And my hope and expectation is that there is going to be some difficulties, but ultimately, both the Israelis and Palestinians are going to recognize this is in their interests. The United States cannot impose a solution, but perhaps because we are not immediately in the heat of the passions involved, perhaps we can see why it is so important for both Israelis and Palestinians to resolve this and resolve this soon and not continue to let it fester. And that is what I am committed to. I do not want to impose an artificial timeline, but I think that all of us probably had a sense in our gut of, Are things moving forward? , or Have they stalled? And when things stall, everybody knows it. People may say a lot of words, but everybody knows that nothing is happening. Right now things have been stalled for quite some time. When things are moving, people also know that. And so what I want to--I want to have a sense of movement and progress. ENTITY--and I will listen to my translation. And you have talked about the Middle East and the future of this region. You also spoke about the commitment of the United States towards achieving progress towards special issues. How is your administration going to deal with the current Israeli Government and with Hamas as a part and parcel of the Palestinian portfolio? And I think so many believe that Hamas is a difficult question that the previous administration did not deal with. What is your vision and your view in dealing with Hamas and dealing with the hawks in the current Israeli Government? The other issue is your clarity and your vision makes me want to ask you, who are your partners in the region that you can rely on to achieve your objectives, either on the Palestinian issue or the Iraqi issue or the Afghanistan issue? First of all, I tried to make clear in my speech that when it comes to Hamas, there is no doubt that Hamas has some support among Palestinians. That was shown in the last election; that cannot be denied. What I also said is that Hamas has responsibilities to those people it represents to have a responsible approach to actually delivering a Palestinian state. If Hamas's approach is based on the idea that Israel will cease to exist, that is an illusion. And what that means is that they are more interested in talk than in results. If they are serious about delivering a Palestinian state, then they should renounce violence, accept the framework provided by the previous agreements, recognize Israel's right to exist.


That still leaves enormous room for them to negotiate on a whole host of issues. But at minimum, they cannot provide the results for the people they claim to represent if they are not acknowledging reality. Now, with respect to the Israeli Government, I have had three meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu. The first two was while I was a United States Senator, and one in the White House just recently. In each case, I found him to be a very intelligent, very engaging person, a excellent communicator. And I think because this is the second time that he is serving as Prime Minister, I think he feels a very real historic sense about the task before him. Obviously, it was a very close election in Israel. It took some time to put that coalition together. And I think that just as so many Palestinians have lost confidence and faith that the process can move forward, I think there are a lot of Israelis who have lost confidence and faith that they will ever be recognized by Arab States, or that there will be security that is meaningful, where rockets are not fired into Israel. And so I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu will recognize the strategic need to deal with this issue, and that in some ways, he may have an opportunity that a Labor or more left leader might not have. There is the famous example of Richard Nixon going to China. A Democrat could not have gone to China; a liberal could not have gone to China. But a big anti-Communist like Richard Nixon could open that door. Now, it is conceivable that Prime Minister Netanyahu can play that same role. But it is going to be difficult, and I do not want to diminish the difficulties for any of the parties involved in making these decisions because, as I said, there are a lot of passions in the people. But part of leadership is being able to push beyond immediate politics to get to where, ultimately, the people need to go. And in terms of partners more broadly, my attitude at this point is, I want to work with everybody I can to get things done. First of all, ENTITY, I want to congratulate you for a great speech. I believe that everybody in the region listened to it, including in my country. One question, which really worries the Israelis, is Iran. In your speech, you did not indicate whether at certain point you--or whether--to stop the nuclearization of Iran is an American national goal, which has to be fulfilled.

Interview With Foreign Journalists in Cairo


Well, keep in mind that I have been very clear on this in the past, and I will continue to be clear on the fact that an Iranian nuclear weapon would be profoundly destabilizing for the entire region. It is strongly in America's interest to prevent such a scenario. But I believe it is in the interest of everybody in the region--indeed, I actually think it is in Iran's interest--to prevent such a scenario, because it would be a very dangerous place if everybody decides that they need to have a nuclear weapon in the neighborhood, particularly given the conflicts that exist not just between--the tensions between Israel and Iran, but there are a wide set of conflicts that would be affected. So my approach, as I have said, is to reach out to Iran to suggest talks without preconditions, but also to--and as I said in my speech, to have a wide range of issues to discuss. But the issue that is time sensitive, where we have to make progress because we are reaching a critical point, is on the issue of nuclear weapons. And so one of the things that I want to do is to put this in a broader context. And as committed as I am to diplomacy, as I said in the White House just a few weeks ago, I am not just going to talk just for talking sake. If I do not see meaningful progress in these talks, then that will indicate to me that the Islamic Republic is not serious. You did not mention the word normalization between Israel and the Arab world in your speech. Is it--does it indicate something? It does not indicate anything. I think the working assumption--and that is why I added the issue of Arab State responsibilities, not just Israeli and Palestinian responsibilities. I added that paragraph because I thought it was very important to reinforce the notion that the region as a whole has to take responsibility for solving this issue. And I think from Israel's perspective, the importance of knowing that as a consequence of making the necessary compromises to achieve a two-state solution, they are not only making peace and doing what is just with respect to the Palestinians, but that they are also securing--that they are also meeting their own security needs, and broader threats that might come from beyond Gaza or the West Bank--that is a very important element. It also, by the way, would allow, I think, the entire region to prosper much more effectively.


If you think about the possibilities of commerce and trade in the Middle East, if a country like Israel, as powerful as it is, were able to have normalized commercial relations with Gulf States, with a Palestinian state that is full of talent, and you suddenly have all the Palestinian diaspora coming back and investing and businesspeople throughout the region, you could see huge economic benefits, as well as security benefits. But we are very far from that vision. So right now I just want us to start taking that step down the road. You know, there is the well-known saying that the hardest step on any journey is always the first one. Of course, as an Indonesian, my first question would be, when will you come to Indonesia? Oh, I need to come to Indonesia soon. I expect to be traveling to Asia at some point within the next year, and I would be surprised if when I came to Asia I did not stop by my old home town of Jakarta. And I will go visit Menteng Dalam and have some bakso, nasi goreng. These are some special dishes here that I used to eat when I was a kid. Actually, I live only 300 meters from your old house. Well, I do not want to make any----firm commitments. And the second is, you know, I read your book, The Audacity of Hope, and I had a very great hope that you can reach the Muslim community, because it seemed to me your understanding of a relationship between faith and politics, especially in black churches, is very much--I can imagine someone who is a Hamas or, you know, maybe radical Islamist would probably, if you take away the word Islam and change it with, you know, black Christian, it is exactly the same. Obviously, I am a person of faith, and as a Christian, but also as somebody who believes very strongly in democracy and human rights--and I am a constitutional law professor, so I have some very strong ideas about how a pluralistic society lives together--these are things that I do spend time thinking about.


What I tried to communicate in the speech and what I believe very strongly is that in an interdependent world like ours, where the world has shrunk and different peoples with different faiths and different ideas are constantly having to coexist, that we have to have a mature faith that says, I believe with all my heart and all my soul in what I believe, but I respect the fact that somebody else believes their beliefs just as strongly. And so the only way that we are going to live together or operate in a political system that can work for everybody is if we have certain rules about how we relate to each other. I cannot force my religion on you. I cannot try to organize a majority to discriminate against you because you are a religious minority. I cannot simply take what is in my religious beliefs and say you have to believe and abide by these same things. Now, that does not mean that I cannot make arguments that are based on my belief and my faith, right? If I am a Christian, I believe in the Ten Commandments. If I am a politician and I say I am going to pass a law against murdering somebody, that is not me practicing my religious faith; that is me practicing morality that may be based in religious faith, but that is a universal principle, or at least one that can translate into a principle that people of various faiths can agree on. I think it is very important for Islam to wrestle with these issues. Now, I recognize that not all religious beliefs are going to be exactly the same in how they think about politics. And so in Islam, there is a debate about sharia and how strict an interpretation or how moderate an interpretation of that should be; or should that be something that is not part of the secular law. I do not presume to make that decision for any country or any groups of people. But I do think that if you start having rules that guarantee other faiths and other groups, or in the case of the United States people with no faith at all, are somehow forced to abide by somebody else's faith, I think that is a violation of the spirit of democracy, and I think that over the long term, that is going to breed conflict in some way. It will lead to some sort of instability and destructiveness in that society. But, as I said, I think this is a important debate that has to take place inside Islam.


