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Subject: INTERNAL TRANSCRIPT: NY Times interview of the President
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
Internal Transcript
December 4 , 1997
INTERVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT
BY
THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Oval Office
3:13 P.M. EST
Q
As you've been told, what we're looking at is a
couple pieces on the state of the presidency and where things are and
your goals for the future, particularly on domestic policy. And the
first thing that struck us in a lot of interviews, people said your
style has changed since early in your first term. You're much more
-- there is more of a corporate atmosphere here. There aren't the
long sort of bull sessions that go on and on, and you're delegating
more. And it's maybe not as much fun as it was, but things get done
-- you're more decisive. And I wonder if you see yourself having
grown in the job and your executive style changed at all?
THE PRESIDENT: I guess the short answer to that is,
yes, but it's somewhat more complex than that. When we came in, I
had a very detailed agenda which I had laid out first in New
Hampshire, then right before the Democratic Convention, and then in
the book that Al Gore and I put out in the '92 campaign, "Putting
People First."
But as always happens, there is a difference between
running for office and governing. You have to confront the facts as
they are. We spent a lot of time right after the election and before
�the inauguration and then in the early part of this administration
having exhaustive bull sessions, if you want to call them that,
trying to work through and talk through these things, because we had
to come to grips w i t h some very difficult issues at home and abroad.
I think w e ' v e got -- once we made the big tough decisions, it was
easier then to regularize the f l o w of work.
I also think you just learn how to do it better. And I
do think we're better organized n o w . And I think it's important that
the President delegate a lot. I'm still actually -- I was thinking
I'm probably putting in more hours now than I ever have on the job,
but I spend a lot of time talking to people one on one, reading,
trying to work through ideas. I still send Rahm as much stuff as I
ever have. But I think that in terms of bringing the rest of the
White House in, I think it's very important that you get as much done
as possible, and I think w e ' v e steadily gotten better and better and
better at that.
Q
Can you just give an example of that, of an issue
where you're not quite as intimately involved as you might have been
a f e w years ago, where you've delegated more?
THE PRESIDENT: No, I don't think -- if it's a big
issue, like climate change or the next steps in the Middle East peace
process or something like that, a big issue, I'm just as involved as
I ever was. But if it's something that we have more -- there is more
of a past n o w , more of a shared understanding, I might make more
decisions based on a detailed memo without a long meeting than I
would have otherwise, if it's something where I have a higher comfort
level and w e ' v e got a clear course established. I think that's a
better indicator.
On the other hand, we still have large meetings w i t h
broad discussions when there is a new set of decisions made. For
example, we're now working on next year's budget, and we have the
same sort of process we all have there. You can't make those
decisions by memo because you have to talk through what the
alternatives are and work through them and then hear everybody around
the table.
We will have -- sometime in the next f e w days, for
example, we'll have, regardless of what happens at Kyoto, we'll have
to have a big meeting on how we're going to do what we're going to do
anyway to deal w i t h the climate change issues. And we'll analyze w h y
we didn't make as much progress in the first four years as I thought
we should have, apart from the fact that the economy grew very
strongly. And we'll work through that and try to set up a different,
whole different w a y of dealing w i t h it so it will be more effective.
That will require meeting, exhaustive batting around of options.
You can't pre-cook a lot of that. But the more you're
�here, the more a lot of decisions flow within the framework that's
already been established, and you can make them more quickly.
Q
You've spent 2 0 years as a chief executive
developing state and domestic policy in one way or another, and
you've experimented quite a bit over the last five years in how to do
it - creating the NEC, soliciting more outside memos from different
people, and you're generally credited now w i t h doing a good job of
coordinating w i t h the agencies and bringing them into the process.
How would you describe specifically the way you're idea generation
system works now? And are you satisfied w i t h it? Do you think
you've gotten to the point -- to its best point so far, or do you
still have some more work that you plan to do?
THE PRESIDENT: There is a difference -- first of all,
I'd say -- I'll answer the question, but let me first say, there is a
big difference in generating ideas and then putting them through a
policy process to see if they make sense, and coming up w i t h a
policy, and then a strategy to implement it. I think we have
developed, through trial and error and an enormous amount of hard
w o r k , a policy development process where we can take an idea, and
even if it's a new and different one, we can protect it from being
dismissed out of hand by people w h o are normally change averse or
overworked or whatever. We've got a kind of openness to it. And
then have it honestly vetted, and still do enough of the basic work
that needs to be done so that everyone feels that they're consulted
and everybody w i t h relevant information and knowledge and experience
can bring that to bear on the decision-making process. And I
believe that it's a little less cumbersome and more timely than it
used to be, but still very serious.
N o w , it's a different thing on the idea of generation,
how do you get the ideas, and I don't know that there is an explicit
process. There are a lot of people who know they can write us at any
given time w i t h new ideas. We all read everything that's in print
all the time, trying to come up w i t h new ideas. We listen to people
all the time. But we get the ideas from a variety of different
sources. Sometimes members of Congress have put in bills that
reflect the new ideas that we want to work and see if there is
something there that maybe if we get behind we can make a difference.
So I d o n ' t know that we have changed our system of
getting new ideas. When I was a governor, I used to say - there
were three or four things I used to cite where Arkansas was the first
state in the country implementing something. And then I had eight or
10 examples where we were the second or the third state in the
country. And I would always say, I'm prouder of the places where we
were second or third, even though we were first, because it proves
that the states are the laboratories of democracy, that we could
learn from one another, and that we could move things. We weren't
too proud to seek out new ideas wherever we could find t h e m , if they
made sense for our people, and implement them.
One of the things I keep trying to do here is to always
�have enough new people coming in to keep the idea quotient high and
to make sure that all the people here, like Bruce Reed in Domestic
Policy, that they're always talking to people outside the White House
to try to make sure that w e ' v e always got ideas coming in, and then
whatever I think up.
Let me give you one little specific idea, example. I'm
very concerned about the fact -- when people think about this
business of intergenerational responsibility and how we're going to
go into the new century, both providing for the retirement of the
baby boom generation and doing it in a way that doesn't soak up the
incomes and the capacity of our children to support our grandchildren
and to invest in the future, most of the thought that's given is
given t o , well, what should be done to stabilize Social Security to
make sure it's there. But the truth is, Social Security is only a
threshold for living for the vast majority of seniors. And yet only
about half the American people are saving for their retirement.
N o w , in the first five years we've been here, the first
important thing we did was to try to protect retirement savings that
were endangered, which we did at the end of ' 9 4 w i t h the legislation
that w e ' d worked on that saved 8.5 million people's pensions and
stabilized 4 0 million others.
And the second thing we did was to make the 401 (k) plans
more functionally useful to people w h o were changing jobs. And
interestingly enough, I got that idea from a letter that a guy I grew
up w i t h wrote me because he was talking about how it took him nine
months to transfer his 401 (k) plan and what the problems were. So we
worked w i t h Congress. It turned out there were a lot of people in
Congress in both parties that were interested in this same sort of
thing, so we got together and we did that. But still only about half
the American people are saving for their retirements.
So I've been soliciting ideas. I saw a couple of -- I
don't want to quote the competition, but there were a couple of
editorials sort of on both sides of the issue in USA Today the other
day about whether the right way to go was to expand 401 (k) more and
then there was an opposing saying, no, it's inevitably titled too
much t o w a r d upper-income retirees. But we had a whole discussion the
other day about what the next steps were in addition to whatever we
might do on Social Security reform to get more people to save for
their o w n retirement and to empower them to do so, and then to
protect the savings once they're made.
So those are the kinds of things that we do around here,
and there is a lot of talk - I don't know how many times, probably
three times a week I read a story in the paper or I see an article in
a magazine or something, and I just send it to Rahm, and I say, we
need to have somebody start working this idea, see if there is
something here t h a t ' s -- something we ought to do.
Q
My question follows a little bit from that. Rahm
will correct me if I'm w r o n g , but you have roughly 1,142 days left in
�office.
THE PRESIDENT: A thousand days plus, yes.
Q
A thousand days plus. You have very healthy
approval ratings, the best economy in a generation or longer -- no
more campaigns to run for Bill Clinton. What are you going to do
w i t h that time? What is the second term going to be remembered for?
You talked a little about Social Security in the upper case sense
- I ' v e gotten some lectures about lower case social security. Are
you going to tackle entitlements, or are you going to try and knit
together all the things you've been talking about for six years?
THE PRESIDENT: Both. That is, when I ran in ' 9 1 , I
made a decision that was a huge personal decision for me to undertake
a rigorous campaign and to leave a job that I loved and a life that I
loved very m u c h , because I felt that we had no strategy for moving
our country into the 21st century, and that the consequence of that
was stagnation and drift and division. And I wanted to change that.
I have not -- presidents are the custodians of the time
in which they live as well as the instruments of the visions and
dreams they have. So the first thing I had to start w i t h was, you
k n o w , we d o n ' t have a war, we don't have a depression, we don't have
a cold war, but what we do have is a breathtaking change going on as
the economy and the societies in which we live become more
globalized, as the information technology revolution continues to
accelerate and as the world faces a whole new set of security threats
as well as opportunities, and, as ordinary people see this, in terms
of change that is both hopeful and threatening at the same time.
N o w , that is the new reality that, as far as we can see
n o w , will dominate the lives of our people for more than a
generation. We have no reason to believe that these structural
changes are likely to abate anytime soon.
So I came to the American people and I said, look, we
need to have a new approach. First we have to have a strategy to
provide opportunity for everybody who is responsible enough to work
for it. Secondly, w e have to figure out how, w i t h all these changes
going on and pulls, if you will, both beyond and within our national
borders, we're going to preserve our American community, our nation
as one America. And the third thing we have to do is to figure out
how w e ' r e going to maintain our leadership for peace and freedom and
prosperity.
And so everything that I laid
new philosophy of government which
something about the deficit -- we had
years, w e had to do something about
from our investment responsibilities.
out, including having a
would -- because we had to do
quadrupled the debt in 12
it, but we couldn't walk away
So I said -- the first thing I tried to do was
articulate a new vision of government that was not something for
�nothing and not everybody for himself, but a government that would
get everybody the tools and conditions they need to make the most of
their o w n lives - career, family, community, country. And
everything I've done has sort of f l o w n out of that.
