[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 5 (Monday, February 6, 1995)]
[Pages 173-179]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Interview With Religious Journalists

February 2, 1995

    The President. Well, I'm glad to see you all and welcome you here, 
for many of you, for the first time. As you know, when I was in--in the 
State of the Union Address, I issued a challenge and as part of my 
explanation of the New Covenant in challenging citizens to be more 
responsible to people of faith and to religious leaders, specifically, 
to help us to deal with those problems that we have to deal with person 
by person and from the inside out, to help us to deal with the problems 
of teen pregnancy and out-of-wedlock birth, to help us to deal with the 
challenges of excessive violence, to help us to deal with the things 
that have to be organized and dealt with literally one by one at the 
grassroots level. And while I think we have to be more tolerant of all 
people, no matter what their differences are, we need to be less 
tolerant of conditions that are within our power to change.
    And as you know now, for 2 years, ever since I took this job, I've 
been trying to find ways to galvanize the energies of people of faith to 
work together on a common agenda that nearly all Americans would agree 
on and, at the same time, to try to respect the differences of opinion 
and views. Our administration strongly supported the Religious Freedom 
Restoration Act, and we've worked very hard to implement it in a good 
faith way. And I think an awful lot of people from right across the 
spectrum of religious affiliations in our country would agree that we 
have done that.
    Anyway, if you have any questions, I'd be glad to answer. But the 
other thing I was going to say today--what I said today was that the 
problems our country faces today are quite profound, you know, the fact 
that a rising tide is not lifting all boats; that a lot of people, in 
spite of this remarkable recovery, have not gotten a raise and they're 
more vulnerable with their health care, their pensions; and the fact 
that a lot of people find their values violated and their security 
violated by crime and violence and the breakdowns of the social order. 
It would be very hard to assert that there are more profound 
difficulties than the problems of previous

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days, than the problems that George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or 
Franklin Roosevelt confronted.
    The difference is that in the information age, which gives us these 
vast new opportunities because of the creation of wealth is based on 
knowledge and that these people have access to more knowledge than ever 
before. It's also a great burden because words have greater power today 
than ever before, not only to build up but also to tear down, to divide, 
to destroy, to distract. And therefore, in a very profound sense in the 
modern world, it is more important that people be striving for the kind 
of spiritual presence of mind and peace of mind that will lead you to 
use words to build up and to unify, instead of to divide and tear down. 
And I really do believe that. I think that it's clearly different from 
any previous time. Words have always been able to wound in letters or 
speeches or whatever. But the omnipresence of information today and the 
fact that we're buried in it, it seems to me, imposes an even greater 
responsibility on people in positions of respect and trust and power to 
use those words more carefully.

Personal Morality

    Q. An awkward question, sir. The moral crusade elements of the State 
of the Union Address, teenage pregnancy, as an example, sits well, 
except that there are investigations into your own conduct which some 
people say leaves an impression. Is this interfering with your ability 
to lead that type of crusade?
    The President. Not in my own mind. That's up for other people to 
determine. But the one thing that I would say today--we live in an age 
where anybody can say anything, and unlike in previous times, it gets 
into print. And even if they admit they took money to say it--which is 
what happened in my case a couple of times--it still gets wide currency. 
So there's not much I can do about that.
    I can tell you this, the work I've tried to do to reduce teen 
pregnancy and out-of-wedlock births generally is something I've been 
involved in for many years. And I think it's a very serious matter. The 
life of these young people was very, very different than my life was 
when I was their age. Their temptations, their travails, it's very, very 
different and much more difficult for them. And I think we've got to try 
to find a way to help them walk back from what is now happening.
    Interestingly enough--this is a statistical comment I'm making now--
there is some evidence that the efforts may be beginning to have some 
impact. The actual numbers of out-of-wedlock births have stabilized in 
the last 2 or 3 years. The rate of illegitimacy is going up because the 
rate of childbearing by couples who are young and successful is going 
down, which is another problem for another discussion. But anyway, I 
don't see that we have any choice as a people to deal with it, and 
it's--and you know, if folks want to use that as another excuse to 
attack me, that's their problem, not mine.

