[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 37, Number 2 (Monday, January 15, 2001)]
[Pages 93-101]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Interview With Steve Holland and Debbie Charles of Reuters

January 11, 2001

No Gun Ri

    Q. We understand you made a foreign policy-related call shortly----
    The President. Yes, I just talked to President Kim about the No Gun 
Ri incident and personally expressed my regret to him. And I thanked him 
for the work that we had done together in developing our mutual 
statement. We also set up this scholarship fund and did some other 
things that we hope will be a genuine gesture of our regret. It was a 
very--you know, I had a good talk with him.
    Q. Any particular reason why you used the word ``regret'' instead of 
``apology'' in your statement?
    The President. I think the findings were--I think he knows that 
``regret'' and ``apology'' both mean the same thing, in terms of being 
profoundly sorry for what happened. But I believe that the people who 
looked into it could not conclude that there was a deliberate act, 
decided at a high enough level in the military hierarchy, to acknowledge 
that, in effect, the Government had participated in something that was 
terrible.
    So I don't think there's any difference in the two words, on a human 
level, because we are profoundly sorry that it happened and sorry that 
any Americans were involved in it. But I think that in terms of the kind 
of responsibility the institution of the military that the facts were 
sufficiently unclear after all this time that the people who were 
reviewing it thought it was the appropriate language. And we worked it 
out with the Koreans and obviously shared whatever we could find with 
them.
    These people have been our friends for 50 years. We didn't have--I 
told our guys to play it straight, that we didn't have an interest in 
trying to cover anything up or sugar-coat anything; we needed to try to 
get to the bottom of this. I think that we've done about

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the best we can do. And I hope that the people of Korea will accept our 
statement as genuine, and I hope it will bring some solace to the family 
members and the few people that still survived who were involved in it, 
who will never get over it.

California Electricity Shortages

    Q. Let me ask you another topical question. California is on the 
verge of blackouts. Is there anything you can do in your remaining time 
in office?
    The President. Well, I'm working at it. We have done some things. 
Secretary Richardson has worked very hard to make sure that the 
wholesalers kept selling the power to the utilities. But essentially, 
what happened was before--without any involvement from the Federal 
Government and before the previous administration in California, the 
deregulation was done in a way that made them vulnerable not to--in 
essence, to very high prices, maybe prices that aren't justified by 
market conditions on occasion.
    They need to get all they can get from out-of-State generators and 
in-State generators, because they've grown so much. And they still have 
a regulation of prices to the ultimate consumer. So we've got a 
situation here which it seems to me might have been predictable at the 
time the deregulation legislation was done. But I, frankly, until this 
happened, I didn't know what the nature of the California deregulation 
law was. I didn't even know when it had been done, until this whole 
thing arose.
    So we're dealing with the situation the best we can. But I also 
think we need to talk to some of the producers, see whether more power 
can be brought on line at economical rates more quickly. I actually 
talked to one of them myself just in the last 2 or 3 days. So I'm trying 
to get all of our options out there, and if there's anything else I can 
do, I will. I saw Governor Davis about a week ago, and I told him that.
    But I do believe that the Governor and the people of California know 
that, through the Energy Department, we've done everything we can so 
far.

2000 Presidential Election

    Q. Let me turn you to the election very quickly. You seemed to 
surprise everybody when you said that the Republicans only--that when 
they stopped the counting, that's the only way that George W. won. What 
point were you trying to make there?
    The President. I was actually just having fun with Bill Daley in 
Chicago. We were home and his brother--he had introduced his brother. I 
think Bill did a very fine job running the Vice President's campaign. I 
was just having a good time, trying to put them all in a good humor. I 
wasn't trying to be sarcastic or hateful or even make any kind of 
deliberate point. I was basically having fun with what I think are the 
undisputed facts. I don't think there's much dispute about the facts. 
They didn't finish the vote count. There's really no--everybody knows 
that.
    Q. Do you have any hard feelings about the election outcome and the 
way the Court, the conservative majority stepped in to stop the 
counting?
    The President. Well, I don't have much to add to what I said. I 
think the Vice President said it all for us. We accept the principle of 
judicial review. It's a very important one. It has been since John 
Marshall wrote the opinion in Marbury v. Madison in the early 19th 
century. And it has helped us to have some finality in our law.
    But yes, I disagree with the decision, and I think most 
constitutional scholars do. I saw a quote in the paper the other from a 
man who was a law professor in the Middle West--I'm sorry, I don't 
remember his name--but he identified himself as a conservative, pro-life 
Republican. But he said, ``I am a constitutional law professor, and I 
disagree with this decision.''
    But the country has had, periodically--thankfully, not often, but 
periodically--there's a handful of Supreme Court decisions that I think 
were unfortunate. But we nearly always straighten it out with time. And 
in the meanwhile, the election was very close. It was fought nearly to a 
draw, and the political forces in Florida, the legislature might have 
done the same thing, and it might have been upheld. I just hated to see 
the Court involved in this way when there was, you know, 6 days less to 
count the votes.

