INTERVIEW WITH: PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1993

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-01448R000402170001-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 27
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 22, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: November 7, 1993
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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NBC "MEET THE PRESS "
WITH HOST, TIM RUBBERY
JOINED BY, TOM BROKAW
INTERVIEW WITH:
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1993
PLEASE CREDIT ANY QUOTES OR EXCERPTS FROM THIS NBC PROGRAM TO
" NBC'S MEET THE PRESS. "
ANNOUNCER: From Washington, this is a special edition of
"Meet the Press " -- the 46th anniversary of the
longest-running television program in the world.
And now, from the Oval Office, the president of the United
States, William Jefferson Clinton.
TIM RUBBERY: Welcome again to "Meet the Press. " Today a
special edition, live from the White House. I'm with my
colleague Tom Brokaw.
Mr. President, this is our 46th birthday. You're 47. You
strike me as the kind of guy who maybe watched the first program
from your cradle.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: (Laughs.) I wish I could. I didn't
have a television then. I was 1 when you started, but I was 9, I
think, when we got our first television in 1956, so I couldn't
start, but I did watch it often after that.
MR. RUBBERY: Well, it's great to have you here. Let's
start -- a lot to talk about today. Let's start with NAFTA, the
North American Free Trade Agreement. Your closest supporters say
that if the vote were held today, you're still 30 votes short.
True?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I don't think we're quite that short,
but we're 30 votes short of having explicit, express
commitments.
MR. RUBBERY: What --
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think we'll, however.
MR. RUBBERY: What role has Ross Perot played in this
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PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think he's kept things stirred up.
That's what he likes to do. And -- but I think frankly the
vociferous, organized opposition of most of the unions telling
these members in private they'll never give them any money
again, they'll get them
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opponents in the primary, you know, the real rough-shod,
muscle-bound tactics, plus the fact that a lot of the business
supporters of NAFTA have not gotten their employees and
rank-and-file people to call and say they're for it. On any
issue like this, the intensity is always with people who are
against it. Those things are difficult.
But, again, I will say I have been quite heartened by the
responses of the last 10 days. More and more of these members of
Congress are men and women who want to do right by their
country, don't want to hurt the United States, and understand
that NAFTA means more jobs, not just in Mexico, but throughout
Latin America -- a huge trading block of people helping to take
us to the 21st century.
MR. RUBBERY: Bob Dole mentioned last night that you were
elevating Ross Perot. Are you concerned that you're going to re-
create a monster?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, Ross Perot's got enough money to
elevate himself. He can buy his way on national television and
buy his own exposure and have very little accountability, except
when he makes the mistake of coming on this program with you.
MR. RUBBERY: Without his charts.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Yeah. (Laughter) The same mistake I
made today. (Laughter) I think the vice president will do well.
Ross Perot is a master of the one-liner and the emotional
retort, but I believe that the vice resident has an unusual
command of the facts and a real commitment, a profound
commitment to this issue, and the American people who watch
Larr}~ King will see that it's no accident that all the
presidents -- living presidents and all the living Nobel-
prize-winning economists and 41 of the 50 governors are for
this. It's good for the American economy.
MR. RUBBERY: Are you trying to demonstrate to the
undecided Democratic congressman, "Listen, this is a choice
between Clinton/Gore and Perot " ?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: No, absolutely not. He is a visible
spokesperson for this. As I said to you, at least for the
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undecided Democrats, our big problem is the raw muscle, the sort
of naked pressure that the labor forces have put on --
MR. RUBBERY: Are you afraid that Democratic congressmen
are in the pocket of labor?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: No, I didn't say that, but I said that
a lot of them are saying, ~~Well, I'm not hearing from these
businesspeople who are for it. Their employees are not telling
me they're for it, and I'm hearing from all these people either
pleading with me based on friendship or threatening me based on
money and work in the campaign, and I don't hear it. "
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So I think what we want to do and what the vice president's
trying to do here -- and this was his idea -- is to let the
American people listen. Yes, Ross Perot is against it. Yes, a
number of other people, Pat Buchanan and others, are against it.
But if all the presidents are for it, all the secretaries of
State, all the Nobel- prize-winning economists, who never agreed
on anything else in their lives, probably, and virtually all the
governors are for it, it must be good for the American economy.
MR. RUBBERY: We have, in fact, lost jobs to Mexico, and
their concern is we'll lose more and it also would depress
wages. There's a clause in the treaty which, with six months'
notice, any side can void it. Would you say to the American
people that if the treaty passes, you'll monitor it and if, say,
in two xears you are convinced there is a sucking of jobs and a
depression of wages, you would move to abrogate the treaty?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: If I thought the treaty were bad for
the American economy, of course I would do that.
But let me tell you there's another provision of the treaty
that we negotiated that I also want to emphasize, because it
goes more to the heart of what many Americans are worried about.
It deals with the so-called surge problem. That's a term of art
which in common language means, but what if this is a good deal
for America and a good deal for Mexico, but some part of our
economy -- or theirs, to be fair -- has an overwhelmingly
negative impact, it's something that nobody ever dreamed would
happen. There's also a provision that allows us to slow the
agreement down as it applies to that. So there's no question
that we have the protections we need. We can get out in six
months if it's bad for us and we can stop anything horrible and
unforeseen.
This treaty is going to make the problems with Mexico over
the last 15 xears better. It will raise the environmental
investments in Mexico. It will reduce the trade barriers to our
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selling products in Mexico. It means more sales and more jobs.