And I think that, for me, the next 1,100 days I think
will be just as exciting as the five years that have just passed and
we'll be building on that. Now, you have to -- you know, things come
up, like the Mexican financial crisis came up -- things present
themselves and you deal w i t h t h e m . But they should be dealt within
the context of what w e ' v e done. So in that context, let's just talk
about some of the things that I think we should be doing.
First of all, we made a good beginning this year on our
education agenda, particularly what was done to open the doors of
college to all Americans which is the most signal achievement in
educational opportunity in higher education in 50 years. But we have
more to do. W e ' v e w o n the initial battles, but we're not there on
the national standards in testing; we're not finished w i t h providing
educational technology to all the schools. I still believe we should
be working to try to deal w i t h the infrastructure of our educational
institutions, even though we didn't succeed on that.
I think that it is very important to identify school
districts that are, on balance, not functioning well, and try to
create an entirely different environment w i t h more school choice,
more charter schools, end of social promotion, adequate use of
standards in testing. The substance of the announcement I made
yesterday at the Akron t o w n meeting was I wanted to create
educational opportunities zones where we would basically support
communities that were willing to do something like what Chicago's
involved in n o w , so there's a whole education agenda out there.
In addition to that, I think we have to recognize that
we have to do more for adults. As you know, I strongly disagree w i t h
folks in either party w h o don't support the fast track issue, but one
of the underlying things there is that you can show I think that
there are more winners than losers in this economy, but there's a
sense that people w h o don't do well don't get enough help quickly
enough in a meaningful fashion to expand the winner's circle and to
be part of this move into the future.
For four years in Republican and Democratic Congresses
alike, and almost for five years n o w , I've tried to collapse all
these district government training programs into a G.I. Bill of
Rights for American workers so we could basically create a system of
lifetime learning that would be immediate, quick, efficient and
relevant to the prospects of people all over America, so that that's
a security they know they always have that they'd be able to get
that.
So there's a big education agenda out there. The second
thing I think we have to do is to continue to work on helping
families balance work and family. I'm very proud of what w e ' v e done
�w i t h family leave, w i t h the earned income tax credit, w i t h the
minimum wage, w i t h tougher child support enforcement - all these
things have helped to reward people w h o are struggling to be good
parents and effective workers. And I'm proud of what we did on child
care and the welfare reform bill. But we need to do more there, w i t h
a broader family leave and a number of other issues.
The third thing I'm interested in is this whole idea of
our responsibilities across the generation for the health of our
people. So w e ' r e about to have this Medicare reform commission to
look at w h a t can be done to add more life to the Medicare trust fund
and structure it in a way that will guarantee quality affordable
health care to people w h o are Medicare eligible.
I think, in addition to that, I think we should take on
the issue of the long-term stability of the Social Security system
and, as I said earlier, ways that we can provide supplemental
opportunities for people to save for their o w n retirement, so they'll
have Social Security as a threshold, but have something on top of
that.
I think we have to look at ways to continue to expand
health care coverage. We have to implement this - what we did in
this budget, to provide health care coverage to 5 million more kids
in working families. But there's still 5 million kids out there
w i t h o u t insurance; there are a lot of young people that don't have
affordable options. And maybe the biggest problem that you see, w i t h
more and more people taking early retirement, there are a lot of
people between my age and their qualification for Medicare that lose
their job-related health insurance and can't afford to get anything
else. And y o u ' d be amazed - I mean, I've taken a little
good-natured ribbing for having a way for the people w h o I grew up
w i t h to have a way to write me at the White House - I got a letter
just the other day from a woman w h o was in my high school class; her
husband got sick and took early retirement, he's got a pretty decent
retirement but they can't afford health insurance. And this is a
bigger and bigger problem for Americans.
So I'm very interested in this whole issue of health
care, affordable health care coverage. I think we should adopt a
patient's bill of rights. I'm going to fight very hard for it. I
think we worked hard to reconcile all the interest there - you know,
we had health care providers, we had businesses, we had labor groups,
we had consumer groups, and I think it's a good solid document.
So, anyway, there's that whole issue. And I think we
ought to move on -- we ought to try to do some more on child care affordable, save, quality child care. That's more on the working
family t h i n g , but I forgot to mention it. I still think - I go into
crowd after c r o w d after c r o w d , even upper-income crowds, everybody
will acknowledge that if they have school-age children they have felt
some conflict - and I bet every reporter you know with a school-age
child has felt some conflict between their responsibilities at work
and responsibilities at home. Now, you can't make all that go away.
�but at least people ought not to be just torn up and upset all the
time, worried about how they're taking care of their kids and whether
they're doing that right.
In the environmental area, I intend to spend a lot of
time in the next three years on three things at least -- first, the
climate change issue, which I believe is very serious. I am
convinced that we can demonstrate to the American people that we can
substantially reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and fulfill our
global environmental responsibilities as well as our responsibilities
to our o w n people w i t h o u t giving up economic g r o w t h , but it will
require a very disciplined, organized, coordinated effort to do it.
So I intend to do that. We still haven't passed the
Superfund reauthorization and we still have too many toxic waste
sites out there that are really causing a problem that is not only
environmental but is economic to the places where they exist. We've
got to continue -- w e ' v e got to keep working until we get that done.
And the third thing that I'm very interested in is to
continue to work in this food safety area where I think -- if you
imagine over the next 2 0 years, it is inconceivable that you w o n ' t
have more and more and more volumes of food crossing national lines
in trade, and we have to be able to guarantee to the American people
that we have a safe food system. I think that's terribly important.
Finally, in this whole area, I would very much like to
see something done to even go further than we have w i t h biomedical
research. I do believe that in scientific terms, the last 50 years
will be seen as an age of physics and an age of space exploration. I
think the next 5 0 years will very likely to be characterized
predominantly as an age of biology and the exploration of the human
organism, especially w i t h the completion of the human genome project,
which I think will literally explode what we know about how to deal
w i t h health issues.
So there will be a lot there to do. Let me just mention
a couple of other things. Our race initiative here I think needs to
be seen in the context also of what I have tried to do since I got
here on citizen service, the whole idea of AmeriCorps, participating
in the President's Summit on Service, all that. My goal w i t h that is
not only to have some policy prescriptions which will help, some of
which I've outlined, and to help people try to come to terms w i t h the
things that w e ' r e fighting about like affirmative action, but in a
larger sense, to create an ethic of service across racial lines so
that w h e n we begin this new century and when I leave office and go
off into the sunset, the typical American will have at least three
opportunities for constructive engagement w i t h people w i t h other
races -- one at w o r k , one at school and one in community service
working on common problems.
So I intend to try to work to sort of integrate all
that. And finally, I've got a huge foreign policy agenda for the
next three years, as you know. And you didn't ask me about that, but
�I mean, basically w e have an area that w e ' v e -- the momentary impasse
over fast track notwithstanding, I think w e ' v e got to try to create a
global system where the democracies of the world are cooperating more
w i t h shared markets. I think it's good for our o w n prosperity and
it's good for t h e m . And w e can do it in a way that elevates
environmental and labor standards in that's accompanied by a more
aggressive program here to help people who are hurt get readjusted.
You have to keep in mind, in the last five years we have
more than doubled the amount of money being spent on worker training
already. And we are now kind of setting up a system within the
federal government, which we should have done earlier -- I'll take
responsibility for that; we should have done it earlier, but we're
working hard to set it up -- modeled on what we did w i t h communities
that had military bases close, to try to deal w i t h communities that
have dislocations from trade, so we can move in a hurry.
But I think we have to continue the trade agenda. I
think we -- I hope we can get the Senate to support the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty. We're going to have a protocol at the Biological
Weapons Convention which will build on what we did w i t h the Chemical
Weapons Convention, which was ratified this year by the Congress, to
help to strengthen our hand in dealing w i t h the biological and
chemical weapons fight.
I'm going to China to continue to try to work out our
approach w i t h t h e m , which is engagement w i t h integrity, and I think
it's working well. I hope to have an impact, a positive impact on
the difficulties between Greece and Turkey, and relations between
India and Pakistan. I intend to go to India and Pakistan next year
if all goes well. I hope to activate our Africa Trade Initiative,
and I'm going to Africa.
And I feel very good that we are in better shape than we
were six, eight months ago w i t h our peace efforts in Bosnia. I'd
like to see them successfully concluded. I think w e ' v e got a good
chance n o w to see a successful peace in Northern Ireland because of
w h a t ' s going on there. And I'd like to see, if Russia ratifies START
II. I'd like to go back to President Yeltsin and finish the START
III process as we continue to dramatically lower the nuclear threat.
So I feel pretty good about those things. I do believe
we are going to have to face very clearly our responsibilities to see
that economic policy and foreign policy have to be integrated. If
you look at what I've been doing in the last f e w days over the
Thanksgiving holiday, working on the Asian financial problems, you
k n o w , trying to set up a system for dealing w i t h that; working w i t h
the Japanese to try to think about the long-term implications. We've
got to develop a bipartisan majority, a substantial majority
committed to the proposition that our o w n welfare requires us to try
to stabilize and promote g r o w t h in other parts of the world because
it helps us to do it, and it maintains the march of democracy, and it
is essential to our maintaining world leadership. So I intend to
work a lot on that.
�Q
Given all that's on your plate that you just
described, w h y do you think there is a sense out there among several
people we talked t o , said openly, in all wings of the Democratic
Party they described a sense of what they see as aimlessness in this
White House?
THE PRESIDENT: Beats me. I mean, look what we did this
year. We got the balanced budget agreement through, which had the
biggest increase in child health since ' 6 5 , the biggest increase in
aid to education since ' 6 5 , the biggest increase since the G.I. Bill
in aid to higher education. We reformed the FDA to move drugs to
market more quickly, and medical devices. We had a huge adoption
reform bill, which is an issue that I care passionately about and
that Hillary has worked on for years. And we had NATO expansion. We
had this China issue, I think, put on a very much more solid footing.
