[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 37, Number 3 (Monday, January 22, 2001)]
[Pages 114-120]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Interview With Mark Knoller of CBS Radio in Dover, New Hampshire

January 11, 2001

No Gun Ri

    Mr. Knoller. Mr. President, let me start by thanking you very much 
for granting this interview. I'm very grateful.
    I wonder if we could start with a little bit of the news of the day. 
Today you issued a written statement expressing deep regret for the 
deaths at No Gun Ri. But the word ``apologize'' didn't appear in that 
statement. Is there a reason for that, that you drew a distinction 
between expressing regret and apologizing?
    The President. Well, for me, now, other than that--I told them to 
try to draw the statement up based on what we actually knew about the 
facts. And I worked very closely with--or our people have--with the 
Government of South Korea. We want to be responsive to the people there. 
And I hope the statement will be taken well by the people of South Korea 
as a genuine expression of regret about what happened.

Lieutenant Commander Michael Speicher

    Mr. Knoller. On another issue, there's a story now that a Navy pilot 
may have been shot down and may be held in Iraq. Do you have any 
information that leads you to believe that there are Americans held POW 
in Iraq?
    The President. Well, I think the most I should say about this now is 
that in this particular case, and in this case only, I reviewed the 
evidence that we had, and we concluded that we should take him off the 
killed-in-action list and put him on the missing list, which means, 
obviously, that we have some information that leads us to believe that 
he might be alive. And we hope and pray that he is.
    Mr. Knoller. What does the United States do about it?
    The President. Well, now that we have some information, we'll 
begin--well, we've already begun working to try to determine whether, in 
fact, he's alive; if he is, where he is; and how we can get him out. 
Because, since he was a uniformed service person, he's clearly entitled 
to be released, and we're going to do everything we can to get him out.
    Mr. Knoller. If Iraq was holding an American, they couldn't use it 
as an issue with the United States unless they let us know they had 
somebody. Why would they hold somebody and not let us know about it? 
Would that be to their advantage?
    The President. I wouldn't think so. That's why we did what we did on 
the classification. We have enough information that makes us believe 
that at least he survived his crash, at least that that's a possibility, 
and that he might be alive. And I thought, in fairness to his family and 
everyone else involved, based on a review of the information and the 
Defense Department's recommendation, we should change the status. But 
that's all we know, and I don't want to raise false hopes to either.

U.S.S. Cole

    Mr. Knoller. Along the same lines, do we now know for certain that 
Usama bin Ladin was behind the attack on the U.S.S. Cole?
    The President. I can't say that. I can--we do believe he was behind 
some other attacks on our people and that people affiliated with him 
have been involved in other attacks. But we're investigating this. We're 
still running down some of the leads. We're still doing some of the 
work. I think that we will know, and I think that the United States will 
take appropriate action.
    And I believe this will be a completely nonpolitical issue. That is, 
I have absolutely no doubt that President-elect Bush will continue to 
pursue the investigation and, when the evidence is in, will take 
appropriate action. And when that happens, I will support him in doing 
so.

Attorney-General-Designate John Ashcroft

    Mr. Knoller. And lastly, on a bit of domestic politics, do you think 
that Senators would have a good reason not to vote for John Ashcroft for 
Attorney General because he blocked your nomination of Ronnie White?
    The President. Well, first, I think that it was a terrible mistake 
by the Senate to do it, to do it on a strict party-line vote, which 
required them to get some Republicans to

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change their position, including the other Senator from Missouri, who 
had introduced Judge White to the Judiciary Committee, and the Senators 
on the Judiciary Committee who had voted his nomination out positively 
to the floor. So I think it was a very, very bad mistake.
    I'm going to follow my policy here. You know, I'll be an ex-
President when this is done, and I do not believe I should be commenting 
for some period of time on public affairs, plus which my wife is a 
Senator. She has to vote on it. So I'm going to let--she can speak for 
herself, and the other Democrats and Republicans will speak for 
themselves. I don't think I should say more.
    I do think it was a bad mistake. I've known Senator Ashcroft a long 
time. I know he is genuinely very, very conservative, and that's what's 
in his heart. But I didn't think this was about that, and it surprised 
and profoundly disappointed me.
    Mr. Knoller. I thought that with just 9 days left, you might speak 
out with a little more reckless abandon than usual. [Laughter]
    The President. Look, I need my Miranda warnings when I talk to you 
guys, you know. [Laughter] I can't even make a joke in Chicago without 
having it blown out of proportion. So I'm having to--I have to still be 
careful. [Laughter]