I think in the meantime--the one thing I can say for certain is that people who justify killing other people based on faith are misreading their sacred texts. And I think they are out of alignment with God. And that, I think, is a debate that I think is settled for the vast majority of Muslims, but we have a very small minority that can be very destructive, and that is part of what I tried to discuss in my speech. ENTITY, why have you chosen--why did you choose Cairo as the venue for the speech? Because the Arab population, after all, make up only about 20 percent of the Muslim population, and Indonesia---- I should have gone to Kuala Lumpur. And also, I mean, the expectations on you are really, really high doing something to heal the rift. Well, I thought it was important to come to Cairo because I think, if we are honest, the greatest tension when it comes to the relationship between the Muslim world and the United States in recent years has centered around the Middle East. In some ways, going to Indonesia would almost be cheating----because I would have a home court advantage. Not only am I personally close to the culture and have a sister who is half Indonesian, but I think that, frankly, the relationship between the United States and Indonesia has generally been strong. It was weakened for a time immediately after the Iraqi invasion, but generally speaking, there have been strong lines of communication. And so my tendency is to go to the source of the problem and not try to avoid the problem. And I think that the source of the problem in this situation has to do with the United States and countries in the Middle East not communicating effectively. And in terms of expectations, I tried to be very clear that one speech alone does not solve all these problems. What I wanted to do was simply to start a conversation, not just between me and the Muslim world, but within the Muslim world and within America and the West about how do we finally start being honest about some of these problems, and that once you diagnose a problem, it still may take a long time to actually cure the problem, but you are never going to cure it unless you diagnose it.


And so what I was trying to do was at least to get us to start thinking about what are the real three, four, five, six things that are at the heart of the argument, and let us go ahead and look at those directly and see are there ways where we can at least agree to what the nature of the problem is. That is how we can begin to solve it. But it is going to take a long time to solve many of these issues, and I do not expect that some of these problems will ever go away completely. Second, I would like to ask you a question about American policy. I go often to the United States in my work, and I meet a lot of people. And my last trip--and it was after your Inauguration, a few weeks--you met with the key members of your party in the Congress at that time. And we read in the papers that what you did is you convinced them of your approach to the peace in the Middle East. And everybody was--then the expectation rose in the Arab world and in the Muslim world. When they saw Mr. Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, refusing a two-state solution, refusing the freeze of the settlements, and the not talking about this issue, and then when we saw this letter of 300 Members of the Congress, some of the Arabs thought that maybe it was AIPAC again, which is trying to influence the Congress. So my question is, do you feel that, as an administration, can you pressure Mr. Netanyahu, if need be, domestically, and can you--do you think that also Mr. Netanyahu can endanger the historic alliance and relation between his country and the United States? Well, first of all, I tried to make very clear in the speech, the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable. It transcends party; it will be there if there is a Democratic President or a Republican President, if there is a Democratic Congress or a Republican Congress. I mean, I think Nahum would be the first one to acknowledge, I do not know what number of American-born Jews are now Israeli citizens, but it is a pretty high number. So expecting a break between the United States and Israel is, I think, not something that people should anticipate. Netanyahu has only been in office, what is it, a month and a half?


So we maybe might just want to try a few more months before everybody starts looking at doomsday scenarios. This is difficult, and it is going to take some time. Now, it is going to take time for Palestinian leadership. We just discussed the issue of how Palestinians unify around some core principles that could facilitate talks from going forward. If Hamas wants to participate, it is going to have its own political problems internal to Hamas, because there are some who will never agree to recognizing Israel, in part because they would prefer being in the role that they are in now, which is in opposition and obtaining financing and support and living in Damascus and doing what they do, to governing. They are going to have to make some decisions. For Israel, these are also difficult decisions. I believe that, as I said in the speech, these settlements are an impediment to peace. But that is not to deny the fact that there are people who are already living in some of these settlements, that there is a momentum to some of these settlements. So all these things are going to take time, but this is why I say America cannot --we cannot do this for the parties. I mean, I do think that sometimes there is a schizophrenic view in the Middle East of America. On the one hand, everybody wants America to stop meddling, Do not interfere; do not be imperialist. And then on the other hand, When is America going to solve the Palestinian crisis? Why have not they done this? Why have not they created democracy and human rights in--throughout the Muslim world? Well, you cannot have it both ways, right? We cannot , on the one hand, be the respectful partner who is listening to other countries, and on the other hand, you expect us to solve every problem, and nobody else makes an effort. And part of what I have tried to do today is to instead say, we will be a partner, we will work with you, but everybody is going to have to carry their own weight on this thing. Are the Arabs who are now the allies of the United States of America, are they ready to be real partners? Because in the past, some of them were not partners, real partners, especially----


For example, in the time of Yasser Arafat and the meetings between President Clinton, I think, and Mr. Arafat and maybe Mr. Barak, most of the Americans I met said, Well, it was Arafat who backed off. Although, some people say, No, this is not the story, but this is what I heard. And when I asked some of my friends in the States, they said, Well, the Arabs --which means, at that time, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who were the allies of Yasser Arafat and allies of the United States-- did not force him or did not try to convince him just to accept what was the parameter of solution, which was at that time offered and I do not think described something better. One of the things I have learned about being ENTITY is I always read about things that I do not remember happening, even though I was in the room, probably because they did not happen. So I do not try to guess or speculate on what happened a decade ago with respect to why a peace deal was not completed. What is more important from my perspective is, how do we now move forward? And I think that all the parties involved are going to have to seize this moment. And it is going to require some risks. And part of the reason that I tried to emphasize this in a public speech is, leaders have to have followers, and it is important for the publics in Muslim communities to be supportive of the efforts of Arab States to solve this problem and, ultimately, help to create a two-state solution and better or normalized relations with Israel, just as it is important for the Israeli population to provide space for their leadership to make difficult decisions, and it is important for the Palestinian people to provide an atmosphere in which the Palestinian leadership can make difficult decisions. You know, politicians, they lead, but ultimately, they cannot be so far ahead of their people that those bonds between the leader and the people are ruptured. And so if we are going to be serious about this, then the people have to at least try to keep pace with what I hope will be leadership across the board. In your speech, you made a reference to the conflicts which are poisoning the relations between the Muslim world and the West, and America in particular. You just came from a partner country, a strategic partner, Saudi Arabia.


In your effort to resolve conflicts in Iraq, in Afghanistan--maybe you have noticed that Saudi Arabia keep its distance with the previous administration from those two countries. Did you develop any plans with King Abdallah, who will share the same views as you, so you would work together in your work in Iraq and Pakistan and Afghanistan? Well, I certainly discussed these issues with His Majesty. I try not to disclose the contents of private meetings unless there is been a joint decision that we will discuss them, because I want to always have frank conversations with these leaders. Saudi Arabia is, obviously, absolutely critical to solving a range of problems in the Middle East. It is an economic leader because of not only its oil wealth but its broad-based development strategies. It is a thought leader and a religious leader because of Mecca and Medina. And so if we are talking about Iraq, for example, I think normalizing relations and exchanging ambassadors between Saudi Arabia and Iraq will be helpful to Iraq and its stabilization. With respect to Pakistan and the situation in Afghanistan/Pakistan, we are seeing a lot of displaced people. Making sure that there are resources that are put in place so that those displaced persons do not experience enormous suffering, but also so that you do not have further radicalization of an entire population that has been uprooted because of conflict, Saudi Arabia is going to be critical. So on all these issues, I think Saudi leadership is something that is desirable. I also happen to have what I consider, and I hope he considers as well, a very good and warm relationship with His Majesty. I think he is a very wise man, and he is a very honest man, and I have great respect for him. A question about the other audience who were not here at the gathering. You spoke to a very receptive, cheerful--they declared their love to you also. But the radicals, whom we need to address--Usama bin Laden is alive. They have their influence, they have---- but they have their influence. What are you going to do about that? Well, Al Qaida we will defeat because they kill innocent people. I am a strong believer in dialog, but I do not think that any nation should tolerate an international network that is willing to murder men and women and children who have done nothing. That cannot be the basis for justice. That cannot be the basis for any governing ideology.


I mean, who would live like that, that I decide somebody lives with a different religion or has a different skin color or looks like somebody that I do not like, and I am just going to go ahead and target them deliberately? And so we will go after them. And part of the reason it is not easy is because they are adept at exploiting the very real tensions that exist that I discussed today. I do not expect to change their minds, obviously. My audience is, though, say, the 20-year-old young man in Cairo in maybe one of the poorer sections of Cairo or in Gaza or in Damascus or in Tripoli who is still searching, is still looking for a way. And my message to that young man or that young woman would be, it is possible for you to be true to your faith, true to your traditions, but instead of destroying, you can build. And if you see injustice, then the way to achieve the changes you seek is not through violence, but is through persuasion. And if I reach a few of those 20-year-olds, or I reach their parents and maybe they have a conversation and debate with those young men and women, then perhaps that can make a difference when somebody tries to recruit that person to join an extremist organization. No quick solutions to Gaza, but by the end of this year, my country will have invested $900 million, almost a billion dollars, in humanitarian relief in Gaza. I think it is very important that we find ways to loosen the borders so that more supplies, more medicine, more infrastructure development can get into Gaza for rebuilding. I think part of that is the international community working to ensure that the smuggling of weapons that are then fired into Israel are no longer taking place. That is going to be a difficult task, but it is one that we are going to have to work on, because in the absence of that, we are not going to solve it. Okay, everybody, I have to go see the Pyramids.