It also -- keep in mind, Mexico is just five percent of the
American economy. It will improve our relationships with our
biggest neighbor and thereby help us to take this kind of deal
to the rest of Latin America so that we can establish a 700
million person trading block. That's real jobs for America.
MR. RUBBERY: The day after the vote November 17, the next
day on the 18th, you leave for Seattle to meet with 14 other
nations -- China, Japan. If you go there having lost NAFTA, what
does it do to your standing?
it.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I'd say I'd sure rather not do
Well, let me give xou the flip side
If I
th
.
go
ere and
NAFTA passes in the House, it will be a clear statement to Asia
number one that the United States is not withdrawing from the
world. We are
MEET THE PRESS/CLINTON PAGE 4 11/07/93
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determined to be the world's leading economic power by competing
and winning, not from running away.
Number two, I'll be able to say what I have been saying to
the Asians: Asia s important to us, but we want free trade. We
want access to your markets. They will see us developing the
NAFTA market, which is not just Mexico, it's Latin America,
Canada, the whole nine yards, and that will be enormous pressure
on them to conclude these world trade agreements, these GATT
talks, by the end of the year. It will also help us with Europe
to do that.
So I can't tell you how important I think it will be. If we
go out there without this agreement, they may say, ~~Well,
President Clinton wants to have an open door to Asia, but is he
really going to be a tough competitor. They ran away from Latin
America, their best friends and best consumers, and can he
deliver? Will the Congress run away from it even if he tries to
expand trade? "
My ability to get done what is plainly in the economic
interests of this country will be weakened. Now, that's very
important, because almost all these people who are for -
against NAFTA, against NAFTA, are still for the GATT talks, for
the big treaty on world trade. They all know it will create
hundreds of thousands of manufacturing fobs for America. They
should consider how much harder it's going to be to get GATT if
the House votes NAFTA down and how much easier it will be to get
GATT if the House adopts NAFTA.
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MR. RUBBERY: Tom.
MR. BROKAW: Mr. President, let's talk about health care.
There's been a lot of confusion about the numbers coming out of
the White House. Mrs. Clinton went to the Hill and said that if
the Clinton plan passes, costs will go up for about 35 to 37
percent of those now covered. Then Donna Shalala, secretary of
health and human services, said 40 percent. Last week, Leon
Panetta said 30 percent. Even your strongest advocates, like Jay
Rockefeller, were holding their heads, in effect, in anguish.
Another Democrat said, ~~We've got to prove that Democrats can
count. " Hasn't your credibility been hurt on whole cost issue?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Maybe, but what I would like to
emphasize is we're the only people who have a plan. It's very
easy for everybodx else to sit up in the peanut gallery. This is
a very complex thing. Keep in mind, you're talking about small
amounts of money -- is this person going to pay $6 more a month
or $60 less a month? -- trying to calculate how it would go if
this plan would be passed just as it is.
Now let me say what was wrong with the early figures where
they said 40 percent of the people with insurance would pax
more. Here's what was wrong with them, why thex were too high.
The people who have insurance today, we now think that 70
percent will pax the same or less for the same or better
benefits. Whx did they say 60 before? Because they neglected to
calculate this: A lot of people who have
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insurance don't really have it. That is, thex have $5,000
deductibles. So they're paying every year, they dust may not be
paying in their insurance premium.
LLLEnglish
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x x x premium.
So they went back and calculated based on what we now know
about how much out-of-pocket people pay -- you have $2,500,
$3,000, $5,000 deductible. That is something they neglected to
think about. So now, who will pay more under this who has
insurance already? People who have essentially catastrophic
policies, who have very limited benefits and young single
workers will pay more because if they day more, it will enable
us to have what's called community ratings, so that if a working
family, middle-aged working family with a sick child can still
get insurance at an affordable cost, and all the young workers
who don't have insurance will be brought into the insurance
system, and even they will get something for it. That is, what
they get for it is knowing their insurance can never be taken
away. There'd be a floor.
Finally, let me say this. If you look at the experience of
the last 12 years, when insurance, when health costs really
started to take off, and then you think about what it will be
like five years from now, a hundred percent of the American
people will pay more five years from now than the rate of
inflation if we don't do something.
In other words, at least what we're trying to do, we'll
lower the rate of increase for all the American people, so
within five years, everybody'll be better off, I believe.
MR. BROKAW: Mr. President, no one disagrees with the idea
that you have engaged the country in a debate about health care,
which is long overdue, but the fact is that you want to add 37
million people to the insurance pool. There are new technologies
coming on board all the time that cost a lot more money. You're
willing to pick up the early retirement benefits for
corporations. You've added mental health and free prescriptions.
It seems to a lot of folks that you ought to be going slower and
that you ought to accept kind of phased- in universal health
care coverage in five years. Would that be --
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Yeah, but the problem is --
MR. BROKAW: -- would that be acceptable to you?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: The problem is -- we are phasing it in
over three years --
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MR. BROKAW: Well, would that be --
~ PRESIDENT CLINTON: -- through all of '90 -- we're getting
-- we re anticipating passage of this program in '94, and then
letting people have '95, '96, and '97.
.ETX
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But let me emphasize, Tom, the people who make that
argument assume something that we assume all the time in
America, that we just can't do things that other people can do.
We tolerate conditions in America that are intolerable in other
countries.
