions over Iraq. There were other times we--more limited actions in 
Bosnia, because thank goodness, we brought them to the peace table. But 
I think those are the hardest things.
    There were a lot of other things. It was very hard to put together 
the economic plan in 1993, because I knew the country was deep in 
trouble. We had quadrupled the debt in 12 years; the deficit was high; 
the interest rates were high; the economy was weak. And I knew it was 
going to take a real cold shower to turn it around. And it would take a 
combination of tax increases, which I wanted to have mostly on upper 
income people, and spending cuts, which would mostly affect middle and 
lower income people. But we had to do them both to try to get rid of 
this deficit. And I knew if we didn't do it, we'd never get there. But I 
also knew that I was asking a lot of Members of Congress to walk the 
line and to risk being defeated.
    And when the Republicans announced that they would give no votes to 
it and it was going to be the first major piece of legislation in 50 
years to pass with the votes of only one party, you know, I knew what I 
was asking them to do. But I also knew--I believed very strongly it 
would work, and I thought if we didn't do something about the deficit 
and the accumulating debt that we would never turn the country around. 
And so I did it. But it was very hard for me, because I knew that the 
Congress would pay the price, because there was no way the economy could 
be that much better by '94 in the elections, and that if I was right and 
it worked, that I would be reelected in '96, and they would have, in 
effect, sacrificed for a decision that I made and got them to support.
    And it's turned out that's how it was. That was one of my lower days 
as President, when that happened.
    Reverend Hybels. Now, let's say that it's 
the night before you have to send troops into battle. Who do you have in 
the room with you? What process is going on? How do you make that final 
call to say, ``Go''?
    The President. Well, you have the national security team, the 
Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the Chairman of the Joint 
Chiefs of Staff, the Director of Central Intelligence, and a number of 
other people would be there. And we would probably be meeting in the 
secure room in the White House that we have for such purposes.
    And we would go over all the facts, all the options, what options we 
had other than going into combat, what our objectives were, what the 
likelihood of achieving our objectives are, and what could go wrong. And 
if the worst happens and something goes wrong, what are we going to do 
then? We try to game it all out and think about it in advance.
    Then I go around the room, and whenever I have a big decision, I 
make everybody tell me what they think. And one of the things that I 
have tried to cultivate is to tell people I do not want them to tell me 
what they think I want to hear. And I must say, they have certainly 
taken that to heart. [Laughter]
    But one of the problems that Presidents--one of the things that 
causes Presidents problems is they tend to pick people to be around them 
who are too much like them. This is not a negative thing. It's a hard 
job. You're under a lot of pressure. You like to be around people you 
feel comfortable with, who have the same interests you do, have the same 
strengths you do. But the truth is, you need to have people around you 
who see the world differently, who have different experiences, and who 
have different strengths and skills. So I tried to do that, too. And we 
just go around, and they all tell me what they think. And then when we 
have to make a decision, I make a decision.

[[Page 1617]]

    Reverend Hybels. And would you try to gain 
consensus, or at a certain point, if you realize there is not consensus, 
you just say, ``Well, men and women, we're going to do this''?
    The President. I always try to get them to get a consensus because I 
know they're smart enough and their takes on things are different 
enough--the same thing is true in the domestic field. I do the same 
thing with economic policy.
    But if they can get a consensus, more than likely, they're right, 
because they're not all rubber-stamp-type people, and they're in there 
really working it through. And they can present the arguments to me.
    But if they can't make a consensus and we run out of time, I just 
make a decision. I make the best decision I can.

