Bill Clinton: The Rolling Stone Interview
It was a long, long way from the dingy back room at Doe’s Eat Place, in Little Rock, Ark., where a year ago we had met Bill Clinton and been so enthralled by his intellect and intensity. This time, one day short of the first anniversary of Clinton’s election, Jann S. Wenner and I were at the gates of the White House grounds, undergoing the usual security shuffle. Secret Service agents rummaged through the Rolling Stone sweat shirts that Jann had brought as gifts. This was a first for both of us and for Rolling Stone —– a relaxed and extended interview with a sitting president of the United States. The West Wing of the White House is somewhat more intimidating than a tamale shack.
Our luncheon with the man was delayed slightly because Clinton was in the midst of a typically hectic day — a flying schedule that bounced him from Jim and Sarah Brady on gun control to a NAFTA promotional event involving notables like Henry Kissinger and Paul Volcker to the Rolling Stone Interview. On the South Lawn, photographer Mark Seliger set up to shoot the cover with a marvelous tableau for a background: the White House on a gorgeous fall day. As Clinton walked down the driveway, surrounded by busy, busy handlers, he looked pressed and a little cranky. But he warmed to the task and looked presidential for the camera, then scooted next door to Treasury to drop by the luncheon for pro-NAFTA celebrities. Up close, I thought his face seemed visibly worn from a year ago, grayer and softer, with a tiredness permanently wrinkled around his eyes.
Half an hour later, his entourage swept back into the West Wing, and Clinton grabbed us for a quickie tour of the Oval Office, where he showed off a new rug with the presidential seal, then led us into his small private dining room across the hall. Woodrow Wilson’s portrait hangs on a wall, and a bust of Harry Truman sits on a sideboard. Clinton, with his incredible penchant for obscure facts, told us, “Woodrow Wilson had big feet, and so do I.”
The president chowed down vigorously (pasta with meat sauce) while we talked and joked about the absence of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, who the year before had described candidate Clinton as a gluttonous fiend for french fries. Two top aides, George Stephanopoulos and David Gergen, sat at the table as mostly silent observers, eating and taking occasional notes. At one point, when it appeared Clinton would have to interrupt the session for other events, he got up and proudly showed off the cozy private study where he reads. One wall is covered with books of every sort, and he seems to know them all.
Our exchange was more focused (and less bizarre) than the first Rolling Stone interview at Doe’s, but once again, the range of his intellect and energy was awesome, much more impressive than the man in TV sound bites. Critical questions elicited some animated finger wagging (mostly in my direction), but his tone was friendly. That is, until the closing moments. An explosion of presidential wrath is an awesome thing to behold, especially when it is right in your face. Believe it or not, I liked him best when he was angry. He seemed authentic and powerful and, when enraged, incredibly presidential. — W.G.
Wenner: Are you having fun?
You bet. I like it very much. Not every hour or every day is fun. The country is going through a period of change, the world’s going through a period of change. There’s a global recession and a lot of pressure on people whose expectations have been dashed by the economic and other events of the last couple of years. So a lot of what ought to be the enormous optimism coming out of the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union has been tempered not only by the thorny problems in our area, from Haiti to Somalia to Bosnia, but the same thing’s true for the Russians, they have the Georgian civil war, the fight between the Armenians and the Azeris.
Wenner: But are you having fun in this job?
I genuinely enjoy it. First of all, I’m getting to do what I believe in –— though I’m also humbled to find out how hard it is sometimes to translate convictions into policy and into people’s lives. But it’s exhilarating to have the opportunity and the obligation to try every day. Second, I really think we’re making a difference. The election was a year ago tomorrow. And I really believe that we’re turning the country in the right direction.
Wenner: What’s the biggest laugh you’ve had since you’ve been president?
What’s the biggest laugh I’ve had since I’ve been president, George?
Stephanopoulos: I liked it when you were practicing with [National Security Adviser] Tony Lake.
The funniest thing happened – in a moment of tension, I guess – was when I was practicing shaking hands with [Yasir] Arafat before I shook hands with [Yitzhak] Rabin. We had an understanding that there would be no Arab embrace. [laughs] “Yeah,” Rabin said, “OK, I’ll shake hands, but no kissing.” [laughs] So there could be no Arab embrace. Tony Lake was pretending to be Arafat, and we finally worked out that the way to stop someone from embracing you —– without seeming like a bad guy —– is to embrace his bicep.
If you hold his bicep [with your left hand, while shaking his right hand with your right], he can’t move up and embrace you. I thought, “I got elected president to do this?” [laughs]
Greider: And did you in fact do that with Arafat?
Yeah. In a nice way. But he was fine, he followed the rules.
Wenner: Earlier this year, Time put you on the cover with the headline “The Incredible Shrinking President.” I’m curious how you handle such criticism personally, how you handle it professionally and, from there, what you think about your relations with the press.