2000 Presidential Election

    Mr. Knoller. Well, as long as you raised that issue, were you trying 
to say that you question the legitimacy of George Bush's election?
    The President. No. No. I have said clearly that I agree with exactly 
what Vice President Gore said, that in this country we observe the 
principle of judicial review. The Supreme Court has ruled, and the rest 
of us have to accept it. And that confers, in a legal sense, a literal 
legal sense, that confers legitimacy. But I didn't say anything 
different than I've always said; all the Democrats were disappointed 
that the votes weren't counted. And that's all I'm saying.
    And I was trying to pay a little homage to Bill Daley in his 
hometown of Chicago, with a lot of his family and friends there, by 
saying--you know, he did, I think, did a very good job running the Vice 
President's campaign. They did win the popular vote. And that's all I 
was saying. We were having a good time. [Laughter]

Early Years of the Administration

    Mr. Knoller. Again, let's look back at your 8 years in office, Mr. 
President. After you were inaugurated in January of 1993, how long do 
you think it took you to get up to speed as President?
    The President. Well, I would say there has--there's a different 
answer to that depending on what the issue--the question is. For 
example, I think that the issues that I talked about today when I 
reviewed our domestic record on social policy, I think we were ready 
from day one. I think we were--and I think part of that was the fact 
that I'd been a Governor for a dozen years, that I'd been through a 
tough economic period, had a clear economic philosophy, had worked on 
education and welfare reform and crime and the environment. Part of it 
was the fact that I'd had the opportunity to represent the Governors 
with the White House and the Congress on many issues. So we were ready 
to go.
    On foreign policy, I think I was up to speed on some things and had 
to learn a lot on others, and I tried to be a quick study. On the ways 
of Washington, I think it took us probably, you know, even as much as a 
year, a year and a half, before we really had a good feel for some of 
the rather different ways in which the town works and the ways in which 
what a President does and says communicates itself to the other 
decisionmakers and to the larger American public in a way that was quite 
different than had been my experience as Governor.
    So I did have a lot to learn about that, and I worked hard at it, 
and I think--it's interesting; I was laughing the other day with Mack 
McLarty, to illustrate the point--we had our roughest political problems 
in the first 2 years, but if you look back on the last 8 years, some of 
the most important and, I believe, most fundamentally sound decisions 
were made in those same 2 years.
    We passed the first big--first we passed the economic plan, which 
included, among other things, the empowerment zones and

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the earned-income tax credit and all the things that got rid of the 
deficit, as well. And then we passed the family medical law. We passed 
the Brady law. We passed the crime bill. We passed NAFTA. You know, we 
did a phenomenal number of things in those first 2 years, substantively. 
But because of the whole sort of contentious atmosphere, some of the 
problems that we had with health care and other issues, I think that it 
was not as successful politically--and I say that in the best sense--
politically, meaning we didn't communicate as well to the American 
people or the other decisionmakers in Washington in a way that people 
could see exactly what was happening and that we were underway here.
    So I think it took me longer to get the politics right. I think it 
took a little while for me to get entirely comfortable with all the 
foreign policy and national security issues I had to deal with--not too 
long. And I think we were ready on the substance of domestic policy from 
day one.

President-Elect George W. Bush

    Mr. Knoller. As we're about to inaugurate a new President, can the 
American people believe that its new President will be ready for the job 
on day one, or do we have to give them a period for on-the-job training?
    The President. Well, I think he is like any new President. I think 
he has certain strengths and will be ready in some ways, and I don't 
think any human being can be ready in every way on day one. I think 
that's why, traditionally, Presidents have had a little bit of a 
honeymoon to get going. But it is a job, like other jobs, and people of 
good will who work at it can do it.
    I think he's obviously got all these people around him who--going 
back to the Ford administration, heavily involving the Reagan and Bush 
administrations--people that have worlds of experience and will help him 
avoid some of the pitfalls which otherwise might come his way--or 
anybody's way, going into that job. And so I think the dealing with 
Washington part of it, and through the players in Washington, with the 
press, I think he will be better prepared on that score than I was.
    I think on national security, he's got a very, very experienced 
team, so I think that he will get up to speed there in fairly short 
order. And on domestic policies, we have different views, and that's 
where the points of greatest conflict were in the campaign between our 
two sides. But I think on some things, like education, he's had the 
opportunity to really work in Texas on, and I think his concern is 
genuine. And on other things, we'll just have to see what happens.
    I mean, I was a Governor for a dozen years, in good times and bad 
times. There's a world of difference between a Governor in a good time 
and a Governor in a bad time. So I think that he will need some time to 
get kind of just the--kind of feel the rhythm of some of these domestic 
issues, because they weren't part of his experience. But I think that 
the American people shouldn't particularly worry about that because he's 
got a very experienced team, because he has been a Governor, and because 
the country is in real good shape right now. And I think he'll get right 
up there to speed on the issues as quickly as possible. I'm not too 
worried about that.

