ENTITY said Mr. Trenholm was one of their most useful men, and there was no doubt he would exert all his power with a view to entire harmony between the State and the Government. ENTITY replied that he understood that was so; adding, if treason was committed, there ought to be some test to determine the power of the Government to punish the crime. He was free to say that it was not a mere contest between political parties, or a question as to de facto governments. Looking at the Government as we do, the laws violated, and an attempt made at the life of the nation, there should be a vindication of the Government and the Constitution, even if the pardoning power were exercised thereafter. If treason has been committed, it ought to be determined by the highest tribunal, and the fact declared, even if clemency should come afterward. ENTITY remarked they were well aware of that. ENTITY resuming, said there might be some unkind feeling on this subject, but it did not exist to any great extent ENTITY said, although not instructed by the Convention, he was induced to ask whether Mrs. Jefferson Davis, who was now confined to Georgia, could not cross into South Carolina to see her friends. ENTITY replied that he had received letters from Mrs. Davis, but they were not very commendable. The tone of one of them, however, was considerably improved, but the others were not of the character beseeming one asking leniency. ENTITY interposed by saying she was a woman of strong feeling. Yes; I suppose she is a woman of strong feeling and temper, but there is no intention to persecute her. True magnanimity takes things as they are, and when taken in the proper way I disconnect them from humiliation. Manifestations of temper and defiance do no good. ENTITY remarked that the tone of the newspapers was more favorable, and different from what it was. He then asked if ENTITY had seen a copy of the amended Constitution of South Carolina. Of course he had seen they accepted emancipation. He felt perfectly satisfied that the person and property of the negro would be protected, and spoke of the great difficulties of regulating labor and restraining vagrancy, etc. ENTITY remarked that they had a deep consciousness of the truth of all president said. ENTITY, resuming, observed that the character of an individual may characterize a nation, which is nothing but an aggregate of individuals; and when a proper spirit is manifested, all can act harmoniously.


it lifts him above humiliation. In these cases, gentlemen, we will do the best we can. While there is sympathy, there is a public judgment which must be met But, I assure you, gentlemen, no disposition exists for persecution, or thirst for blood. ENTITY thought many of the evils would disappear if they inaugurated the right system. Pass laws protecting the colored man in his person and property, and he can collect his debts. He knew how it was in the South. The question when first presented of putting a colored man in the witness stand, made them shrug their shoulders. But the colored man's testimony was to be taken for what it is worth by those who examined him, and the jury who hear it. Those coming out of slavery cannot do without work; they cannot lie down in dissipation; they must work; they ought to understand that liberty means simply the right to work and enjoy the products of labor, and that the laws protect them. That being done, and when we come to the period to feel that men must work or starve, the country will be prepared to receive a system applicable to both white and black-prepared to receive a system necessary to the case. A short time back you could not enforce the vagrant law on the black, but could on the white man. But get the public mind right and you can treat both alike. Let us get the general principles, and the details and collaterals will follow. We must be practical, and come up to surrounding circumstances. ENTITY, ENTITY and ENTITY, all expressed to ENTITY their conviction that the State had accepted in good faith the result of the issue which had been made; that the people felt that ENTITY had stood between them and a harsh use of the power of the Government; that they felt entire confidence in his purposes and actions, and hoped, in return, to entitle themselves to his confidence as to their feelings and actions. ENTITY replied, he was glad to hear it; that whenever such mutual confidence existed, there would, he thought, be an open road to the restoration of good feeling and a prosperous condition and that if he knew himself, and he thought he did, he would recommend nothing but what would advance their interests. So far from pandering or looking to future elevation, he must be believed, when he said he had not an eye single to such preferment.

Interview with Judge Wardlow, Alfred Huger, Colonel Dawkins and W.H. Trescott of South Carolina


Because we have to get out now and raise our funds. And if I can do it in a regular, disciplined way, then I can maintain as much time as possible for my job even next year when the election begins. Is it hard to run a country and run for office? It is if you have to do it fulltime. And I just determined that the best thing to do would be to try to handle the fundraising in a regular way this year and try to get it out of the way so I could spend as much time as possible being ENTITY next year and defer the campaign as long as possible. Oh, so next year the campaign is going to come late to you. But what I'd like to do is to work as much as I can. Even on this trip we have done several official things. This morning I was up in San Francisco with 19 executives of major information firms announcing that we were going to provide computer hookups for all the schools in California over the next couple of years and challenging the rest of the country to follow the lead. And over the next few weeks, I will be trying to put together a national plan for this sort of thing. We know we can get computers in all of the schools, and if we can get the teachers trained, have good software , we are going to do very well, indeed. He was not, although I know him quite well, and I expect that he will be very supportive of this. Because he said recently on a show we did on television that he would be very supportive. Yes, he-I know him quite well, and we have talked about this extensively. We had lots and lots of other people there. There is a great feeling that California ought to lead the way because the State is now only 45th in students- computers per student-but they have the- they are the technological leader of the world. So I am encouraged by it. This is the audience's show, but let us cover some bases right up front. And again, I would like to put it off as long as possible. In the next 60 days, in the working out of this budget, we are going to define in some measure what our country is going to be like for the next several years.

Interview With Larry King in Culver City, California


And I just want to continue to focus on the substance of the changes we ought to make and the values we ought to put up front in protecting families and individuals and trying to bring our country together and give people a chance to make the most of their own lives and try to write that into the budget. And I think the less politics, the less partisanship we have, the better off we are going to be. I think-you know, he is plainly the most influential and effective Vice President in the history of the country, what he is done with technology, what he is done with the environment, what he has done with reinventing the Government. We have done more than any previous administration, Republican or Democratic, to shrink the size of Government, reduce regulation, and basically make Government more entrepreneurial. And he is led that effort. And of course, he is been the leading voice in what we have done in foreign policy as well. So I am looking forward to running with him, and I like working with him. I do not even have to ask a question, I just say a name. Colin Powell-what do you make of it? Well, as you know, I have worked with him and I like him and I think he is got a very compelling life story and he is a very appealing man. I have no idea what he is going to do, and I cannot -I do not really have any influence over it. So what I have to do is-- You have to think about it, though. Believe it or not-well, and you would expect that. I mean, he is a very impressive man, and he is gotten a lot of very favorable publicity, much of it very well deserved. And so that is just a part of it. But I have no control over that. What I have to do is to do the job the people gave me. And I really believe, in the world we are living in, with so much change going on and people being bombarded from all sides with so much information, people like me who are in office should not worry so much about being popular. We ought to do what we think is right for the long run and then hope-believe the election can be our friend. Because only when the election starts do people really begin to focus on it.


Are you, though, concerned about this apparent feeling in the country-Powell said it the other night on my television show-a plague on both the Houses, the Democrats, the Republicans. Bill Bradley is a classic example- he leaves the Senate. Both parties seem to be in disfavor. Well, I think they are in disfavor right now because the American people have seen them fighting in the Congress and they have seen few results since the last election and because in the previous election they did not understand what results had actually occurred. But if you look at the facts-first, I think there is a good chance that we will get a budget agreement that will both balance the budget, which both parties want, but which will preserve our fundamental obligations to our children in terms of education and technology in the future-- And that will change the feelings? and to the elderly in terms of having-reducing the rate at which Medicare and Medicaid grow but still not really hurting a lot of the older people of the country. If we get a good balanced budget, if we can get a decent welfare reform bill, if the people see the system working, then I think they will not have such negative feelings about both parties. But I also believe, in fairness, that the Democratic Party has done a lot of things that most Americans never thought they would. I mean, the Democrats took the lead alone in reducing the deficit from $290 billion to $160 billion a year. They passed a crime bill that increased the death penalty but also invested more in prevention, that had three strikes and you are out but also put 100,000 police on the street. The crime rate is going down in every State in the country. Well, because we still have troubles and because it is an unsettling time. If you look at what is happened all over the world, you have got this global economy that is going from an information society to a technology and- I mean, it is going from an industrial society to a technology and informational economy-- And you-look at all this, yes. And you have got-people are going to be faxing us; they are going to be E-mailing us; they are going to be doing all this stuff on the Internet. We do not have the cold war anymore, with nation-states organized in roughly two different camps. We have got instead a global economy. And the good news is you have got economic integration.