We had the Chemical Weapons Convention ratified. There is a lot
going on this year. And there will be a lot going on next year. And
there will be a lot going on in ' 9 9 , and a lot going on in 2 0 0 0 .
You k n o w , I can't answer that. I honestly don't know
w h y that is. But all I can tell you is, I'll do the very best I can
to disabuse them of it every day I'm here.
Q
Did you think it was inappropriate what Gephardt
said the other day at Harvard about small ideas and the leadership
only nibbling around the edges of big problems in this country?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I didn't read his speech, so I
can't comment on that, but I'll talk about small ideas. Actually, I
told Rahm he ought to take up a list -- I told him about a month ago,
I said, you ought to get a list together of all these so-called small
ideas of ours and let's see whether the American people think they're
small ideas.
Let me deal w i t h big versus small. First of all, the
biggest crisis w e faced when I became President was that the country
was paralyzed because we had quadrupled the debt in four years and we
had interest rates that were too high to permit a restoration of
solid g r o w t h , and we had a projected $300 billion deficit, designed
to get worse.
Restoring fiscal responsibility to America is not a
small idea; it is a big idea. And the deficit had been cut by 92
percent before the balanced budget agreement was adopted. I don't
think that's a small idea.
I think the idea of having the national government on
the side of an anticrime policy that would actually lower the crime
rate to its lowest rate in 2 4 years, of putting 1 0 0 , 0 0 0 police on the
street, taking assault weapons off the street, and the Brady Bill,
which was responsible for keeping over 2 5 0 , 0 0 0 people from getting
hand guns because they have criminal records and mental health issues
-- I don't think that's a small idea.
�I think the idea of having a welfare reform bill that
changed 6 0 years of assumptions because the welfare population had
changed that if people were in distress they should just get a check
until they got themselves out of it, to a system that says, no, if
you're able-bodied you've got to get yourself out of it within a
certain amount of time, but we're not going to take food or medicine
away from your kids and we're going to give you child care and we're
going to give you education -- I think that's a big idea.
Those are just three big ideas. I think that this
climate change issue is a big idea. I think that what we're doing
w i t h NATO and Russia is a big idea. I think what we're doing w i t h
China is a big idea. So I think that these are not small ideas.
N o w , let's take some of the small ideas. Today - t w o
days ago, a huge headline in the paper: Curfews Lower Juvenile
Crime. We were out there all last year trying to promote curfews,
promoting school uniforms because they lower some crime.
A big part of what the presidency is, it seems to me, in
a society of free people, w i t h limited government, is elevating ideas
that, if generalized throughout the society, would have a very
positive impact. For all those kids that aren't going to jail, and
for all those people that are safer n o w , the expansion of curfews or
the expansion of school uniforms is not a small thing; it is a big
thing.
We took $ 1 , 4 0 0 off the average closing costs for people
w h o are in HUD-financed housing. That may sound like a small idea.
If you're a new family struggling to get a home, that's not a small
idea; t h a t ' s a big idea. And now we are at an all-time high in
homeownership in America. For the first time we're at two-thirds
homeownership. That's a big thing; that's not a little thing.
I think the fact that we worked to set up this national
nonprofit group to combat teen pregnancy and that the teen pregnancy
is going d o w n - I don't think that's a little thing; I think that's
a big thing.
So I just have different views about w h a t ' s a little or
a big idea. I think that real people think this stuff matters. And
maybe I spent too much time as a governor in a state where I related
personally to people from all walks of life, that I don't have the
appropriate discrimination between big and small, but I think that a
lot of these so-called small ideas make a big difference.
W h a t ' s the tobacco thing? When we took on tobacco for
the first time, was that big or small? I think it's big. Of course,
now it involves big dollars. It's another one of the things, by the
w a y , I didn't mention, that I'm hoping we resolve in ' 9 8 .
But maybe you ought to give me a list of the so-called
small ideas and I could comment on t h e m , the others. But I don't
�think they're small. And I don't
pursue big structural things, but
that, if generalized, would have
lives, I think it's good to pursue
think that we should -- we should
if there is also some specific idea
a big positive impact in people's
it.
After I went out to Long Beach, California, on that
school uniform deal, Long Beach was literally flooded w i t h requests
on school uniforms, and there was an article in the New York Times, I
think not very long ago, saying that something like 2 0 percent of the
school kids in America now are in school districts w i t h school
uniform polices -- just exploded in three years. And that basically
the experience is that discipline and order improve, and violence and
disruption go d o w n , and the student performance is better and dropout
rates drop. That's a huge thing. That's not little, that's big.
Q
To change gears a little bit, earlier this week you
had a discussion w i t h Chairman Archer, about taxes I presume. Are we
going to be hearing something from you about some sort of change,
reform, reduction in the tax code, and for what purpose?
THE PRESIDENT: He asked me if I would meet w i t h him. I
met w i t h him about a year ago and we talked about his ideas about the
tax code. And he wanted to bring a gentleman in w h o was an expert
in, you know, basically his idea that we ought to have some sort of
national sales tax. And I said I would be glad to talk to him, and I
had a fascinating hour's conversation w i t h him.
I have drawn no conclusion yet about what I would be
for, but let me say, my objectives on taxes are -- and my questions
about all tax reform is: Is it fair to average American taxpayers?
Is it realistic that you can implement the proposal, whatever it is?
Will it be good for the economy as a whole; will it support our
continuing g r o w t h of our economy? And will it be simpler? Can we do
that?
N o w , since w e ' v e been here, w e ' v e done a lot of work to
make it easier for people to interact w i t h the tax code. More than
half the taxpayers now fill out that simplest little f o r m . Millions
of people can file electronically w h o couldn't before. We've done
what we could to really improve the system as it is, based on
progressive income taxation.
So at the end of the year, every year, we do this.
We're open to new ideas, and I wanted to listen, but I didn't draw
any conclusion from it and I haven't reached a decision yet about
w h a t , if anything else, I might recommend in this area.
I will say this -- we had a huge bipartisan vote at the
last of this last year in the House on a bill to further improve the
functioning of the IRS, which I hope the Senate will take up and pass
at its earliest opportunity in early ' 9 8 . That would make a big
difference to a lot of American taxpayers, and I hope they will at
least do that.
�Q
But can we expect to see some form of tax reform or
tax relief in the next budget in the State of the Union?
THE PRESIDENT: No, I wouldn't say
should give you any false expectations there.
can't say no. I w o u l d n ' t rule out the fact that
something that I think would w o r k , but I don't
griddle as you are doing this interview.
-- I don't think I
I can't say yes, I
I might find
have an idea on the
But one thing, let me say, I have a different view about
this than some people do. We do not have a surplus now. We do not
have a surplus n o w . We have a deficit now. It's a tiny one, and
it's less than 10 percent of what it was when I took office, but the
people w h o say we have a surplus, I think it's very important that we
understand what they're saying. They're saying that the deficit has
gone d o w n more rapidly than it was predicted to go d o w n when we
signed - when I signed the balanced budget bill and when it passed
back last summer.
Therefore, some people think that we should go back to
the curve that we predicted last summer and spend all the money
between where we are now and where we are then. I think that is a
questionable course. I hope that we can continue to grow at 3
percent a year, and private sector g r o w t h has been over 3.5 percent a
year since I've been President. I hope we can continue to do that.
But I think that it is not prudent for us to go spending a lot of
money that we haven't really realized yet. So I think we have to be
very careful -- this so-called spending the surplus - it is not a
surplus that is being spent; it is the difference between the
projected deficit line today and the one that existed last summer.
And if we hold tight and save all of that money or most
of that money, and show some discipline here, we might get a balanced
budget a lot quicker than they thought, and then we can decide what
to do. But I think we need to be somewhat careful before we just go
spend all this money that hasn't materialized.
Q
Just to be clear on something you mentioned -- we
have one more just to try to clarify something. Are you saying you
might endorse a national sales tax?
THE PRESIDENT: No, I didn't say that at all. I said
that you should draw no -- he didn't even ask me if I was going to
endorse a national sales tax. John asked if this meant that I had
decided that I was going to offer a tax reform idea in ' 9 8 , and I
said I hadn't decided to offer any tax reform idea in ' 9 8 . But I
think that we should be open to ideas and listen to arguments.
Is it fair? Is it progressive? Will it work? Will it
be more simple and efficient? I think those are legitimate
questions. And Mr. Archer asked me if I'd have the meeting, and I
said of course I w o u l d , and I did. I did not decide that I would
endorse it after the meeting.
�Q
Can I just quickly ask you -- we can't leave here
without asking about golf because many people that meet w i t h you said
that you talk a lot about golf, but even to the degree where some
said it's sort of a preoccupation, where it's filling your thinking
in a way that polls used to during the campaign and so f o r t h . And
they're worried that you may even be going too far in your golf talk.
We've heard that from Tom Daschle and other people, and Senator
Breaux said, it's golf, golf, golf; that's all he talks about.
THE PRESIDENT: Almost the only people that ever
complain about it are people that don't play golf. (Laughter.) And
I try not to say anything about it around t h e m , but sometimes they're
in crowds ~ I think that's a -- that's not so. For one thing -- one
of the things that I've learned is that anything a President says is
subject to being multiplied by five -- (laughter) -- or 10. I'm
interested in it, and it's f u n . It's just a way I get away from it.
And when I talk about it, it's just a way I get away from it. If I
were really serious about it, I'd have a lower handicap and a
different approach. (Laughter.) But I like it; it's a lot of fun
for me. It relieves the pressure of the job. But it's not -- I
don't think that I'm -- it's not fair to say I'm obsessed w i t h it.
Just like -- I think even that polling thing, to be
fair, if I had been a completely poll-driven President, I would not
have been willing to pass an economic plan that could only pass by
one vote. Or since I know how to read polls and I know that it's not
just the numbers but the intensity, I wouldn't have been the first
President to take on the NRA, or help Mexico, or do Bosnia, or do
Haiti, or do any number of other things w e ' v e done here.
I think these polls are interesting and they're
important. They tell you what the people w h o hired you think, at any
given moment in time. And they shouldn't be completely disregarded.