Welfare Reform and Abortion

    Q. Related to that, some people suggest that both your welfare 
reform proposals and the Contract With America's welfare reform proposal 
takes such Draconian measures against these unwed teen mothers in terms 
of limits that what it's likely to do is to drive up the abortion rate, 
not stop the unwanted pregnancy rate but drive up the abortion rate. Do 
you see that happening?
    The President. Well, I don't agree with that in my proposal, and 
obviously, I don't know what would happen in the others, but let's look 
at that.
    The abortion rate has been going down in America. And I think it's 
been going down for--maybe because of all the protest against abortion. 
But I also think that most Americans have deeply ambivalent feelings. 
That is, I believe that a majority of Americans are pro-choice and anti-
abortion. That is, they don't believe that the decision should be 
criminalized because there are too many different circumstances where 
most of us feel that decisions should be left to the people who are 
involved rather than having a totally legal prohibition.
    On the other hand, most people think in most circumstances that 
abortion is wrong and that it shouldn't be done. So the abortion rate is 
going down in America. It's still very much too high, and we've tried to 
do some things to make adoption more attractive. And there was a law 
signed last year that's gotten

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almost no notice because it was part of the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Act to try to remove the prohibitions or the discriminations 
in courts across the country in cross-racial adoptions to try to do 
whatever we could to just encourage more adoptions.
    But let me back up to your question and to explain, if I might, why 
I don't agree that our position would cause more abortions. There are 
basically three different approaches, with a zillion different 
limitations, but three different approaches in this welfare debate. 
There is the Contract approach which is deny benefits to the second 
welfare child born out of wedlock. And then this extreme version is deny 
benefits to any teenager who has a child out of wedlock and to that 
child for up to 18 years. That's what--then there's the people who say, 
turn it over to the States and let them do whatever they want, which 
could include that.
    Our position is give the States a lot more flexibility, but don't 
punish the children, take care of their basic needs. And we say don't 
cut the parents off of public assistance unless, number one, they're bad 
parents or, number two, they do things which will undermine their 
ability to either be successful workers or successful parents.
    So for example, the way our plan works is if you're a teenager and 
you have a baby, in order to draw the public assistance in a normal way, 
you'd have to stay in school, you'd have to live at home with your 
parents, and if you lived in a bad home you'd have to live in some other 
supervised setting. You'd have to cooperate and help identify the father 
so we could attempt to get the father to pay child support and support 
the child. If at the end of your education period and training, if 2 
years have elapsed and you haven't gone to work, then you would have to 
go to work if there were a job available. And if you turned down a job, 
you could lose your benefits.
    Under their proposal, the second problem is, you'd be cut off after 
2 years whether there's a job there or not. So the two differences are, 
I say, cut people off after a limited amount of time if there's a job 
there. They say, cut them off altogether. I say only take benefits away 
from people if they misbehave as parents or in their own 
responsibilities. They say, if you have a child out of wedlock and 
you're a teenager, you should never get benefits and neither should your 
child.
    I'll leave it to you to conclude what impact that might have on the 
abortion rate; I don't know. But I don't believe ours would. I think 
ours is responsible. You have to have more requirements on people; you 
can't just continue to perpetuate the present system. But I don't think 
you should punish the children or punish people for their past mistakes; 
you should deal with their present conduct.

Child Health and Welfare

    Q. What about the suggestion that, particularly of Speaker Gingrich, 
that the churches and the charities should be able to take over much of 
the responsibility, including the financial responsibility that the 
Government now has for foster children and various other tough social 
situations? Is that an appropriate way for these problems to be taken 
care of, for these people to be cared for? And if so, how should the 
money get there?
    The President. Well, I think the churches could well be involved in 
more activities. For example, I think that you might--and one of the 
things that I want to do is to give more flexibility in how to implement 
welfare reform to State and local government. If they want to involve 
the church, particularly, for example, in developing supervised settings 
for young girls and their children who can't, and shouldn't, be living 
in their homes because of the problems in their homes, that's the sort 
of partnership that I would certainly not oppose.
    But I don't think you can say from that that there's no national 
interest which should command some taxpayer support to make sure that 
these children have minimal levels of nutrition and medical care and 
just the basic things that it seems to me we've got an interest in 
doing, because we don't want to lose any more of these kids than we have 
to.
    The welfare benefits themselves, by the way, are not a problem. The 
real welfare benefits are about 40 percent lower than they were 20 years 
ago. So nobody goes on welfare for the check, it's the child care, it's 
the food stamps, it's the medical care for your chil- 