I didn’t think much of Time‘s cover, but then again I didn’t think much of the Time cover that showed a photographic negative image of me. Whoever does Time‘s covers is obviously not a fan of the administration, but that’s their business.
This compulsion to make instantaneous judgments and make big things little and little things big is one of the problems of modern politics. There we were, trying to do important things that had been long ignored, which is not a way to shrink the presidency. By any standard the mistakes we made did not even compare with the importance of the things we were trying to do. Time was, I thought, trivializing the presidency and giving itself a vested interest in the failure of it. But that didn’t bother me very much. I didn’t read that article. And I didn’t pay any attention to it.
Wenner: What about the press in general? I see the press as more critical of you than they have been of any other.
Any other president, in the first year.
Greider: What’s going on? That’s not what we expected a year ago, surely.
I don’t know. Some of them got it in their mind that I didn’t like the press, which is not true. And then some of them were mad that I wasn’t doing more press conferences, even though I was answering more questions than predecessors had. So I offered to do more.
But I think most of it is due to the nature of coverage today. There is a qualitative difference now. Used to be a president got a honeymoon. If you go back to Kennedy’s first year as president – we haven’t had a Bay of Pigs yet [knocks on the table], and I hope we don’t in the next two months.
We haven’t been able to do everything I said I’d do in the campaign, but nobody’s accused me of just running away from things. I haven’t stiffed the civil-rights community or anything like that.
Wenner: You do seem to have run into a wall of hostility, not only from the press but from Republicans, who’ve been as vicious as I can recall the opposition.
And they weren’t held accountable for it.
Wenner: Why have the Republicans been so virulent?
A lot of them thought the White House was their plaything, their personal preserve. They thought that as a party they owned the White House, and it was very disorienting to them to have it in someone else’s hands. And a lot of them are very good at being “agin” they’re better “aginners” than builders.
Now, that’s not true of all of them. We’ve gotten bipartisan support for several things. We’ve gotten good bipartisan support on most foreign-policy issues. But there was an astonishing level of party discipline applied to the budget vote and, in the Senate, to the vote on the jobs-stimulus package. But that’s getting a little better now.
Overall, the attacks didn’t bother me all that much, ’cause I knew that sooner or later they had to end. If for whatever reason the press and the Republicans decided that I’d be the first president, at least in modern history, with no honeymoon at all. They could do that, but in the end, I would either succeed or not. I didn’t think it was the right thing to do for the country, but it was their decision, not mine. It was out of my control, so I just got up every day and kept going to work.
Wenner: So your attitude is, this too shall pass?
Absolutely. Absolutely. Because if you get a six-month honeymoon, or a year honeymoon, or whatever it is you’re entitled to, in the end it goes away anyway. So the press decided for whatever reason that they would deny me a honeymoon. It may have something to do with the competitive dynamics, the economics, of the press now. It may have something to do with information overload. I just have no criticism of it. They have to make their decisions, and I make mine. And for whatever reason the Republicans made their decision, but they came back and supported me on Russia. They supported me on a number of other issues, or at least substantial numbers did. There’s a core of them taking a very reasonable, positive attitude on health care.
I got hired to fight for the folks in this country, to face real problems. And any time you face problems in specifics instead of in the abstract, you’re going to be misunderstood, and you’re going to have a lot of opposition. That’s just a part of it. This is not an easy time. It’s easy to be president when the economy is rocking along, when everybody thinks tomorrow is going to be better than today, when they think America is a coherent society. What you’ve got today is a middle class full of frustration, fear and anxiety and a society coming apart in a world that is more uncertain. We know we have to lead, but Americans want us to be discriminating and disciplined in what we do in the rest of the world. And they want us to focus very clearly on what we’ve got to do here at home. And a lot of people, obviously, still hope there are easy answers.
Greider: Let’s talk about Congress. I must say, I’ve heard this from a lot of people — what is it between you and [Georgia Sen.] Sam Nunn? We assumed a year ago he was a close ally, since you both come out of the same kind of politics. But it seems like he has gouged you on one thing after another.
Well, there are two things. First, he really disagreed with my gays-in-the-military position. Deeply, profoundly. He thought it was wrong, and he was really upset it came up so early. He didn’t exactly hold me responsible for that. He knew we were trying to take a reasoned approach and work it through with the military and that Republican senators pushed it up on the agenda. But it still put him in a terribly uncomfortable position, as head of the Armed Services Committee.
“What you’ve got today is a middle class full of frustration, fear and anxiety and a society coming apart in a world that is more uncertain.”
Then I was very disappointed when he didn’t vote for the budget. I thought he was wrong, and I told him so. He took the position that he and [New Mexico Sen.] Pete Domenici had laid out a program about how to deal with the deficit, and since I didn’t take exactly the same position, he would look bad voting for my program. But if that were an argument, then no thoughtful member of Congress would ever vote for any initiative put forward by any president or any other thoughtful member of Congress.
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