Now, the condition we tolerate by not having everybody
insured is higher health care costs. That is, you've got folks
in medicine in your family. You know this -- not insuring
everybody raises health care costs because all those people
without insurance if they need health care will get it. They'll
get it when it's too late, too expensive, and someone else will
pay for it, and that rifles the cost. So by accelerating the
moment of universal coverage you not only do the morally right
thing by finally letting Americans join the ranks of all these
other advanced countries and giving everybody health security,
you immediately begin to lower the rate at which costs increase.
So you can argue about all these other things, but it seems
to me delaying the time of universal coverage will aggravate the
price spiral, not make it better. We assume that universal
coverage will cost more when every other country that has
universal coverage is paying much less than we are and having
less inflation.
MR. BROKAW: Would you sign a living will publicly? About
one- third of our health care costs in America go to the last
year of life. Mrs. Clinton has talked about you doing that. Are
you prepared to do that?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I certainly would sign one. I
don't know if I would do it in public, but I'd be glad to tell
you what's in it. I don't know. There's something so -- I don't
know. I've never thought about a public demonstration of a
private act like that, but we've given a lot of thought to it
because of the experience I had with my stepfather when he died,
when Hillarx's dad died earlier this xear. We know that -- I
think families should think about living wills and should have
them. It's not something the government should impose on them.
But we do have a lot of extra costs that most people believe are
unnecessary in this system, and that's one way to weed some of
them out.
MR. BROKAW: And ultimately are we going to have to come to
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health rationing in America, especially those heroic procedures
that are long on odds and very expensive -- take that money and
send it on prenatal care and other procedures that might extend
life at the beginning, not at the end?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, let me say before we make that
decision, we should acknowledge two things: One is we're
rationing health care right now. There's a huge rationing doing
on and out. It's just a roll of the dice whether you have it or
not and what you get.
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What we do know is that if our plan passes and we put more
emphasis on primary and preventive health care and primary
physicians getting out there and taking care of people and
stopping bad things from happening, we'll have less need for
those extreme procedures.
I do not believe we want America to pull back from the
technological advances that we all treasure. I do not believe we
want to tell people they can't have procedures that have a
realistic chance of saving their lives and returning them to
normal, so I suspect we'll always be willing to pay a little
more than any other country in the world to do that, but if we
do more with the primary side, we'll be better off.
MR. RUBBERY: Mr. President, you're still confident we'll
get a health care bill by next year?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Oh, I think we will. Absolutely.
MR. RUBBERY: We have to take a break. We'll be back with
more from President Bill Clinton in the Oval Office. We'll talk
a little bit about foreign policy.
(Announcements.)
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x x x (Announcements.)
MR. RUBBERY: We're back, live from the Oval Office.
Mr. President, a lot of growing concern about North Korea,
a country that we fought some 40 years ago. Will you allow North
Korea to build the nuclear bomb?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: North Korea cannot be allowed to
develop a nuclear bomb. We have to be very firm about it. This
is a difficult moment in our relationship with them and I think
a difficult moment for them. They're one of the most -- perhaps
the most isolated country in the world, with enormous economic
problems, trying to decide what direction to take now, sometimes
seeming to reach out to South Korea, sometimes seeming to draw
back.
I spend a lot of time on this issue. It's a very, very
major issue. We have got to stop the proliferation of nuclear
weapons, and particularly North Korea needs to stay in the
control regime. They don't need to withdraw.
Now, there is a lot of disagreement about what we should do
now. I just want to assure you and the American people that we
are doing everything we possibly can to make the best decisions,
to be firm in this. We are consulting with our allies in South
Korea and Japan. They are most immediately affected by what we
do and how we do it. And we have worked with the Chinese, who,
despite our other differences, have helped us to try to work
through this.
MR. RUSSERT: Would one of the options be a preemptive
strike the way the Israelis took out the Iraqi nuclear reactor?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I don't think I should discuss any
specific options today.
All I can tell you is that I tried to issue the sternest,
clearest possible statement about this when I was in Korea.
Nothing has changed since then. I think you asked me a question
about it at one time also, Tom. This is a very grave issue for
the United States.
MR. RUSSERT: There are 800,000 North Korean troops amassed
on the South Korean border. If the North Koreans invaded South
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Korea, would that in effect be an attack on the United States?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Absolutely. We have our soldiers there.
They know that. We still have people stationed near the Bridge
of No
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Return. I was u~ there on the bridge, I was in those bunkers
with our young Americans. They know that any attack on South
Korea is an attack on the United States.
MR. RUBBERY: Tom?
MR. BROKAW: President Yeltsin of Russia has said over the
weekend that he wants to now delay the presidential election
until 1996. That is the full term for him, but he had said
publicly that he would do it in the spring of next year. You had
endorsed that. Now for him to pull back from that public
commitment to elections next spring, is that a mistake on his
part?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, let's -- let me first say reading
-- and all the -- I have not spoken with him directly because I
didn't -- late yesterday evening, I was made aware of his
comments. So I'm not sure exactly what he said and exactly what
he meant. The -- his comments are subject to more than one
interpretation. I do think the following things. I think he had
always assumed he would run for reelection, and his comments
seemed to indicate that he may not want to do that and he may
want to simply finish his term.
As long as he is promoting democracy, as long as he's
promoting human rights, as long as he's promoting reform, I
think the United States should support him. He has been brave
and consistent.