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    But I didn't mean to make any big point. I didn't say anything that 
I and the Vice President and other Democrats had said tons of times. I 
was just having fun, trying to say something nice, to make people laugh 
about Bill Daley. It's pretty tough on him, you know, because he really 
did do a good job. I think they were about 10 points behind or 
something, and Bill took over, and he really did, I think, a very good 
job.
    Q. Can I switch to the Middle East? Everything that's going on right 
now. Today they had some talks----
    The President. Let me just say one other--you shouldn't read 
anything about--that has nothing to do with--we have tried to be very 
supportive of the President-elect and his team and the transition. I 
haven't tried to politicize this. I was strictly having fun with my 
friends in Chicago and bucking up Bill Daley. That's all.
    Anyway, go ahead.

Middle East Peace Process

    Q. The Middle East, there were some talks in the Gaza today between 
Israelis and Palestinians. But Sharon has already said the Oslo deal is 
dead, basically. What are your thoughts about the next 8 days? Is there 
any hope for anything to happen or will you----
    The President. I think there is. It depends on what the agreement is 
and then how the Israeli electorate responds to it. General Sharon has, 
I think, never liked the Oslo agreement and has been very honest about 
it. But he did come to Wye River; he participated fully. Then Prime 
Minister Netanyahu had been very critical of Oslo. But they negotiated 
that agreement at Wye River, and previously to that, I think he was in 
when they finalized the Hebron agreement.
    So you have to hope that this process keeps going. The reason we 
went--let me just back up and say, the reason we went to Camp David in 
the first place is that it was obvious to everybody that just as the 
Hebron and then especially the Wye River agreement was absolutely 
essential to keep the peace process alive, because the previous 
understandings had come to the end of their rope and they had to stay on 
the process, it was obvious to me that we had come to the end of our 
capacity to stay in the peace process with just the Wye River agreement. 
It worked very well for a couple of years, but there had to be some 
continued movement.
    Because what happens is, when you reach a stall, then the people 
that really don't want this to happen, particularly rejectionist 
elements within the Palestinian community, they can have incidents; then 
they provoke reactions; then the borders get closed; then the incomes of 
the Palestinians drop again, and you get in a downward spiral. So I was 
trying to head off just what we've been through these last 3 months.
    So I think that they will have to reach some sort of accommodation, 
unless they really want the thing to spin out of control. And I really 
don't believe either side wants that, so we'll just have to see. But you 
know, whatever happens will be the responsibility of the next 
administration and the winner of the Israeli election, whoever that may 
be.
    Q. Do you think it's important for you to set out a list of, maybe, 
points that have been agreed to so far, so that they don't start from 
scratch again, that you don't lose what you've already gotten?
    The President. Well, I think it was quite significant, actually, 
even though it came 6 days later than I wanted it to, that the 
Palestinians have now agreed in principle with the parameters. So at 
least that Israeli Government and the Palestinian Authority have 
agreed--this Israeli government, excuse me--and the Palestinian 
Authority have agreed to the parameters. Both sides have some concerns 
and some questions which are, frankly, quite well known to either side. 
So I think we have narrowed the debate and moved it forward.
    Now obviously, unless there is an agreement, the United States 
Government is not bound by the position I took. Any incoming Israeli 
government would not be bound. For example, when I felt that I had to 
continue a number of President Bush's policies--I didn't particularly 
disagree with them, either, by the way, in Somalia and one or two other 
places--but I didn't really believe it was an option to reverse them, 
because our Government was committed. And I think it's very