But on the other hand, they're not a very effective guide for action
in a dynamic w o r l d . You have to understand what really matters is
what the condition of the country is when you're finished, or when
you're up for election, or whatever. And if an administration in a
dynamic world really made decisions just based on polls, what they
would find is it was ultimately self-defeating because by the time
they were held accountable, the polls had been changed.
You always really have to -- the right thing to do in
making decisions like this is to ask, first of all, what do you think
the right thing to do is. Secondly, where do you want to be at the
end of the road; when you're finished what do you want the results to
be? And t h e n , thirdly, is there a compelling way in a
free
society you can sell it to the American people so that they will stay
w i t h y o u , because it is important to have popular support because
that's the w a y democracy works. And polls can be very helpful in
that regard, but they are a very poor guide to deciding what you're
going to do t o m o r r o w , because the circumstances tomorrow may be
entirely different than they will be six months or a year from now,
particularly if you take the easy way out now. You wind up in more
trouble t o m o r r o w .
�We took the tough decisions in ' 9 3 and ' 9 4 , and I regret
very badly that some of our people paid w i t h their seats in Congress
-- on the economic plan and on taking on the gun lobby and all that.
But the country is in much better shape now and I think we laid the
foundation for a much stronger, progressive politics and a much
stronger Democratic Party into the 21st century because we did that
and that's part of our party's legacy.
Q
Have you had any success in converting anyone in
the Senate on Bill Lann Lee?
THE PRESIDENT: No, but I think it's a real mistake. I
think they made a real mistake on that. And I still don't even know
-- you k n o w , I've had a pretty good working relationship and a very
candid relationship w i t h both Senator Lott and Senator Hatch, and I
must say, I'm just - I'm really disappointed. I just don't -- I
just think it was a mistake and I don't even think it makes political
sense for t h e m .
This guy, his life story, his life's work, he made it
unambiguously clear that he was going to enforce the law as it is
written and interpreted by the Supreme Court; that he would recuse if
the specific California issue came up. I mean, this is a -- they
just didn't make much of a case for being against this guy. It
looked to me like whoever was in this kind of conservative bloc there
just decided he was going to take the fall. And I think it's a
terrible mistake. I think he's a very able, good man.
Q
Are you going to recess-appoint him?
THE PRESIDENT: I'm not prepared to make a statement on
that one w a y or the other yet.
Q
Tell them next week?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, that depends in part on -- it's
not just my decision to make, you know. There's more involved in
that than me. But I'm not prepared to say one way or the other yet.
I'll just tell you I think they made a terrible mistake.
Q
Is he willing to do it? Mr. Lee, come here w i t h
that sort of uncertainty?
THE PRESIDENT: I don't know the answer to that for
sure. You'd have to - somebody here may know the answer, so I'm not
trying to mislead y o u .
Q
Somebody here does.
THE PRESIDENT: I'm not trying to mislead you on that.
I've been working on this -- most of what I've been doing the last
f e w days has been on the financial issues in Asia, so I don't know.
�Q
Are you worried about a backlash from that and the
United States being seen as sort of a global economic superpower
dictator -THE PRESIDENT: In Asia? No, because of the way we did
it. Keep in mind, the Korean plan is consistent w i t h the agreement
that all the finance ministers in the Asian Pacific region made -Q
In Manila.
THE PRESIDENT: In Manila. And instead of Japan and the
United States coming in and bailing -- just doing the bailout
ourselves, and dictating the terms, this was part of an agreed-upon
negotiation w i t h the IMF where we and others came in in a supporting
role.
Did we say that there ought to be strong terms? Yes, we
did do that. But again, that's just like what we had to do in ' 9 3 .
It would have been a lot easier for us to have an easier plan in ' 9 3 ,
but it would have had less satisfactory results. Because we had a
tough plan we got interest rates way d o w n , we got g r o w t h way up.
Look at what Mexico did, because they took the tough way
out. They took a terrible beating for a year and a half; t w o years
later they were in much better shape than anybody ever dreamed and
the government enjoyed strong support.
So the only thing that the United States did. Secretary
Rubin, was to say, look, Korea has no stronger supporter than the
United States and we believe in its economic potential and its
economic future. But we want the plan to be real. And that's what
the IMF said they wanted and that's what we got. And I'm very
hopeful.
Q
Has Louis Freeh made it harder to make the case
that campaign finance reform charges that remain are essentially
political?
THE PRESIDENT: I don't think so.
END
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Subject: ABC: This Week, 1/25/98
Message Creation Date was at 25-JAN-1998 1 3 : 5 2 : 0 0
ABC This Week
Aired on JANUARY 2 5 , 1998
Interviews w i t h WILLIAM GINSBURG, ATTORNEY FOR MONICA LEWINSKY
SENATOR TRENT LOTT, REPRESENTATIVE HENRY HYDE (R-IL),
PAUL BEGALA, ADVISER TO PRESIDENT CLINTON,
and EVAN T H O M A S , NEWSWEEK CORRESPONDENT
TV MODERATOR: From ABC News, THIS WEEK w i t h Sam and Cokie, and featuring
George Will.
DONALDSON: This week, crisis in the White House. Bill Clinton's presidency
threatened by an alleged affair w i t h White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILLIAM J . CLINTON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There's not
a sexual relationship. That isn't accurate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VERNON JORDAN, ADVISER TO THE PRESIDENT: At no time did I ever say, suggest
or intimate to her that she should lie.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: Charges of obstruction of justice and perjury hang in the balance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KENNETH STARR, WHITEWATER INDEPENDENT COUNSEL: Our job is to gather facts
and to evaluate those facts and to get at the t r u t h .
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BOB BENNETT, ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT CLINTON: Mr. Starr seems hell-bent on
getting President Clinton.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTS: We'll hear from one of the president's closest advisers, Paul
Begala; from Monica Lewinsky's attorney, William Ginsburg; and political
reaction from Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House Judiciary Committee
Chairman Henry Hyde.
DONALDSON: And our roundtable w i t h ABC News Analyst George Stephanopoulos
and Bill Kristol.
ROBERTS: We have new revelations in the alleged affair between President
Clinton and 21-year-old at the time intern Monica Lewinsky. We will get right
into those revelations.
Sam.
�DONALDSON: Right, Cokie. Let's go to Jackie Judd who has these revelations.
She broke this story for us, as you know, last Wednesday.
Jackie.
JUDD: Thanks, Sam.
ABC News has learned that Ken Starr's investigation has moved well beyond
Monica Lewinsky's claims and taped conversations that she had an affair w i t h
President Clinton. Several sources have told us that in the spring of 1996, the
president and Lewinsky were caught in an intimate encounter in a private area
of the White House. It is not clear whether the witnesses were Secret Service
agents or White House staff.
Soon after Jthe alleged incident, Lewinsky was moved from her job at the
White House to the Pentagon.
This development is important because until now there had only been
circumstantial evidence of an affair and Lewinsky's claims on the tapes.
Although obviously it is not illegal to have an affair, it does undercut Mr.
Clinton's reported denial of a sexual relationship made under oath when he was
deposed by lawyers for Paula Jones. Additionally, it underscores how Ken Starr
is collecting evidence and witnesses to build a case against the president -- a
case that would not hinge entirely on the word of Monica Lewinsky.
Sam.
DONALDSON: Thanks, Jackie. Now joining us is President Clinton's close
adviser, Paul Begala. Welcome.
BEGALA: Good morning.
DONALDSON: Good to see you. And joining us as always with the questioning,
George Will of ABC News.
Mr. Begala, have you talked personally to the president? The things you're
about to tell us -- do you know that from his o w n lips?
BEGALA: Well, he told the whole country that these allegations are false,
that he never had a sexual relationship w i t h this w o m a n , and that he never
asked anybody to do anything other than tell the t r u t h . He told the whole
country that. He told the Cabinet that.
DONALDSON: So you have not personally talked to him?
BEGALA: Well, I've talked to him. But I cannot, because of the odd world we
live in, be a fact finder because I'm not his private attorney in this. And I
will find myself, like many of my friends, w i t h hundreds of thousands of
dollars of legal bills, because we have here an independent counsel firing off
subpoenas as if he's got an Uzi and running up huge legal bills on people just
for having been in a meeting.
So I am in the odd position of being -- of required to defend my guy. I
believe him completely, and I know he's telling the t r u t h . I can tell you what
he told the American people.
DONALDSON: Right. I mean, I think that many people saw his interview, for
instance, w i t h Jim Lehrer of the Newshour. So you're
basing w h a t you're going to tell us on the fact that he has said publicly
that he had no sexual relationship with this young w o m a n . But he has not said
that to you?
BEGALA: Right. Well, of course, he said it to me. He said it to the American
people as well. But I'm in a different position, OK.
I've been through a lot w i t h this guy. I've worked for him off and on for
six years. As we say in Texas, it's not my first rodeo.
So like - you know, like Dale Evans w i t h the Bible, God wrote it, I believe
it, and that settles it. It ought not have to settle it for the cynical press
or the skeptical public. There is an investigation. It will clear the president.
Let's everybody take a deep breath. Let's conduct this investigation not
�based on leaks and lies and manufacturing evidence and dropping bomb shells.
DONALDSON: What evidence has been manufactured?
BEGALA: When you wire someone and you send them in -- this was not
discovered evidence. This was created evidence. When you hook a wire to
somebody, and you go in and you say, well, generate some evidence here,
generate some talk, generate some gossip, and then you turn and drop the -drop a dime in a phone and call the press, that's not the kind of investigation
I think the American people need.
WILL: This...
ROBERTS: Mr. Begala, you're a married man, right?
BEGALA: I am.
ROBERTS: Would you -- or maybe more importantly, would your wife -- think
that any physical relationship between a married man and a woman not his wife
was a proper relationship?
BEGALA: The president has said this is not a sexual relationship.
ROBERTS: No, I just asked you a different question. Any physical
relationship between a married man and a woman not his wife, is that a proper
relationship?
BEGALA: He has said that he did not have an improper relationship w i t h this
woman.
ROBERTS: No, that's not what I'm asking you.
BEGALA: OK.