I think on this issue we'll have to see how it plays out.
I'm sure after the elections of the parliament in December, they
will have something to say about it. One of the things that
Boris Yeltsin has really understood is that it's not good if
he's the only source of legitimate democratic power in Russia --
and he is now. He's been elected twice by the Russian people in
the last couple of years. After December, we'll have another
major player, sort of like the president and the Congress here.
And as we know, they'll be urce of legitimate
democratic power and we'll see how it works out.
MR. BROKAW: Let me ask you about China. You said during
the course of the campaign that President Bush coddles China
despite a continuing crackdown on democratic reformers, the
brutal subjugation of Tibet, the irresponsible exportation of
military and nuclear technology. Your administration now is
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demonstrably warming up toward China. Have conditions changed
there?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, first of all, let's talk about
what we've done. The Chinese have complained because they think
we've been so much firmer and colder. We imposed sanctions
because of weapons technology transfers that the Chinese engaged
in that we opposed. So we have taken steps there that were not
taken previously.
But we also have had a consistent economic relationship
with them. The United States this year will purchase 38 percent
of China's exports, a little known fact. The American people --
not the American
MEET THE PRESS/CLINTON PAGE 11 11/07/93
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business community that wants to invest there, the American
people have been very good to the Chinese people in supporting
their economic advances. We believe their movement toward market
reform and decentralization will promote more democracy in China
and better policies.
I want to engage President Jiang on that, and I think we
can do so. But we also have to be very firm on these issues of
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and human rights.
But I think we have to pursue both courses at once. I don't
think you can isolate a country as big as China, as important to
the world's future as China, but neither can you simply turn
away from things that you cannot abide. And that's what we've
tried to do. We've tried to strike the right balance and I think
we have.
MR. BROKAW: Even some of your partisans on Capitol Hill
believe that you've not shown a strong enough hand on foreign
policy. After your experience in Somalia, will you be as eager
to get involved with the United States in operations of that
kind in the future?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think what we have to do is to
recognize that the United Nations peacekeeping function is still
very important and sometimes works very, very well. What they've
done in Cambodia, with our financial support, but with no
Americans there, is truly remarkable. Will it transform
Cambodia? Who knows? Maybe it will all go back to the way it
was, but at least the United Nations has given Cambodia a
chance.
That is what we're doing for Somalia. Will they be able to
overcome their historic, deeply embedded clan warfare? I'm not
sure. But at least we're giving them a chance.
What's wrong with the United Nations' peacekeeping
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operations is that it's too much of an ad hoc thing. Some work,
some don't and a lot of the command and control operations, a
lot of the training details, a lot of the simple organizational
things that are important have not been worked through. So the
United States favors a substantial restructuring and upgrading
of the peacekeeping operations in ways that would permit us to
participate in the future with a much higher level of
confidence.
MR. RUBBERY: Let's turn to Somalia, Mr. President. The
reports yesterdax that the United States troops will take again
once -- a very visible role. What does that mean?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, when I announced that we would
pursue the political objective a few weeks ago, I also said we
would stay there and complete our mission. Our mission there is
to deliver the humanitarian supplies and to keep the lines of
communications open. We stood down from patrolling the roads
when the voluntary cease-fire was announced in Somalia to try to
let things calm down and to try to get the political process
going.
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Now that there is a political process, as always is the
case, there's also a lot of maneuvering in a quasi-military sort
of way. We cannot allow that to undermine the humanitarian
mission. And our people cannot be expected, our young soldiers
there cannot be expected to just sort of hunker down and stay
behind walls. That almost puts them at greater risk. So we have
to go out now and make sure that the ordinary conditions of the
U.N. peacekeeping mission are continued even in Mogadishu, and
that's what we're doing.
MR. RUSSERT: The secretary-general of the U.N., Boutros
Boutros- Ghali, said that unless you disarm the warlords and the
clans and put together and fashion a political settlement before
you leave, the mission will have been a failure.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I disagree with that. First of all
that's the argument he made to the Bush administration. I mean,
President Bush's administration simply refused to get involved
in disarmament. Arguably, it would have been easier then at the
moment when we came in, when everybody was starving and we were
at our moment of maximum popularity and leverage, but I'm not
sure that decision is wrong. In the end, the international
community will have to broker political resolutions within
countries. But our ability to stop people within national
boundaries from killing each other is somewhat limited and will
be for the foreseeable future.
I mean, they have -- they are going to have to make up
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their mind. I think the better course is to get these African
nations, to get Ethiopia, to get Eritrea, to get their neighbors
involved in trying to work out a political solution. Those
people now remember what it was like before we came there. We're
going to do everything we can in the next several months to get
this political solution going. But for us to go in and disarm
would run the risk of our becoming, in effect, combatants on one
side or the other, particularly if some said, yes, we'll disarm,
and others said no.
MR. RUBBERY: In retrospect, then, it was a mistake for you
to send the Rangers to try to capture Mr. Aideed?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: No, that was a different issue. The
mistake was -- and I want to clarify this because I am proud of
what those Rangers did. The ones who gave their lives did not
die in vain.
The ones who gave their lives and were wounded in the last
instance did it because of the tradition of the Rangers of never
leaving anybody behind, even someone who's been killed. And I
feel terrible about what happened.
But what they were doing is trying to enforce the law.