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important that we--except in the most extreme circumstances--maintain 
some continuity in foreign policy and in our commitments to other 
countries.
    But President-elect Bush is in no way, shape, or form bound by the 
positions I've taken on this Middle East agreement, unless there is some 
agreement.
    Q. Do you think that'll happen?
    The President. I just don't know. You know, it's a very difficult-
to-predict situation. All the odds say no, but there are reasons why 
they are both working to get this done. In all my 8 years of service as 
President, I've never seen a situation quite like this, where the 
circumstances, including my short time in office, seemed unfavorable, 
but the determination of the main players seems strong, in fact, maybe 
even intensified. So we'll just have to see what happens.
    I'm trying to keep myself free of expectation one way or the other, 
and to do whatever I can to try to help end the violence--and we had a 
good day today--and just create the conditions in which, if they're 
willing, they can do as much as they can do. And we'll just have to see 
what happens. I don't think we can predict it.
    Q. Do you think the incoming Bush people will be as interested in 
pursuing this as you have been?
    The President. Well, I think they will be very interested in 
stability and peace in the Middle East. Their orientation has been a 
little more toward, you know, the Gulf, the oil-producing states, 
honoring our historic commitments to Israel to maintain their 
qualitative military capacity.
    But to be fair, the previous Bush administration took a pretty 
strong line on expanded settlements after the Madrid talks started in 
the hope that they could help to create the conditions in which the 
Palestinians and the Israelis could move toward peace.
    So I think that there may be differences in approach and priorities 
that the President and the Vice President and Secretary Powell will have 
to work through. But my guess is that their general direction will be 
the same, because in the end, what happens is--let's assume--and I'm not 
saying this, because I don't believe this--but listen, even if you had 
an administration that didn't really care about the Palestinian problem 
on its own merits, and said, ``Well, our real interests are in the 
geopolitics of the oil-producing states and the problems created by the 
lack of an agreement with Syria.''
    And by the way, I'm fairly optimistic that there will be an 
agreement between Israel and Syria sometime in the not-too-distant 
future, and I don't think there would be much difference in the policy 
positions taken by Likud or a Labor government on Syria, or by my 
administration or the incoming administration. We worked this hard, I 
mean, for years. And I think if the late President Asad hadn't kind of 
felt he was not in the best of health and was not--that they wanted to 
freeze things in place, and if he can secure his son's accession, we 
might well have been able to do a peace agreement when I met with him in 
Switzerland shortly before his death. So I expect that I don't think 
there will be much difference there.
    So even if it's not a priority for you because it looks like a 
morass that can't be solved in a small place with people that don't have 
a state, don't have nuclear arms, don't have an air force, don't have an 
army, inevitably what we always get back to is that the absence of an 
agreement with the Palestinians and the absence of a stable situation 
between Israel and the Palestinians infects the other countries and 
their capacity to relate to us over the long run.
    And particularly as these other countries have more and more young 
people who are more and more drawn to the sympathetic--drawn with a 
sympathetic ear to the claims of the Palestinians, and they have more 
demonstrations in these other countries and more unrest in these other 
countries, I think that our concern for stability in our relations with 
the Saudis, with the Kuwaitis, with not letting Saddam Hussein develop 
weapons of mass destruction again, the whole range of concerns that any 
American administration would have to have leads you back down to the 
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and trying to get to the end of the road 
there. I mean, I just think you do.
    I think that that's why I made the speech I did to the Israeli 
Policy Forum the other night. I waited until the very end, and until, 
essentially, I had put these parameters out