President's Best Moments

    Reverend Hybels. All right. You're going to 
be leaving office in a few months, and you look back and you say--what 
were one or two of just the highest moments, just the greatest feelings, 
when you said, ``It doesn't get better than this''?
    The President. Well, I'll give you a couple. When we won the 
economic fight in August of '93, I knew it was going to turn the country 
around. I just knew it. Because the productive capacity of the American 
people and the fact that we were ahead in this information technology 
age anyway was beginning to assert itself. And I knew if we could just 
get the deficit down, get interest rates down, get out of the way of the 
economy, and then do some things that would speed it up, it would be 
great. That was a great day.
    In September of '93, when Arafat and Rabin met on the White House 
lawn and I got them to shake hands for the first time in front of a 
billion people on television, it was an unbelievable day.
    When I signed the AmeriCorps bill to give now 150,000 young people a 
chance to serve at their communities for a year or two and then earn 
money for college, and I did it with the pens that President Kennedy 
used to sign the Peace Corps and President Franklin Roosevelt used to 
sign the Civilian Conservation Corps, that was a great day. It was one 
of my dreams to do.
    In December of '95 I went to Ireland. And our administration was the 
first American administration ever to become deeply involved in the 
Irish peace process. And we had just about got a final peace in Northern 
Ireland. And my people are Irish; they were Irish Protestants from 
Fermanagh, right on the line between Northern Ireland and the Republic 
of Ireland. And to see 50,000 people in the streets in Belfast, to walk 
down the Shankel and the Falls, the Catholic and the Protestant 
neighborhoods, and see them there together, all these young people 
cheering for peace; see over 100,000 people in Dublin waving American 
flags and Irish flags, all because they thought America stood for peace.
    The first time I went to Sarajevo after the war in Bosnia ended and 
all these people came up to me on the street and thanked me because 
America gave them their lives back. You know, that means--you forget the 
enormous capacity of our country to represent the best hope of 
humankind. And you realize, when you're President, you're just sort of 
the temporary steward of something that's so much bigger than you are. 
But if you use the power in the right way, how it can move the world, 
not because of you but because of America, because of 226 years of 
history, because of the values of the country, because of the way it 
works, I mean, it's unbelievable.
    So those were some of the things. There were many more: standing in 
Nelson Mandela's prison cell with him was a pretty amazing thing. 
Listening to him tell me the story of how he let go of his hatred and 
resentment so he could be free to be a human being after being unjustly 
imprisoned for 27 years. You get a chance to have some pretty good 
moments in this job. [Laughter]

President's Worst Moments

    Reverend Hybels. And then describe the 
lowest point, where you just said, ``It doesn't get worse than this.''
    The President. Well, obviously, one of them was my personal crisis, 
but we've already talked about that. So if you go beyond that, let me 
just mention a couple.
    Somalia, when we lost 18 of our soldiers in Somalia in a firefight, 
where somewhere between 300 and 500 Somalis got killed. When our 
soldiers were asked--we were there--remember we went there to help 
because people were starving, but this political conflict was going on. 
And the U.N. had troops there, not

[[Page 1618]]

just Americans. And a lot of you don't remember, I bet, what 
precipitated this. One of the factions in the Somalis fighting killed 22 
Pakistani troops who were there with us for the United Nations. And the 
U.N. couldn't just walk away from that. I mean, they ambushed them. They 
bushwhacked them and killed them.
    So only the United States troops had the capacity to try to arrest 
those who were responsible. And I remember General Powell coming to me 
and asking for my approval for us to try. And he said, ``I think we've 
got only a one-in-five, one-in-four chance of getting this guy alive, 
but we've got a one-in-two chance of some success.''
    But the people on the ground decided the that best thing to do was 
to launch an attack in broad daylight on this hotel. And when they did 
it, it turned out to be an unbelievably bloody battle under unbelievably 
adverse circumstances, and 18 of our guys died, and several hundred of 
theirs did. And it wasn't the sort of decision made in the way it should 
have been made by me, with our involvement. And I felt the sickest I 
have felt since I've been here. And they were very brave, they fought 
very well. I gave a couple of them the Medal of Honor, who were killed. 
They were unbelievable. But it was a terrible moment.
    It was a terrible moment when those people were killed in Oklahoma 
City, because, if you remember, it came--there briefly people assumed 
that it was some sort of foreign terrorist--remember that--where they 
were trying to arrest a gentleman who was an Arab-American who was 
traveling on a plane out of the country. And I thank God for whatever it 
was that made me think to say to the American people, ``Well, don't jump 
to conclusions here. This may not be what's going on.''
    And then when we found out what did go on, there was this terribly 
twisted, disturbed young man who had been affected by all this rhetoric 
that had been kind of seeping through the underground of America, about 
how inherently evil the Government and anybody who worked for it was, I 
just felt sick. I felt, what can we do--I just--and one of those people, 
by the way, who was killed in Oklahoma City, when I went down there to 
see his family, they showed me a picture of him at my inaugural. And I 
was talking to all these victims, and every one of them had a story; 
people have stories.
    If you ever get a chance to go to the Oklahoma City Memorial, if 
you're ever within a hundred miles of there, stop whatever you're doing 
and drive and go see it. It is the most effective memorial of its kind I 
have ever seen. But I just felt that there were forces at work in our 
society that made my words seem weak and inadequate. And I wanted to do 
something to try to heal the heart of the country, to go beyond sort of 
bigger than policies and bills and who was up and who was down. It was 
just unbelievable.
    So those two things kind of stand out to me as really low moments. 
And I mention just personally, for my allies, I felt sick when the '94 
congressional elections occurred, because I felt like those people bled 
for a decision that I got them to make. So I felt responsible for their 
losing their careers, even though I thought what we did was right for 
the country. And I think the future bore us out.