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dren. Therefore, nearly anybody who can will get off and go to work if 
they can take care of their children and their children won't lose their 
health care.
    But do I think the churches should do more? I do. And one of the 
things that we want to do is to give them more operational control of 
this program to the States and let them use churches or community 
organizations or others to do whatever they can to repair the families.
    Q. Much of what the churches already do--for instance, Catholic 
charities, their money comes from contracts through Federal agencies. In 
essence, what some of the Republican proposals are asking them to do is 
to continue doing the sort of work but without those contracts, without 
the money.
    The President. Well, it will just be harder for them, won't it? I 
mean, I think--I mean, Fred is a good example. The Government does not--
we are not a particularly generous country in terms of social welfare. 
The thing--I don't think the American people object to spending tax 
money on poor people. I think what they object to is spending tax money 
on a system that perpetuates destructive conduct and irresponsible 
conduct. I think that the issue is--for example, I don't think most 
Americans really think that it would be a great idea to cut out all 
spending on poor children in order to afford a capital gains tax cut. I 
don't think that's where they would come down. On the other hand, would 
they rather have a tax cut or just waste money on any program, including 
a program that perpetuated dependency? I think they would--or reduce the 
deficit or whatever. So I think the--what my goal is, is to say there's 
a national interest in the health and welfare of our children. I think 
it requires some investment of taxpayer money in the areas of 
particularly basic health care and nutrition and immunization of 
children against serious diseases. But the systems are dysfunctional. So 
I think we ought to try to fix them.

Response To Criticism

    Q. In a meeting of Baptist leaders back in October you were asked a 
question about some of your critics who were attacking you with 
unsubstantiated charges. I'm thinking specifically of Reverend Falwell 
pushing a video on his TV program. And your response to the question was 
that you were busy running the country and didn't want to respond to 
your critics, but you were surprised that the Christian community wasn't 
taking these men on.
    Since that time, I know American Baptist Tony Campollo was asked for 
equal time on his show to try to defend you. But do you know of any 
other attempts like that, or anything since that time to try to answer 
some----
    The President. There have been an awful lot of attempts--I think 
there have been a lot of press stories refuting some of the specific 
allegations. But I would just say again, in the world we're living in--
I'll say what I said at the prayer breakfast today--there is an 
inordinate premium put on the use of words to destroy or to distract 
people. And it takes away from my ability to be President, to do the job 
with a clear head and a clear heart and to focus on the American people, 
if I have to spend all my time trying to answer charges about what 
people say that I did years ago. And I just can't do it. I just can't do 
it.
    I do the very best I can. Sometimes you can actually disprove 
something someone says about you. A lot of times, some people could lie 
about you in ways that you can't disprove. You can't always disprove 
every assertion. So insofar as whatever happened, I can't change 
yesterday, I can only change today and tomorrow. So I've just got to 
keep going. I think it is--I think I have--if I'd done anything, even 
though I've tried not to deal with it at all, I think whatever time I've 
spent kind of trying to absorb those blows since I've been President has 
been time and effort and energy, emotional as well as intellectual 
energy, has taken away from the American people. And I'm not going to 
cheat them anymore. I'm just not going to do it. I'm tired of letting 
other people say things that require me to deprive the American people 
of the best effort I can make. They'll have to make whatever evaluation 
of this they want to.
    There is a difference between reputation and character, and I have 
increasingly less control over my reputation but still full control over 
my character. That's between me

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and God, and I've just got to try to be purified by this.
    I also noticed--Winston Churchill said--I ran across this the other 
day--that just because someone strays from the truth in criticizing you 
doesn't mean you can't learn something from their criticism. So I've 
decided that I'll try--need to learn a little something from my critics, 
even if what they say is not so. None of us are perfect, and I'm 
certainly not. But I just can't--I really think I made the right 
decision to try to just tune it out and go forward.