The bad news is there is all this pressure for unsettling people's lives, whether it is people being less secure in their jobs or working harder for less or being subject to smaller fanatic groups who practice destruction like the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway or the Oklahoma City bombing or a bus blowing up in Israel. So it is a time of great ferment and upheaval where there are a lot of wonderful things going on and a lot of very troubling things going on. And the United States has-our job now, all of us in positions of authority and all of our citizens, is to embrace new ideas and change to try to create a new economy in which we can grow the middle class and shrink the under class, to try to create a social policy which rewards work and family and freedom and responsibility and to try to give us a different kind of Government that is more entrepreneurial and less bureaucratic but helps people solve their own problems. Now, this has only happened-the last time this happened to this extent was 100 years ago. And it is not surprising in a period like this that people would be looking around at all their options because they think there are so many balls up in the air. So, therefore, come independent candidates and disfavor and people leaving politics. And not only that, if you have got-look, if you go home at night and you have got 40 channels on television, and they say, which would you rather have, three parties or two, you'd say three. And if you ask five or four, they might say five. But I think that if this system that we have, which has made us the oldest democracy in human history, the longest lasting one, if it produces a balanced budget with a commitment to our children and our future and being decent to the seniors on Medicare and Medicaid, if it produces welfare reform that promotes work and responsibility without hurting innocent children, if it shows that it can come to grips with the fundamental challenges of the time, then it will generate more support. If it does not solve the problems, then it will not . Would you welcome an independent candidate? Is that good for the mix? You ran against it last time. I think it depends on who the candidate is, what the person says, what the issues are. What Powell would be for? Could we elect a black President?


Oh, I think the American people-I would hope the American people would judge any candidate based on his or her merits, without regard to race or gender. That is what I hope, and that is the America I have worked for all my life. If you look at my appointments, if you look at the policies I have pursued, that is the America I have worked for. But I think-again, I will say it takes almost all the concentration I can muster every day to do the job I was hired to do. And that is what I am going to work on. But you love it. I love it. You told me once, My bad days are good days. Yes, because of-it is an incredible gift, with all the difficulties, to be given the opportunity to meet these challenges. And as I said, I honestly believe, when the history of this era is written people will say this was the period of the biggest change in the way we work and live in 100 years. So who could not be grateful to do that for a day, a week, a month, 4 years? If I get 8 years, that is so much the better. I am working hard at it. We are going to turn it over to the public. Are you going to sign off on this welfare bill? It depends on what it looks like. The Senate bill-I still have a few problems with the Senate bill. They took a lot of the extreme, kind of right-wing ideological things out of it. They have put in a bonus for moving people to work. They require people to sign personal responsibility contracts. They have put in a lot more funds for child care so people can go to work and still be good parents. These are all ideas that I have been pressing a long time. So I like it. It really would end welfare as we know it. And I think we can make it-if we can make it a little better in conference, I will be happy to sign it. If they make it a lot worse, they could kill it. I think it would not even get back to the Senate again. Right now you are leaning toward yes? Well, right now I like a lot of-the changes in the Senate bill that were made in the last 2 weeks were very good. If that is the direction the Congress is going in, we are going to have a great welfare reform proposal. But it still could get off the track.


I just hope they will keep going in that direction. You are listening to ENTITY with ENTITY. What have we done in the last 4 years to help the environment? We do not hear a lot about ENTITY and environment? We have, first of all, faithfully advanced the cause of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Secondly, we have done a great deal to try to promote public health in dealing with problems like the cryptosporidium problem that-that was the thing that got into the water in Milwaukee that killed all the people. We are trying to deal with that. Only you would know the actual name. We have also tried to improve public health through improving the food testing, like dealing with the problems with E. coli that caused the deaths from eating the meat. Would you say you have kept your promises? I have pushed through the California Desert Protection Act here, which was the biggest single land protection act and that kind of legislation in history. We worked very hard to solve the problems of the old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest-which the Congress has kind of messed up now-to get that out of court to protect the old-growth forests and to try at the same time to permit responsible logging. We reached an accord between the environmentalists and the farmers here in this so-called Bay Delta accord, in the farming area of California. We have worked to try to reduce the global warming and hazardous emissions through working on the clean car project with Detroit. We have supported the development of electric cars and natural gasburning cars and other things to promote clean air. Those are just some of the many things we have done in the environment. And in addition to that, I am obviously carrying on a vigorous fight now to prevent this Congress from using the budget process to undermine our ability to stick up for clean air, clean water, and the other basic environmental protections of the country. Well, I think it is a terrible mistake to neglect education funding in favor of building prisons. On the other hand, you still have to have strong criminal justice laws. The crime rate is going down in almost every State in the country-- It is not the only answer, but some people need to be sent to prison.


Now, when we passed the crime bill last year, in addition to providing for three strikes and you are out and more funds to help States build prisons, we also gave the States and the communities of our country a good deal of money to promote prevention through education, through community activities and recreation, to give our young people something to say yes to. And in addition to that, our administration has worked very hard to give the States and the schools of this country and the young people of this country more educational opportunities, everything from getting kids off to a better start in school, to giving the school districts money for smaller classes, more computers, higher standards, to more scholarships and national service opportunities to pay for college education, to many, many more low-cost, easier repayment college loans. We have to be tough on crime, but we have to be smart about prevention and we have to continue to invest in education. You know, we have got 7 1/2 million new jobs in this country and an economic explosion by conventional measures, but half the people are still working harder for no raise. We have got to increase the skill level. So I agree with the questioner. You know, in California the cost of education has been increased so much and the funding decreased, that enrollment here has gone down in colleges by 10 percent at a time when it ought to be exploding. So I do want to reverse that, and I do think one of my fundamental obligations as ENTITY is to help our young people make the most of their own lives by getting a good education. And we cannot sacrifice that; that is the most important thing we can invest in for the future. Based on that, are you surprised that Governor Wilson got into the Presidential primaries? I have no opinion about that. Let the Republicans pick their nominees. All I am saying is, my obligation is to try to make sure that people like that caller can make the most of their own lives, and education is perhaps the critical element of that. We have an E-mail question. By the way, do you expect it to be Bob Dole? One of the things I learned is that you cannot predict, just as nobody predicted that much that I would be nominated and elected. I am going to be ENTITY, work on being ENTITY, and let them make their own decision. With Mexico in an economic and social tailspin, is NAFTA dead or jeopardized? And let me tell you why.


NAFTA gives us a chance to have more access to Mexican markets and not to have a permanent trade deficit with Mexico just because their wages are lower than ours. In the first year of NAFTA's existence, we had a huge surplus with Mexico and generated many thousands of jobs. The truth is that the Mexicans expanded too quickly, borrowed too much money, and got in trouble. But now, under President Zedillo, they are slowly working their way back into a stable situation. Over the long run, NAFTA means more opportunities for Americans to sell products that bring higher wages to our workers, it means more stability in Mexico, it means less illegal immigration, it means better partnerships in Mexico and in Canada and then throughout Latin America for the long run. We have to make these decisions in this period of change not just on what might be good next month but on what will be good for America 10 or 20 or 30 years from now, and I am convinced that NAFTA and the GATT world trade agreement will be very good for America over the long run. A report just in, , from Reuters, that all the factions in Bosnia are going to meet in New York this week. What can you tell us? We just released that information, I think, from our plane. Ambassador Holbrooke, who is handling those negotiations for me, has been working very hard. I believe that a combination of factors, including the firm resolve of our NATO allies in the United Nations in stopping the siege of Sarajevo with the air campaign, some changes on the ground there in Bosnia, and the willingness of parties to work with Mr. Holbrooke and with our partners in Europe in Russia to get a negotiated settlement, give us some hope. Now, I want to caution everybody, this is Bosnia, and it is tough. But I feel better than I have in a long time. Well, they are coming to New York, as I understand it, in part for the United Nations. So it is convenient for them, and it is good for us. So we will be working- we talked for a long time today. I talked with the Secretary of State and my National Security Adviser and Mr. Holbrooke; we had an extended talk and we agreed on what the agenda was going to be, and I feel good about the process. But I want to caution the American people, this is Bosnia, we have got a long way to go. Are you hands-on in this?


Yes, I have been very involved in it, and I feel that we are doing the right thing and we have a chance to put an end to the misery and to limit once and for all the possibility that this could spread into a wider war that can involve our people. This is the ENTITY special on Westwood One, if you have just joined us, with the ENTITY of the United States. Let us knock everything off. Well, let me first of all say that we have been doing a version of that. When we took the deficit from $290 billion down to $160 billion in the first three budgets that I was involved with, the first time since President Truman was office that we had a three-yearin-a-row reduction of the deficit, we eliminated hundreds of programs, we cut others, and we cut domestic discretionary spending and defense spending in the aggregate and then tried to make our priorities within them. Now what we are trying to do is to agree on a timetable for going to zero, and instead of- we are cutting categories, if you will, as you suggest. But within those categories, I still believe we ought to preserve our commitment to education, to technology, to research and development, to the things that will generate the jobs and the opportunities of the future for Americans, because that is an important value. But we are doing, in general terms, what you suggest. The reason you cannot take the politics out of it is because there is so much difference between the various Members of Congress and the administration on what should and should not be funded. But I do believe that what we need is an automatic mechanism to say that if in any year we miss our deficit reduction targets, then there will be some sort of across-the-board cut. Now, that is what we did when I was a Governor, and it worked very well. So I'd like to see us make our priority decisions now over the next 60 days, and then say if, in these years, these out-years we miss it and we have a bigger deficit than we thought, then there ought to be some sort of across-the-board shaving so that we can keep faith with the American people and take that process out of politics. Someone by fax wants to know where you draw the line in sand? What would you definitely veto that is a Republican proposal? Well, I have issued a lot of those things.