Their mission was to try to arrest people who were suspected of
murdering the Pakistani U.N. soldiers. The mistake was not that
they were trying to do that, the mistake was that we were out
doing that and while we were doing that, the political dialogue
shut down so that the people that were associated with Aideed
thought we the U.N., not we the U.S., but we the U.N. were
trying to cut them out of Somalia's future.
.ETX
MEET THE PRESS/CLINTON PAGE 13 11/07/93
.STX
And what we have tried to do is to lower our profile on the
military police side so that the political dialogue can start
again. Now that that's going on, we're going to do the U.N.
mandate.
MR. RUBBERY: And all troops will be out by March 31st?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Yes.
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MR. RUBBERY: Quickly on Haiti --
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Go back to my statement -- they'll be
out by March 31st except for a couple of hundred support
personnel who may be there to do just logistical things --
MR. RUBBERY: Which is what you said before.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: That's right.
MR. RUBBERY: Haiti -- the military leaders have refused to
meet. Your policy, United States policy is to reinstate Mr.
Aristide. Is it now time to broaden the embargo from just fuel
and -- to everything?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: We have to strengthen the embargo.
There are two options. We can in effect have a total embargo and
try to shut the country down. That will be more painful in the
near term to the average Haitians who are already suffering.
We can also try to do something that will target those
people that are causing this problem, which is to get all the
other nations of the world to side with us in freezing the
assets of the wealthy Haitians who are plundering that country,
keeping democracy from taking root, and supporting the police
chief and the military.
I would prefer to do that, but I'm not going to rule out
the other things, and we're following this on a daily basis,
spending a lot of time with it.
goods?
MR. RUBBERY: So we could have a complete embargo on all
PRESIDENT CLINTON: That is an option, but I also hope that
the other wealthy nations of the world that have assets
deposited from these Haitian interests who are keeping democracy
from returning will join us in freezing those assets. That would
reallx help. That would do more in less time to change the
political climate than anything.
MR. RUBBERY: President Bush invaded Panama to remove
Noriega. Would you consider invading Haiti to reinstate
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Aristide?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I don't want to rule anything in or
out. Let me just say that there's a difference here, though. He
went to Panama not only to remove Noriega for the Panamanians,
but because Noriega himself was wanted for violating American
law as a drug runner.
MEET THE PRESS/CLINTON PAGE 15 11/07/93
.STX
Prime Minister Malval and President Aristide have both not
called for us to do that. In fact, one of the problems we had
with the Governors Island agreement is that neither they nor the
other side wanted the United States or the U.N. there in a
police function. That is, those folks we were trying to land the
other day were supposed to train the army to be the army corps
of engineers to rebuild the countrx. Neither side has wanted
that. And they had these bad memories of invasion.
Last time the Americans went there, in 1915, we stayed
nearly 20 years. So they have not asked for that. But I don't
think we should rule anything in or out.
MR. RUBBERY: Your stated policy of the United States is to
reinstate Mr. Aristide. The CIA has gone around this town saying
that Aristide is mentally unstable. Can you as
commander-in-chief tolerate that insubordination by the CIA?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I think you have to ask yourself
whether it's insubordination or not. And let me tell you what I
mean by that. The CIA is duty-bound to tell the Congress what it
knows. That's the law, just like the joint chiefs of staff are
duty-bound to go when asked, express their personal opinion if
they have an opinion different from the president, even though
they work for me.
In secret hearings, the CIA told the -- told the Senate
what they had told me before, which is there is -- that they
thought they had some evidence which questioned Mr. Aristide's
ability to be president of Haiti. All I can tell you is -- and
I'm glad in a way that it came out since it had been whispered
around, that based on my personal experience, the vice
president's repeated contacts with him, the willingness of
Aristide to work with our people -- he has done everything he
said he would do, and more importantly, he agreed to put in Mr.
Malval, who was a respected businessman, to give some balance.
Aristide may not be like you and me. He's had a very
different life. But two-thirds of the Haitians voted for him,
and he has shown a willingness to reach out and broaden his
base. So I just disagree with -- and I also disagree that the
old CIA reports are conclusive in their evidence. But they had a
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legal responsibility to tell the Senate.
If I had put the thumb on them, xou'd be asking me why are
you gagging the CIA from giving American intelligence to the
Senate Intelligence Committee --
MR. RUBBERY: I might ask you that --
PRESIDENT CLINTON: You would.
MR. RUBBERY: Finally, in this round, a lot of calls, or
suggestions that Secretary of Defense Aspin, Secretary of State
ChristETXer resign. Are they secure in their positions?
MEET THE PRESS/CLINTON PAGE 16 11/07/93
.STX
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I don't think that the president should
even discuss that sort of thing, those personnel things.
Let me say this. I think they deserve credit for doing well
on many big things. This administration has secured the interest
of America in dealing with Russia, in dealing with the Middle
East, in raising economic issues to a new high, in conducting a
thorough security bottoms-up review of the Pentagon and our
military operations and in many other areas.
We found three problems that we inherited here when we got
in that are very difficult problems, in Bosnia, Somalia and
Haiti. And every day you can pick up the newspaper and see
opinions on both sides about what we should do, or a myriad of
sides. We're doing the best we can on those.
And we're going to do it, and we're going to do it with the
team we've got as long as we're all working together. I think
that they have worked very hard, and I think that some of the
attacks on them have been quite unfair.
MR. RUBBERY: Mr. President, we have to take a break. We'll
be back with more from the Oval Office and talk about crime and
kids in America.
(Announcements.)