Bible Readings

    Q. Is there a place in the Scriptures where you find a source for 
the kind of faith you talked about earlier in stillness in facing these 
things, a story or a parable or a reading that you've turned to?
    The President. Well, it's interesting, I just finished reading the 
entire Psalms. I also read--this is ironic--Lloyd Ogilvie's book on the 
Psalms that I didn't--I read it before he was selected to be Chaplain of 
the Senate. And there are a lot of the Psalms where David is sort of 
praying for the strength to be sort of purified in the face of adversity 
and in the face of his own failures.
    There are a lot of the Proverbs which talk about the importance of 
keeping a quiet tongue and at least not getting in your own way, which 
I've done a lot in my life and which I've tried, even still, to grow out 
of. And I've spent a lot of time dealing with that over the last 2 
years, as you would imagine I would have to.
    I think the important thing--and I find this in the Scriptures over 
and over again--the important thing that I have to keep focusing on is 
what am I going to do today, what am I going to do tomorrow, how can I 
be free to call on the power of God to make the most of this job that I 
have for a little bit of time in the grand sweep of things. And that's 
just what I keep focusing on every day.
    But I think--you'd be amazed how many people write me little fax 
notes, from friends of mine on a daily basis, saying look at this 
Scripture, look at that Scripture, look at the other Scripture. During 
this difficult period, a lot of people were giving me different Psalms 
to read. It was amazing, and so I did.

 Negativism in Politics

    Q. Sir, when you talk about destructive language, if you--you refer 
to personal attacks on yourself. But what about some of the uncivil 
language which has been so much in the news over the past months that 
has been in Congress? Are you including that in----
    The President. Oh, sure. I said today at the prayer breakfast, I 
don't think anybody in public life, including me, is blameless. I think 
it's that there are general--excuse me, genuine differences that people 
have on issues, and they ought to express them. But our public life 
needs more of the spirit of reconciliation, it needs more civility, it 
needs more humility. Sometimes we think we know things we don't.
    And I think on debates over public issues, that is true as well. The 
American people very much want us to--they respond to these negative 
things, but they don't like it. The reason it keeps happening is because 
they respond to it. The politicians read polls, you know, and they know 
very often that the negative campaigns work and elect people. And they 
know that if you just constantly demean and run down people, like, after 
a while it sticks. They know that, so they keep on doing it. And the 
people respond to it, but they hate it. It's almost saying, ``I wish 
you'd lock this liquor store up so I couldn't drink anymore.''
    And so somehow we have to crawl back off of this wedge because it 
has--as I said, it's--today people get more information that is sort of 
argumentative and editorial and often less accurate and then get in a 
more negative context than ever before. And it is a function of the 
information explosion. And so I do believe that I and others have a 
heavier responsibility even than we might have had in a former time, 
when in order to just get people's attention, you might take a little 
license with your language, you know.

Politics and Religion

    Q. [Inaudible]--proven through the words and your actions that you 
are a genuinely religious person, since you were very young, and your 
wife as well. And a lot of religious people I talk to don't seem to 
accept that, who don't seem to feel it's genuine--feel that