ROBERTS: I'm asking you your view. Is any physical relationship between a
married man and a man not his wife a proper relationship?
BEGALA: No sexual relationship occurred here. And I'm not sure what you're
trying to get at.
My o w n view, I think -- I think you know, for one thing, you know -- I may
be a divorced man if I take any more weekend deer hunts, leave my wife w i t h -I have three boys.
But I'm not quite sure what you're getting at.
ROBERTS: Well, what I'm...
BEGALA: He has said that this is not true. There is an investigation that
will bear that out. And just like all these others we've seen for six years...
ROBERTS: What about -- what about intimate telephone conversations between a
married man and a woman not his wife?
BEGALA: Are we going t o . . .
ROBERTS: I'm asking your view.
BEGALA: OK.
ROBERTS: Is that a proper relationship between a married man and
a woman?
BEGALA: I -- I think that we have now descended into a point where we are
going to shut d o w n the recovery. We are going to shut d o w n the government. We
are going to shut d o w n everything to start asking...
ROBERTS: But you're not answering my question.
BEGALA: ... to start asking about whether somebody made a phone call to
somebody. The president has said, I didn't have a sexual relationship w i t h this
w o m a n , I did not ask anybody to do anything other than tell the t r u t h . There is
an investigation going on. And it will clear him.
Now, if we're going to shut d o w n the whole country about that, then I think
that's unwise. There's an awful lot that we can do and need to do. And there is
an investigation that ought to be professionally conducted...
ROBERTS: So you're saying that you don't want to answer whether those are
proper relationships or not.
BEGALA: I've said he didn't have an improper relationship.
�ROBERTS: But you didn't answer the question of whether those relationships
you would consider improper.
BEGALA: Well, he didn't -- let me be clear -- he didn't have any
relationship w i t h her that I would consider improper.
ROBERTS: OK.
BEGALA: And he's told the American people that.
WILL: And you believe him.
BEGALA: Yes.
WILL: So let's go back to some earlier rodeos, as you put them.
BEGALA: Yes.
WILL: In the past, people w h o ' v e worked for Mr. Clinton have responded to
w o m e n ' s accusations against him by questioning their character and their
motives. Paula Jones was said to have an ideological motive because she
appeared to make her accusations at
a conservative gathering. She appeared perhaps to be in a position to make some
money.
Gennifer Flowers was getting money from a tabloid newspaper.
Can you suggest a character flaw or a political motive that would animate
Monica Lewinsky?
BEGALA: No.
I'm not here to question whether -- to question her motives.
WILL: But you must have some idea — some puzzlement as to w h y she's saying
these things.
BEGALA: But they're -- but -- there will be an investigation that will
determine this.
WILL: But are you puzzled?
BEGALA: I -- I am not going to engage in any kind of psychoanalysis of
someone I've never met. I'm just not going to do it. And I'm not going to start
hurling around reckless charges about motives. I'm not going to do it.
WILL: OK.
When Gennifer Flowers made her accusations...
BEGALA: Yes.
WILL: ... the president said that allegation is not true. People are now
worrying about how the president speaks. By that accusation, he may have meant
that the 12-year relationship wasn't true; it may have been 1 1 , may have been
13. That's the w a y the president clipped (ph) an axe (ph).
I want to ask you this: Have you asked the president if those w h o went out
and defended him in 1 9 9 2 , on the grounds that he had no physical relationship
w i t h Gennifer Flowers at all, did you mislead the country?
BEGALA: What he has said to his staff and then those who go out to explain
to the public his positions is that what he said in 1992 and what he said in a
sealed deposition are not inconsistent.
Now, I - apparently I'm the only person who doesn't have access to the
secret sealed court documents. I must not be on the right list of leaks. OK? So
all I know is what is legitimately in the public realm, not it - what is
selectively leaked and characterized.
WILL: Since you say you believe the president, you must believe,
I gather, that in fact he had no sexual relations ever w i t h Gennifer Flowers.
BEGALA: No, I said that he said that what he said in '92 and what he said in
' 9 6 , or ' 9 7 or ' 9 8 , whenever this deposition was, are not inconsistent.
WILL: What did he say in '92?
BEGALA: What he said in ' 9 2 was that the allegations were false and that...
WILL: And by that he meant what?
BEGALA: He meant that the allegations were false. This was a woman that came
�out w i t h a whole host of charges. The whole country took a look at that.
He said, look, I have caused pain in my marriage, I will admit to being not
perfect. Everybody knew what that meant when they voted for him. He did not
come out and say, vote for me because I am pure. He said, vote for me because I
have some good ideas to get the country going.
BEGALA: Excuse me. Let me finish.
I think those ideas are working. And I think that that does animate part of
the attack against him from the right, frustrated at every turn by being unable
to defeat him on this battlefield of ideas.
WILL: People like you are out here defending him. And he's, of course, not
out defending himself...
BEGALA: Right.
WILL: ... for, probably, prudential reasons.
But there are some — there's some information that could be out that isn't.
For example, the White House logs -- w h o came into the White House w h e n . You
push a button to get a printout and you release it. Why have those not been
released?
BEGALA: Well, the attorneys in the office of White House counsel are
generating all of the responses to all of the subpoenas and are going to turn
them over as soon...
DONALDSON: Well, let me take you back to the idea that Kenneth Starr is
manufacturing evidence, generating evidence. It's a standard investigative
issue...
BEGALA: He didn't discover it.
DONALDSON: Well, it's a standard investigative technique that prosecutors
use everywhere to wire people. Are you suggesting that Mr. Starr encouraged
perjury?
BEGALA: No, no, I'm saying he...
DONALDSON: Well, then, how could he manufacture evidence?
BEGALA: ... he took -- he took steps to generate evidence rather than
discovering it. That does happen from time to time. It happens in cases...
DONALDSON: Well, that's -- that's what the police do.
BEGALA: ... involving, you know, Sammy ' ' T h e Bull" Gravano. I mean, we have
a guy now w h o is wiring people to go and tape their friends based on whether or
not...
DONALDSON: What if...
BEGALA: Listen. Wait. Whether or not someone told the truth in a civil
lawsuit that has nothing to do w i t h Whitewater...
DONALDSON: Well, but, it, in fact...
BEGALA: ... a 13-year-old land deal.
DONALDSON: ... if Jackie Judd's report is correct, which we at ABC News
believe or we would not have put it on the air, and there are witnesses that
have seen the president and this young woman in
a intimate act, would you say that that's manufactured evidence?
BEGALA: What - I'll tell you what I would say is that that is a continuing
and troubling, ongoing campaign, of leaks and lies coming from somewhere. And
the last time I checked...
DONALDSON: So you think that reporter is lying...
BEGALA: The last time I checked - the last time I checked it is not legal
for people conducting...
DONALDSON: But he hasn't told you this...
BEGALA: ... a criminal investigation to be leaking to the press...
DONALDSON: You said you haven't talked to the president.
ROBERTS: Do you - if the physical evidence comes forward that this young
�woman has that shows that she had a relationship with the president, do you
continue to believe them?
BEGALA: One of my rules in this is that hypotheticals are the provinces of
fools. And I am not going to enter into any kind of hypotheticals that are
discovered.
ROBERTS: So -- so -- well, let me just ask you this. If the president has
got no problem, w h y doesn't he just come out and talk to the American people?
BEGALA: He has a problem which is called a criminal investigation going on
generated by his partisan political opponents.
DONALDSON: Do you think he's going to resign?
BEGALA: No.
DONALDSON: OK.
ROBERTS: Thank you very much, Mr. Begala.
(LAUGHTER)
DONALDSON: Thanks you for coming.
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERTS: Still -- still to come former intern Monica Lewinsky's lawyer
William Ginsburg.
And next, the Republicans react. The majority leader of the Senate, Trent
Lott, and later House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DONALDSON: Now w i t h us, the majority leader of the United States Senate,
Senator Trent Lott. Welcome.
LOTT: Thank y o u , Sam. Glad to be back.
DONALDSON: Do you believe that this particular scandal and the details that
we have seen publicly may, in fact, cost the president his job?
LOTT: Sam, I think it would be totally inappropriate for me to comment on
that. I don't know what the facts are. My job as majority leader is that I
should be working on the agenda for this year. We should be getting prepared to
address issues -- education, drug, crimes, foreign policy.
DONALDSON: Senator...
LOTT: I'm not -- I'm not going to get into that. I just don't know the facts.
DONALDSON: With all due respect, it sounds to me like you're just
enunciating the rule of the late Lee Atwater, and that rule was, when your
opponents are in the process of destroying themselves, get out of the way.
LOTT: Look, I don't know what the truth is. If it turns out these
allegations are false, the president will be vindicated. If it turns out
they're true, then there is a legal process. There is an independent counsel,
w h i c h , by the w a y , Janet Reno cooperated with in this last week. People seem to
forget that.
That has a process, a way of handling itself. I assume it's not going to
come to us in the Senate. And we have to work on the problems that really do
concern the American people and want us to concentrate on.
DONALDSON: Well, if it turns out these accusations are true, and you assume
it will not come to the Senate, I assume you're telling us that it will be
settled in some other way through resignation.
LOTT: I didn't limit it in anyway. I just don't know what will happen.
ROBERTS: We have an ABC poll that shows that the majority of Americans think
that if the president had an affair with this 21 at the time year old w o m a n ,
that that is not a reason for resignation or impeachment. But if he lied about
it, that is a reason for resignation or impeachment. Do you agree w i t h the
majority of American people?
LOTT: Cokie, I just don't think that I should get into commenting on what
may happen or speculating. You know, you're going to spend two-thirds of this
�show talking about this issue. Shouldn't we talk about the State of the Union
and what we're going to be doing in the Congress this year.
Look, I have personal feelings about it, you know. I certainly am concerned
about the seriousness of the allegations. They cannot be dismissed, and they
will not be. But I'm not going to take time today to get into speculation about
it or commenting on what my o w n personal feelings are.
ROBERTS: You're not going to say whether you agree or disagree?
LOTT: No.
ROBERTS: OK.
The Democrats say that the Republicans are thrilled to have this weakened
president, that this way that you keep him around as long as you can, sort of
the way the Democrats felt about the speaker last year and that that way you
can -- you k n o w , you can have your way.