ENTITY, let us start with Mexico. You are going down there on Monday. The news today is that Mexico just dismantled its antidrug agency and has put a new agency in place with new trainees. Will this stop the corruption that has been so rampant? Well, I think there is a good chance that it will improve things. Keep in mind the Mexicans have a big challenge. This is not just something they-this cooperation we are undertaking in the antidrug area from Mexico's point of view is not primarily for the United States. Of course, we want to reduce the number of illegal drugs coming into America. Primarily, it is for Mexico. It is to preserve the social, political, and economic integrity of the country. I have had a good relationship with President Zedillo and with Mexico since I became President. I have done everything I could do to try to make sure America is a good neighbor and a good partner for the future. And I think this will enable us to work more closely together in that area. ENTITY, Mexico is going to have midterm elections that are going to be watched throughout the world. And I know President Zedillo has been trying to change some of old time and change the structure of his party. What are your expectations of these midterm elections? It is the first time the mayor of Mexico City is going to be elected. My only expectations are that they will be free and fair and that they will express the will of the Mexican people and that we will support that, whatever that is. ENTITY, NAFTA, according to the numbers, seems to be working. Do you expect the U.S. Congress to help push NAFTA to Chile fast-track? And you have spoken, and your people have spoken, how important Latin America is as far as a trading partner, but does Congress share your view, sir? I am, frankly, disappointed and surprised that there is still so much opposition to expanding fasttrack. NAFTA has been a big success for us, with Canada and with Mexico. It has brought our two countries closer together. When Mexico had a difficult time economically, the United States made the loan that-I made the decision to make a loan to Mexico, and they paid the loan back early with interest and a profit. It is creating more jobs for Mexico, more jobs for the United States.

Interview With Jacobo Goldstein of CNN Radio Noticias


And I think we would be very, very, very shortsighted if we did not extend fast-track, go down and involve Chile, and then eventually complete the promise of the Summit of the Americas-involve the Andean nations, the MERCOSUR nations, all the nations, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean in the trade area of the Americas. That is what I want to do, and I am going to keep pushing for it. ENTITY, you placed great importance on the relations with Mexico, personal relation between you and President Zedillo. And now the word is out, you are going to be naming a very famous politician of the other party, the Governor of Massachusetts, Governor William Weld. How will this create better relations between you and Mexico? Well, if Governor Weld's appointment goes through, I would expect it to greatly strengthen our relationships because I think that they will have a lot in common and that the three of us will all have a good relationship, which will facilitate our countries growing closer together and working better together. Will he have direct access to you and Madeleine Albright? I know him well. I mean, he is a member of the other party, and when he ran against Senator Kerry last year, I worked very hard for Senator Kerry. But we have a good personal relationship. He is a highly intelligent man, and he and I are clearly on the same wavelength in terms of what we believe our policy toward Mexico and, indeed, toward all Latin America should be. Finally, ENTITY, I want to touch slightly the issue of human rights. Will the subject of human rights be broached during the bilateral meeting, or will you deal-with President Zedillo? I expect we will discuss everything that is out there to be discussed in our relationship. We have a very open and candid relationship. If he has some problems with the United States, he feels free to raise them with me. And we will talk through everything I think we should talk through. Migrations-the new migration laws have created a huge stir in Mexico and Central America, also-the issue, that will come up? I would like to make three points. First of all, there were provisions dealing with legal immigrants tacked onto the welfare reform bill that had nothing to do with welfare reform, that I strongly opposed, and that will have to be significantly changed if we are going to get a budget agreement here with the Republican Congress.


I have told them that, and we are working hard on it. Secondly, with regard to the law dealing with illegal immigration, I know that there are some questions about that law in Latin America. But let me point out, the main thing the law does is to give us extra tools to control our borders, to deal with illegal immigrants in our workplaces and who come into the criminal justice system. We are going to work very hard to avoid any draconian interpretation of the law that would lead to any kind of mass deportations or anything of that kind. But keep in mind, the United States admitted last year 960,000 legal immigrants. We are now the fifth largest Hispanic country in the world, with 22 million Hispanic-Americans here. So we are committed to open immigration and to having more people here from the Americas, but we have to do it in a legal way that has some discipline and order and integrity to it. And we will try to do it in a fair and balanced way. ENTITY, there was some concern in Mexico when Mexican trucks were not allowed-truckers to drive in this country. President Zedillo would bring it up if I did not . we are trying to work that out. Our concerns here are basically safety concerns, and we have an obligation under NAFTA, the United States does, to permit Mexican truckers into the United States if they meet the standards that we apply to our people. And we are trying to work out exactly how we define that and resolve it with the Mexicans. And we have two or three relatively minor matter all but one. And I think we have to work very hard to try to rectify the economic harm done to the Caribbean countries inadvertently by Congress when they adopted NAFTA but would not go along with my suggestion to give the same treatment to the Caribbean countries. Excuse me, by Caribbean you mean Central America and the Caribbean Basin? We did not- I do not think the Congress meant to hurt them by passing NAFTA, but I told them what I was afraid would happen. I asked them to at least maintain the status quo, so that they would not lose any ground compared to Mexico because Mexico's great gains have come from the labors of the Mexican people and from the transfer of some production from Asia back to Mexico. They never intended to take anything away from the Central America and Caribbean countries. So we have to rectify that because those countries have to have a chance to grow.


Otherwise, the more successful Mexico is in its antidrug efforts, the more vulnerable the Caribbean countries will be-especially the Caribbean, even more than Central America. They will become even more vulnerable to drug traffickers because they will not be able to make a living there. So we have got to rectify this, and I am hoping to resolve it with this session of Congress. ENTITY, the Central American countries will also bring up the immigration issue because El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras-they were all deeply affected in the eighties during the liberation or revolution, the civil wars of the eighties. They-because of the unique status that they bore when they came into this country, they are in a position different from legal immigrants or plainly illegal immigrants. They are in a different position. And we have already had one discussion, interestingly enough, about that today. We are trying to work that out in a way that seems fair and humane and balanced, and I hope we can. ENTITY, I would like to ask you two questions as they are pushing me out. One has to do with Peru. You were very much involved, your country was, with Japan during the hostage crisis, which came to a conclusion a few days ago. There seems to be some rumblings about some possible human rights violations when the army barged in and saved the hostages. No. have you had any conversations with Mr. Fujimori? I do not know what the facts are on that. I do know that the Government of Peru was very patient for a long time, that the people who took the hostages were terrorists who threatened their lives, and that it was a good thing and remarkable that only one of them was-life was lost in the rescue attempt. But I do not know what the facts were about what happened on the compound. Helms-Burton has created a rift-between Latin America and the United States because of Cuba and Helms-Burton. Do you visualize any circumstances under which Helms-Burton could be lifted? And do you feel this will not threaten your commercial relations and political relations with the Latin American nations? Well, first of all, I think the biggest problem with Helms-Burton, vis-a-vis Latin America, may well have been solved by the resolution we made with the European Union about the interpretation of Helms-Burton.


And I think if we look at what happened with the European Union, what we want the other democracies of Central America and Caribbean and South America to do is to work with us on promoting openness, human rights, and freedom in Cuba, and we need to do that every way we can. Now, under the statute, the Helms-Burton statute, about the only agreements I can work out are the ones that-like we worked out with Europe. That law supplanted a bill that I liked very much, the Cuba Democracy Act, which gave the United States the flexibility to be both more open and tougher with Cuba, depending on the facts. But that law was passed by Mr. Castro himself. He passed the law as surely as if he'd been here voting on it when he shot down those planes and killed those innocent people. So we are doing the best we can with the law we have, but we all need to keep working for greater openness in Cuba. I think the only prospects for a change in the law would be those that are, again, completely within the control of the Cuban Government and of Mr. Castro. I mean, if he were to evidence some changes, then he might get some changed attitudes here. Finally, ENTITY, you- during your first term, you fought very hard for NAFTA against your own party. You fought very hard to save Mexico-the economic bailout-against people of your own party including. Will you fight as hard now that you do not need to run for reelection? Political considerations aside, will you fight just as hard to make sure that Latin America has a free trade agreement? It may take about a year or two. And are you optimistic you can do it by the year 2005, as they said in Miami at the Summit of the Americas? And I will certainly-there are no political considerations for me one way or the other now. I would like to point out we did get quite a large number of Democrats who supported NAFTA and that the leadership in both parties supported me with the Mexican loan. I am quite concerned that there may have been an erosion of support for the free trade concept in the Americas, not just in the Democratic Party but in the Republican Party as well. Here we are now at the pinnacle of our economic success, political influence in the world, but the only way we can exercise our political influence for good is to become involved with other countries.