President's Legacy

    Reverend Hybels. What would you like to be 
remembered for?
    The President. I would like to be remembered for leading the country 
through a great period of transformation. This period is most like what 
happened at the turn of the last century, when Theodore Roosevelt and 
Woodrow Wilson led America from an agricultural country into an 
industrial country and helped us to make the changes necessary in that 
context to reaffirm our commitment of opportunity for every responsible 
citizen and to realize, in that context, what our responsibilities to 
one another were, to have one national community.
    And I would like to be remembered as the President that led America 
from the industrial era into the information age, into a new global 
society that reaffirmed the importance of our mutual responsibility to 
one another and the importance of guaranteeing an opportunity to 
everybody, and that I was a force for peace and freedom and decency in 
the world, that tried to bring people together instead of drive people 
apart, tried to empower poor people so they could have a chance like 
everybody else, and that tried to change the nature of our politics so 
we spent more time debating our ideas than trying to destroy our 
opponents and basically tried to lift us up and move us on. That's how 
I'd like to be remembered.

[[Page 1619]]

The Presidency

    Reverend Hybels. One of the last times we 
were together, we were just taking a little stroll around the White 
House grounds, and you said, ``Man, I'm going to miss this job.'' What 
are you going to miss about it?
    The President. People ask me all the time, what are you going to 
miss the most? Will it be living in the White House, which is the best 
public housing in America--[laughter]--or going to Camp David, which is 
a pretty good vacation home, or getting on Air Force One, which relieves 
me of all the kind of screaming tedium that tests your faith every time 
you walk in an airport? [Laughter] But the truth is--or having the 
Marine Band play ``Hail To The Chief'' every time you walk in a room? 
[Laughter] I've had a couple of my predecessors tell me you feel lost 
when you walk in a room the first 4 or 5 months, and nobody plays the 
song anymore. [Laughter]
    But what I will miss more than anything else is the job. I loved the 
job. I love it every day. My biggest problem now is I hate to go to 
sleep at night. I go to bed, and I sit there, and I read for hours. I 
just keep working. I'm trying to get everything done I can do before I 
leave. I have loved the work.
    I wanted to be President at a time when I was very happy being the 
Governor of my State, very happy with the life that Hillary and Chelsea 
and I had in Arkansas, because I wanted to make some specific changes in 
the direction of the country. I had a very clear idea of what I wanted 
to do. And it is the most rewarding work you could ever imagine.
    And believe it or not, it's a job like other jobs. I mean, it really 
matters how hard you work at it. It matters how smart you work at it. It 
matters whether you've got a good team helping you. I mean, it's not 
sort of like--sometimes I think it assumes proportions, the Presidency 
does, that are both too mythical and too trivial, as if it's all just 
positioning and politics. Not true. It's a job, like other jobs.
    It matters what you think you're supposed to do. It matters whether 
you've got a strategy to get there. It matters whether you've got a good 
team. And it matters how hard you work. And problems yield to effort, 
just like other jobs. And the work--I will miss the work.
    And the other thing I'll really miss is the opportunity on a regular 
and consistent basis to come in contact with every conceivable kind of 
human being. I hope that I can find something to do when I leave office 
which will at least keep me in contact with different kinds of people 
who have different interests and know different things, from whom I can 
continue to learn and for whom I can continue to contribute.
    But it was the job that I loved. Every day. Even the terrible days, 
I loved the work. People ask me all the time, ``How did you survive all 
that?'' I said, ``I remembered who hired me.'' I got up in the morning 
and said, ``At some level, Presidents aren't supposed to have feelings. 
They're supposed to be servants. They're supposed to remember who hired 
them. And you get 24 hours in a day, and you have to sleep a little, and 
you need to take time for your family and renewal, but otherwise, you 
need to be there for the American people.''
    And it's just been a joy. I can't even--I don't even have the words 
to describe how much I love the work.