LOTT: Cokie, you and Sam and George have known me for a long time. I've been
around this city for over 25 years.
No, I'm sad about this. I really do worry about the impact on the country
and on the presidency. Taking aside the persons that's in there now, I worried
about it in Watergate. I always worry about when the presidency is weakened,
either by allegations or truths, if they turn out that way. So I'm not happy
about this.
I think, again, it diverts us from keeping our attention on keeping a
balanced budget, tax relief for working Americans, and helping our children
where they're having problems w i t h education and drugs. That's where I want to
talk.
ROBERTS: Let me ask you one last thing. And that is in areas that you are
concerned about, are you concerned that this is distracting the administration
in terms of Iraq? And do you have any information that Iraq might be getting
away w i t h things while this is going on?
LOTT: I have felt for some time that we needed to be more aggressive in
dealing w i t h Iraq. I felt like this issue should already been dealt w i t h ,
perhaps militarily.
I'm worried now on how it will be interpreted. I hope the administration can
keep calm, and aides that are dealing in this area, like Sandy Berger and
Secretary Cohen, will go forward and do what needs to be done.
But you know it's a distraction. I mean, these decisions cannot be finally
made by the president. Is he in any condition to make the right call?
I have said that I've seen him, you know, go ahead and do the things that
were important to the country when he was under duress before. I hope he can do
that. But you know it's got to be a problem. Iraq, Iran, what happens in
Bosnia, the Middle East situation -- we have real big problems right on the
edge of problems getting worse if we don't do something quickly.
WILL: Do you believe that in the -- this is a speculative question about
presidents in general — that in the contract, so to speak, that exists between
the country and the president, there's a moral turpitude clause, and that when
clause is violated, that's grounds for removing the president?
LOTT: You k n o w , you said it in a very eloquent way. I'd probably put it in a
more, you know, common-sense language. But I think the answer is yes. I think
that the way a president of the United States conducts himself in office does
matter.
WILL: It matters, perhaps, does it not, with Iraq? Is a president guilty in
the eyes of the public of moral turpitude in any position to send young
Americans into harms ways over Iraq, for example?
LOTT: I think that the president, no matter what else might be going on, has
to do as he sees, you know, fit and appropriate to do w h a t ' s necessary for the
�country.
LOTT: I think in that case, you know, it hurts if you lose that moral
authority. But the fact remains we need to take action and rapidly.
WILL: But the country is hurt. I mean, suppose you...
LOTT: No question about it. I mean, the country is hurt even by the
allegations, true or not.
WILL: Which brings me to literally the State of the Union. You're going to
deliver the response to the president's speech. Of course, it's not really a
response. They're all written in advance.
How can you talk about the State of the Union next Tuesday night w i t h o u t
talking about this?
LOTT: Because I think that the people want us to continue on with the
people's business. I mean, regardless of this, the problems of children in
schools exist. We have to deal with that. The problems w i t h the tax burden and
bureaucracy and IRS is out of control, seizing people's property. We cannot
ignore that.
Now here's the other thing about it. We can deal with a lot of these in
Congress. We can go ahead and pass these bills, and hope that the president
will have the good judgment, and the moral turpitude to sign them.
DONALDSON: Senator, we're told that you had conversations perhaps w i t h Mr.
Bowles at the White House or others about whether the State of the Union
address ought to be postponed. Is that correct?
LOTT: I did have a discussion w i t h Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles.
DONALDSON: What was your recommendation?
LOTT: Well, my recommendation was that we go f o r w a r d , that he come and
present the State of the Union. You know, if something -- if other matters
intervene, you know, they'd have to reconsider that, and so would I.
DONALDSON: How will he be received on the floor?
LOTT: Appropriately.
DONALDSON: What does that mean?
LOTT: Well, he is the president of the United States, and we don't know what
the facts are. And so for us to not receive him or receive him in some way
other than cordial w o u l d n ' t be right either.
ROBERTS: But does that imply that there might be something else that might
intervene between now and Tuesday night?
LOTT: No, no, no -- oh, no, no, I don't know. I mean, after what w e ' v e seen
the last week and what continues to happen, you know.
ROBERTS: But I mean, did Mr. Bowles seem to think that something was going
- that there might be some eventuality that would postpone this?
LOTT: No. Our discussion was very brief about, you know, the State of the
Union and some incidental discussion about Iraq. And I will be meeting w i t h . . .
DONALDSON: What did he tell you about Iraq?
LOTT: I said that I hoped that the president would take the necessary action
in Iraq no matter what other distractions might be going on.
DONALDSON: What did Mr. Bowles reply?
LOTT: He said he would - well, I don't want to quote him directly, but the
inference was that he still would try to do what was right for the country.
DONALDSON: Thank y o u , Senator Lott. We appreciate your coming today.
And later, another key Republican, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry
Hyde.
But up next, Monica Lewinsky's lawyer, William Ginsburg.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Welcome, William Ginsburg...
GINSBURG: Thank y o u .
�ROBERTS: ... lawyer for Monica Lewinsky.
You've had quite a f e w days in Washington talking to lawyers, talking to the
press. You've just heard Jackie Judd's report that there are other witnesses,
alleged witnesses, to acts between the president and Ms. Lewinsky.
If that is true, does that make a difference in your ability to get immunity
for Ms. Lewinsky? Does Kenneth Starr have other sources that he can then tap?
GINSBURG: If that is true, I am, on the one hand, upset for the presidency
and the country. On the other hand, I am pleased for my
client, w h o is w h o I represent, because it means the spotlight will come off
of her, and her testimony is no longer that important. And assumptively Judge
Starr and his staff will spend their bullets, their money, pursuing this from a
much more intelligent angle than going after a 24-year-old girl.
ROBERTS: But what does it mean in terms of your negotiations w i t h them to
get her off the hook?
GINSBURG: If they have solid evidence, as Ms. Judd suggested they might, I
suppose they're not going to be offering us immunity, or a promise not to
prosecute. And we will defend our client if they choose to move f o r w a r d .
DONALDSON: Is it true?
GINSBURG: I'm not going to broach the attorney-client privilege, and I would
appreciate it if we could stay away from that. That's a very inviolable right,
to talk to me...
DONALDSON: Absolutely. But we wanted to ask the question.
GINSBURG: Well, you did indeed, and I answered it.
WILL: Your client is supposed to have - these are all suppositions, I
guess, to some extent - had talking points for her friend Ms. Tripp as to what
Ms. Tripp was to say about Kathleen Willey and her allegedly unsolicited sexual
advances from the president.
Have you asked your client and has she told you if she - w h o gave that those talking points to her?
GINSBURG: I will say this, as you heard me say to Mr. Donaldson.
I cannot broach or breach the attorney-client privilege. I will say that the
office of the independent counsel showed me those documents, although they did
not give them to me. I haven't had a chance to analyze them and pick them apart.
And as to whether or not I know where they come f r o m , the answer is an
unequivocal no.
WILL: OK.
So - so therefore you don't know who wrote them either.
GINSBURG: I do not.
WILL: OK.
Now, on - talking to Mr. Lehrer on public television, the president was
asked - said, ' * I didn't ask anyone not to tell the t r u t h . "
Mr. Lehrer responded - asked the president then, * "Did you talk to her,"
your client,
about t e s t i f y i n g ? "
A t that point, the president simply said, changed the subject, saying it's
important to let the investigation take its course.
Do you know the answer to that question? That is, did the president talk to
your client about...
GINSBURG: I think I know the answer to that question, but it again falls
within the attorney-client privilege issue.
WILL: Can you tell us w h y the FBI agents took some of your client's clothes?
GINSBURG: Yes. There is a report, which I was advised of initially a week
ago by the office of independent counsel, that there was a dress that might be
forensically important in terms of DNA evidence. I'm - I'm reluctant - I'm
very, very uncomfortable, because this whole issue is so salacious. And I don't
�want to say it on the air. But I mean, you know what I'm talking about, and
everyone else t h a t ' s read the paper.
WILL: The -- it's said, of course, that Mr. Starr is putting pressure on
your client. You, do you not, have Mr. Starr under a certain kind of pressure?
He needs your client very badly, does he not?
GINSBURG: Judge Starr is not dealing w i t h me directly. He's the boss, and he
remains in the background. His staff of very professional lawyers have been
cordially dealing w i t h me. They are not pressurable, any more than I am
pressurable. We are not talking pressure.
DONALDSON: Well, what is the state of the negotiations as we sit here this
morning?
GINSBURG: In part, we are negotiating the shape of the table, because we
can't get in and out of our hotels and office buildings because of the press,
and they have every right to be there.
But we have been cordial on the telephone. We have discussed substantive
issues.
And w i t h this new development that I heard here first, in your ready room, I
don't know any more what the state of negotiations is.
DONALDSON: There are some reports that you are trying to limit, in a sense,
in trying to make a deal w i t h the independent counsel, what your client - the
areas in which your client would talk, and they are insisting that she must say
everything she knows.
GINSBURG: Now, that's -- that's a misstatement.
We are saying unequivocally -- and there's no part of this ' " y e s " that I'm
about to give you that is in doubt — if she gets promise of no prosecution,
she will tell all. I will stay and make her comfortable in loco parentis to the
best of my ability, and they are entitled to use any form of forensic testing
that they need t o , w i t h the exception of an invasion of her body or mine.
DONALDSON: But you want total immunity?
GINSBURG: I don't know -- total immunity means a promise not to prosecute to
me, and that means, I guess, ' " t o t a l " means * ' t o t a l i m m u n i t y , " she w o n ' t be
prosecuted.
ROBERTS: Given this new information, is it possible that you would have to
take a lesser deal?
GINSBURG: Oh yes. Given this new information.
I have not had a chance to analyze it, but I heard it here first. And if
it's true, then I may have to renew my negotiating in
a different w a y .
DONALDSON: But it could be then, I suppose what you're saying is at the end
of the day, she'll get no immunity and she will be prosecuted.
GINSBURG: And we're prepared to defend her. We have no problem at all w i t h
that. We are not begging for a deal. We are anxiously awaiting an offer that we
can accept.