We are definitely in a better position. Keep in mind that my entire goal throughout this exercise is to make sure that what happened on August 21st does not happen again, that we do not see over a thousand people, over 400 children subjected to poison gas, something that is a violation of international law and is a violation of decency. Well, I think we have the possibility of making sure that it does not happen again. And the initial response is the Syrians act as if they do not know anything about it. At that point they are not even acknowledging that they have got chemical weapons. The Russians are protecting the Syrians, suggesting that there is no possibility that the Assad regime might have done this. And as a consequence of the pressure that we have applied over the last couple of weeks, we have Syria first -- for the first time acknowledging that it has chemical weapons, agreeing to join the convention that prohibits the use of chemical weapons, and the Russians, their primary sponsor, saying that they will push Syria to get all of their chemical weapons out. The distance that we have traveled over these couple of weeks is remarkable. And my position and the United States position has been consistent throughout, which is that the underlying civil conflict in Syria is terrible. I believe that because of Assad's actions, his response to peaceful protests, we have created a civil war in Syria that has led to a hundred thousand people being killed and 6 million people being displaced. But what I have also is that the United States cannot get in the middle of somebody else's civil war. We are not going to put troops on the ground. We cannot enforce militarily a settlement there. In the past you said he had to go. What we can do -- what we can do is make sure that the worst weapons, the indiscriminate weapons that do not distinguish between a soldier and an infant are not used. And if we get that accomplished, then we may also have a foundation to begin what has to be an international process in which Assad's sponsors, primarily Iran and Russia, recognize that this is terrible for the Syrian people, and they are willing to come in a serious way to arrive at some sort of political settlement that would deal with the underlying terrible conflict . And your -- and Vladimir Putin has become your unlikely partner in this.

Interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC's This Week


And, you know, even in this op-ed, which has stirred up a lot of controversy here in the United States, he said there is every reason to believe that the rebels are the ones who used the chemical weapons. So does that tell you he is going to lie to protect Assad? Well, nobody around the world takes seriously the idea that the rebels or the perpetrators. He wrote it in The New York Times. What I said is nobody around the world takes seriously the idea that the rebels perpetrated this attack. Now, what is true is that there are radical elements in the opposition, including folks who are affiliated with al-Qaida, who, if they got their hands on chemical weapons, would have no compunction using them in Syria or outside of Syria. And part of the reason why we have been so concerned about this chemical weapons issue is because we do not want those folks getting chemical weapons any more than we want Assad to have chemical weapons. And so the best solution is for us to get them out of there. But with respect to Mr. Putin, I have said consistently that where the interests of the United States and Russia converge, we need to work together. And I talked to Mr. Putin a year ago, saying to him, the United States and Russia should work together to deal with these chemical weapons stockpiles and to work to try to bring about a political transition inside Syria. But do you trust he has the same goal? Do you really trust that? I do not think that Mr. Putin has the same values that we do. And I think, obviously, by protecting Mr. Assad, he has a different attitude about the Assad regime. But what I have also said to him directly is that we both have an interest in preventing chaos, we both have an interest in preventing terrorism -- the situation in Syria right now is untenable; as long as Mr. Assad's in power, there is going to be some sort of conflict there -- and that we should work together to try to find a way in which the interests of all the parties inside of Syria -- the Alawites, the Sunnis, the Christians -- that everybody is represented and that there is a way of bringing the temperature down so that, you know, the horrible things that are happening inside the country are contained -- .


I think there is a way for Mr. Putin, despite me and him having a whole lot of differences, to play an important role in that. I welcome him saying, I will take responsibility for pushing my client, the Assad regime, to deal with these chemical weapons because I think that if, in fact, not only Russia gets involved, but if potentially Iran gets involved as well in recognizing that what is happening there is a train wreck that hurts not just Syrians, but destabilizing the entire region -- -- But are not you worried at all that Putin is playing for time and playing you? Well, you know, Ronald Reagan says trust but verify, and I think that that is always been the experience of U.S. presidents when we are interacting with first Soviet leaders and now Russian leaders. You know, Mr. Putin and I have strong disagreements on a whole range of issues. But I can talk to him. We have worked together on important issues. The fact of the matter is, is that we could not be supplying all of our troops in Afghanistan if he were not helping us in -- in transporting those supplies through the northern -- northern borders of Afghanistan. So there are a whole range of areas where we currently work together. We have worked together on counterterrorism operations. This is not a contest between the United States and Russia. I mean, the fact of the matter is, is that if Russia wants to have some influence in Syria post-Assad, that does not hurt our interests. I know that sometimes this gets framed or -- or looked at through the lens of the U.S. versus Russia. That -- that is not what this is about. What this is about is how do we make sure that we do not have the worst weapons in the hands either of a murderous regime or, in the alternative, some elements of the opposition that are as opposed to the United States as they are to Assad. If one year from now Assad is in the process of surrendering his chemical weapons, but he is strengthened his hold on power, is that a victory? Well, the chemical weapons issue is the issue I am concerned about first and foremost simply because that speaks directly to U.S. interests. It speaks to the potential that other countries start producing more chemical weapons, that the ban on chemical weapons unravels, and it becomes more accessible to terrorists, which in turn could be used against us.


So I have a -- so I have a -- a primary concern there. I also believe that the U.S. has an interest in seeing a stable Syria in which people are not being slaughtered. And it is hard to envision how Mr. Assad regains any kind of legitimacy after he is gassed or his military has gassed innocent civilians and children. And so part of my argument here is that we will not intervene militarily to bring that transition about, but all of the countries in the region and, I think, the entire world and the United Nations should have an interest in trying to bring about that stability. What do you think Iran makes of all this? You mentioned Iran. Do you think they can look at all this and say, maybe all options are not on the table, you are not willing to use force? No, I think -- I think the Iranians, who we communicate with indirectly -- Have you reached out personally to the new president? And -- and he is reached out to me. And I think what the Iranians understand is that the nuclear issue is a far larger issue for us than the chemical weapons issue, that the threat against Iran -- against Israel that a nuclear Iran poses is much closer to our core interests, that a nuclear arms race in the region is something that would be profoundly destabilizing. And so I -- my suspicions is that the Iranians recognize -- they -- they should not draw a lesson that we have not struck to think we will not strike Iran. On the other hand, what it -- what they should draw from this lesson is that there is the potential of resolving these issues diplomatically. You think they believe that? I think they recognize, in part because of the extraordinary sanctions that we placed on them, that the world community is united when it comes to wanting to prevent a nuclear arms race in the region. And, you know, negotiations with the Iranians is always difficult. But, you know, my view is that if you have both a credible threat of force combined with a rigorous diplomatic effort, that in fact, you can -- you can strike a deal. And -- and I -- and I hold out -- I hold out that hope. I am sure you are used to that. Senator Corker, Foreign Relations Committee, said that you are not comfortable as commander in chief; it is like watching a person who is caged.


The president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard Haass, words like ad hoc, improvised, unsteady come to mind; this is probably the most undisciplined stretch of foreign policy in your presidency. What do you make of that? Well, you know, I -- I think that folks here in Washington like to grade on style. And so had we rolled out something that was very smooth and disciplined and linear, they would have graded it well, even if it was a disastrous policy. We know that because that is exactly how they graded the Iraq War until -- . No, what it -- what it -- what it says is that I am less concerned about style points. And what I have said consistently throughout is that the chemical weapons issue is a problem. And as a consequence of the steps that we have taken over the last two weeks to three weeks, we now have a situation in which Syria has acknowledged it has chemical weapons, has said it is willing to join the Convention on Chemical Weapons, and Russia, its primary sponsors, has -- has said that it will pressure Syria to reach that agreement. And if that goal is achieved, then it sounds to me like we did something right. Five years out let us take stock. You know, I am looking at the cover of Time Magazine this week. And we have got polls showing that, you know, two-thirds of the country still think we are going in the wrong direction, think the economy is no more secure. What do you say to those Americans who think Wall Street is winning but they are not? The economy was on the verge of the a Great Depression. In some ways, actually, the economic data and the collapse of the economy was worse than what happened in the 1930s. And we came in, stabilized the situation. We have now had 42 straight months of growth, 7 1/2 million new jobs created, 500,000 jobs in manufacturing, 370,000 jobs in an auto industry that had completely collapsed. It is giving loans to companies who can get credit. And so we have seen I think undoubtedly progress across the board.


And part of it has to do with a whole bunch of long-term trends in the economy where the gains that we have made in productivity and people working harder have all accrued to the people at the very top -- -- And the folks at -- in the middle and at the bottom have not seen major income growth, not just over the last three, four years but over the last 15 years. And so everything that I have done has been designed to, number one, stabilize the economy, get it growing again, start producing jobs again. Number two, trying to push against these trends that had been happening for decades now. That is why we made sure that we had a tax system that was a little bit fair by asking people to pay more at the top. That is what the Affordable Care Act, health care reform, is about, is making sure that folks who had been left out in the cold when it comes to health care are able to get health care. That is why we strengthened the entire banking system so that, you know, too big to fail is far less likely to be in place if, heaven forbid, there is a crisis the next time because we have said, you know, banks, you have got to double the amount of capital that you have so that you can absorb losses when you have them so taxpayers are not bailing you out. If you do start going under, you got to have a plan, a living will, we call it, so that we do not have to come in and clean up after you; you are going to be on your own. OK, but you do have these things, and still 95 percent of the gains go to the top 1 percent. Do you look at that 4 1/2 years in and say, maybe ENTITY just cannot stop this accelerating inequality? No, I think -- I think ENTITY can stop it. I -- the problem is that there continues to be a major debate here in Washington, and that is, how do we respond to these underlying trends? If -- if you look at -- at the data, couple of things are -- are -- are creating these trends. Capital, companies, they can move businesses and jobs anywhere they want. And so they are looking for the lowest wages. That squeezes workers here in the United States, even if corporations are profitable. If you go a lot of companies now, they have eliminated entire occupations because they are now robotized.