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you're using it in the course of making politics. And I'm wondering why, 
if you believe that, too, and if you--any analysis as to why that is and 
what it might say about the role of religion in politics, whether they 
really ought to be bound together----
    The President. Well, I don't think they should be bound together. I 
mean, I think the First Amendment is a good thing for our country, that 
we protect the right of everybody to be faithful to whatever they 
believe by not uniting church and state. But I don't think you can 
change people or who they are. They have the convictions they have. They 
have the beliefs they have.
    And what I've tried to do is to draw the proper balance by 
encouraging people of all faiths, including people who disagree with me, 
to be activist citizens. I think the--the book that Stephen Carter wrote 
on that--he makes a better statement about that than I can make, in 
terms of why they don't accept that about me. I think it's hard to make 
a case that I have tried to use this. I've never tried to say that--for 
example, I never tried to say that there was a Christian coalition 
behind anything I did, you know, that God had ordained us to do these 
following things, and I knew it, and anybody that didn't was seized by 
the Devil. I never said that.
    I've said that like every other person, I consider myself a sinner 
because I believe I consider myself forgiven. I consider--you know, I 
need the power of God. This is a humble thing for me. But it's an 
important part of my life and has been for a long time, but especially 
again in recent years and before I became President. And the same thing 
is true for Hillary. I think the truth is that there are people who 
don't believe it's genuine because they disagree with me politically. 
They don't believe that you could be a committed Christian and not want 
to criminalize all abortions. I just don't believe you can be; that's 
what they think. They don't believe that you could be a committed 
Christian and believe that--take the position that I took on gays in the 
military. They thought--think the Bible dictated the previous policy on 
gays in the military, even though we fought two World Wars, Korea, and 
Vietnam, with a different policy. And so--but they don't believe that. 
That's their conviction.
    So then I think there are people, once they disagree with you so 
much, who will believe--who will believe in perpetuating anything 
anybody says about you, and so they think that's evidence of that.
    But--you know, the Bible is full of refutations of the latter point. 
All they had to do was read the Scripture to know better than to make 
that argument. But I can't worry about them; that's their problem. Let 
them think what they want.
    I literally--you know, the one thing I realize is, is I wasted too 
much time when I got here, and it caused me to be a less effective 
President, either being hurt by or paying a great deal of attention to 
what people said about me in the past. And I've just got to try to keep 
going and fight against it, because the people that wanted to really 
blow that up either wanted to do it for their own purposes or wanted to 
do it literally without regard to whether the Government of the United 
States functions or the public interest is furthered. It's just a crazy 
way to behave; you can't do it. It never happened before in our history 
to this extent, and it shouldn't be happening now. And if it is 
happening, I can't control it. So what I should do is just do my job and 
shut it out; that's what I have to do.
    Q. Sir, do you think that religious groups such as the Christian 
Coalition risk their credibility by wholesale endorsement of the 
Contract With America?
    The President. Well, I think that's for others to judge, I think, 
but I would say this: You know, I think that they will come to be seen 
more and more like a political party with an agenda, rather than people 
who are driven into politics based on one or two issues that they 
believe the Bible dictates a position different from the present policy 
of the United States.
    And there are a lot of European political parties with the name 
``Christian'' in them, the Christian Democratic Party in Germany, Helmut 
Kohl's party. Nobody considers him to be, how should I say, sacrilegious 
because he's part of a party called the Christian Democratic Party that 
has religious roots, but no one anymore seriously believes that every 
position they take is rooted in their reading of the Scripture. And I 
think that the Christian Coalition is long since at that point.

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    Now, the thing I do think they have to be careful about with their 
credibility is the very, very hard hits they put on office holders who 
don't do as they believe. I remember one of the Members of Congress who 
lost in the last election told me of an encounter with a Christian 
Coalition minister who said to this Member, ``Well, you want to see what 
we're going to put out in our churches on Sunday, tomorrow?'' And she 
said, ``Yes, I'd like to see it.'' And she went to these ten items; she 
said, ``But, these two things aren't true.'' He said, ``So, it's 
generally true. So what?''
    So I think that that could hurt their credibility more than anything 
else, the idea that they're using the emotions of people of faith who 
are deeply disturbed for good reasons with what's going on in our 
country today and channeling those emotions into convictions about 
people in public life that aren't true. Now, that could hurt their 
credibility.
    But I think just taking positions on these other things, I think 
everybody knows that they basically are an arm of the Republican Party 
and that they're going to take all these positions. I don't see that 
there's anything wrong with them doing it. And I agree with some of 
them, too. You know, I don't disagree with everything in that Contract; 
I agree with some of it.
    Did everybody get a question? I'm glad to see you.
    Q. It's good to see you.
    The President. Thanks. Do you ever wish you were back in Conway?
    Q. Almost every day when I'm driving out to Fairfax County for that 
hour and a half. [Laughter]
    The President. It's pretty out there. I had a woman today from 
Lonoke come sing at the prayer breakfast. It made me so homesick I could 
hardly stand it.

Note: The interview began at 11:46 a.m. in the Oval Office at the White 
House. A tape was not available for verification of the content of these 
remarks.