The veto threats, if you will, or veto notices, I do not want this balanced budget process to be a pretext for destroying our ability to protect clean air and clean water. I do not want the balanced budget process to lead to massive cuts in our efforts to give our young people a chance to make the most of their own lives through education investments. And I do not want the balanced budget to be a pretext for really hurting the elderly, the disabled, and the poorest children in this country with excessive reductions in Medicare and Medicaid just to meet the 7-year target and mostly to meet this very large tax cut that benefits the upper income people like you and me who really have not asked for it. Now, I think we can have a tax cut targeted to the childrearing and to education and still balance the budget in a timely fashion. But we should not just jerk the rug out from under the health care of the most vulnerable people in this country. Have you asked Mr. Dole and Mr. Gingrich about the conference committee on the line-item veto? And what do they say? We have less than a minute because I have got to get an on-time break here. and they had the Congress so they were in charge of the spending, they did not want to give me the line-item veto. So you think there is no doubt it is just deliberate because of ENTITY? Well, I do not even know if they'd do that. They have got the Congress, and so now they like the spending. When they were in the minority, they liked the line-item veto. I have been consistent on this. I have always believed in the line-item veto. It imposes some discipline on the process. It is not a cure-all, but it gives you much more discipline. We have more to come. We are going to take a break, and then when we come back, more from ENTITY, more E-mail, more faxes overseas, in the United States, phone calls, et cetera, in this kind of historic town meeting. This in Westwood One, and you are listening to ENTITY with ENTITY. I guess this is from America Online. Due to the fiasco surrounding the O.J. Simpson trial, what is its effect on the American justice system? How do you see that trial-they are going into the jury next week? Well, I think it depends in part on things that still have to happen.


But I would hope neither the American people nor our friends in the United Kingdom would judge the American justice system entirely on this trial, because the facts are so unusual. First of all, the trial was televised, which I think contributed to the circus-like atmosphere and some of the developments. You are opposed to televising? Well, I just think that you run a serious risk when you do it in a high-profile trial. Secondly, you had a very excellent defense, and you have had a lot of-in terms of-and they are famous, they are well-known, and they are able. And then you had all these extraneous elements coming in that do not normally come in a murder trial. So I would just say, we should be hesitant to recommend sweeping changes in the American justice system based on this trial, which is unlike any one in my experience. As an Attorney General in-which you were in Arkansas-- Did you ever have a televised trial? And I just think-on balance-I think all criminal trials can be heavily covered in the press and then reported on by television. But I think on balance, you run the risk of having more derailments and distractions if you have televised trials. Yes, we have got problems there, do not we? And it is a much more rare occurrence in Japan, unfortunately, than it is here But I would say to you that we will first of all make it clear that the United States deeply regrets the incident, that we do not condone any misconduct or any abuse of the Japanese people. We think that anybody who violates any laws should be treated accordingly. But we have been a good partner with Japan. And even though we have had some differences over trade matters, for example, when we had to have a real conflict over the treatment of automobiles and the auto parts, the Japanese are a great democracy and a strong ally for us, and our forces have been there now for quite a long time in genuine partnership. So if they think there is any kind of procedures we ought to take to improve things, we obviously are open to that. But I think as long as they know that we are not turning a blind eye to this, that we are outraged, that our heart goes out to them, they know that we have been a good partner and we respect them and we will continue to be. Is Vice President Mondale doing a good job of being up front with the Japanese?


I think it is fair to say that he has exceeded the expectations even of his biggest fans in both showing the Japanese that we are deeply committed to our friendship and partnership with them and that we respect them in every way but that there must be some changes in our trading relationship. He has been very tough and very strong and, at the same time, very supportive of them. He is struck just the right balance. Well, it was a decision that we made together. Everybody said that it was bad politics- the people who said that if she went it would be condoning their human rights record and then if she went and said it was strong, that she would upset our developing relationship with the Chinese. But I felt that she has invested so much of her life in the welfare of women and children in our country and then around the world, and I thought that she could speak for our American values and about conditions that exist, not only in China but in other countries, even here in the United States, that are bad for the future of women and little girls-that it would be a good thing. And I think now everyone sees that it was a wonderful thing for our country and for the cause of freedom and human rights around the world. I am sitting in an office in the middle of our farmyard in the middle of North Dakota. The information highway is open to us, but the long-distance charges are much too heavy. Can we expect equal access for rural America in the future? That is one of the things that we have worked very hard on. The Vice President and I strongly feel that we have got to have equal and affordable access, whether people are isolated in rural areas or whether they are low-income people in innercities or whether they are small business people or people in schools and hospitals and libraries. And so one of the things that we are looking for, for example, in this telecommunications bill is a bill that will guarantee genuine competition to bring prices down and the quality and variety of services up. Rural America actually is in a position perhaps to benefit more than any other part of America by putting America into the information superhighway because you can bring all-everything to the smallest rural hamlet in North Dakota or in North Arkansas. It is going to be a big issue in the telecommunications bill, and it will continue to be a big issue for us. And I do believe the answer to your question is, I think this will be like all technology.


I think the more of it there is, and the more competition there is, the lower your prices will be. In that regard, this legislation might remove all ownership restrictions for radio and television, meaning we could own anything in any amount. Do you favor it? Now there are restrictions now on how many-what percentage of the national television stations you can own-it is at 35 percent, I think-but the present bill has no restrictions in local markets. You could own five stations. Well, no, you could own two television stations, the radio stations, and the town newspaper. You are against that. I am against that. You might say, well, look at Los Angeles, we have so many television stations, but most places have three television stations, a handful of radio stations, and one newspaper. So I think the local concentration provisions ought to be changed before they send the bill to me. You got into criticizing Calvin Klein. I have no judgment about whether whatever they did violated the law. The crime rate's coming down, and the murder rate's coming down Drug use by people 18 to 34 is coming down. But violent crime among people between the ages of 12 and 17 is going up, casual drug use between-about people between 12 and 17 is going up. And these young people, in their most vulnerable years, trying to come to grips with their physical developments, with their intellectual challenges, where the world may seem bewildering to them, I just do not think they ought to be used as commercial objects. I do not think you ought to put teenagers out there selling jeans where you show their underwear. And basically, you send a message to all these kids out there that are struggling to try to come to grips with the world that what is really important is how they look in jeans and whether they can show their underwear and whether they can basically be sex objects when they are teenagers. And it was an emotional, visceral reaction on my part. It has nothing to do with the law. And I think the American people are going to have to reassert some things are important-more important than commerce, and the welfare of children is one of them. And speaking of nothing to do with the law, was Senator Dole also right in his criticism of what some of the things Hollywood turns out? And I know you are supported here very well-tonight there is going to be a gala with a lot of those people there.


Yes, but I think that the general comments he made were correct; the specific ones I do not have a judgment about. That is, the general thrust of saying that we need more sensitivity on the part of everybody in our culture-all the cultural influences in society, not just movies and not just records but all cultural influences in terms of the welfare of our children and their future, I think that is accurate. Now, having said that, let me remind you that this was an issue that I raised before when I was Governor in the 1992 campaign. In '93, instead of attacking Hollywood, I came to Hollywood and challenged the people here-and in television, which I think is a bigger problem just because kids watch more of it-to join with me in trying to deal with this issue. And one of the things that came out of that meeting- and I want to compliment the networks on this-I think the major networks and I believe Fox was involved with this-commissioned UCLA to do an annual study of the violent content of television programs. And UCLA recently issued their first report. So that is something positive that the networks are doing. Now we will have to see-will they act on those reports. But again, you do not want laws. No, I am not interested in censorship. What I am interested in is asking all of us in American society to be accountable for what we do. The more freedom you have, the more responsibility you have to exercise, in any area of life. And I think these things should become open for public debate, not because we want to gag people with laws, not because we want to be unrealistic but because our children, large numbers of our children are in deep trouble, and we all ought to be trying to rescue as many of them as we can and give them a good start in life. You are listening to ENTITY with ENTITY. Brandon, I'd say you are off to a good start just the way you handled the question. I want to compliment you for calling in and-- By the way, it is appropriate because the ENTITY planned on being ENTITY when he was 6. It is not so, but it is not too soon for you to think about it. I think you should- I would give you just a little simple advice. Number one, I think you should devote yourself to learning as much as you can in school. Learn as much as you can in school.