You know, we do not have travel agents. We do not have bank tellers. It is bigger than Washington. So -- so there is a whole bunch of stuff that is happening in the marketplace. But if we have policies that make sure that our kids are prepared for higher-skill jobs, if we have policies that make sure that we are rebuilding our infrastructure, because a robot cannot build a road, and we need, you know, new ports and a smarter electricity grid, if we are making investments to make sure the research and development continues to happen here, if we have tax breaks for companies that are investing here in the United States as opposed to overseas, all those things can make the situation better. It does not solve the problem entirely, but it pushes against these trends. And the problem that we got right now is you have got a portion of Congress who -- whose policies do not just want to, you know, leave things alone; they actually want to accelerate these trends. There is no serious economist out there that would suggest that if you took the Republican agenda of slashing education further, slashing Medicare further, slashing research and development further, slashing investments in infrastructure further, that that would reverse some of these trends of inequality. This may -- may lead to something even more disastrous. It is deja vu all over again here in Washington. You are a couple weeks away from a government shutdown, few weeks away from a possible default one more time. Speaker Boehner says, listen, you just have to sit down and negotiate with me. Are you still absolutely refusing to talk in any way, shape or form? Keep in mind my position here, ENTITY, because I -- I have been through this a couple times -- with Speaker Boehner. What I am -- what I have said is, with respect to the budget, we have presented our budget. And now it is the job of Congress to come up with a budget that keeps our long-term trends down or -- or our current trends of reducing the deficit moving forward but also allows us to invest in the things that we need to grow. And I have told him and I have told the country what I think we need to do.


I am happy to have a conversation with him about how we can deal with the so-called sequester, which is making across-the-board cuts on stuff that we should not be cutting while continuing tax breaks, for example, for companies that are not helping to grow the economy. It is just that they have not been willing to negotiate in a serious way on that. What I have not been willing to negotiate, and I will not negotiate, is on the debt ceiling. But presidents have done that in the past, and you have done it in the past. ENTITY, if you take a look, what has never happened in the past was the notion that in exchange for fulfilling the full faith and credit of the United States, that we are wiping away, let us say, major legislation like the health care bill. And when it comes to budgets, we have never had a situation in which a party said that, you know, unless we get our way a hundred percent, then we are going to let the United States default. That did not happen when you were working here in the White House. The -- ENTITY, I think it is fair to say -- you -- that never in history have we used just making sure that the U.S. government is paying its bills as a lever to radically cut government at the kind of scale that they are talking about. There have been negotiations around the corners because nobody had ever presumed you'd actually threaten the United States to default. You know, they say they need changes in Obamacare. The -- if we set -- if we continue to set a precedent in which a president, any president, a Republican president, a Democratic president, where the opposing party controls the House of Representatives, if -- if that president is in a situation in which each time the United States is called upon to pay its bills, the other party can simply sit there and say, well, we are not going to put -- pay the bills unless you give us what our -- what we want, that changes the constitutional structure of this government entirely. So -- so -- so -- so we cannot negotiate around the debt ceiling. If Mr. Boehner has ideas about how we can grow this economy, strengthen the middle class, put people back to work in a serious way, of course, we are happy to, you know, support the negotiations that have taken place between the House and the Senate.


If we are going to continue to reduce the deficit -- and I think a lot of people are not aware of the fact that the deficit's been cut in half since I came into office, it is going on a trend line of further reductions -- if we want to do more deficit reduction, I have already put out a budget that says let us do it. I am willing to reform entitlements. I am willing to, you know, cut out additional waste that may be there. But I -- what I also think we should be doing is eliminating corporate tax breaks that nobody can defend but keep on reappearing each year in the budget. If we are serious about it, there is no reason that we cannot do it and do right by -- by the -- by the country. You were, you know, re-elected a little more than a year ago, 332 electoral votes, 51 percent of the vote, first president since Eisenhower to do it twice. You put gun control at the top of the agenda, immigration reform, climate change -- all of it is stalled or reversing. How do you answer the argument that beyond the deficit, this has been a lost year, and how do you save it? Well, on immigration reform, for example, we got a terrific bipartisan vote out of the Senate. You had Democrats and Republicans in the Senate come together, come up with a bill that was not perfect, it was not my bill, but got the job done. It is now sitting there in the House. If Speaker Boehner put that bill on the floor of the House of Representatives right now, it would pass. So the question then is not whether or not the ideas that we put forward can garner a majority of support, certainly in the country. I mean, gun control, we had 80, 90 percent of the country that agreed with it. The problem we have is we have a -- a faction of the Republican Party, in the House of Representatives in particular, that view compromise as a dirty word, and anything that is either remotely associated with me, they feel obliged to oppose. And my argument to them is real simple. We are out of time. Your vice president is at Tom Harkin's Steak Fry in Iowa this week, and clearly, Secretary Clinton positioning for a possible run for president. You chose both of them. What do you say to your fellow Democrats when they are thinking about that possible choice?


ENTITY, I assume that your trip to Europe, after your reelection, was very well tailored, and we can imagine why you go to Brussels and to Germany. But there are lots of-lots of speculation about why you decided to go to Bratislava. So what was behind this decision? I have been trying to think about when this thought got in my mind. I think-I have to credit your Prime Minister, who, in the Oval Office, said, You need to come to our country. And I thought about it, and I think I told Condi Rice then, when she was my National Security Adviser, before I named her Secretary of State, that would be a great idea. I'd like to come, and I am thankful for the invitation, because I want to say to the world, Freedom is a beautiful thing, and here is a country that is working hard to promote democracy. The spirit of your Prime Minister, talking about overcoming the difficulties to become a free society, is-was just wonderful. I have always felt like countries like the Slovak Republic are very important for the world to know more about, and-because, as you know, I am a big believer in liberty, and this is a country which is succeeding. And it is not-there is bumps in the road. It is going to be one of the highlights of the trip; it really is. You have, obviously, a very good relationship with Slovak Government and the other governments of so-called new Europe. But the public does not always necessarily agree with our Government and with American policy. And you, many time, stress that you want to have a very good relationship with the whole Europe. So what is your strategy to improve the relationship with the nations, with the citizens? Well, first of all, nobody likes war. And basically what you are referring to is my decision to go into Iraq. And I can understand why citizens, particularly if they did not feel threatened by Saddam Hussein, would say, We do not like war, and we do not agree with what ENTITY decided. And I know that. But now they have got to see what is happening in Iraq. Eight million people voted in the face of terror. And so what is going to be very important for me is to connect that free country emerging with peace for their children and grandchildren. In other words, there has to be a connection in order for people to say, Well, now I understand what, you know, what the policy means.

Interview With Slovak State Television


It is a-and so one of the reasons-that is what I will speak about not only-I mean, in Europe, it is very important to make that connection. It is -ours is a-mine is a mission and a trip that says, We share values, human rights and human dignity and rule of law and minority rights and respect for women. And therefore, it is those values that should unite our voices when it comes to spreading those values in parts of the world that are troubled parts of the world, Iran or Syria or, as you saw recently, in Lebanon. I am convinced that as democracy-and particularly, Israel and the Palestinian Territories-as democracy takes hold there, the people of the Slovak Republic will see, Gosh, I am beginning to understand what ENTITY was trying to do. United States and you, personally, helped to fulfill the vision of free, democratic, and united Europe. But there is something missing from this picture, and people feel that they are treated like second-class Europeans because of visa. And I am sure you will hear about the visa very often, not only in Slovakia but also in European Union. I know your Government has many other priorities, maybe much, much bigger priorities. But can I count on your leadership, ENTITY, on this issue? No, I have heard about the visa issue. I mean, yes, I have heard about the visa issue. In other words, what I was saying, No, this is not a minor issue. This is an issue that our friends have brought up quite frequently. And we are trying to work it through. There is an old policy in place that needs to be renewed and reviewed, given the new realities of the Slovak Republic or Poland or the Czech Republic or wherever. And so I have told Condi Rice, Let us just make sure our visa policy is fair and balanced. So we can count on your help? I am not sure you can count on the results, but you can count on my interest. ENTITY, you are going to meet President Putin in Bratislava. And in Washington, many people are concerned about corrosion of democracy in Russia. And you, in a summit in Chile, you also raised the issue of Russia's curb on democracy. So how much you are concerned about this issue of Russia? Well, I have a good relationship with President Putin.