Health Care

    Mr. Knoller. As you look back over your years in office, are there 
things, big things, that you wish you could do over or do differently?
    The President. Oh, a few. If I had it to do again, in the first 2 
years I might try to pass welfare reform first, and then do health care. 
Or I would tell the American people that we had to do the deficit 
reduction first, and there were only two ways to have universal health 
coverage.
    Let me just back up and say, a lot of people believe that if the 
health care plan had been differently designed or something, it could 
have passed. That's just not true. The truth is that because of the 
combined effect of the condition of the economy and the inability to 
raise taxes, we could have neither an employer mandate or a Government-
funded program sufficient to insure 100 percent of health care coverage. 
It wasn't in the cards.
    And I think--that's one of the things I talked about. I got a lot 
done. I mentioned at the end of this speech all the things that

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have happened this year--unheard of in the eighth year of a Presidency 
for all these things to happen. But I have a much greater sense now of 
the pace of things and how much you can jam through a system. And so, if 
I had it to do again, I think I would either try to flip the order and 
do welfare reform and then health care, or I would go before the 
American people and say, ``Look, I know I told you that I wanted 100 
percent coverage, and I do, but here's the condition of the budget; here 
is the condition of the country. I can't pass either an employer mandate 
or a tax increase, and you can't get 100 percent coverage without either 
one. So we're going to take these five steps now.''
    If I had it to do over again. I think in a policy sense, that was 
the place where the wheel kind of ran off the tracks and we got a little 
out of position with the American people, and we took that terrible 
licking in the '94 campaign. But since then, I think we've been doing 
better both substantively and politically.

President's Future Plans

    Mr. Knoller. When you leave office at noon on January 20th, are you 
fearful that as you approach the next stage in your life, that the best 
part of your life is over?
    The President. Oh, no. You know, in some ways this is the best part 
of my life because being President is the greatest honor any American 
could have and the greatest job any American could have. But I've given 
a lot of thought to this. I have enjoyed every phase of my life, from 
being a little boy to going off to college, to living in England, to 
being a teacher, to being a young attorney general. There's never been a 
part of my life in which I have not been absorbed, interested, and found 
something useful to do.
    And I think that I owe it to my country, and to the people around 
the world who share the values and concerns I do, to try to be a good 
citizen-servant for the rest of my life. And if I do it right, it's a 
whole new challenge trying to figure out, how are you going to organize 
your life, how are you going to organize your day? I mean, for 27 years, 
most days since I entered public life I have just been on a relentless 
schedule, and I have the opportunity now to kind of reimagine what I 
want my life to be like.
    I want to do what I can to support Hillary--I'm thrilled and--I'm 
more than thrilled, I'm just ecstatic that she won that Senate race, and 
I'm happy for her and happy for the people of New York--and help Chelsea 
as she works her way in her life. So I have some financial support 
responsibilities. But beyond that, I just want to try to imagine how I 
can be of the most service in the most effective but appropriate way.
    Just because I'm working until the last day here, which I'm 
definitely doing, doesn't mean that I don't understand that after 
noontime on January 20th I'm not President anymore. And I know what I'm 
supposed to do there, too, and I'm going to go home to New York and get 
on with my life. But I don't know exactly how I'm going to do it yet, 
but I've given quite a bit of thought to it.
    Mr. Knoller. And when you said 4 years ago, as you were campaigning 
for reelection, that that was your last election ever unless you ran for 
school board, are you going to stick to that?
    The President. Yes, I can't imagine I would run for office again. 
And you know, if I'm fortunate enough to live a long life and I stay 
healthy, maybe some day, somewhere down the road, somebody will say, 
``Why don't you run for this, that, or the other thing,'' and I would 
think about it. But that's not really where I see my public service 
going. I do believe I owe it to myself and to my country to continue to 
be a servant, a public servant. But I think there are a lot of ways you 
can do that as a private citizen.
    And there's a whole new generation of young people coming up. This 
country will never have a shortage of good, gifted people willing to 
serve in public life. And I think that's something I should leave to 
others.