Number two, I think you should try to make friends with and understand all different kinds of people because in a democracy like America, many different kinds of people make up our country and get to vote. And number three, when you are old enough, I think you should start to work for people you believe in in elections and learn how the election system works. So I would do those things. If you like people and you understand them, if you learn a lot in school and you develop your mind, and then you understand how the political system works, you might grow up to be ENTITY. Have we redressed that grievance? Well, it is interesting that you would ask that because I have-our administration has spent a great deal of time with the Native American tribes. And we now recognize in our country a government-to-government relationship with the American Indian tribes. We are trying to do things that recognize their integrity, that recognize their right to exist, their right to make many autonomous decisions, and that give them more support in trying to become more independent and to overcome some of the economic and other problems they have. since James Monroe in the 1820's to do that. So we are working on having the right kind of relationship with the Native Americans, and I think we are making some good progress. And I hope we will not see that progress reversed in this Congress. Before we take the next call, if we can capsulize it, what is happening today with Medicare? I presented a balanced budget that balanced the budget in 10 years and had a smaller but still sizable tax cut than the Republican congressional cut. Mine was basically targeted to middle income people to help them raise their kids and to deduct the cost of education after high school. They presented a 7 year balanced budget with a $250 billion tax cut and then basically made an arbitrary decision that they had to cut Medicare and Medicaid. Together, they had to reduce that spending by $450 billion over the next 7 years. With regard to Medicare, the problem with that is if you try to reduce it that much you either have to take so much out of the hospitals and doctors and other Medicare providers that you run the risk that they will not stay in the program or cannot stay afloat, or you have to excessively increase premiums and copays and other costs for seniors. And keep in mind, threequarters of our seniors live on less than $24,000 a year.


So what I am trying to do is to find some common ground with the Republicans to say we have to bail out the Medicare Trust Fund and lengthen its life. We have to slow the rate of medical inflation, but your cuts are simply too big and will cost too much hardship for the seniors of this country or to the health care system. Are they going to change them? Well, we are trying to find a way to work through to an agreement. There are lots of possibilities, and you know, the details are probably too complicated to go into here now. But that is basically the difference between us. And I am working hard to-because Medicare is a program that has integrity, it works, but it needs to be preserved for the future. May I ask if you are confident that we are going to see a compromised Medicare bill? I believe the chances are 50/ 50 or slightly better that we will ultimately reach a good faith agreement which balances the budget, preserves the integrity of Medicare and Medicaid, increases our investment in our children's future, and protects our environment. In other words, what is this? Or raising money. Yes, I have been doing fundraisers, and I have made addresses. But even the speeches I have given at my fundraisers have been reasonably nonpolitical, and then I am mostly trying to explain to the American people what I think we are going through right now and how I think we need to embrace new ideas based on old-fashioned American values and try to come together. I am really doing my best to see the American people go beyond partisanship to reach some common ground. Does the party pay, then, for part of this trip? Well, my campaign pays for all-if I do anything political, my campaign pays 100 percent of it. The taxpayers cannot pay for it. They do not pay for it. So even if you work 5 hours and you do politics 6 hours, politics pays? Unless I take a separate and distinct trip that is solely for the purpose of dealing with an issue before my job. Like the other day, for example, I flew to Colorado to do a fundraiser. My campaign paid for that. I left and went to another small town that was completely an educational event, and that was a public part of my job. What have you learned?


Well, I think the most significant thing I have learned is that the ENTITY- being ENTITY and being an effective ENTITY and a good leader for our country is about more than actually what you accomplish. It is about more than the bills you pass in Congress or the executive actions you take. It is also about the words that you say and how you say them. And I have learned that, for example, the ENTITY has to be much more careful, much more clear, much more unambiguous than, for example, a Governor can in discussing an issue. And I am much more, I think, sensitive to the impact of my words and the way the decisions are made and the way they are communicated to the American people since Washington is so far from Boulder, Colorado, and all the other places that have called in today. And I think that giving the American people the understanding that we are making the decisions based on my convictions about American values, even though I know some of my decisions, whether it is to go into Haiti or to take on the NRA over the assault weapons ban or to take on the cigarette companies on teen smoking, may be wildly unpopular in the short run-I am trying to do things that are good for the long run. And I think I have to communicate to the American people clearly what the basic values are that animate my decisions and why I am doing this even though it may be unpopular because I think it will be good for the country over the long run. And that is a real lesson I had to learn, because when you are Governor, being Governor is more about whether you accomplish things and what you actually do in terms of the day-to-day work. Now, that is very important for a ENTITY, but very often it is almost impossible for people even to keep up with that until the election starts. So I have learned that. And if I were to win another term, I would try constantly, because I believe we are in a period of historic change, as I said earlier, to bring the American people together around shared values and a willingness to take bold steps and embrace new ideas even if they seem to be unpopular in the moment. By the way, you will be participating in many debates in this campaign? We can count on it. I believe the ENTITY should be accountable, and I think debates are a good way to do it. So I have always been willing to do that. Basically I would be opposed to those changes.


Our education budget preserves the commitment to special-needs children. My Domestic Policy Adviser, Carol Rasco, has a child who is almost-about grown now. But he had cerebral palsy. I have known him since he was 5. And I watched him come up through our public schools and develop and flower and get to the point where he could live in his own apartment. My college roommate for 4 years adopted a special-needs child. And I think the commitment of our Nation to let every child live up to the fullest of his or her own ability is something that we should not abandon. And we do not have to abandon it to balance the budget. Well, as you know, I believe the tobacco industry has made two great mistakes in the last several years. First of all, it is now clear that at least a couple of the big companies have been aware for years that tobacco was both addictive and harmful and that it was concealed. And secondly, it is clear that many of the tobacco companies definitely market to teenagers to get more customers because they lose customers every year even though it is illegal to sell cigarettes to teenagers, I think, in every State in the country. So I would like to see a firm effort against teen smoking. I do not really care, as I made it clear, whether the FDA does it or whether the Congress does it by law. But if the Congress does it by law, I expect them to adopt all the restrictions in substance that we have recommended. Now, many Congressmen are very loath to take on the tobacco companies because they are very wealthy, they have massive informational capacity to communicate to smokers, they have the ability to incite, inflame, and terrify the tobacco farmers who are really good, oldfashioned American hard-working people but who can be frightened by the tobacco companies. And so they do have a lot of influence, and frankly, all my political advisers told me that it was bad politics to take on the tobacco companies and there was a reason why no other living ENTITY had ever done it and that it was dangerous. But we had evidence that for 30 years companies had known that tobacco was addictive and dangerous and that 3,000 kids start smoking a day and 1,000 kids will have their lives ended sooner because of it. So if we can save 1,000 kids a day, that is worth a lot of political damage to me.


I think it is the right thing to do, and I hope they will not have so much influence in Congress that they will try to undermine this important effort. Should it come under the FDA? It should come under the FDA unless Congress is willing to write these requirements into law. Now, the FDA itself, Dr. Kessler said he did not care about regulating tobacco. If Congress would take the things we want to do and put it into law, the FDA would lose jurisdiction. They would not be able to do it on an ongoing basis, but the benefit we would get is then the move against teen smoking would begin right away whereas tobacco companies can tie us up in court for a while otherwise. So the FDA head, Dr. Kessler, has said that he will do it either way. But he would gladly give up jurisdiction to the Congress if, but only if, the Congress would take the same tough stand that we have recommended. Well, we are all over the board today. I believe on balance that both NAFTA and GATT will be a major boon to American agriculture. I was just out in California meeting with a lot of farmers there. And virtually all of them talked about how much stronger agriculture was as a result of it. With regard to NAFTA and Mexico, some of our livestock people have been concerned about how NAFTA would play and whether it would hurt them. With the GATT agreement, which is a worldwide trade agreement, there is no question that our farmers will be better off because other countries subsidize their farmers more than we subsidize ours. So if everybody has to reduce subsidies to an equal basis, American farmers will come out way ahead because we have the best, most competitive, most productive farmers in the world. If we can get a decent farm bill out of the Congress, that is, one that continues to reduce the cost of the farm programs but does not take us out of global competition and does not really wreck the family farm, then I think the future of agriculture is bright. In fact, I think we may have seen a bottoming out of the number of farmers. We may see the same or even a larger number of farms in the years ahead because global population would probably outstrip the ability of other countries to produce food. So farming should do very well in America for the next 20 or 30 years if we have a good farm bill and if these trade agreements are faithfully followed by all the countries.


