An Interview With CLINTON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q. It doesn't bother you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q. Do you find the President complicit in this?

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

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

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

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

A. No. We've not been close. I mean, we were friendly but not close, even though we're neighbors. But I looked around the country for people I thought had real ability, real character, real achievement. I found that there were a remarkable number of things where we had the same passions, like the economy and children's issues, and areas where he knew things that I didn't just by the nature of his job, and where he had a real important perspective that I thought would be important for my presidency, like in defense and arms control and foreign policy and issues that are important for the whole world, like his environmental positions.

Q. How much time did you spend with him before the choice?

A. I had one very long meeting with him. I knew a lot about him. I was real familiar with his record, but we just never spent a lot of time together. We set up a time to talk, and I thought it would go on about an hour, and I talked to him for nearly three hours. It was fascinating. I mean, first of all I was somewhat surprised that he would discuss it with me.

Q. Why is that?

A. I don't know. I just didn't know whether it was a good thing for him to do, or whether it would be something he would be interested in doing. But I decided that he really loves his country. And that he really does believe, just like I do, that we just couldn't pass this election.

I think the Earth Summit in Rio had a big impact on him too. He wanted America to be a leader in these areas, and he found our country dragging its feet. He saw the Germans and Japanese down there just eating our lunch, selling environmental technology and environmental cleanup stuff all around the world. I think that really may have been something that made him even more determined to entertain this partnership.

Q. You didn't have to sell him the idea?

A. This is not the sort of thing where a thoughtful person would be eager, so I don't know that he was eager, but he was determined. I think you know he felt exactly like he said out there today: there are a lot of us, and I guess in our generation, who went through a lot of things because we were children of the '60s, and we believe the time has come for us to secure this country's future. Every generation has to do it, and about every generation something fairly bad happens to America -- it's endemic to the human condition.

Q. How important was it that he had been around the presidential campaign block once and probably wouldn't be presenting you with any surprises?

A. What I thought was important is that he knew it's a process like nothing else and that he had a real sense of how to handle himself with the press and how to communicate to the people. I thought that with only a four-month campaign, there was a lot of learning he wouldn't have to go through that other people would, and we wouldn't have to worry about what might happen that would be destructive for him.

Q. Senator Tsongas has now endorsed you, but Jesse Jackson criticized your choice of Al Gore. Mario Cuomo agreed to nominate you, but not without giving you a little difficulty. Do you get the feeling the Democratic Party is ever going to pull together to elect a President?

A. Oh, I think so. Keep in mind that this has always been sort of a fractious bunch. I mean, look at what Truman had to confront in '48. And Kennedy didn't get Johnson to agree to run with him until he got to the convention. You know these are not unprecedented difficulties. In fact, in some ways we are more united than we normally are.

Q. The emphasis in your economic program seems to have changed. You started off months ago saying you thought you could reduce the deficit to zero your first term -- now you're talking about reducing it by half.

A. When I started in New Hampshire working with those numbers, we felt the deficit was going to be about $250 billion a year, not $400 billion. The second thing that has really made a big impression on me is the argument of those 100 economists, who recommended a $50 billion increase in investment on a one-year basis to get the economy going again, even if it all was added to the deficit. I didn't buy the argument that we should just add it all to the deficit, but what impressed me about their argument is that we had an investment deficit in this country that was as big as or bigger than the budget deficit, and that without increased investment you couldn't get growth, and without growth you could never do anything on the budget deficit. Now, I've seen politicians for 12 years talk about a growth dividend that didn't materialize and underestimate the deficit. But it is clearly true that the primary components of the deficit today are low growth and uncontrolled health-care costs. And low growth manifests itself both in terms of less money going into the Treasury and more people making claims on entitlements. So I did go back and emphasize investment more because I think without it, you could never get enough growth to balance the thing anyway.

Q. Isn't there a political vulnerability there, another big-spending Democrat coming down the pike?

A. If you look at it, I've got more budget cuts in my budget than Bush has advocated. Bush has expanded parts of the government that I recommended restricting, including total federal employment. I want a leaner bureaucracy and more investment. Most of that will go into private hands. If you build roads and bridges and high-speed rail networks, that money winds up being spent on contracts in the private sector. I've always supported increased investment targeted to areas that would promote economic growth and education, but I've tried to restrict the growth of what you might call the permanent government.

Q. On the entitlement side, you've in effect postponed whatever big bite you might take out of entitlements by saying it's part of the health-cost problem, but there's no mention of Social Security.

A. Well, I wouldn't rule that out. I just didn't put it in for sure. I want to look at it. The explosion of health-care costs is the entitlement problem. And it swamps the fact that upper-income people get them and that they don't pay full taxes on them or whatever, it's just not even close. So my belief is that the great challenge of my Administration on the entitlements issue would be to prove you could bring health costs back down to no more than the rate of inflation. That is light-years more important than anything else. As a matter of common fairness, you ought to ask upper-income people to pay more for what they get. But it's more symbolic than real. The real money is in reducing poverty so you reduce the number of people making claims. And then to do something about health-care costs.

Q. What I hear you saying is we can get out of our troubles without anyone but the rich paying a little bit more.

A. That's what I believe. The middle class has paid through the nose for a decade. We have to be somewhat wary of making a problem of inadequate income even worse by taxing people whose incomes are going down. That's my premise.

Q. Do we understand correctly that except for the top 2% of incomes in this country, you are not going to raise taxes? That 98% of the people in this country are going to get from you the same pledge that 100% got from George Bush in 1988?

A. Those are two different things. The thing I think will work is to raise the top tax rate on people with gross incomes above $200,000 to 35% or 36% and put < a surtax on people with incomes of a million dollars or more a year. But it would not be fair for you to say I'm running on a read-my-lips pledge just because I'm in principle opposed to raising taxes on the middle class. I think Bush made a terrible mistake saying "Read my lips" without knowing what the facts were, and I don't want to get into that.

Q. President Bush went to war over Kuwait. He has talked about the possibility of U.S. intervention in Yugoslavia under a U.N. umbrella. Now that the cold war is over, when and where is the use of American force overseas justified?

A. When our vital interests are at stake, when there is a clear, sharply defined objective that is achievable at acceptable cost, and when you are sure you can build the support here at home. The gulf war is a good example of that. Especially when it can be done through multinational support. It's appropriate for us to support the airlift to Sarajevo. If we do get involved further there, it certainly ought to be through a U.N. aegis and not on our own, and we need to be very careful that we don't have a European Beirut.

Q. Do you really think it will be a three-man race all the way, or will one candidate fade?

A. I don't know. I don't know because this is a strange year. How many Americans are out there who won't listen to anybody who holds any elected office, who has ever been identified with any political party? I don't know. And that really is unfathomable.

Q. Is it your sense that the public has got to the point where it's saying yes to change and the question is who is going to do it?

A. Almost. I think the public says, We want change, who can do it, and dare I take a chance? The message I want to send is that you have to take a chance, and here's your best chance.