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x x x (Announcements.)
MR. RUBBERY: We're back on "Meet the Press. " I'm with my
colleague Tom Brokaw talking to the president of the United
States in the Oval Office.
Mr. President, in recent months on "Meet the Press, "
we've talked to Senator Pat Moynihan, Washington Post columnist
William Raspberry, the Reverend Jesse Jackson about the problem
of kids and crime. And they are in agreement that the break-up
of the traditional family as we know it -- two out of every
three black kids born this year will be born out of wedlock, two
out of five white children born out of wedlock. Is the break-up
of the traditional family unit a national crisis?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Absolutely. It is absolutely a crisis
MR. RUBBERY: And what can we -- what can you do about it
as president?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I think that as president I have
to do two things. One is to speak about it and to focus the
attention of the nation on it. I went to the University of North
Carolina recently and spoke to the 200th commencement --
anniversary there of the university, and gave a major speech
trying to deal with the combined impact of the breakdown of the
family and the rise in violence and the rise in drugs and the
lack of economic opportunity and how it's all --
MR. RUBBERY: There's a correlation --
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Absolutely --
MR. RUBBERY: -- between crime and drugs and the breakdown
of the family.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: And to me -- let me back u~ and say I
think America has two big challenges. One is to chance in ways
that will permit us to go into the 21st century winning as a
country and as individuals. The second is to provide security in
the face of all these changes so that people can have a coherent
life, and that we can't do that with economic stagnation or with
social disintegration and we're fighting with both.
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I mean, today in the Washington Post, there's a story of
four people killed over the weekend, nine people wounded. A guy
picks up a 1-xear-old daughter -- maybe his daughter, a
1-year-old child, drives
MEET THE PRESS/CLINTON PAGE 18 11/07/93
.STX
away, and people drive after him, shoot him in the head and the
bullet goes through the girl's body and blows her shoe off, you
know.
Three or four days ago, an 11-year-old girl planning her
own funeral. I mean, these things are terrible. And what I think
-- let me just say, I called the attorney general last night. We
talked for 30 minutes about this on the phone. We have got to
use this administration to awaken in all Americans an
understanding of this and to get everyone to ask what their
personal responsibility is to try to help rebuild the family and
the conditions of community. Then we have to follow policies
which will do that.
MR. RUBBERY: Tom?
MR. BROKAW: Mr. President, do you think that there has
been enough dialogue within the black community about this whole
issue of families without fathers? Jesse Jackson recently has
started a campaign on black-on-black violence, but there really
-- among the activists in the black community, there hasn't been
much public dialogue. Has that disappointed you?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, let me say this. I think there
should be more. And I think that we should all be willing to
face up to all the reasons why this has occurred. The famous
African-American sociologist -- at least he's famous in our
circles -- William Julius Wilson at the University of Chicago,
wrote a little book a few years ago called, "The Truly
Disadvantaged. " It's only about 180 pages long. But it has --
it graphicallx shows you what has happened to black families in
the inner cities and how the decline of the black family is
associated not simply with the rise of welfare, but with the
evaporation of jobs for black males in those areas.
So I think first that we ought to pass our crime bill here
and put another 100,000 police on the street and do it right,
and community policing. But we also have to get work back into
the lives of people. You know, you can't have generation after
generation not knowing work and expect there to be structure and
order in peoples' lives. That's one of the things when Colin
Powell retired as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, you
know, he talked about maybe he could be a role model for people
outside the military who have none of the structure that's what
makes the military go in this country.
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MR. BROKAW: So much of this is driven by drugs. Your
administration has kind of taken drugs off the radar screen. Do
you think you're going to have a take a harder line on drugs?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, first of all, I don't think
that's a fair characterization. The administration has had to
subject the drug budget to the same ruthless discipline that
nearlx every other budget has been subjected to so that while we
have increased some drug funding, like in the block grant
program, some of the rest of it has not been increased.
MEET THE PRESS/CLINTON PAGE 19 11/07/93
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What I have tried to do is to get people to see the drug
problem first of all in terms of stopping the major sources and
then here at home focusing on drug -- in terms of treatment and
education and integrating it with out overall strategy on law
enforcement and violence. I think this country needs a community
strategy which deals with the crisis of drugs, violence, crime,
the family and work. And we need to go not only nationally but
at the grassroots level, and we need to understand that there's
some basic things we have to do. If you want families to stay
together, you've got to make it possible for people to be
successful workers and successful parents.
If I can just briefly tell this one story. We -- a couple
of Sundays ago, we had a family in here taking a tour, a man, a
wife, three daughters, and one of these children was in a wheel
chair. She was in this Make a Wish program, you know, a sick
child wants to go see the president. I say hello, we have a
picture. On the way out, the man says, `~Mr. President, just in
case you think that one person doesn't make a difference, " he
said, ~~You signed the Family Leave Bill, which gives me a right
to spend time with my sick child and not lose my job. If you
hadn't done that, if Congress hadn't passed it, I would have had
to choose between spending this precious time with my daughter,
who s probably not going to live, or keeping my job for my other
two daughters and my wife. And I don't have to choose now. Don't
ever think what you do doesn't make a difference. "
A few days later, that little girl died. But that man knows
that he was a good parent and a good worker. If you want -
that's just one example of the kind of things we have to do that
have moral content even though they have may be public policies.
But no matter what we do, there has to be reawakening of
responsibility in every community.