DONALDSON: You heard Mr. Begala suggest that the independent counsel had
manufactured evidence by wiring Ms. Tripp. Is that your view?
GINSBURG: Well, first of all, I've never heard the tapes. So I can't tell
you w h a t ' s on t h e m , except the snippets that I see in the press and in Newsweek
Magazine, which I just got.
GINSBURG: Mr. Starr, Judge Starr, and his staff are professionals. I do not
believe, from the bottom of my heart, that they manufactured anything, in the
sense that whatever they have on the tape is what was said.
WILL: What Mr. Begala meant by manufacturing was going out and causing it to
happen, creating the occasion for it to happen. Does it -- is that ethically
troubling to you?
�GINSBURG: Yes, it's ethically troubling to me. And I have said that before
this week. But I don't think it's manufactured or illegal.
WILL: Given what you now can feel after three or four days here in
Washington about the rhythm of this case, can you tell us when you think a
proffer might be offered and accepted, and the deal concluded between your
client and the independent counsel?
GINSBURG: There have been a couple of oral proffers, called attorney
proffers, to the U.S. attorney. There will be no further proffers, in the legal
sense of the w o r d . And we are currently awaiting the decision of the
independent counsel.
WILL: OK. You are saying that's a final offer you have made?
GINSBURG: Well, we've -- w e ' v e -- w e ' v e made them an offer to completely
cooperate if we can take this young girl out of jeopardy. Short of that, we'll
defend the case.
DONALDSON: Tell us about Ms. Lewinsky's mood. How is she reacting to all of
this?
GINSBURG: Scared to death, frightened. She doesn't want to wear the scarlet
letter -- indictment and conviction -- all her life. And she certainly doesn't
want to spend any time in jail. And she's very, very frightened.
ROBERTS: Well, given the...
DONALDSON: She's frightened -- may I, Cokie...
ROBERTS: I'm sorry.
DONALDSON: ... of the situation. Does that imply that she may also be
frightened that some harm might come to her?
GINSBURG: No, I -- I...
DONALDSON: OK.
GINSBURG: No.
ROBERTS: Given, though, the -- the situation with Susan McDougal, it is
clear that -- that Judge Starr plays rough. And that must put her in a position
where she — she would make any kind of deal, it would seem to me.
GINSBURG: I -- I -- I don't know what you mean by rough.
ROBERTS: Well, I mean, he's willing to follow through and keep somebody in
jail for a long period of time.
GINSBURG: I'm prepared to defend Ms. Lewinsky. And I do not believe that the
American public will allow her to go to jail. She's a 24-year-old doe in the
headlights of a major international scandal.
ROBERTS: Thank you very much, Mr. Ginsburg. I appreciate you coming d o w n .
GINSBURG: Thank you.
ROBERTS: Next, Congressman Henry Hyde, whose committee holds the power of
beginning impeachment proceedings.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DONALDSON: Joining us now is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee,
Henry Hyde. Welcome, Mr. Hyde.
HYDE: Thank you.
DONALDSON: Good to see you.
Before we start the questioning, may I just say to viewers who may have
joined us that earlier in our program ABC's Jackie Judd reported that
corroborating witnesses have been discovered, to the extent that apparently Mr.
Clinton and this young lady were caught in an intimate act by these witnesses.
Whether they were Secret Service Agents or White House staff, we are not
able to report. But apparently, that is the story which the independent counsel
is now pursuing.
Mr. Chairman, what do you think of that?
HYDE: Well, I think it's just another development. They happen daily in this
�saga.
HYDE: So it's interesting. But again it's an allegation. We don't have any
proof of it yet.
WILL: You have said, I believe, that Mr. Starr should be allowed to complete
his investigation before any impeachment hearings should begin. That supposes
that prosecutorial tidiness is perhaps more important than the smooth and
effective functioning of the government, does it not? I mean, suppose we have a
crisis w i t h Iraq w i t h a crippled president.
HYDE: Well, I would rather, frankly, the professionals do the investigating
rather than the politicians. I don't mean to demean my o w n office, but I think
the chances of a circus are greater in a congressional hearing than if the
professional lawyers -- and Ken Starr is a person for w h o m I have the greatest
admiration for his integrity and ability -- I would rather they develop the
facts.
I'm speaking for myself now, not for Congress. They develop the facts. The
law requires him to report to us any credible, substantive evidence that might
be impeachable. And when that happens, it's time enough for us to kick in.
WILL: It's understandable to insist on Starr's primacy to the extent that
this is a legal question. But impeachment is a political act and a political
document, the Constitution, for a political problem. Now suppose you have
someone w h o simply cannot lead the country. That's political. Isn't impeachment
a response to
a political problem independent of what professional investigators may turn up?
HYDE: I think we have to be very careful to minimize politics. Now that may
sound strange, because what you've said is true. But at the end of the day, the
Democrats have to agree. You need a two-thirds vote in the Senate to remove
someone from office. That means substantial Democratic support.
I don't see that happening yet. But I simply say that if we sit back and let
events occur, let the proof develop, that's time enough to face that question.
ROBERTS: You say that you would prefer to have the official investigators do
the groundwork. Eventually they would have to come to you. They can't indict
the president, correct?
HYDE: Correct.
ROBERTS: But do you, aside from the question of whether that's the
preferable course, in looking at what you see now, do you think there is enough
evidence to start, if you chose t o , to start impeachment hearings?
HYDE: Oh, I d o n ' t think there is enough evidence to prevail. You can always
start something, but you want to finish it. You want to be able to prevail. And
I would be loathe to start something that I didn't think we could finish. And
right now I doubt if the Democratic support would be present for a guilty vote
on impeachment.
ROBERTS: The poll that ABC has taken says that the majority of people
believe that if the president had this affair and lied about it or told someone
to lie about it, that he should be removed from office, either by impeachment
or resignation. The majority does not feel that way if he simply had the affair.
Do you agree w i t h the majority?
HYDE: Cokie, I hate ducking questions. I try never to do that. But I may
have to sit as a judge - the counterpart of a judge on these evidentiary
details. And I would rather not commit myself on speculation at this point.
DONALDSON: But if the evidence is there, if in fact these charges turn out
to have a firm basis, will it ever get to you? I mean, by that, wouldn't the
president resign before that?
HYDE: One would think, as in the Nixon situation, when responsible members
of his o w n party would counsel him that he's hurting the party, he's hurting
�the country, that he would react appropriately to that. But that's just common
sense, not any prediction on my part.
DONALDSON: Isn't this event Tuesday night, the State of the Union address,
something surreal about it? I mean, as we're told, the president at the moment
intends to come and give a State of the Union address but not address this
subject at all. How is that going t o . . .
HYDE: I think t h a t ' s the right w o r d , surreal. It is -- it's weird. It's
going to be fascinating to w a t c h . The Democrats' reaction will either be an
exaggerated enthusiasm, many leapings to their feet and wild applause, or
restraint -- one of the t w o . I don't think there's a middle ground.
ROBERTS: And what about Republican reaction?
DONALDSON: But w e ' v e seen...
HYDE: I hope we are civil. I hope we are restrained but polite.
DONALDSON: Yes, w e ' v e seen that before -- of course, not in a serious
situation like this where one side of the chamber will applaud and the other
side will sit on its hands for a president of
a particular party. Wouldn't it strike you that this time both sides will
applaud in a restrained way?
HYDE: I think if I were a betting man, that's where I'd put my bet, yes.
WILL: Presidents, CEOs, college professors, presidents of universities have
in their contracts moral turpitude clauses, and they can be fired. Can
impeachment be used to fire a president who violates the implicit moral
turpitude clause in his contract with the people?
HYDE: I'm all for opposing moral turpitude, but we have elections. I think
Mr. Clinton w o n t w o elections, and I think the public had some questions,
unanswered questions, involving that subject, but they still elected him.
People say they vote Dow Jones, not Paula Jones.
(LAUGHTER)
But nonetheless, I think moral turpitude is a very serious issue, and I'd
like to see it raised on the hierarchy of values.
DONALDSON: Thank you very much Henry Hyde, chairman of the House Judiciary
Committee.
HYDE: Thank y o u .
DONALDSON: Hope you'll come back.
Well, up next, our weekly roundtable with George Stephanopoulos and Bill
Kristol w h o ' v e been reporting on this story from the very beginning.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTS: Well, there's only one real question that's being asked in
Washington this week, and that is can President Clinton survive. Can he
recover? George Stephanopoulos, Bill Kristol, ABC news analysts, both here, go
for it. Can he survive?
STEPHANOPOULOS: I think it depends on the answer to only one other question.
You k n o w , we can sit here and talk for days, but there's one question. Is he
telling the t r u t h , the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
If he is, he can survive. If he isn't, he can't.
DONALDSON: W h a t ' s your guess.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I don't know. I pray he's telling the t r u t h . You know, this
is hard for me, I've got to tell you the t r u t h . I'm heartbroken with all the
evidence coming out, but I just hope he is.
KRISTOL: He cannot survive, because he's not telling the t r u t h .
I mean, everyone in Washington knows, everyone in the country I think basically
knows, that the president of the United States is lying. Everyone knows he's
lying. He's know inducing others who work with him and for him to lie. Lies
beget lies. Washington is n o w , I think, drowning in deceit, and it cannot go on
�long.
ROBERTS: But is that something new? Everybody knew that when they elected
him.
KRISTOL: I k n o w . But they didn't know that it was not so clear, so obvious
that he was lying about a matter of real gravity to the whole American people.
DONALDSON: I'm w i t h Mr. Stephanopoulos here, and I agree that if he is not
telling the t r u t h , he's done. But let's just wait. He'll come out at some point
and say something more. He has t o . And at that point, either he and the
evidence will satisfy the country that he's telling the truth or it w o n ' t .
If he's not telling the t r u t h , I think his presidency is numbered in days.
This isn't going to drag out. We're not going to be here three months from now
talking about this.
Mr. Clinton, if he's not telling the truth and the evidence shows that, will
resign, perhaps this week.
ROBERTS: But George, this week.