What did you think of what the Post and Times did? I might add, the FBI praised them today. Just for the reason that the caller said, I thought it took a lot of real courage on the part of the Post and Times to do what they did because our country has basically taken a very hard line in not cooperating with terrorists of any kind, not being blackmailed and not being subject to blackmail. The FBI recommended to the Attorney General, and she recommended to the Post and Times, after careful consideration, that they publish this for two reasons. One is they really felt, based on the best psychological profile they had of the Unabomber, that he would honor his commitment and stop killing people, stop trying to kill people. And secondly, they felt that the publication of the document, if it could be widely read, might actually help Federal authorities who have been looking for this person for nearly 20 years now, to identify a range of potential suspects. And they thought that this was not like, you know, like asking for a million dollars or asking to swap hostages or anything like that. So it was for that reason, with great reluctance, that the FBI recommended, that the Attorney General recommended, and that the Times and the Post did it. And you agree with it? I do agree with it under these circumstances. I sympathize with the comments of the gentleman that just called in. Our basic policy is strictly to not cooperate with terrorists of any kind. But under these circumstances, this narrow case, I think the Post and the Times did the right thing. And I appreciate the risks that they took with their journalistic integrity and with their principles to try to save lives and help us to finish this case. Do you plan to read Colin Powell's book? You know, I was kind of hoping he'd send me an autographed copy. I have not gotten one yet, but I was kind of hoping he would. He is autographed every other one in America. He might as well send one to you. By the way, would you-I know this happened once with Mr. Gingrich in New Hampshire. Would you sit down with Colin Powell and Ross Perot and others who are critical and semicritical-- I know you like-discussions in the White House.


It is election day, and you know, they give frequent flyer miles on Air Force One, you are going to get a free trip to anywhere. But you know, I had to take that very important trip to the Middle East, and when I came back, a lot of our candidates asked me to get out there and campaign, including Governor Cuomo, so I tried to do all I could to make the best argument for why we are moving our country in the right direction and we do not want to go back to the policies that failed us before in the eighties. So this morning I am just taking a last opportunity to encourage the American people to go out and vote, to make their voices heard today. The stakes in this election are quite high, as they always are in any midterm election, but especially in this one. So I hope the people within the sound of my voice will exercise their citizenship today and get out there and vote. Interesting contrast for you; maybe you can talk about it for just a second, between the events of the Middle East and our political system and the fact that the peace treaty signing coming so close to our election. Well, of course, we have been working on that very hard for a couple of years. It is just a coincidence that it came as close as it did to our election. But I would hope that it would remind the American people of the great potential of this country and the greatness of this country. And I hope it would keep our people in a positive frame of mind. One of the unfortunate aspects of so much of modern campaigning is that the negative tends to outweigh the positive, and the negative television ads, the whole business about the tone and tenor of our elections. This is actually quite a great country with a great past and an even greater future if the people who are going to be affected by it will invest in it and vote for it and vote for people who will build the country, not just place blame, vote for people who will keep moving us into the future. That is really the lesson of the Middle East, that people want the United States involved in the peacemaking and the problem solving of the world, whether in the Middle East or in Haiti or Northern Ireland, just to name three, because they think we have a good system and that we are a good people. And sometimes I think we forget it, and we need to remember it. We can go out, be heard, and make a difference.

Interview With John Gambling of WOR Radio, New York City


As a man that has spent his entire life in politics, how do you define politics? Is it program or is it more the essence and the basics of hope, security, fulfillment? I think giving voice to people's hopes to getting people together, giving energy to other people is very important. So much of what we do down here in Washington basically is an effort to empower people to take responsibility for their own lives. There are not so many things that the Government does directly. I mean, we pay for medical care for the elderly through Medicare. We finance the Social Security system. We run a wonderful National Park System. the student loan program, the Head Start program, the crime bill which enables the city of New York to hire more police officers and have programs for kids to keep them out of trouble. All these things basically give people in their individual, family, or community lives the ability to take responsibility for themselves. So part of it is programs, but a lot of it is setting the right tone and the right direction, looking to the future all the time. This country is always at its best when it is coming together and moving to the future. I hear a frustration in your voice about the mood of the country, the cynicism, the negative advertising that is taking place on all sides in the past weeks. I think it has too much sway over our national life, but I think our communications in general with one another are too negative these days. We ought to be having more honest conversations with one another and doing less verbal bomb-throwing. I think the American people are frustrated by it, and that is why I hope that there will be a good turnout today for candidates like Mario Cuomo who have essentially been a positive force throughout their public careers. Because it is just so easy to give in to the kind of pounding-attack communications that tend to dominate not just the elections but often the daily communication of our public life. And it is not a very good way to run a railroad or a country, and we are better than that. And whatever happens today in these elections, I am going to be determined over the next few years to try to lift our country out of that. Along those lines, if, as predicted by some, the Republicans gain control of the Senate, will your agenda for the next couple of years have to change? No, but I will have to have more responsible bipartisan efforts on all parts.


ENTITY, minors buy one billion packs of cigarettes a year. How are you going to make not smoking and quitting smoking cool and attractive to young people? Well, I think we have to do several things. I think, first of all, the Government's responsibility is to make sure that the young people understand that it is addictive and dangerous and can kill them and that about one-third of the young people who start smoking every day-about 1,000 people a day, young people, start smoking who will have their lives shortened because of it. Then the third thing we have to do is make it less attractive, that is, we need to change the advertising and limit the ability of advertising to be a lure. We had a young teenager in here who was part of an antismoking group yesterday who said to me-I was so touched-she said, We look at these TV ads, she said, these girls smoking, they are always tall; they are always thin; they always have long hair; they are always pretty. She said, It is just like when the boys who are young see a movie star holding a gun. And it was shocking what she said. And then what we want the tobacco companies to do is to spend some money on an affirmative strategy to put out positive messages-over MTV, for example-about how it is cool not to smoke instead of to smoke. So I think you make it less accessible, less attractive, and then put out a positive message. And of course, we need a lot of help. We need people like you to do programs like this, and every parent in this country needs to talk to their children-all the parents need to talk to their children about it, because we now have done 14 months careful research and we know how damaging this is, and we know that the tobacco companies know how damaging it is from their own files. We have got to do something about it. Do you worry about making smoking more enticing by making it more forbidden to young people? I think that is always a concern; there could be some of that. But the staggering magnitude of the damage that it is doing is so great, I think if young people really understand how dangerous it really is and all the things that can happen to them and how it can affect their future, I do not think it will be more glamorous. You know, though, what kids are going to say.

Interview With Tabitha Soren of MTV


In a time where they are growing up and sex is associated with ENTITY, alcohol with drunk driving, going out late at night you could be shot, it is very violent, smoking during your adolescence almost seems like a lesser evil. I know it does, but in some ways it is the thing that puts the most at risk over the long run. And we have to do something about the other things, too. I have fought very hard to get the assault weapons out of the hands of gang members, to pass the Brady bill, to put more police officers on the street. The crime rate is going down in almost every-almost every big city in this country, the crime rate is going down. We have to-we are doing a better job trying to keep big shipments of drugs out of the country. We are working hard on that. On alcohol, it is less accessible than cigarettes. It is still a problem, but I want a zero tolerance drunk driving law for young people in every State in the country or here in the Congress. But the cigarettes-the magnitude of the damage caused is greater than all of that right now. And we just have to focus on it. I know it-because there normally is a period of several years between the time you start and keep smoking and the time you face the consequences, and when you are young you think you are going to live forever I know that it is going to be harder to get young people to focus on that. There is a lot of destructive behavior in America we need to attack at the same time, and I just think that we can get these numbers way, way down. You gave the number-a billion packs of cigarettes or a billion cigarettes a year-we can get that way down. And when we do, we will get the life expectancy of these young people and their quality of life way up. Did you ever experiment with cigarettes as a teen? Did you go through that phase? She smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes a day until my daughter got her to quit for her 8th birthday. When my daughter turned 8, her grandmother gave her that for a present. So I had a bad feeling about it from childhood. But it was only because of that. I am sure I would have done it otherwise. Why were you savvy enough to have a bad feeling about it? You did not like the smell of the house, or you did not like-- Yes, I did not like the smell in the house.

Interview With Tabitha Soren of MTV


And I thought it was-it struck me as a bad habit, kind of a nervous habit, a reliance. And I had a feeling that it was not good for her health. What would you say to Chelsea if you saw her fall under peer pressure of some of her friends and start smoking or if you found ashes in her bedroom in an ashtray or something? I would talk to her about it and tell her I thought it was a bad idea. She is the most militant person in our house, though. She and Hillary are always on me. You know, as I confessed yesterday, I still, once in a great while, maybe five, six, seven times a year, will smoke a cigar when I am outside. And I have got to do better with it. But if they see me chewing one on the golf course or something, they are on me. So my family is doing a better job with it than I am. Some kids I talk to said that nothing but an outright ban on cigarettes would deter them. Because cigarettes are just as deadly, if not more so, for adults. You have to go through all the same problems we went through with prohibition with liquor. It would have significant economic dislocations for a large number of Americans. And I think as a practical matter, because so many adults are, in effect, hooked on it, it would be very, very difficult to enforce. What I want to do is to phase it out over time by getting-if young people stop using cigarettes-if we could get young people, the usage down to zero, then eventually it will phase out. I think we just have to start with our young people. I do not think that. Most of them-a lot of them come from families that have been doing it 100, sometimes 200 years. I think some of these companies have known for a long time, according to their own documents, that nicotine was both addictive and destructive. And they have-insofar as they have pretended that they did not know that, that is wrong. I think some of these companies have said, we do not want teenagers to smoke, but they have consciously directed their advertising strategies to make it appealing to young people and not just Joe Camel, which was obvious, but a lot of other things as well. And what I want the tobacco companies to do is stop doing the wrong thing and start doing the right thing. I think they ought to come in here and support this-these restrictions.