That goes back to your other question. Should the black
community be debating this? They should. Should the white
community be debating it? We should.
MR. BROKAW: All of this, it seems to me, is fueling
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greater racial tensions, especially in the urban areas. Do you
think that the racial tension and the racial climate in urban
America now is better or worse than it was say 10 years ago?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think for middle class people, it's
much better. I think the level of comfort among people of
different races is much higher. I think the appreciation for
diversity is greater. I think for people who are outside the
economic mainstream it is much, much worse.
My God, we've got kids planning their funerals, 11-year-old
kids. But the crying shame is that those people also want to be
a part of mainstream America. I mean, look at these children.
When they make these plans for their funerals, are they out
there breaking the law?
MEET THE PRESS/CLINTON PAGE 20 11/07/93
.STX
And one thing I'd like to say to the rest of America is,
you read these horrible stories about how many people get killed
on the weekends. Most of the people that live in all those
neighborhoods never break the law, work for a living, for modest
wages, pay their taxes, trxing to do right by their kids. I
mean, this country is falling apart because we have allowed that
-- a whole group of us to drift away. It's not an underclass
anymore, it's an outer class.
MR. RUBBERY: Mr. President, can we talk about this in
direct terms without a cloud of political correctness hovering
over the subject?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think we have to. I think we've got
to get -- I think Jesse Jackson, frankly, has performed a good
service by going out and starting this debate again when the
American people are willing to listen.
We've got to be able to sit down and tell people what we
think. There can -- I think that the American people are willing
to put aside political correctness. But if we want to sax tough
things about the breakdown of the family and the responsibility
of people who live in these communities, we also have to say
tough things to the rest of America about how you can't just
ignore these people until -- until you have to read about how
they're having children having children and they're -- nobody's
married and they're having babies and these kids are dying.
You've got to have some structure in these communities and some
opportunity. If you want to preach the American dream to them,
there's got to be something there at the end of the road. So
there's something for all of us to do here.
MR. RUBBERY: Mr. President, we have to take another break.
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We'll be back in dust a moment to talk about Bill Clinton's
first year in off ice.
(Announcements.)
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x x x (Announcements.)
MR. RUBBERY: We're back with the president of the United
States in the Oval Office.
Mr. President, your poll numbers are low, but the one
that's most striking to me is that since you've been president,
the number of people who think the country's on the wrong track
has doubled. What happened?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, they may not know what's going on
and I think we should all ask ourselves what responsibility that
has. Let's look at the facts. Let's just look at the facts.
Since I became president, we have lowered the deficit,
lowered interest rates, kept inflation down. This economy has
produced more private sector jobs in the first nine months than
in the previous four years. Jobs are up and investment is up. We
have shown discipline and direction in the budget. It was a
remarkable achievement.
Not only that, in that budget, we did something that has
not been done for 20 years. We tried to reverse the inequality
of incomes. We asked the wealth to pay more and we gave over 15
million working families, comprising about 50 million Americans,
a tax cut because they're working hard and still hovering around
the poverty line. Most Americans don't know that.
MR. RUBBERY: So it's just a communications problem?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, no -- but let me finish.
MR. RUBBERY: Please.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: In that program -- one of the things I
promised the American people to do to try to add more security
to their lives was to open the doors of college education to
everybody. We reformed the college loan program, we lowered the
interest rates, we strung out the repayments. Most Americans
don't know that.
We passed the family leave law, which I just spoke about.
We have a major health care proposal on the table. We have
opened any number of economic avenues of opportunity that
everyone agrees with. We've got 37 billion more dollars in
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high-tech equipment up for exports and that'll create hundreds
of thousands of jobs.
MEET THE PRESS/CLINTON PAGE 22 11/07/93
.STX
So the economic record of this administration in only nine
months is very good. The educational record of this
administration is good. What we're doing on health care is
unprecedented in our lifetime.
The foreign policy record on the issues that really affect
our national security is good. There are the problems that
nobody's figured out how to resolve. I concede that. I do not
know what the answer to this is. But I know this: I believe
that when historians look at this first xear, they will be hard
pressed to find many first years of presidencies that equal
ours.
The Congressional Quarterly said the other day that only
President Eisenhower had had a higher success rate in Congress
than I have. If you go out and ask the average American, they
think I hardly ever get anything passed.
Now -- now that may be --
MR. RUBBERY: But the voters --
PRESIDENT CLINTON: That's right. That may be my fault. It
may be somebody else's fault. But the reality is, the economy's
going in the right direction, we're -- I'm keeping the
commitments of the campaign to empower people through education
and through health care initiatives and through all these other
things. Why don't they know that? I don't know. But I'm sure --
I gave a speech the other day to 250 people from my home town --
my home state that were up here, and I just went through these
specific things and they said, "There must have been a
conspiracy to keep this a secret. We didn't know any of this. "
MR. RUBBERY: But in six states since you've been
president, Senate seats in Texas and Georgia, governorships in
Virginia, New Jersey, mayoralties in New York and Los Angeles,
have all gone Republican. There must be some small message in
there for you.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I think the message is people
still want change. But, you know, you're from Buffalo. Don't you
believe that all politics is local? I was a governor for 12
years and I can honestly say that of 150 governors I served
with, I never heard one say, not one, that he or she won or lost
an election because of a president.