Interview With Slovak State Television


And the reason-and that is important, because that then will give me a chance to say in private-ask him why he is been making some of the decisions he is been making. I mean, he is done some things that has concerned people. And I-it is going to be-I want him to be able to have a chance to say he is done it for this reason or done that, so I can explain to him as best I can- in a friendly way, of course-that Western values are-you know, are based upon transparency and rule of law, the right for the people to express themselves, checks and balances in government In other words, not one part of the government is so powerful they can overwhelm all the rest of the government. And I am looking forward to doing that right there in your beautiful country. Listen, I think this is going to be my 12th meeting with President Putin. It is an important relationship that we will continue to nurture and work. You mentioned the war in Iraq and relationship. What is your personal lesson how this war in Iraq changed relationship between United States and Europe and built relation with Eastern Europe? Yes, I appreciate that very much. First of all, war is a terrible thing. And a lot of Europe supported the decision to enforce the United Nations resolutions. Remember, this was not a U.S.-you know, this came about as a result of the United Nations passing 1441, which said-and by the way, the 16th resolution to Mr. Saddam Hussein that said, Disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences. He chose not to do either, so he faced serious consequences. And a lot of Europe supported the decision to go and have him face serious consequences because the international body, the United Nations, needed to be credible when it spoke. And the Eastern Europeans were great friends on this subject, and it is interesting. They understand what it means to live under tyranny. They know what it means to have secret police. And they began to smell that great freedom that comes, and then all of a sudden, democracies began to emerge. And what a fantastic example for the world, and Europe benefits with countries like the Slovak Republic a part of NATO or the European Union. I mean, these are very important lessons for people to see, that you cannot take freedom for granted, and freedom is hard, and democracy is hard work.

Interview With Slovak State Television


A beautiful day here in Seattle; it rained earlier this morning, but there is no city like this. They have been very good to me. It is a real future-oriented place with a lot of different kinds of folks. Do you like this? I do like it. In large measure I like it because it is one of the few times I get to really go out and put out our record, my message. And I also just like to see the American people. We were in Ocala, and you said to me, God, I love this. Remember that we were in that rodeo arena? It would seem that after this time you have been ENTITY for 2 years that it is old hat by now. And perhaps the most frustrating part of being ENTITY is how hard it is to stay in touch with them, to stay connected to them, for them to really know what you do on a daily basis. And so to be able to come back out here with someone like Ron Sims, whom I admire so much, that represents what is best in this country, that is cutting against all this cynicism and negativism that is blanketing the airwaves, it is really just a great thing to do. What do you make of that? And there is lots of bases we are going to cover, of these lots of radio talk shows, other areas of negativism, that is more than just criticism. What do you make of it? Well, it is almost like an institutionalized approach to life, you know, that everything is given the most negative possible spin, information is presented in attack mode. The American people hate it, but they react to it. But portions of them listen to it. Portions of them listen to it, of course. And even if they listen for entertainment, the surveys show in these elections that they react to it, which is, of course, why the politicians do it. So what does it mean to you when you see it, hear it, about you, about people you like, about anyone? Well, it what I think is it is not very good for America. It is not good for our people. It makes it harder for people to take a deep breath and face their problems and seize their opportunities and move forward. And as I have a chance, for example, to go to the Middle East to participate in that peace signing, other leaders are bewildered at the negative attitudes in America.

Interview With Larry King in Seattle, Washington


They say, Gosh, you know, your economy is coming back; your deficit's going down; things are happening in your country. You are leading the way to peace around the world. Why would the American people be in a negative frame of mind? And I always say, well, first of all, a lot of Americans have personal insecurity in their lives. I mean, let us face it, there is some reality out there. There are a lot of people who are afraid they are going to lose their jobs. They have not gotten a raise in a long time. They may lose their health care or their retirement. They are living in a neighborhood where they feel personally insecure. They see things like these children killing children.  So they have a right to that feeling? In other words, the picture is not all positive. But I think the other thing is, the overwhelming way that most Americans get their information tends to be both negative and combative and assaultive, almost. And what I tried to do in the presidential campaign in '92 with all those town meetings, starting way back in '91, where I listened to people and they talked to me, with insisting on three debates and having one debate with the public there asking questions of the candidates for ENTITY, with the bus tours we did was all designed to get people involved, let them vent their frustrations, and then focus on what we were going to do. And that is the thing that has been missing too much in this election. And of course, the Republicans like that because if people are mad, then they think the Democrats do not vote and the extremists on the right in their party do vote, they get a big advantage and it helps them get into power. But it does not do anything to help America solve their problems. How do you deal with it personally, I mean, the carping, the anger, the up and down in the polls, personally? Well, on the up and down in the polls, I basically try to ignore it. Not because I care what people think about the issues, but I knew when I started this job that while everybody said they wanted us to change, if it were easy to do it, someone else would have done it. So to get the deficit down, we had to make some tough decisions. If you are going to make college loans more affordable to Americans within the budgetary constraints we had, we had to make some tough decisions, take on some interest groups.


If you want to pass the Brady bill and the crime bill, you have got to make some tough decisions. The NRA got real mad at us, and now they are trying to take it out on every candidate in the country that stood up for safer streets. So anybody who ever fights for change is going to have to be willing to risk going down in the polls some. What bothers me more is the general atmosphere where people tend to believe the worst about people in public life, rather than the best, and tend to have a negative view, generally. Because the truth is that this country is in better shape than it was 21 months ago. The Government is smaller, but it is doing more for ordinary working people. The streets are going to be safer because of the crime bill. And we are a lot closer toward having a safer, more democratic, more free world. The Russian missiles are not pointing at us. The North Korean nuclear agreement means they will not present a threat to us in terms of nuclear weapons, if we go through with that. We have the progress in Haiti and in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East and Northern Ireland. We are moving in the right direction at home and abroad. We have a lot of problems, but we are moving in the right direction. And for people to be kept in a constant turmoil all the time, where they do not listen to one another, they do not talk to one another, they just are bombarded by these negative ads on television, I think is not good for our democracy. If you could see the way other people look at us, they know this is a very great country. When there is extreme negativism, do you condemn it on both sides? When Democrats do it and Republicans do it? Particularly if it is unrelated to the work of the job, you know. This whole thing started from the get-go with the determination of the congressional leadership in the Republican Party not to work with us on the economic program. You are not going to get any votes out of us no matter how you change this program. And there was this little town in South Carolina where there apparently had been maybe some division or something in the past, but they were all coming together. You saw those gripping pictures of the schoolchildren praying. You saw blacks and whites going out together to look for the kids. People really were trying to do their best to do a good and noble thing. And then they found out that the mother had done it.


And unlike previous cases we have had some other cases, horrible cases, where parents kill their children. But this was it stood in such stark contrast to those people praying, working, desperately trying to find those children. I think they had a sense of betrayal, of outrage, of bewilderment, of pain. And I think the experience that the people in the community felt riveted all across our country, indeed, across the world. I think every parent was just sickened by it. The fact that and remember the case in Boston with the call to 911 that she drew the picture of a black man tells us what about racism in America? I think it tells us that we have at least some assumptions about race that still color our thinking, our talking, sometimes our voting. The people in that community, without regard to race, were out there looking for those boys. And most African-Americans in this country get up every day and go to work, work their hearts out, pay their taxes, raise their kids, obey the law. And while the crime rate is higher among African-Americans, they are also more likely to be victims of crime. And it is all really it is a complicated thing, but it is plainly related to the combined impact of the breakdown of family and community and the loss of economic opportunity working together. I saw a poll in the Wall Street Journal the other day, a fascinating poll, which said that both African-Americans and white Americans agreed that this breakdown of social order in the family, the community, the rise of crime, violence, drugs and gangs and guns was the biggest problem in our country. They agreed with that. They all supported welfare reform I mean, not all, 85 percent of both races. The classic American clash. And the truth is, in my judgment, they are both right, and they are both wrong. That is, you need a combined approach to it. We have to rebuild these communities. It is hard to have an orderly society without work. It is hard to have a coherent family without work. It is hard for parents to have all the selfrespect they want if they know they will never have a chance to go to work. But on the other hand, we simply cannot tolerate the behavior that has become all too commonplace. I mean, what is it that turns the heart of a 10-year-old to stone in Chicago and makes it possible for them to let go of a 5year-old boy?


And again I say, the thing that is so wrong about so much of the political dialog in this election or political ads, is there is no dialog. People are not reaching out across racial lines and trying to figure out how to affirm what is best in this country, how to support the lives and the futures of these kids. Are you saying they are playing to the worst in us, the racist in us? I think they are playing to the they are playing to the lowest common denominator, to the fear, to the division, to the anxiety. I believe that it is better to play to the best in us, to address fear, to address anxiety, to admit it, to say it is legitimate, say, okay, what are you going to do about it? And it was delayed to death at the end of the session by our opponents, like a lot of other bills were. But we do not need that. We need to reform the campaign finance system. There ought to be things that involve people, that let them express their anger and frustration and then say, Okay, now, what are you going to do about it? Because what we run the risk of doing in this election which is why I have been out here working like crazy since I got home from the Middle East is we run the risk of seeing people vote for candidates whose platforms and positions they absolutely disagree with just because they say, I am out; put me in. Government's bad; put me in. I have not seen you quoted on it, and every American has talked about it and they all want to know what their ENTITY thinks. Can there be a fair trial in the O.J. Simpson case? Well, the answer to the first question is, I think there can be a fair trial, but it is much more difficult to empanel a jury that has no opinion. What bothers me is that all the previous proceedings have been televised, all the preliminary things, all the backand-forth arguments. But on balance, I think it would have been better if they had not been, because I think it would have been easier to empanel a jury that had no fixed views, no at least predisposition to believe it. Now, what these folks have to say and what they had to convince the judge of was that whatever they had heard in the past, they could put aside and be fair.