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before saying that, because I don't believe an American President should 
try to impose or create a peace between these two parties. The questions 
go too much to the heart of their respective sense of national 
identities, their cultural identity, their whole set of religious 
convictions.
    So all I said in these parameters and all I meant to say in the 
Israel Policy Forum speech is, ``Look, I've been listening to these 
people for 8 years, and I've studied these issues as closely, I believe, 
as any American President ever has, down to the maps, the settlement 
locations, the maps of the city of Jerusalem, the whole thing. My best 
judgment is if there ever is going to be a comprehensive agreement, it 
will have to look something like this.'' And you know, that's not the 
only option. In other words, they could do what they did at Wye River. 
They could say, ``Okay, here's the next chapter, and this is what we're 
going to do.''
    But the real problem with the sort of sequencing of interim steps is 
that, at least so far, because of all the other very complex forces 
going on there, these steps have not brought sufficient stability to the 
relationship and to the climate within the Palestinian areas or within 
Israel that there can be a long-term sort of set of nonpolitical 
measures that lead to progress--which is exactly the reverse of the 
Irish situation.
    And you may have heard me say this before, but the difference is, in 
Ireland--I may have said this in the Israel Policy Forum speech, I can't 
remember--but my physical analogy is, some unsolved problems are like 
scabs on a wound. If you leave them alone, they'll heal. Some are like 
an abscessed tooth. If you leave it alone, it will get lots worse.
    In Ireland, because the underlying economic circumstances are 
dramatically improved and because there has been a dramatic increase in 
interpersonal contact which is positive, and because while there is a 
small terrorist group that is still trying to upset the Irish thing, 
it's much more contained, the absence of final resolution of the thorny 
political issues is unlikely to crater the situation.
    In the Middle East, the per capita income of most Palestinians is 
the same or lower than it was when we signed the agreement on the White 
House Lawn, because there are so many different groups that can paralyze 
the process with acts of terror or violence that close the borders, that 
stop everything, that wreck the economy, and that kind of burn the 
bridges of trust that get built up when things are going okay for a year 
or so. I think it's more like an abscessed tooth. So that's why I 
decided to make the speech I gave at the Israel Policy Forum.
    But they don't have to do that. They could reach another 
accommodation. They could say, ``Okay, we can't do this whole thing, but 
we can't just rest on Oslo plus Wye River, so we have to do this,'' 
whatever this is. And they could do that.
    But I think any Israeli leader would have to see that, and I think 
in the end, any American Government will come back to a concern for it, 
if for no other reason than a desire to have stability in the region.

Tax Cut/National Economy

    Q. Let me turn you quickly to the economy. The Republicans are 
talking about a retroactive tax cut. You've got an economic statement 
tomorrow. Are the factors there, is the evidence there strong enough 
that there's a downturn going on and we need this retroactive tax cut?
    The President. Well, first of all, the blue chip forecast, I think, 
is for 2.6 percent growth, which is enough growth to keep the 
unemployment rate at about 4 percent. And that really doesn't surprise 
me. When I saw the initial estimates, which were about 3.4 percent, I 
thought they were a tad high because we've been growing for a couple of 
years at nearly 5 percent, which is, for an advanced economy of our 
size, it's just virtually unprecedented. You simply couldn't sustain it 
at that rate. So I think that the expansion can be continued.
    On the other hand, there's been a fairly sharp drop in stock values, 
and that takes a lot of wealth out of the economy, and eventually, that 
backs down into lower consumption and orders and things like that. So 
you see, for example, real problems in the steel industry today at a 
time when steel imports are also dropping. So it's not like the '97 
crisis where--the crisis in Asia and Russia led people to try to flood 
the market in America with

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bargain basement prices. Here, you've got an overall problem.
    So I think I've always believed that a tax cut should be part of the 
next budget. I thought it should have been part of the last budget. It 
can be a little bigger than the one that I proposed, because the surplus 
has been written up some--the estimated surplus. Although I think it's 
very important that they go back and subtract from the estimated surplus 
the 10-year costs of the budget we just adopted, because it's the best 
education budget, for example, that we've had in my 8 years. There's 
about a 15 percent increase in education. But you have to prorate that 
out, and President-elect Bush has said he's very interested in 
continuing to support education, even though he wants to kind of 
rearrange the deck chairs on how we allocated it--which is, you know, 
that's up to him and the Congress. They'll have to work that out.
    So I think the question is not so much whether one is warranted but 
what kind of tax cut should it be, and how big should it be? My 
concern--what I have believed in--I said this back during the campaign 
period so I can reiterate it--my view is that it should not be so large 
as to preclude our continued ability to pay down the debt and to stay 
more or less on the track we're on to get the debt down over the next 10 
years, because if the markets perceive that we're going back into 
deficits, that would lead to an increase in interest rates, which would 
wipe out the impact of a tax cut for most Americans--even wealthy 
Americans, because it could have a depressing impact on the market, and 
it certainly would increase the cost of business borrowing and tend to 
slow down the growth of the economy.
    So the trick is--that also, by the way, would foreclose--this is 
what happened to me when I got in. I didn't have the option to do what 
Americans would normally--the Government would normally do in a 
recession, which is to have a substantial tax cut and pump the thing 
back up, because the deficit was so big, it would just have caused 
interest rates to skyrocket.
    So the trick for the incoming administration--they have lots of 
options here. They can spend money; they can cut taxes; they can do more 
of one or less of the other--and less of the other. But the real--what I 
would be thinking about if I were in that position is, what is the 
aggregate amount we're going to commit here, particularly on the tax cut 
side, because it's not like--you don't have to repeat spending in years 
2, 3, and 4. You can cut spending if times are tough. We've proved that. 
But once the tax money--once you cut the taxes, that's normally gone. 
It's hard to raise taxes when times are tough.
    So what I hope is, I think they ought to have a tax cut of some 
magnitude, but I think they ought to save back enough to keep on the 
track of paying down the debt, which also gives you the protection down 
the road. Someday, surely, the expansion will come to an end, but I 
don't think it has to come any time soon. And when it does, the more we 
pay the debt down, the more free we will be then to have a substantial 
tax cut to help the country in a recession--when that happens sometime 
in the future--without having an adverse impact on interest rates.
    So I don't think there's any question that they can have a tax cut. 
It could be fairly sizable. I think it's appropriate. But I just think 
you don't want it so big that it takes you off the path of getting us 
out of debt, because the mental knowledge that that's the path we're on 
keeps interest rates low.
    The average American family now is saving $2,000 a year on a home 
mortgage, as compared to where we were back in '93. Long-term interest 
rates are 2 percent lower than when I took office, even though we've had 
an 8-year expansion, which is unheard of. You normally wouldn't have 
that. And paying down the debt has a huge impact on that, because it 
frees up more and more money every year to borrow in the private sector, 
and interest rates are lower than they would be if the Government were 
competing.
    And let me also say there's something else that we should keep in 
mind. The more you pay down the debt, the lower your interest bill is. I 
think this year we've got interest payments on the debt down under 12 
cents on the dollar. But they were at 13 or something, headed north, 
when I took office.
    Let's say we went--I'm making this up, of course--let's say we went 
4 or 5 more years on the same tack, and we got interest