Surviving Politics in Washington

    Mr. Knoller. During your Presidency, sir, you have survived travails 
that would have sent other politicians either running for cover or 
killed them, and yet you have survived them. To what do you owe this 
ability to survive bad situations?

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    The President. Well, I'd say a couple of things. I think, first of 
all, I had an indomitable mother, and I was raised to believe that every 
person should live on Churchill's edict, ``Never quit.''
    And I had a high pain threshold. I remember once I was in an 
accident in a car in high school, and my jaw hit the steering wheel real 
hard, and it was the steering wheel that broke, not my jaw. I have a 
high pain threshold. That's pretty important. And since modern American 
politics, certainly for the last 20 years, have been a pretty brutal 
contact sport, that's important.
    But I think by far the most important thing is what I talked about 
here today. I mean, I never thought the political office was primarily 
about personal attainment or ego or validation or even being thought 
well of. I always thought it was a job designed to achieve larger 
purposes for the people you were representing. And that's why I came to 
New Hampshire to give this speech. Apart from my sentimental attachment 
to the State, we proved here in '92 that if you have good ideas and they 
relate to people and their lives and their future, that you can survive 
personal adversity, because people understood this was about a common, 
larger endeavor.
    And I think that's another thing. I never, in the darkest days, I 
never lost sight of the fact that however many days I had left as 
President, every one was a privilege and a pleasure, and I should be 
working for the people. And I think they sensed that. I think that, more 
than anything else, answers the question you asked.

Presidential Security

    Mr. Knoller. During your Presidency, sir, were there any security 
close calls that we didn't know about?
    The President. I'm just thinking. I'm not sure. You remember when 
the guy shot up the White House with the assault weapon, although you 
guys were in more danger than me. The bullets were directed toward the 
press room, but he didn't know that. But I don't think so. There were 
periods when I had an unusually large number of threats, but the Secret 
Service handled them and did well. As far as I know, there was nothing 
significant you don't know about.

Farewell Address

    Mr. Knoller. Are you going to do a farewell address?
    The President. I'm thinking about it. I have tried to--as I 
mentioned today in my speech here, I tried to structure a series of 
speeches, in one of which I spoke to the larger world when I went to 
Great Britain and spoke at Warwick University after--about the global 
challenge of the 21st century. Then I made many of the same points at 
the University of Nebraska at Kearney.
    And then I made the education speech in Chicago and this speech here 
today. And I'm going home to Arkansas to speak to the Arkansas 
Legislature, where I spoke on my inaugural the five times I was 
Governor, and I'll talk a little more about substantive domestic issues. 
So I will have laid out my case for what I hope America will do in the 
future pretty much by the end of my term in these last few weeks in 
these speeches.
    I may do another farewell address just so I can thank the country as 
a whole and say a few specific things. But it will be--if I do, it would 
be much briefer and less indepth on the policy stuff.

Use of Polling Data

    Mr. Knoller. Bum rap or not, sir, you, more than any other 
President, used polling data during your term in office to guide you.
    The President. Well, but let me just say, so did Roosevelt. 
Roosevelt was the first President to be almost obsessive about polls. 
But I never was controlled by them because I always believed if you were 
right, you could find a way to change public opinion.
    Only a fool, I think, ignores research data on a constant basis. I 
mean, that's like television ratings or anything else. You look at 
research data. But I did--I believe that you'd be hard pressed to find 
any President in the last several decades who's done a larger number of 
things which were not popular at the moment.
    And one of the things that I used polls for was to understand how 
aware the public was of given issues or, if they disagree with me on an 
issue, what was the most effective argument I could make to try to 
persuade them. But I didn't--especially on issues affecting America's 
future, I never let the polls

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control me. But the economic plan was not popular. It passed by one 
vote, and I knew it was the right thing to do. The decision to help 
Mexico was opposed 81-15. Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, those things were not 
popular. But I thought they were right, and I thought they could be made 
popular.
    And let me give you some other things. By contrast, if you took 
polls in the beginning, it would appear that the public overwhelmingly 
agreed with me on all the gun safety issues, but there's no question 
that one of the reasons we lost seats in the Congress in '94 was because 
of the efforts of the NRA. If you took polls on the health care issue in 
'94, they all looked to be popular, but it turned out not to be.
    And the reason for that is--but I was not unaware of that; I knew 
that--you have to understand how to read polls. I mean, you could be on 
a popular issue, but if the people who are against you are more intense 
than the people who are for you, it will still be a net loss at voting 
time.
    So I was never paralyzed by polls. I always saw polls as sort of 
snapshots of what the American people knew, what they were thinking. And 
I used them to try to figure out what the best possible arguments I 
could make were to move the country where I thought we ought to go.
    So I would expect any politician to use polls, but anybody who is 
imprisoned by a poll will in the end be defeated, because they're not 
good guideposts; they're pictures of horse races that are in progress.