But I just think all of us, we cannot help being affected by the things we know. And the wrenching pretrial publicity I think is more damaging than whatever publicity might have come in the trial itself. Are you impressed with Judge Ito? They all strike me as competent and committed. And the judge strikes me as someone who has been firm and fair. He is trying very hard, and he has an enormously difficult task. Is this the kind of case, when you were prosecuting, you would have liked to prosecute or not like to prosecute? Well, of course, any I think most prosecutors would, at a kind of a personal, professional level, welcome the chance to be in a big case like this. It is the sort of thing that brings great pain to a country. The feelings that we all had about O.J. Simpson and everything it is a very sad case. Friday night on this program, Bob Dole said that on Tuesday night, when the Republicans take the Senate if they take the Senate and the House, the first person he calls will be you. He will ask to meet with you Wednesday morning. I do not think they are going to win the House and the Senate. But whatever happens, I hope he will call me Tuesday night, and I hope he will be willing to cooperate. All I can tell you is that we had bipartisan support for that crime bill, and it turned into naked politics. And the Republicans that did stick with us were lacerated by their leadership. I hope they do not really, seriously believe that we can go back and do what they did in the eighties and have all these massive tax cuts for upper income people and pay for big defense increases and bring back Star Wars and balance the budget in 5 years and not tell anybody how to do it. If you take Social Security off, you have to cut everything else in the budget 30 percent. I tried to cooperate in the health care debate. When we started the health care debate We met with them in advance. We even offered to work with them on drafting a bill. We were told, No, you go ahead and put your bill in; then we will put our bill in and then we will work. They announced an approach where more than half the Republican Senators supported universal coverage. By the time it came to talk about the bill, there were zero Senators from the Republican Party on that.


So and by the way, then they released the memo of their strategist, Bill Kristol, who was not even ashamed to release the memo and say, You must not cooperate on health care because if the middle class ever gets security about health care, they will probably support the Democrats again. Whereas, if we keep them all torn up and upset and angry, we can either keep them home or get them to vote for us. So I want let me just say this I want more than anything to have a bipartisan effort. I want more than anything to move this country forward, not see it go back. But I have not obstructed that bipartisan effort. And I have seen a level of intense obstructionism that I never thought I'd ever see. So what the American people have to say is first of all, I think we are going to do better than everybody thinks because jobs are up, unemployment is down, the deficit is down, the Government is smaller, all these things are different from the way it was before. We are doing things for ordinary Americans like middle class college loans, national service, tax cuts for lowincome working people, the Family and Medical Leave Act. When people know this, I think we are going to do much better than the experts think, because I think people want to keep going forward, they do not want to go back. Worse-case scenario they take the House. Could you work with Newt Gingrich? I can work with anybody who will work with me. I meant worst-case scenario for you. I am not taking a stand. I can work the American people are the bosses of this country. They run this country. They decide who is in the Congress, and they decide who is ENTITY. You work for them. I work for them. So we will do what we are told to do by the American people. But I will say again, I have worked very hard to get this economy going, to bring the deficit down, to get investment back in education and training, to pass that crime bill and now we have to implement it so we make our streets safer to make our country stronger. What I think is going to happen is the American people are going to think about, in the next couple of days, do we want to keep going forward, or do we really want to go back to trickledown economics?


Do we want to go back to exploding the deficit, shipping the jobs overseas, causing the country trouble, or do we want to keep working forward? A lot of Republicans did work with me. But without exception, when they work with me on anything tough except for the trade bill, except for NAFTA, and except for some education legislation, in a lot of these other areas they were subject to withering, withering pressure and attack from the leaders of their own party. So I want to work with them, however these elections come out. I think we will probably see the Democrats keep control of the Senate and the House because we are changing things for the better, and the American people now are seeing what the record is. But you will take that call, and you will meet with whoever it is you have to meet with? I would have always taken it. When I ran for ENTITY, I ran as a former Governor I was a Governor. I never shut the Republicans out of my office. I always thought my job was to work with anybody the people elected. A lot of bases to touch, and later we will get some predictions on some individual races that the ENTITY is very aware of. They are the bad guys. And that is the way Harry Truman won in '48, by knocking the no-good, do-nothing Congress. Are we adopting that mode? For one thing, I do not believe we are going to lose the Congress if the American people know what has been done. So you will have no Congress to knock in '96. There is well, whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in the majority, a minority can frustrate the will of the majority just with the filibuster in the Senate, if for nothing else, which killed the campaign finance reform, lobby reform, environmental reform, and a number of other things last year. s initiatives in both years. Eisenhower, once for ENTITY Johnson, and then this one. I will say again, it depends on who the American people send to Congress and what their attitude is. I will work with anybody who will work with me to move the country forward. When I ran for ENTITY in '92, I said I thought the Democratic Party had to change.


We had to do something about getting the economy going again, bringing the deficit down, shrinking the Government, being tougher on crime, all things the Republicans had previously said they were for, although the deficit went up, the economy was in trouble, and they just talked about crime for 6 years. All right, now we have reduced the deficit, reduced the size of the Government, passed a good crime bill, which now will have to be implemented at the grassroots level. Even as we speak, we have got police officers being hired all over the country because of this crime bill. What are we going to do? I am not like that. This ain't going to be a Truman give 'em hell, Bill campaign? It depends on what they do. It depends on what they do. If they want to work with me, then we will work together. I do believe that we are going to that the people who gum up the works need to be held more accountable. Reports in recent books of disorganization in the Presidency, 2 years of unwieldiness, I am sure you have heard about this, if you have not read the books. Well, my comment is, if we were all that disorganized, how do we have the third most successful record in success with Congress, one of only three with over 80 percent of our initiatives passing, including major advances in bringing the deficit down, education reform, trade expansion, crime, and a number of other things, first of all? no Russian missiles pointed at the United States, North Korea, Haiti, Northern Ireland, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East. Are you saying we are looking at the process, not the result? But I am saying the process is more open than perhaps in previous administrations because we are going through a period of historic change. And when for example, when I tried to get my economic program together, after I was elected, but before I took office, we all agreed we had to bring the deficit down; we still had to invest more in education and defense conversion and new technologies. And we had to do things that would expand the economy. We wanted to help low-income working families. And we wanted some other incentives to spur economic growth that cost money, some tax incentives. So we got a lot of people in from different points of view, and we talked it through.


Now some people wanted to have the image that somebody brings a ENTITY a little one-page memo with two options, and you just check off and say that is the way it is, and it is all neat. This is a complicated world with a lot of variables. It may be unsettling to people that we have honest debates in the White House. But you know, when I think about some of the major mistakes that my predecessors have made, I think the absence of honest debate may have caused some of that. I think that the White House today is much better organized than it was 30 days after I took office. I think it is more orderly; it is running more smoothly, decisions are made in a more disciplined fashion. I think a lot of people have learned to do their jobs better and better and better. But again, I say the a lot of the best companies I know of in America have very lively, open discussions on important issues. They take real time on important issues because then that shapes what the future is. And so far, I say, if you judge us on our results, we are making pretty good decisions. Critics have said now that you fired your wife from health care. What caused this change, and who is running the health care battle? Oh, I did not do that. I know, but critics are saying what happened in that change? She never did she never signed on to, agreed to, or was willing to manage the congressional process.  She took the ball, though. She took the ball, but what she did was to put hundreds and hundreds of people together to go out and consult all the Members of Congress, to run a 2-day seminar on health care for Republicans and Democrats in Congress, and to try to get the work product up and then be the spokesperson. Now whatever we wind up doing on health care, she will be still speaking out on that and doing a number of other things. But the what we were saying is that she would not have primary responsibility for actually deciding what move next to make in Congress and lobbying that. Did she dislike doing it? No, I think she liked it, but she did not want to be in a position where that is all she would do. And that is the only issue she could be involved in, and she did not want to be in a position where she got caught up It is where she got caught up in the process of the lobbying of the Congress process.


She wants to be a spokesperson for health care, for solving a problem, not the person who has to manage the process in Congress. So we will be hearing a lot from Hillary in the next 2 years. Yes, she you know, she is invested a lot in this. She is done a wonderful job. And she is what we think about the health care deal is that, first of all, keep in mind how long it takes to get things done in Washington. Family leave took 7 years. The Brady bill took 7 years. The crime bill took 6 years. Banking reform took 7 years. I mean, we have gotten things done that took years that other people could not do. But it was probably unrealistic to think you could get health care reform in a year and a half, given the fact that it is bigger than all those other things. By the way, this is the ENTITY's seventh appearance, all together, running and as ENTITY, on this program. It is always great to have him with us. We are touching a lot of bases. If there was a ever a case for campaign finance reform, it is this. The Republican candidate moves to California in '91 from Texas, essentially buys a Congress race, announces 8 months later for the Senate, loses his own congressional district in the Republican Senate campaign but spends, it looks like, $35 million or something, some enormous amount of money, just to run negative ads against Feinstein. She, by contrast, in only 2 years, passes the assault weapons ban, a law that requires zero tolerance for handgun possessions in schools by students, and the biggest protection act, natural protection act in history, the California desert bill. It is his money, but it shows you why we need some sort of campaign finance reform. No Senator in my lifetime has gotten as much done in as short a period of time as Dianne Feinstein. And those three things may not be popular everywhere, but they are supported by a majority of the people of California. Three hundred miles from here, over the hills in Spokane Mr. Foley, Speaker of the House what is going to happen there? I think the people of every every time there is a Speaker who comes from a rural district, there is always the problem of the people in the district thinking that the Speaker is more interested in the national job than the grassroots job.