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Now, what do these things say? They say people are still
upset at crime, they're upset at the lack of jobs, they're upset
when they're paying more taxes and think they're not getting
something else for it. But we are addressing each of those
things. Whether it's in the economic program, the health care
program, the reinventing government program, expanding trade, we
are addressing those things.
I think that what I have to do is to a better job of
getting out there and getting the record there. But what happens
here is every day's just a new battle. But I don't know anybody
who's out there who
MEET THE PRESS/CLINTON PAGE 23 11/07/93
.STX
believes that all these elections are and more than a referendum
on what people want for their mayors and their governors.
MR. BROKAW: Mr. President, Jimmy Carter used to complain
that the White House press was here simply to play "gotcha. "
Are you saying in effect --
MR. BROKAW: -- that the press coverage has failed you and
failed the country?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: No -- well, I don't know about -- I
think it may have failed the country some but not -- I don't
take it personally. And I don't think it's a "gotcha " thing.
I think in a way it may be my fault. I keep -- I go from
one thing to another. So we have one moment on national service,
for example, the signature idea of my campaign, something we
know the American people care about, and it happens, but it
happens in the middle of all these other things, so nobody knows
it happened. I think that's the big problem.
MR. BROKAW: Let me ask you about 1996. You had a meeting
in the White House the other day with Colin Powell. He endorsed
NAFTA. Do you think Colin Powell is a Democrat or a Republican?
And do you think he'll run for office in '96?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, you have to ask him that. I don't
think I should speak for him.
MR. BROKAW: But what's your instinct?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: I don't have an instinct. I think --
let me just say this. What I have determined to do is to get up
every day and do what I think is right and try to move this
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country forward and keep the commitments I made to the American
people and follow it through with real conviction and just let
everything else happen.
I can't control a lot of events, but I do think it is
astonishing to me -- and I take this on myself maybe more than
you, but that -- to coo back to Al Gore's line in the campaign,
"What should be up is up; what should be down is down. We're
moving in the right direction, " and I have -- people should
know that. And if they don't, then I have to examine why they
don't. But perhaps you do, too.
MR. RUBBERY: Mr. President, we have to take a break. We'll
be right back after this break.
(Announcements.)
MEET THE PRESS/CLINTON PAGE 24 11/07/93
.STX
MR. RUBBERY: We're back with the president. Tom Brokaw,
you have a question.
MR. BROKAW: Even in the Oval Office, you can hear the
local protest outside about fire fighters or something in
Washington, DC. You know that it is like living in a fish bowl
here. Comedians have had a lot of fun with the fact that you run
every day, but you don't seem to lose any weight. In fact, what
can you tell us about your personal health? Have you lost
weight?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Little bit --
MR. BROKAW: And have you changed your eating habits?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, yeah, quite a bit since I've been
here. I have lost weight -- I gained a lot of weight in the
campaign. I'm now almost back to where I was two years ago. I've
lost weight and lost, I don't know, two or three inches off my
waist. But I run six days a week. And I just try to -- like I
say -- it's like everything else. I think you just have to get
up -- sort of show up every day and try to make a little
progress. I think that's what you do in life.
MR. RUBBERY: Mr. President, a friend of yours told me that
you jokingly sometimes refer to life in the White House as the
" crown jewel of the federal penitentiary system. "
PRESIDENT CLINTON: That's right.
MR. RUBBERY: How confining has it been?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, it's pretty confining. And I
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always say I don't know whether it's the finest public housing
in America or the crown jewel of the prison system. It's a very
isolating life. And one of the things that frustrates me is that
I get more easily out of touch and maybe even out of harmony
with the American people. That's the question you asked me
earlier.
I also know that every little word I say can be sort of
twisted, you know. And again, I don't fault anybody, but I just
have to be careful. I --
MR. RUBBERY: We have just a few seconds --
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Did you see what Gergen just did? He
brought in this thing saying that the headline is now that
Clinton accused labor of roughshod tactics and that's --
(laughter) -- I mean, those guys are my friends. I just don't
agree with them on NAFTA. We're going to all work together --
MR. RUBBERY: We have just a few seconds --
PRESIDENT CLINTON: -- but I just, you know, that bothers
MEET THE PRESS/CLINTON PAGE 25 11/07/93
.STX
MR. RUBBERY: Is there one thine that a year ago you were
absolutely certain of that you're not quite sure about now?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Mm-hmm (affirmative response). I was
absolutely certain a year ago that I could pursue this
aggressive agenda of change and that every step along the way
I'd be able to tell the American people what I was doing and
convince them that we were going right. We're pursuing it, we're
making in a way a little more progress than I thought we would,
but there's a big gap between what we've done and what I've been
able to tell the people about. I've got to do a better job.
MR. RUBBERY: Thank you for letting us join you in the Oval
Office today.
I take it this is the room you'll invite the Buffalo Bills
after they win the Super Bowl?
PRESIDENT CLINTON: That's right. The Buffalo Bills will be
here if they win the Super Bowl this year.
MR. RUBBERY: Mr. President, thank you very much.
MR. BROKAW: You're going to be in office a long time if
that's the case, Mr. President. (Laughter.)
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MR. RUBBERY: You're going to see this interview in its
entirety tonight on CNBC at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time and
highlights tomorrow on the "Today " program, and then "Nightly
News " with my old buddy Tom Brokaw.
That's all for today. We'll be back next week. If it's
Sunday, it's "Meet the Press. "
LLLEnglish
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/05/23: CIA-RDP99-014488000402170001-4