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Text File | 1993-04-08 | 18KB | 388 lines

                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 25

BILL CLINTON and AL GORE

An Interview With CLINTON


He denounces the politics of personal destruction and says that
Bush himself is to blame for it

By HENRY MULLER and JOHN F. STACKS/LITTLE ROCK and Bill Clinton


    Q. You are about to be nominated for the presidency of the
United States, the fulfillment of a long ambition. What are your
feelings about that achievement?

    A. I feel very grateful to the people who made it possible
and to the people here at home without whom I would not have
been in a position to run. I feel humbled by it; it's an
awesome responsibility. And I feel determined, as determined as
I've been since I've begun this. There is a feeling, I think
perhaps more intense among people my age and a little older,
that this is a moment we have to try to turn the country around,
revive it economically, reunite it, renew it.


    Q. What do you make of what you've had to go through to
get to the nomination?

    A. I don't know -- I'll probably have to go through some
more if the Republicans have their way.


    Q. Given the mood of the country, the state of the economy
and the President's lack of popularity, why are you not going
into this convention with a 20-point lead?

    A. First of all, a lot of this is not accidental. We live
in a time when the politics of personal destruction have been
proved very effective. This President got there not with a
vision but by first taking out his primary opponents and then
taking out his general-election opponent. We also live in a time
when people think pretty poorly about anybody who is in public
life. So you carry that baggage with you, and winning the
primary process has often been almost as much a negative as a
positive. Then you've got probably the deepest disillusionment
with the American political system in my lifetime, much deeper
than it was at Watergate. We will have more new members of
Congress as a result of it.

    It means I've got a real job to do to demonstrate to
people that I'm not part of the problem. I've been part of the
solution for years, and I'm going to be as President. This Perot
phenomenon is in part the result of people's sense that both
parties have let them down in Washington, which is true.
Americans want to hate politics, and the political system, but
they desperately want it to work.

    I think I'm being given a chance in effect to start again.
Under the circumstances, after all I've been through, to be in
what is a functional three-way dead heat is not all that bad.
I'll take that.


    Q. Floyd Brown [creator of the Willie Horton ads in
1988] is ready to air a new attack advertisement, featuring
Gennifer Flowers.

    A. Well, that's the way the Republicans do things. That's
one of the reasons the country's in the fix it's in today,
because too many people have voted on base instincts and
diversion and division. This will be a test in this election not
just of my character but of the larger character of the American
people and what they want for their country and whether they're
prepared to make the changes it will take to turn the country
around. That doesn't bother me.


    Q. It doesn't bother you?

    A. It doesn't bother me in the sense that I'm not
surprised by it. This is the way the Republicans make a living
in national politics, by destroying their opponents. That's
their bread and butter. They don't care if they are
hypocritical. They don't care if they are fair. They don't care
if they're dealing with doctored evidence. They don't care
anything about that. That's their deal. They are not interested
in governing and changing. They are very interested in
maintaining power. It worked for them in 1988, so they're going
to run this dog out in '92 and see if it will work again.


    Q. When you hear them talk about Gennifer Flowers, do you
want to talk about Jennifer Fitzgerald [the subject of
unproven rumors about a relationship with Bush]?

    A. No. You know that if they do this, the free media may
extend beyond Spy magazine [whose current issue features a
story about alleged extramarital affairs by Bush]. When you
live by the sword, you have to be careful. There is a certain
arrogance and relative hypocrisy in all this that's pretty
appalling. You know, when I hear them talking about that, what
I want to talk about is my life, my family, my record. I'm out
here worrying about what's happening to the rest of the country.
Why, with the worst economic record in 50 years, would we be
having an election talking about this?

    They can't afford to be judged on their record or on their
vision for the future. They can't afford to be judged on Ronald
Reagan's standard: Are you better off than you were four years
ago? Or on the "kinder, gentler" standard. Would you be better
off four years from now? And that's what I've got to remind the
people of.


    Q. So you think attacking your opponents personally would
be counterproductive?

    A. I have taken the position that I would fight on
political issues and the differences that we have over record
and issues. What these people have done to pollute our politics
is wrong. Not only dishonest but just wrong. And I don't want
to get into doing the same thing they do. And no one, no serious
person, believes that Floyd Brown is independent of the
Republican campaign.


    Q. Do you find the President complicit in this?

    A. Yeah, I just don't believe that he doesn't know about
it. He could stop this stuff in a heartbeat. You know, this is
the good cop-bad cop thing they always do. They feel they've
got a personal destruction machine over at the Republican
Committee that rivals the KGB. That's what they do. I don't mind
if they want to run down Arkansas because it's always been a
poor state, or go after my record on the issues, but they
believe that the press is giving them leave to go beyond what
has ever been considered the acceptable bounds of
political-campaign discourse. They basically believe there is
no difference now in tabloid journalism and legitimate
journalism, and the whole thing is in free fall, and they're
going to take advantage of it. I believe the best way for me to
demonstrate my character is to make sure people know the whole
story of my life and my work and my family and what I'm fighting
for in this election. So you know, we'll just have a little
contest and see who's right about the American people.


    Q. What do you hear when Dan Quayle talks about family
values? Is that code for something?

    A. Well, yes and no. I have a little different take on
this than some people do in our party. I think family values
are important. You can't raise children without them. On the
other hand, the Republicans don't feed hungry children. They
don't dignify work. My beef with Quayle is not his saying
fathers should take responsibility for their children or that
it's a good thing when a child's fortunate enough to have two
parents to take care of him or her. My beef is that they use the
issue of family values in two ways that are not legitimate. One
is as a flat-out excuse for their not having done anything. And
the second is it's a wedge issue. The implication is always: We
the Republicans represent your family values and the other guys
don't. You know, I was looking at my wife and child and Al
Gore's family up there today and thinking that we were not
without family values. I was sitting out there under that
carport with my 87-year-old great-uncle the other day, who did
so much to raise me when I was a kid, and thinking that we were
not without family values. The clear implication is Clinton,
Cuomo, all these guys, they are in a cultural elite and they
don't really share your values, they don't live by them, they
don't like them, they don't like you. You know that's their
whole deal -- it's a bunch of bull.


    Q. Did your choice of Al Gore have much to do with your
perceptions of Quayle?