Bill and Ted's Cuddly Adventure

The White House allowed Ted Koppel, anchor of ABC's Nightline, to spend a few exclusive minutes with Bill Clinton on each night (but one) of the President's European tour. Questioning Clinton -- and Secretary of State Warren Christopher -- the usually bold and unflinching newsman suddenly seemed to turn into Merv Griffin:

TO CLINTON

"Over the past month, you've had a bad time ... You now have got to be the leader of the free world again. Just from a human point of view, how do you find the grit to do that?"

"See if you can explain, in a nice pithy paragraph, how it is that 30 or 40 years from now people are going to look back on this trip."

"Do you go with these speeches the way they're written, or do you sort of wing it?"

((After Clinton separately walked out on three reporters who asked him about Whitewater)) "Yesterday you lost it a little bit. I don't mean you lost it, you lost your touch a little bit. You didn't handle the Miklaszewski interview | very well, you didn't handle Ann Compton's interview very well. Was it fatigue? Was it just the frustration of having it come up? I mean, why? You could have handled either one of those questions and knocked them out of the park any other night."

TO WARREN CHRISTOPHER

"Do you have to take along formal wear? How many different changes of clothes does the Secretary of State have to bring, and why don't you have someone to pack for you like the President?"

"It's just -- it is amazing, I mean, I am some years younger than you and do not work as long or as hard a day as you do, and I must say, for you to move into this thing now, and you can't really let your guard down now for the next eight days, can you?"

"Now, how important is dinner with your wife?"