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on the debt down to 6 cents on the dollar. That's a huge amount of money 
that is freed up every year for either investment in our future or for 
tax cuts. And you have more and more and more flexibility.
    Anyway, that's kind of a long-winded answer, but it's a very, very 
important subject, and I've thought about it a lot.
    Q. Can I just--another foreign policy question--one more question.
    The President. Go ahead.

National Missile Defense

    Q. On NMD, which has become topical now with the Bush administration 
and Rumsfeld's hearings today, do you regret at all making it a 
commitment of the United States, since some diplomacy efforts, like with 
Korea, are working out? And is it just going to create more problems 
with China, Russia in the future?
    The President. Well, I think I made the right decision not to 
deploy. And I think that I made the right decision to continue the 
research program. And I hope that's what they will do.
    It's not clear to me exactly how they're going to operationalize 
their commitment. That is, because in the campaign, the President-elect 
said that he would do this if it could be developed, whether anybody 
else liked it or not, which bothered some people. But he also--the 
``it'' that he was trying to develop was a system that was, in effect, 
more comprehensive than the more limited one that could have been 
deployed in the timeframes we were talking about during my tenure. So it 
may be that what he will decide to do is to intensify research.
    Look, if we actually knew we had the technology to take missiles out 
of the sky, even assuming that we get this agreement with North Korea--
which I think we will get, on freezing the missile production, not 
selling missiles. I think that will come. That's teed up, and I believe 
the Bush administration will see it as a great opportunity. And I think 
it will be one seized within the first few months of the incoming 
administration. I think it will be one of their first achievements, 
because it's set, and I think it will happen.
    But even if that happens, with the proliferation of technology 
around the world, we can't possibly know who might have missiles in the 
future. So I think we're almost morally obligated to continue to try to 
develop this kind of system. However, if we deploy the system in a way 
that leads to more proliferation and more insecurity, that's very 
problematic. And it's one of the things that I had to consider, that if 
we just set it up, even if we were worried about North Korea and the 
Middle East, if the Chinese interpreted it as a move to try to contain 
them, even though there's no way we could--even if they have just 50 
missiles, that's more than--or two dozen, whatever they've got--two 
dozen I guess, more or less--they might decide that now they need 300.
    If they did that, the Indians would decide that they needed more, 
under the present state of play between the two countries. If they did 
that, the Pakistanis would certainly build more. And circumstances that 
exist on the Indian Subcontinent are not as stable as those which 
existed between the United States and the Soviet Union during the cold 
war, or that exists today between the United States and Russia. And by 
the way, I expect that there will be a further reduction in nuclear 
warheads by both countries. That's one thing I think the Bush 
administration will be in a position to do, because of the development 
of our relationships, I'll be--I expect that President Putin and then-
President Bush will be successful in continuing to reduce the nuclear 
arsenals. But you don't want to have all this sort of uncontrolled 
instability in some other part of the world.
    But there's a way to continue to work the missile defense issue, and 
then there would be a way to put it at the service of all countries, the 
technology, which is what President Reagan used to talk about when he 
was talking about the Star Wars in the sky and all of that. 
Philosophically, he had an idea of making it available to all countries 
so that no one would be any more at risk, including from us.
    But that technology is not out there now. We're talking about 
technology to stop the accidental launch or a terrorist or a country 
with two or three missiles that could lob them at you. Two or three 
missiles could do a world of damage on the United States or someone 
else.