Interview With Tabitha Soren of MTV


I think they ought to ask Congress to enact them into law now. If they do not want the FDA to regulate them, let us enact the law now. And I think that we ought to start the very next day on this campaign together. If the tobacco companies really do not want kids to smoke, we can do this together. Are you going to try to bring back the cigarette tax? California has had a lot of success with that in their State. Well, this Congress would not adopt that. I have had a number of people who've come from tobacco countries suggest that some of the cigarette tax ought to be devoted to helping the farmers who want to convert their farmland to other purposes, to some sort of buy-out program. But I think that right now what we ought to do is-the bulk of the cigarette tax is available to the States, and a lot of the States now are passing cigarette taxes to help to pay for the health care bills of people who are suffering from tobacco-related illnesses. And I do not want to see the Congress and the Federal Government crowd that out. So when I proposed a tobacco tax before, it was to pay for health care. Right now, advertising is written off as a business expense, and that means the public pays in some fashion for all advertising, including cigarette advertising. Would you consider getting rid of the tax deduction for cigarette advertising? You are the first person who is ever suggested it to me. I'd never though of that. So I will give you a few minutes to absorb it, and I will come back. I have never thought of that. Because I think a lot of people would be offended by the idea of paying for an unhealthy product to advertise and garner more smokers through it. But I will let you dwell on it. Not only do you want to regulate tobacco products, but you are also in favor of regulating how they are marketed. When a musician sits down to talk with me and they are smoking a cigarette, should I not air that footage on MTV? Should I ask Keith Richards to put out his cigarette before he does an interview with me? Should this go for all television? Because of lot of young people watch MTV. I think you should ask him to put it out because I think there are a lot of young people-- And I know he is an icon-for me, too. I do not know if he-his heart might stop if he does not have a cigarette.

Interview With Tabitha Soren of MTV


That is the great thing about their endurance, you know. But that is a decision that each network, each interviewer, they will have to make. I believe very strongly in the first amendment and the right to free speech, free association, and freedom of religion. I believe in a very broad interpretation of it. But I believe that we should be restricting advertising directed at children because it is illegal to sell cigarettes to children. So, therefore, if it is illegal to sell cigarettes to children, it cannot be illegal to stop the advertising directed at children. In terms of the interviews and everything, I would hope every American adult, even those who smoke, would think, as I had to when I became ENTITY and I had this occasional bad habit of having my cigar once in a while, I would hope they would think about not doing it in public, not doing it around children, not setting a bad example. I think we adults have a responsibility to try to set a good standard for our young people and to basically say everybody's got a lot of problems, but being self-destructive is not a way to deal with them. ENTITY, I want to say this as politely as I can, but I think a lot of our viewers are going to be wondering why should they listen to you about this issue? Well, they do not have to listen to me about this issue. What we are going to do is change the law. But I will tell you why they should listen to me or to anybody else. I would say that if they wanted to listen to me, do not listen to me, look at the medical research, look at the evidence. This is about their lives, not mine. I have lived most of my life. Their lives are ahead of them. And the reason they should listen to me is that the evidence is on my side, not just because I am ENTITY. We know that nicotine in cigarettes and smokeless tobacco is addictive, is destructive, and will shorten the lives of one out of three people who start smoking on a regular basis. We know that. So what they should do is say, Okay, here is the evidence; now, what kind of life do I want to live? Ultimately, it is going to be their decision, because even if the law keeps cigarettes away from them in the near-term, soon they will turn 18, and they will be able to do whatever they want to do. They have to make these decisions.

Interview With Tabitha Soren of MTV


But I think-my job, what I am trying to do here every day and with the economy, with saving the college loan program, with trying to preserve the environment from this awful assault that the Congress is making on it , is to give the young people of our country a good country to grow up into and a good life to look forward to. Then they have to make a decision about how to live that life. And what those of us who are older are supposed to do is to say here is what we think will maximize your choices. Here is what we think will give you the chance to live up to the fullest of your abilities. And that is what I hope they will listen to, because the evidence is on my side. I am not just preaching here, I have all this evidence. It is not like you do not have enough things to do already. Everything I try to do here, if you look at-let us just take trying to save the college loan program from attack and trying to preserve the environmental protections we have in this country. Why would I do that? Because I want my child and our grandchildren and all the young people coming up to enjoy a good life. That still requires all these individuals who are watching us to make decisions about how they are going to live. And being addicted to tobacco is not a smart thing to do if you want to have a long, full, good life. It is a huge roll of the dice. I never will forget a few years ago having to speak at the funeral of a very close friend of mine, a man that had literally no other vices. He was one of the most perfect human beings I ever knew. But he smoked a couple of packs of cigarettes a day, and he died of lung cancer 2 1/2 years after he had his last cigarette because it takes that long to clean out your lungs. And he was younger than me. I never got over it. I never will get over it. While I have you, there are a couple of other issues I wanted to ask you about that are important to young voters, in addition to smoking and their health, which you sort of rattled off very quickly. First, though, the woman best known as Jane Roe, whose struggle to obtain an abortion led to the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, has come out against anything but first trimester abortions. How big a blow do you feel this is to the pro-choice movement?

Interview With Tabitha Soren of MTV


Well, as I understand it, she is gone through a number of changes in her life and had a serious religious conversion and believes that abortion is wrong now. The rule of Roe v. Wade is it permits everybody in America to make that same decision. That is, I think there are too many abortions in America. I have always believed that abortion should be rare but that they should be safe and legal until the third trimester when the child can live outside the mother's womb. If somebody has not made the decision by then, unless the life of the mother's in danger, I think they should be illegal, and they were in my State. But I think that leaving the decision to the woman and her doctor and whoever else she wishes to consult, I think on balance is still the right decision in our country. And that makes it possible for people like this woman to make up her own mind and to have her own convictions and then try to persuade other people that she is right. It leaves her free to say, My religious conviction is what is right for all of you; I hope you will follow me. People can do that. And we have a very vibrant, as you know, pro-life movement in this country of people trying to convince other people of that all the time. But we do not say to people who disagree that we are going to criminalize your conduct until the child can live outside the mother's womb. And I think, on balance, that is the right position for our country, and I would stick with it. Since abortion is under such attack in Congress, do you think that you should be doing more to support the pro-choice movement? Well, I do not know what else I can do. I am doing-I think I am doing everything I can. I have resisted the attempts in the Congress to take away the rights of choice to women in the service, to women who work for the Federal Government. And I hope we can beat it back because I think it is -I do not think that is the right thing to do. I do not think the law here is the way to resolve all these problems. You have used executive actions in the first 2 years of your Presidency for issues like abortion. And in recent months, with the Republican majority, you have turned to them more frequently, the regulation of teenage smoking being the most recent one. Do you feel like you are subverting the will of Congress by tackling issues this way?

Interview With Tabitha Soren of MTV


I think that I probably should have been doing more of this all along. But in the first 2 years, I had to pour all of my energies into trying to do something to bring the deficit down, to invest more in education, to try to expand trade, and get the economy going again. And we were able to do that, but the voters still gave the Congress to the Republicans. And now it frees me up, in a way, to-most of my efforts, to try to keep them from undoing the gains we have made from wrecking an economic strategy or wrecking the education program or wrecking the environment. But I can now do things like use my executive authority, for example, to promote welfare reform in all 50 States, to do the other things that we talked about. So I think I probably should have been doing more of it all along. Today lawyers for the legal defense fund are announcing how much money they have raised. Does that make you feel awkward to have them up there saying, We have collected this money for the ENTITY to defend him? But I am not a wealthy person and my adversaries decided that they would try to embroil me in all kinds of legal things, and I cannot afford to take any time off to think about it. So they are dealing with it the best they can in a legal and appropriate way. And I did not want to go to a few wealthy people and ask them to spend a ton of money to pay all my legal bills. So we resolved that the most appropriate thing to do would be to raise funds in a legal defense fund that had the same financial restrictions that running for Federal office does. And so that is what we have tried to do. Senator Dole and Senator Helms have proposed asking for $100 million in arms aid for Bosnia. Do you support this legislation? My position is that the United States should not, by ourselves, violate the U.N. rule against selling arms into Bosnia because it applies to all Yugoslavia, that instead, what we ought to do is have that U.N. mission there work to stop aggression against Bosnia by letting NATO use its air power and by strengthening the U.N. mission on the ground. What happened in Srebrenica was awful. But it happened in large measure because the United Nations would not permit the United States and the other NATO allies to take strong action from the air against the Serbs.