All I can say is that of all the leaders of Congress I have ever known in both Houses and in both parties, Tom Foley is the one who speaks most often about his constituency and is most in contact with what he thinks they are thinking about. He is the one who talks to me all the time. And I think that if my feeling is that the people have seen him back there working, defending his positions, defending his record, defending his service for the district. If it is just a question of who can do more for the people in that district to build their economic future and to meet their needs, I do not think there is much question. I think he wins in a walk, but it is a tough race. Our old friend Ross Perot's entrance into the race, endorsing some Republicans, some Democrats, independents and calling for basically a Republican victory. Well, it is curious to me because if you look at what I have done as compared with what Ross Perot advocated, I disagree with him on GATT and on NAFTA, but so does the Republican congressional leadership. So both sides disagree with him on trade. So what else was his campaign about? It was about reducing the deficit, reducing regulation and the size of Government, and getting political reform, campaign finance reform, lobby reform, lineitem veto. We reduced the deficit without any Republican votes. We reduced the size of Government without any Republican support. We have deregulated in banking and trucking. We have deregulated a lot of the Federal rules on welfare reform, giving 20 States the right to move people from welfare to work. We have done things that he said he was for. I supported and most Democrats supported, most Democrats supported, campaign finance reform, lobby reform, a bill to make Congress live under the same laws it imposes on private business. Their leadership opposed it. So what we are doing and where we stand and what we want to do in the future is much more consistent with what Ross Perot said he wanted to do if he were ENTITY. Then what do you make of this? I will leave that to you to make of it. All I can tell you is, we have really faithfully pursued the reform agenda that he and I shared in common when we both ran for ENTITY.


So the truth is, he'd come a lot nearer getting what he said he wanted done in '92 in fact done in '95 if we kept the Democrats in the Congress who are committed to change. I do not have any idea. Do you expect Democrats to oppose you? I do not have any idea. Do you have a Republican favorite you'd like to run against? No, I am going to leave that up to them. I will say this, sooner or later, we will have a debate and a discussion in this country about what, in fact, has been done and what has not been done. We will have to get over being mad and being negative and talk about what we are going to do to build this country. We cannot for long afford to give in to the blamers instead of the builders. I mean, this is a country you look we have got a lot of challenges we have to work through to get this country into the 21st century as the strongest country in the world, with the American dream alive and well. We are strongest again economically, according to the annual vote of international economists, for the first time in 9 years. We are outselling all other auto companies, Americans are, for the first time in 15 years. We are moving in the right direction. At some point, people who tempt our anger and our frustration but promise to reverse the progress we have made and put us back in the economic trouble we were in just a couple of years ago, are going to have to be held accountable. That is what this election ought to be about. And if it is, the Democrats who represent hope, the future, and the progress that is been made in the last 21 months ought to have a chance. Why should we give up the progress of the last 21 months and not give me a chance to finish and go back to what failed us for 12 years? But can we also say, therefore, can I trace in what you said in the beginning that if you do run for reelection, you will debate your opponent or opponents? We are back with ENTITY , touching a lot of bases. The legal defense fund, are there any second thoughts about that, or was it necessary or do you have second thoughts? I think with a strict limit on contributions, there is no possibility of any conflict of interest there. in a very long time. And all these things are like the Whitewater thing, it is these things come up. They have been embarrassing, though.


If we are going to make Presidents a subject for the first time in history this has never been done to anybody before to things like special counsels looking into things that happened long before the President became President, that were fully aired in the presidential campaign I do not think President should make money being President, but I do not think they should be bankrupt when they leave because of legal fees. Nor do I think that President should expect lawyers to work for nothing. So, once again, we are in a situation here where do you really want to say that unless you are fabulously wealthy you should not be able to be President? You should not be able to run for an office because you cannot buy enough negative television ads to trash your opponent? I think what we did was appropriate, legal, proper, and restrained. spoken to him awhile back and that he, in the middle of a sentence, got angry that he had forgotten what he had been talking about. He said, I lost my memory on that, and it really makes me mad. Did you then think that this might have been Alzheimer's, a common thing to think in people over 80? Did you think it? I do not know that I know the difference between the manifestations of Alzheimer's for someone who is 80 and just not remembering things as well. But he and I have always had a very cordial personal relationship. When I was a Governor, I supported and worked with the White House when we got the first big welfare reform legislation through back in '88. And even though we have had our differences, I always liked the fact that he was positive about America, that he was an upbeat person, that he at moments he was capable of going beyond partisanship, as he has since he is left office. You know, he supported NAFTA and the Brady bill and the crime bill with the assault weapons ban in it, because, I think, of the experience he had with Jim Brady and the terrible scars it left on everyone. So I just I wanted to say that. I was probably in the most Democratic congressional district in America yesterday. And when I asked them, they all just applauded and they gave him a big cheer. Do you think it will help focus emphasis on Alzheimer's? Do you think he was right to do it, to make the announcement? First of all, I think he was very right to do it.


And he sat down and wrote the letter himself I think it will help to focus attention on Alzheimer's. I personally appreciated it, because I lost both an uncle and an aunt to Alzheimer's. And so I think it is one more thing that the American people have to be appreciative to him about. We are back with ENTITY. Our remaining moments, some other quick bases to cover Senator Dole the other night said he likes Warren Christopher, thinks he is done a great job. Is Warren Christopher staying at State? He is done a good job, and as far as I am concerned, he is the Secretary of State. There was rumors that she was going to be leaving that post, and she seemed to have strengthened it. She is doing a good job. Will she be here through the next 2 years? She has not told me yet. She is doing a good job, and she is going to stay as long as we decide she is going to stay, she and I together. I have been a little evasive on all personnel questions. You do not want to discuss personnel? I think ENTITY should always be slightly evasive on personnel questions unless there is some great policy issue involved. George Foreman I like, because I identify with him. He is still got a terrific punch. I'd like to think that there are a lot of us who could identify with that. You know what he said yesterday? He said he was really grateful to America for giving him the chance to fight. I am grateful to America for giving me the chance to fight. So you felt an association with him. You have the same kind of midriff, and he eats like you, fast foods. I do not really eat fast foods anymore. It is part of Dee Dee's counseling to me. She will not let me do it no, we do not do that much anymore. Well, I have not been there, but Ann Richards is supported in her job by over 60 percent of the people. So if they support the work she is done for Texas, you would think they would renew her contract. Oh, I was at the beginning. I was asked to go, actually, to El Paso, but we could not do it. We are out of time. Are you predicting victory in the Senate and the House? You will retain control of both?


ENTITY, what are you going to do about the fact that sensitive and relevant documents were not reviewed by the Iran-contra committees? In the first place, I have great confidence that A.B. Culvahouse and those charged with cooperating with Congress were cooperative; I have seen nothing to indicate they were not . Secondly, I would offer full cooperation to any request made of this administration, and I just cannot confirm the hypothesis of your question at all. But you mean you would turn over any documents that they now want to see? Is that what you are saying by full cooperation ? Those procedures were agreed to by the Congress. Certainly, I would see that if any documents are in control of this administration -- relevant documents -- that we would live assiduously by those guidelines. But I have no reason to believe that the previous administration, the lawyers in it who worked closely with Congress, did not fulfill their obligations. ENTITY, were you an emissary to Honduras, as has been alleged? I went to Honduras, sure. That is a matter of public record. And did you have a quid pro quo deal? I have told you that I am not going to discuss that until the trial with North is over. No, I might have something to say on it when the trial is over, but I would simply ask you to understand that this is a request of the lawyers. My conscience is clear. As far as you can tell, was there an oversight by any of those two bodies, or was it a question of -- the Congress was not pushing the right buttons to get the documents? All I can just state is the confidence that I feel in Culvahouse and company. But we have received the letter down here, and I will take this opportunity to tell them we will cooperate fully. But who controls the documents and all of that -- you will have to talk to the lawyers about that.   I think they are in the control and in the custody of the Archives archivists, but I am not sure. When you say you will cooperate fully with -- I presume you mean Senators Mitchell and Inouye . Does that mean -- they have asked you, I think, to launch an investigation to find out exactly what happened. Are you saying you will launch an investigation or that you have? I do not remember launching an investigation. Was that part of their request?

Interview With Members of the White House Press Corps