[[Page 100]]

    So I just think--I think that I left it with a maximum number of 
options for the next administration. I've tried to leave the economy 
with maximum number of options in good shape, and I think this program 
gives them the maximum number of options.
    And I think--again, you know, we all say things in campaigns, and 
then you get to be President and it looks a little different. Presidents 
pretty much do what they promise to do in campaigns, but sometimes when 
you turn an idea into an operation, when you operationalize your views, 
the world looks different when you're sitting behind the desk in the 
Oval Office than it did when you were running for the job. It just does. 
And that's no criticism of him. They're the same things that looked 
different to me when I got there.
    And so I just--it's a big issue, but it will be closely covered and 
widely debated, and I hope it will be resolved in an appropriate way. 
But I do think that the research should continue.

President's Future Plans

    Q. How are you going to feel on January 21st? You wake up Sunday 
morning, you won't be President.
    Q. In Chappaqua.
    The President. I'm not sure. But I'll say this, right now, I just 
feel very at peace and very grateful. And I'm going to start thinking 
about the rest of my life. Every stage of my life has been rewarding and 
good. And I've been so fortunate, and it's a real challenge. I'm just 
going to try to imagine how I can make the most of it. I'm kind of 
looking forward to it. I don't expect that I'll have sort of prolonged 
periods of semi-depression because I'm not President anymore.
    Q. Withdrawal pains?
    The President. Yes. I was only halfway kidding when I told the 
church the other day that I expected to be disoriented when I go into 
big rooms and nobody plays a song anymore. [Laughter] I mean, I'm sure 
there will be somehow some kind of things that will be tough, and I'll 
have to learn how to be a real citizen all over again, but that's good.
    The Presidency is what was so well taken care of, and a lot of the 
cares of normal daily life that I never had to think about when I was in 
office. It's probably healthy for a person not to have that kind of 
support for too many years in life. So I'm kind of looking forward to 
it.

Socks

    Q. What about Socks? What's going to happen to Socks?
    The President. Well, I don't know. You know, I made more progress in 
the Middle East than I did between Socks and Buddy. [Laughter] And I 
don't know that I've got enough space and enough help when I'm gone to 
keep them both away from one another and keep them both happy.
    But I still haven't quite resolved what to do. I love that old cat. 
You know, we picked him up as sort of a half stray in Arkansas, and I 
hate to give him up. But Betty loves him. Half the White House loves the 
cat, and the other half loves the dog.
    Q. You can't break them up into that many pieces.
    The President. No, no. I'm sure going to take--I know I'll take 
Buddy, because I slept with him for 16 months all during the Senate 
campaign. He was with me all the time. [Laughter] I can't live without 
him.
    But I really--I've even talked to some of the guys, a couple of the 
guys at the White House are quite good at training pets, and we've all 
kind of tried to work at this. None of us have been able to figure out 
how to actually get them in peaceful coexistence.
    I feel of all the skills I learned as President in bringing these 
people together, I didn't do very well with that. [Laughter]
    Q. It's been a pleasure, Mr. President.
    Q. Thank you.
    The President. Thanks, Steve.
    Q. Thank you very much, sir.
    The President. You guys have been great.

Note: The interview began at 11:37 p.m. aboard Air Force One en route to 
Andrews Air Force Base, MD. In his remarks, the President referred to 
President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea; Governor Gray Davis of 
California; Gore 2000 campaign director William M. Daley and his 
brother, Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago; former Minister of Foreign 
Affairs Ariel Sharon and former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of 
Israel; President-elect George W. Bush; Vice President-elect Dick 
Cheney; Secretary of State-designate Colin L. Powell; President Bashar 
al-Asad of Syria, son of the late President Hafiz al-Asad; President

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Saddam Hussein of Iraq; President Vladimir Putin of Russia; and Betty 
Currie, the President's personal secretary. A tape was not available for 
verification of the content of this interview.