Interview With Tabitha Soren of MTV


Now that there is been a real change on the ground and the Serbs have been rolled back in the western part of Bosnia and in Croatia by the Croats, I hope we have a chance to make a decent peace there. I would not be against-if the U.N. mission fails, I would be for selling arms to the Bosnians or making it possible for the Bosnians to buy arms, but only when we get everybody to lift the arms embargo at the U.N. But let me just say this in closing. We have an embargo against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and you see what happened. We put a lot of pressure on it; we now have some defectors coming over, weakening his power. If we say, We are going to ignore you, and we are going to sell arms to the Bosnians, then what is to prevent other countries from saying, Okay, we will ignore the U.N. embargo in Iraq, and we will bolster Saddam Hussein? I just have two more quick questions. Do you think it is a good thing that Time-Warner wants to sell Interscope Records? Do you know anything about that? I wanted to ask you if you were-well, Jerry Garcia has affected millions of Americans. Have you ever been to a Grateful Dead show? And why do you think he affected so many people of different backgrounds and generations? Well, first of all, he was just a great talent. And I was really pleased to see the Grateful Dead have one more great run around the country, you know, in the last couple of years and see all these young teenagers gravitating to a group that all of us liked 20 or more years ago. He had a great gift. And he even wound up putting out that line of ties. He had great ties. I would go around wearing Jerry Garcia ties and giving them away to people. But he also had a terrible problem that was a legacy of the life he lived and the demons he dealt with. And I would hope that all of us who loved his music and valued his contributions would also reflect on the consequences of, again, really self-destructive behavior. I mean, the lesson of Jerry Garcia's life is that he made a great contribution and he really was a-he had at least two generations of Deadheads, you know. Has she ever gone to a show?

Interview With Tabitha Soren of MTV


We certainly appreciate that. Before we get on to talking about Canada-U.S. relations, I want to deal a little bit with your personal relations with Canadians. Does that matter to you? Does it matter to the relationship? I think I have had very good relations with the Canadians with whom I have dealt. We did not always agree, but I can understand people not agreeing with some of the decisions I made. But that does not necessarily mean there is any problems with the relationship. I guess much has been made about some of the name-calling that went on. That is just part of politics, and it does not bother me in the least. If I was bothered about name-calling from Canada, I'd certainly be bothered about name-calling from the United States as well. The relationship between Canada and the United States is really a relationship not necessarily by government only but by the peoples, by the interchange, by the exchanges we have, by the relatives on both sides of the border. In that regard, Prime Minister Harper, the new-I think this is now the third Prime Minister you have gone through-- He said that of the top priorities that he is got, softwood lumber has to be number one; says it is , in his words, putting a very serious strain on the relationship between the two countries. You have often said that this is something that you want to take care of. I am giving you an opportunity to make some news here. I may not see that. What would be- is there any one thing that you can do to unblock this issue? Well, I can tell our people to try to find common ground. I thought we were pretty close to a deal a couple of years ago-I cannot remember the exact timing of it, but I know we have been working on softwood lumber for quite a while. I fully understand how difficult an issue this is, particularly from Canada's perspective, since there is been some rulings. I told that to Stephen Harper, that I understand its importance. I understand its priority. And I'd like to get the issue resolved once and for all myself. The best thing I can do is tell our negotiators that-see if you can find common ground. Again, we were close to an agreement before-maybe that is a place for people to look for common ground. It is going to require some very quiet consultations to see if we can do what I'd like to see done.

Interview With CTV


Can it be solved on your watch? I know it creates anxieties in Canada. I really do not want to create anxieties. On the other hand, I do want to be fair to our folks here as well, and I think we can find ground. We have got the world's largest undefended border; we are both countries at war; we have got boots on the ground in Afghanistan. And yet here at home, we are putting more barriers along that Canadian-American border. You have often said that the reason for this-or what Stephen Harper calls the passport problem-you have said that it is because you want to know who is coming and going across that border. So I guess it begs the question, are the Canadians not telling you who is coming and going? Are we not doing a good enough job? Oh, I think Canada has been very cooperative, and the relationship between our services is very good. It can be a document, a tamper-proof document that will expedite border crossings, not delay border crossings. And right after September the 11th, obviously, our country took a hard look at the procedures enabling people to come back and forth across our borders, both north and south. And the idea was to come up, as I said, with a tamper-proof document. I know they have been focused on the passport, but surely we can design something-the law does not say passport only; the law says, kind of, passport-like, if I am not mistaken. We have found a lot of, for example, driver's license forgeries throughout the United States that make it difficult to-you know, as best as we can, assure our citizens that we know who is coming in and who is not. I guess part of the problem for a lot of people in this is they say, look, it is not so much guys like you and me going across-we have all got passports or identity cards. But it is the minor league, peewee hockey team, or the peewee baseball team that will not be able to play in each other's countries right now because it is too much of a hassle to get this card. I can understand-I mean, on any change of the status quo, you can always find, kind of, the nightmare scenario that makes life- it makes it feel like life is going to be a lot worse.

Interview With CTV


I think we can work with our Canadian counterparts to come up with something that is rational and meets the law that has been passed by the Congress and that I signed. Can you foresee-you are going down to Cancun as part of the exercise, I guess, of imagining a new North America and then getting it going. In your vision, can you foresee a day when there would be free travel of people across the borders without identity cards, just free movement of people in North America? That is probably down the road. But I am not imagining an important relationship, though, because we are really building on what our predecessors left behind, which is a trading arrangement that has substantially increased trade between the United States and Canada and Mexico. I am a believer that trade helps grow economies. I think free trade is an important part-and fair trade-something that Canadians want and something that Americans want is free and fair trade-benefits both of us. You know, we traded about nearly $500 billion, two-way trade, in 2005, which is very positive for both our economies. What I am concerned about is that protectionist tendency and isolationist tendency that could emerge in both our countries as well as in Mexico, which would make it harder for us to realize the benefits of collaboration together, make it harder for us to, kind of, grow together. And that would be not beneficial for the hemisphere, and frankly, it will make it a lot harder for future Americans and Canadians and Mexicans to compete with the Chinese, for example. And so there is a relationship which exists which needs to be protected and nurtured and streamlined and made more efficient, and that is really what the discussions will be in Cancun. A quick last question for you-I do not know if you are going to take the bait on this one. I let the cat out of the bag. Are you any happier with the Conservative Government in Canada than a Liberal Government? I am-I respect the will of the Canadian people, and as I say, you know, this is-there were some tense times when I made the decision to go to war in Iraq, and I understand that. I am not the-I fully understand why people, not only in Canada but in the United States, expressed deep concern about the use of force to protect ourselves. I stand by the decision. And therefore, I was not surprised when I heard, you know, members of political parties in both our countries express deep concern about it.

Interview With CTV


We want to talk to you first about Medicare and then about new markets. You have got your long-awaited plan out on Medicare. What do you think the prospects are, especially looking at the early initial reaction that you got yesterday? What do you make of that? Well, first, I think it is a good sign that we have the Republican leadership with the door open. That is what having Senator Roth and having Congressman Thomas and the other two Republican congressmen there- McCrery from Louisiana, in particular, is a guy I know and have a regard for. McCrery would like to make an agreement on Medicare and Social Security-very serious man. I think, also, the breadth of the presence of the Democrats indicates that the most liberal Democrats have acknowledged that we need to make serious structural reform; and our moderate-to-conservative Democrats believe that this is enough structural reform to unify and coalesce around. So I think we have got something to go forward on. And what I intend to do is to call the leaders-Senator Lott and the Speaker and Senator Daschle and Mr. Gephardt-and ask them to come and meet with me the day we get back from Fourth of July recess, and let us try to make a plan for how we could do it this summer. Because I believe that I can do the same thing with the Social Security I have done with Medicare, I can offer them something. We could even maybe build on it and get the-done, because we cannot know that we are really going to pay the debt off which, as you know, I believe is profoundly important, unless we understand where we are on both. But I think the first thing to do is to get the Medicare because there is a real interest in it. When you have this meeting with the congressional leadership, are you going to give them a deadline for action? What will you do, specifically, at the meeting? What do you want to come out of it? Well, what I want to come out of it more than anything else is a common commitment to the goal. In other words, if the leaders will all say we want to do this and we think we can, it does not mean we will, but it will get us a lot closer. That will send a signal to the rank and file in both caucuses that this is something we are really going to try to do.