Media Coverage

    Mr. Knoller. I've got one last question that I think you'll find 
irresistible. In recent days, I've noticed you've accused us in the 
media of treating you with increasing irrelevancy. I'd like to ask you 
as you near the end of your Presidency, sir, what do you think of the 
news media coverage that you've been subjected to?
    The President. Well, first of all, that's also been in just a good-
natured jest. It is true that I'm on the way out. I mean, you can't--and 
so I've had a good time. But actually, you've given me unusually heavy 
coverage for this late in my term. But that's because we're continuing 
to do things; we're taking these actions like the environmental actions 
and the other things.
    I think, on balance, the coverage has been--over an 8-year period, 
on balance--has been intense and fair in the sense that I have always 
had the chance to put my side out. I think that there are unusual 
pressures on the media today because there are more competitive outlets, 
and I think that the net effect of that is that sometimes a herd 
mentality takes over, and one person gets the story wrong, then 
everybody gets it wrong.
    I think that the pressure for market share has aggravated the 
tendency which already exists, not only in our Capital but in every 
capital in the world, to elevate politics over policy and discord over 
working together.
    So I think that--I also think that as the first post-baby-boomer 
President, and given the fact that I was involved in my youth in the 
controversies over Vietnam and a lot of other things, I think I became 
kind of a lightning rod--and Hillary did--for a lot of things that the 
system kind of had to work its way through. But I'd be at a poor 
position to have any profound complaints since I'm leaving office with 
pretty good approval ratings from the American people, and none of that 
would be possible if it hadn't been for the media through which I 
communicated my views and my side of all the controversies.
    But I think that--I do think it's harder to get stories right, to 
avoid jumping the gun, to avoid kind of contributing to things that have 
a lot of heat and may not have much light, given the pressures that all 
of you are under today.
    The last point I'd like to make, and I'm not pandering to you 
because you can't cover me much longer, is--[laughter]--but I believe 
this--I think it is a real mistake for people to generalize about the 
media. Very often there will be a big story in the national news, and 
ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and CNN will all cover it differently.
    So I think that you have to--I always had the feeling that you were 
more interested in policy than a lot of the people that covered me, but 
I think it's more because you've been here so long. I mean, I think you 
couldn't have hung around the way you have and done this if you weren't 
fascinated by politics. But in the end, you'd run dry if you didn't also

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care about what the consequences to the country are. And like I said, 
you can't cover me much longer, so I'm not pandering to you, but I 
think--on the other hand, if you were here now--consider, suppose you 
were a 30-year-old, or however young you can be, 35-year-old television 
anchor, and you got the White House assignment, and you wanted to go 
further in life, and you were going to be judged partly by how hot you 
were on the screen and what your market share was, and you had to put 
this story together, and you had an hour to do it, you'd be under a 
whole different set of pressures, both in your work environment and in 
your head.
    So I think that I would--that's one thing I would counsel any 
President to do, is not--fight paranoia about the press, and don't 
generalize about it.
    I think both I and my wife's alleged aversion to the press has been 
way overblown. We've always been far more discriminating about the 
things with which we disagreed and the things with which we agreed.
    Mr. Knoller. Mr. President, thank you so much, sir. It's been 
fascinating.
    The President. Thank you.

Note: The interview was taped at 2:35 p.m. in Dover High School for 
later broadcast. In his remarks, the President referred to Usama bin 
Ladin, who allegedly sponsored the 1998 bombing attacks on the U.S. 
Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania; Senator Christopher S. Bond; Ronnie L. 
White, whose nomination to be U.S. District Judge for the Eastern 
District of Missouri was defeated in October 1999; Gore 2000 campaign 
director William M. Daley; and former White House Chief of Staff Thomas 
F. (Mack) McLarty. The transcript was released by the Office of the 
Press Secretary on January 15. A tape was not available for verification 
of the content of this interview.