Mission of Church Leaders

    Reverend Hybels. I just have a couple 
minutes left. There's many, many thousands of pastors here and at the 
satellite sites. And if I said, what challenge, what words of 
inspiration would you have for pastors? Is what they're doing important? 
How do you see it in the overall scheme of things?
    The President. Well, first of all, I would say that I believe in 
what it is you're doing here, because every one of us who has a job that 
anybody ever held before we did is normally reluctant to admit we don't 
know everything we should know about how to do it. I mean, we think, 
well, everybody knows what the President does. Pick up a textbook. 
Everybody knows what a pastor does. I mean, you've got to pass the plate 
on Sunday; you've got to get enough money in to keep the church open; 
you've got to--[inaudible]. It's not true. There are ways to imagine 
what you do that will dramatically increase your effectiveness in doing 
what God put you on Earth to do.
    And what I would say is I think that--I wish I'd actually spent more 
time even than I have thinking about that in my work. And so I think--
I'll go back to what I said--I think basically America works best when 
it's really strong at the grassroots. And that means that the role of 
community churches is pivotal.

[[Page 1620]]

    The second thing I would say is, to everybody listening to me, we 
may have very different political views about certain issues, or maybe a 
lot of different political parties, but I think every church needs a 
mission that goes beyond its members. And I think that this church does, 
and I respect it very much.
    I think that the words of Christ in St. Matthews about how we're all 
going to be judged in part by how we dealt toward the least of these is 
very important, especially in a time of extraordinary prosperity like 
this one.
    And the final thing I would say is you asked me today about whether 
these pastors should minister to other politicians, and I said some 
things about politicians and their spiritual needs and me in mind. But 
that's really true of everyone.
    One of the things I think that must be hardest--one of the most 
rewarding things I think about being a pastor, and yet one of the 
hardest things to remember, especially as you have some success, is that 
whether you have 20,000 members in your church or 200, they've all got a 
story, and they all have their needs, and they're all--they have a claim 
as a child of God to have a certain level of connection. And as you get 
bigger and more successful, you've got to figure out how to keep giving 
it to them, because nobody goes through this whole life without a slip 
or a turn or a scar or a challenge or something that seems just beyond 
their ability to cope with.
    And so I think learning these leadership skills and thinking about 
what your job is--all I can tell you is that's what's kept me going for 
8 years. I just kept thinking about the personal stories of all the 
people who touched me and reminded me of why I was supposed to show up 
every day.
    I think if you can do that and have a mission that deals with your 
members as individuals and that goes beyond your members, I think 
America will be better. And I know that all of us who are involved in 
these endeavors will be better.
    The last thing I want to say is--I used to say this about Al 
Gore all the time; I used to say, when I 
was being criticized, he doesn't get enough credit for what we did 
together that is good, and surely no fairminded person would blame him 
for any mistake that I made. I hope you'll feel that way about Hybels. 
I've got to make up for these two cuts I took him. [Laughter] He didn't 
fail in his ministry because I did. And what he did was good for 
America, because I needed somebody to talk to, to brace me up, and make 
me think about things in another way. It was a gift. It's something I'll 
treasure all my life. And for those of you who have whatever political 
or personal differences you have, I hope you will still believe that he 
did the right thing, because he did.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 2:15 p.m. at the Willow Creek Community 
Church. In his remarks, he referred to Gordon McDonald, senior minister, 
Grace Chapel Congregation, Lexington, MA; Tony Campolo, associate 
pastor, Mt. Carmel Baptist Church, West Philadelphia, PA; Rev. J. Philip 
Wogaman, pastor, Foundry United Methodist Church, Washington, DC; 
President Saddam Hussein of Iraq; and Chairman Yasser Arafat of the 
Palestinian Authority. Rev. Hybels is the pastor of Willow Creek 
Community Church.