Interview With Susan Page of USA Today Aboard Air Force One


And it would be a phenomenal gift to the country to do it, and we have the money to do it, and the only reason not to do it, frankly, is if somebody makes a real decision that the money should be diverted to something else. We are close enough now; we are much closer now, frankly, on Medicare than we were before we did the omnibus balanced budget in '97. This meeting or really the release of the plan is the start of a process. Some people think the end of the process could be a deal that enables Republicans to get some of the tax cuts they want and you to get the Medicare plan you want. Is that a possible end of this? Well, I think it depends first on whether we can get close enough so that- on the particulars of the structure of the Medicare-that is, can we get everybody, or more or less everybody for the kind of structural modernization that I think is imperative, where we have some genuine competition, but we do it in a way that does not sacrifice quality-that is why I want to set up this extra fund, because most people believe that in the '97 Balanced Budget Act we had excessive savings in some areas of Medicare from the point of view of providers, so we set aside a fund for the Congress to deal with that-and then whether we can get a general agreement on the structure of the drug benefit. A lot of our people-and I am very sympathetic-and maybe some of theirs would like to accommodate both the people that have huge drug bills and the biotech industry which wants to be able to sell these drugs if they keep investing and pushing the envelope on the big things. But I thought it important not to have a drug benefit that would be subject to the same criticism that we leveled at one of their tax programs back in '97-that, okay, it looks good for 5 years. So now, we have avoided that. But I think that if we can get agreement on the fundamentals of this and then if we can get agreement on real commitment to paying down the debt and taking the interest savings and plowing it into Social Security, then I think there is enough funding left over, not committed to either of those pots, given this new budget, that we can probably make it a kind of omnibus agreement covering other things. Yes, but I think that what we have to focus on is first things first.


I think that, for the Democrats and for me, the important thing will be having the right kind of Medicare reform, having the prescription drug benefit, and getting the details right here. And so that is why I think we have to really-we have got to focus on that. I think the other stuff-assuming, as I said- it is a big assumption-assuming you get the financing right on the Social Security piece, I'd also like to have an omnibus agreement. I am going to try to get them to agree on Social Security, too. And a lot of people-most people do not think we can do that. I spent a lot of time just quietly thinking about it, on our trip to Europe and other things, trying to write out different scenarios. But I think there is much more energy right now behind the Medicare issue and a much greater sense of urgency. And frankly, you have got one that goes broke in 2015 and the other one, if they just hang with the money I have got, will stay all right until 2053 or 2055. So I think Medicare first, see if they want to do it, see if they will commit to try to do it by the summer. And then I think they can raise their other concerns once we get into the framework of the substance. But we have got to stay- this is a big, big-changes in Medicare, and we need to focus on that first. Are you concerned at all, though, that there may be a good number of Democrats who are afraid there will be a deal that they will not like? But none of them think that so far. In other words, I have worked very, very hard to keep our caucus together. I took a good deal of time to come out with the specifics of this plan, and we did a lot of serious work, all of us-and I include the White House in that, too-really trying to take the politics out of this in terms of what specifics we recommended. That is, I really tried to figure out what I thought had to be done structurally for this program to work, what kinds of savings we had to achieve, whether the economics really would support getting rid of all the copays on the preventive screening if you put in the copays on the lab tests that tend to be-most people believe are overused.


So I think that-all I can tell you is that the negotiating process that I would support would be designed to produce an agreement that would be supported by the overwhelming majority of our caucus, and I would hope the overwhelming majority of theirs. If you look at the balanced budget agreement, we did a pretty good job. They had a slightly higher percentage of Republicans voting for it in the House than the Democrats, and in the Senate we had a slightly higher percentage of Democrats voting for it than Republicans. I think to get an agreement, we are going to have to do that. Given how important it is to you to try to win the Congress back, or as much as you could, for your party, do you ever feel personally torn about a deal versus trying to give Al Gore and the Democrats an issue? No, because I do not believe- it might help some individual Republicans get reelected to Congress if they voted for such an agreement, but I believe that for Democrats what is good policy is almost always the best politics. The do right rule is almost always best for us because we get hired to do things. The American people, when they vote for Democrats, they hire them. They give you this job, and you get a contract, and your contract is 2 years, 6 years, or 4 years if you are President; and they hire us to go to work every day and to do things. And I do not believe-for example, it did not hurt the Democrats in 1998 that we had a big budget at the end where there was a compromise that a lot of Republicans voted for, and we got the big downpayment on 100,000 teachers and a lot of other educational priorities. It did not hurt them at all. The only-this is not going to turn into a status quo country, and there are too many issues on which we are too deeply divided. If we can reach agreement on-and I am not saying this could happen-if we could reach agreement on Medicare, Social Security, taxes, investments in education, and there would still be differences in 2000 on next steps in education, on guns, on patients' rights, even if we pass a Patients' Bill of Rights, there are going to be differences, unresolved differences, on choice, on a lot of issues. In other words, there will be a vibrant election-year environment in 2000 for issues still to be decided by America that will be clear in the Presidential race and clear in the congressional races.


Even if both parties-even if the Republicans join us-if you look at George Bush's message, it is assumed he will be nominated on this compassionate conservatism thing-and that both parties are competing for the dynamic center of America , I happen to think that is a healthy thing. If you just look at the real substantive differences, all-just the issues I have mentioned and others, we will have plenty to fight about, argue about in the election. So I think that actually both parties will be better off in dealing with the agenda of the 21st century. If we dealt with the baby boom problems right now, if we dealt with Social Security and Medicare and committed to pay the debt down, if we did all that, the Republicans would still say we need more for tax cuts than maybe we will get, or here is our next round of tax cuts, or whatever. One last question on Medicare, before we turn to new markets. Senator Breaux was critical, saying your plan did not go far enough by addressing structural reforms. And you, yourself, since Putting People First, have supported things like means testing. Are you frustrated that politically it was not possible to go farther than you went in this Medicare plan? No, I think-well, first of all, I think the structural reforms in the health care-there are two issues there. One is the means testing, which was not in his report, either, because some of the Republicans did not go for it. I do not think that is as big a problem as some people do, and I will come back to that. The second is an area on which we have an honest disagreement-Breaux and Thomas and me-and it is an honest disagreement. I want there to be-I want the managed care Medicare people to be given the maximum opportunity to make their program attractive to people in the traditional fee-for-service program, if they can do so. In that regard, I go just as far as they do.


Now, what I do not do, and I really do not think I should do, especially given the level of anxiety Americans have about managed care-even though I have imposed a Patients' Bill of Rights for federally funded programs, so our guys, our Medicare people, get the Patients' Bill of Rights-what I do not do that they do is I do not permit a level of what they call competition in the fee-for-service program in a way that would permit the cost of the traditional program to the beneficiaries to rise so rapidly that it would force people into managed care, whether they wanted to be there or not. And we just have an honest, philosophical difference about that. Now, on the upper income premium issue- I ran on that in '92. I have never made any secret to the American people that I think that is the right thing to do. We took the income limit off of the Medicare tax in the '93 balanced budget act. So every wealthy person in America today is paying much more in Medicare taxes than they will use anyway. In other words, if you are making a quarter of a million dollars a year, you do not have that $67,000-I think it was $80,000 cap, something like that-you do not have that cap anymore. So since '93, you have been paying a great deal into the Medicare program. So you do not have the equity argument you used to have. One of the reasons that Medicare program was extended in its life-apart from the cost savings we effected and waste, fraud, and abuse stuff, which we really did better about than most of us thought we could-is that we took the earnings limitation off the Medicare tax, and I think that a lot of times people who say upper income people should pay more have forgotten that and forgotten just what a significant amount of money that is to a lot of people. We better turn to new markets, because we want to talk a little about that, too. So you are going next week from Appalachia to Watts. Tell us why you are doing the tour. Well, I am doing it first to shine the light on these areas in America, because I believe that we have both an obligation to give the communities and the neighborhoods that have not been touched by the economic recovery the chance to be a part of it, to go into the new century with us, and


All the discussion leading up to what the Federal Reserve was going to do today on interest rates was all premised on the fact that we are having a great national debate now, because no one thought 5 years ago, 6 years ago that we could possibly have average growth well in excess of 3 percent and unemployment under 4.5 percent without having inflation. So we do not have any signs of inflation, but should not they be worried about it, since nobody really thought we could have it? Everyone knows that the technology explosion, especially in telecommunications and information technology, has dramatically increased productivity in ways that traditional economic models do not measure. Is there any way we could keep this economic recovery going, creating even more jobs, raising incomes even more, and not have inflation? And the answer is, yes, if you can either find more customers for American goods and services or more workers to come in and produce more so they are not just being added on for the same level of production. Now, what are the possibilities for that? Expanded trade, which is why I have worked very hard to build a consensus in my own party for trade, plus labor and environmental standards- why I went to Geneva and made those speeches, why I went to the University of Chicago and all that-for trade. The most obvious ones in America are more people from welfare to work. Tonight I had Eli Segal at the fundraiser, if you listened in on that. He is now got 12,000 companies in this deal where we are trying to hire even hard-to-place welfare recipients and train them. Because that is adding to the productive capacity. You get people who are both workers and consumers. The other big discrete population are the disabled, which is why this thing that apparently we are going to have an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Congress do, which is to let disabled people keep their Medicaid in the work force, it is potentially a very big, positive contribution to long-term growth, because, again, you are creating more workers and more consumers. Now, the third big opportunity is to find what areas have not been fully reached with investment and jobs in growth. And that is what this is about. Now, I want to talk about three things when we go there.