DONALDSON: Cokie, I am amazed. I sat here during Watergate, we all did. I'm
amazed at the speed w i t h which this story is going.
ROBERTS: George, the question, though, that we've had from many, many times
over w i t h President Clinton is just what is the t r u t h . I mean, it is not so
black and w h i t e . There are always little areas gray, gradations of words, all
of that.
WILL: I believe that six years ago this day, Super Bowl Sunday 1 9 9 2 , when he
went on television to address the Gennifer Flowers" affair, he had a success of
sorts that was ruinous to him. He gave that very lawyerly answer, essentially
misleading the country, about the affair he had with Gennifer Flowers. The
country, I think, said he lied about that but he's going to stop.
I think the lesson he took from that was I can get away w i t h anything and he
can't. His presidency, Cokie, today is as dead, deader really, than Woodrow
Wilson's was after he had a stroke.
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERTS: Well, he had Mrs. Wilson, and the president has Mrs. Clinton,
doesn't he?
WILL: I say this -- I say this for t w o reasons.
First of all, W o o d r o w Wilson still was there, and his condition was not
k n o w n . And second, he had enormous moral authority.
This man's condition is k n o w n . His moral authority is gone. He will resign
when he acquires the moral sense to understand...
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: I was at Super Bowl Sunday six years ago, and I think he
didn't mislead the country. I mean, the people did know what he was saying. But
at that same time, a lot of pundits he's like a gut shot Confederate soldier;
he'll never survive.
I think this is far tougher than that. We're dealing with the president in
office. There's no question that this is far, far more serious.
But he does have to do something about it. The idea that he can go to the
State of the Union Tuesday night without addressing this before or saying
something during the speech is -- is ludicrous.
ROBERTS: But that's the plan, isn't it?
(CROSSTALK)
ROBERTS: Well, I think if Bill Clinton can convince the American people that
a relationship w i t h a woman not his wife that is in any way physical, or even
in any way sexually intimate in conversations, if he can convince people that
that's a proper relationship, he's probably the only person on earth w h o could.
DONALDSON: Oh, come on.
�Cokie, we have seen this video...
ROBERTS: But if he can do it...
DONALDSON: We've seen this video of him, right after his election...
ROBERTS: But people hug. That's...
DONALDSON: That's right. You and I have hugged in the corridors of ABC News.
ROBERTS: Sam reveals...
(LAUGHTER)
DONALDSON: And you are not my w i f e . Is that wrong?
ROBERTS: No. But that is very different from what we -- if there is evidence
that there was an ongoing relationship of some kind, or even a one-time-only
relationship that was - that was not necessarily sexual intercourse, but other
forms of sex, I don't see how the president slices that in a way that people
are able to accept it.
I must say, if he's the only - he's the only person on earth that I think
could do that, because he's awfully good at it.
WILL: He's not awfully good at it. Look at the soup he's in. I mean, this is
a man w h o - w h o convinced himself that he was such a good shader of the t r u t h ,
to put it as politely as I can do so, that he could go on doing it. That's not
skillful. This is not the condition today of a skillful politician.
DONALDSON: OK. We're all sort of agreed that if the facts don't bear him
out, spinning w o n ' t help, and he's going to leave.
So what does President Gore do?
(LAUGHTER)
DONALDSON: I'll tell you one thing he doesn't do.
WILL: There's an intervening step. Wait a minute.
There's an intervening step, which is...
DONALDSON: I'll tell you one thing he doesn't do. He does not pardon his
predecessor.
STEPHANOPOULOS: There w o n ' t be a trial, Sam. Come on.
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: We're getting way, way, way ahead of ourselves here.
ROBERTS: Well, what do you think? I mean, how - what are the steps Bill
Clinton could take to survive?
KRISTOL: I don't think he can survive, because he's not - well, he really
isn't telling the t r u t h . And I don't think anyone...
ROBERTS: OK. So he is out. So then what happens next?
KRISTOL: What happens is senior Democratic leaders go to the president and I agree w i t h Sam; it could be in days, not in weeks - and tell him this is
insupportable, you cannot put the country through this.
James Buckley, the Republican senator from New York, in April of 1974 was
the first Republican to say publicly that President Nixon had to resign. It
would be ironic if the man w h o defeated him in 1976, Pat Moynihan, the
Democratic senator from New York, stepped up and said that. But I think someone
like Moynihan or Sam Nunn or Bill Bradley or a respected Democratic elder...
ROBERTS: Do you see that happening?
KRISTOL: ... in the next f e w days is going to say, Mr. President, you cannot
put us through this.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I think if it comes to that, it will happen if he doesn't
get out very quickly. And frankly this report this morning, from Jackie Judd again, all the caveats - if it's true, has an entirely new element to the case.
What does the Secret Service say about that? What does the White House say
about that? It's no longer his word against hers, if it is true.
ROBERTS: Well, isn't this the reason that we haven't heard from the
president? Isn't the very reason that we haven't heard -obviously, if he - if
�he could just tell a straight story, we would have heard it.
(CROSSTALK)
KRISTOL: If he could tell the truth. I mean, w h a t ' s most striking, Cokie you're absolutely right - is all the White House spin is they're getting the
story together, they're getting the narrative together, they're getting the
account together. None of it is he's trying to remember - he's getting the
truth together.
DONALDSON: Well, wait a moment...
KRISTOL: It is not hard to tell the t r u t h .
DONALDSON: Here, I've become - I've become his defender - I'm a...
(LAUGHTER)
I think it's very reasonable for lawyers, for him or for anyone else, to
say, all right, w e ' v e talked already today about she came in the White House,
she sent packages. What do the logs show?
WILL: If the logs showed she never went to the White House, w e ' d know that
by n o w .
(CROSSTALK)
DONALDSON: ... to find out what the facts are, and that is not absolutely
proof...
KRISTOL: Bill Clinton knows that. Who cares about the logs?
ROBERTS: That's right. That's exactly right.
KRISTOL: Bill Clinton knows whether she visited him in the White House. He
can stand up and say so. If you are falsely accused of having visits from
someone you weren't supposed to be getting visits f r o m , you would say it is
false.
DONALDSON: That's right. I would stand up and I would say it's false. And
then if my accuser said, but what about this paper trail, how do you explain
this receipt...
ROBERTS: Which is also the reason that I don't think...
DONALDSON: ... I would want my lawyers to have an answer ready...
ROBERTS: ... I - but your point is...
DONALDSON: ... before I spoke.
ROBERTS: ... is, you know, the president is the person who knows. And the
president is the person w h o has to defend himself. And I think that the
president is the issue. This whole business of trying to get Kenneth Starr and
attack Kenneth Starr that the White House is trying to tone d o w n , but it's
defenders are doing, I don't think that works. Kenneth Starr is not the issue.
The president is the issue.
STEPHANOPOULOS: The only way it's the issue - and this is the longest of
long shots right now - is that if this whole thing is a set up. The White
House is going forward on a hope that the worst always comes out first and that
over time it can - it can subside and improve if the president can come out.
But I - I think the time - the clock is really running.
ROBERTS: Do you see these Democrats going to him right away, big senior
Democrats, and saying...
STEPHANOPOULOS: I really think - I think they are going to give the
president one chance. I think they are going to give him the chance. Nobody
will do anything until he goes out front, goes to the public, and tells his
story.
If they find it unconvincing...
DONALDSON: But an Oval Office address isn't going to do it. He is going to
have to face a multitude of questions.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I think it's a three-step, Sam. He's got to do an oval
office address, Part 1 . The next day, he's got to go into a full-blown press
�conference. Part 2. And then he's going to have to address the country again,
the country and the Congress as the elected officials.
ROBERTS: And George, can that do it?
WILL: No, because he can't tell the t r u t h . I mean, if he's guilty. I mean,
that's the reasonable assumption on the evidence informed by the context in
which it occurs, which is six years of evidence of his deceit.
ROBERTS: So if...
DONALDSON: If he can't answer the questions, then it will be clear he's not
telling the t r u t h .
ROBERTS: So if that - if that happens...
WILL: What...
ROBERTS: Go ahead.
WILL: What - what that - what - sooner or later Democrats are going to
have their minds rolled back 24 years to 1964 when the Republican Party was
annihilated because it was seemed to have been tardy in disciplining one of its
own.
DONALDSON: Well, I renew my question. What will President Al Gore do then?
(LAUGHTER)
KRISTOL: He'll select -- he'll select a very respected figure as vice
president, and he will have a big honeymoon. And it will - he will actually
advance legislation pretty effectively.
DONALDSON: So did Gerald Ford. And he lost.
ROBERTS: Which is one of the reasons that the Republicans would like to keep
Bill Clinton in there.
KRISTOL: One - one Republican senator said to me this weekend that speaking
politically, they would love a weakened Clinton for the next year or for the
next three years. But it w o n ' t happen. I don't think.
WILL: That is so irresponsible...
KRISTOL: I agree w i t h that.
WILL: ... for Republicans to think that way.
KRISTOL: I agree w i t h that.
WILL: We are in a crisis right now, a military crisis.
KRISTOL: I agree.
WILL: And we have a commander in chief w h o cannot have the moral stature to
send young men and women into harms way. That's a national danger, not an
embarrassment.
ROBERTS: That - that - that is the last w o r d .
And thank you very much. Sam and I will be back w i t h some final thoughts.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DONALDSON: President and Mrs. Clinton went to church here in Washington
today, even as a new report was aired on this broadcast from ABC's Jackie Judd
that corroborating witnesses have been found who caught the president and Ms.
Lewinsky in an intimate act in the White House.
ROBERTS: And also on this broadcast, Ms. Lewinsky's lawyer, William
Ginsburg, says that that evidence casts new light on his ability to negotiate
w i t h Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel, because now the question of
immunity for Ms. Lewinsky is somewhat more problematic.
For the latest on the crisis in the White House, stay w i t h ABC News. First,
tonight on WORLD NEWS TONIGHT SUNDAY w i t h Forrest Sawyer, then tomorrow morning
on GOOD MORNING AMERICA w i t h Charlie Gibson and Lisa McRee.
Kevin Newman will be here in Washington live w i t h the latest developments.
DONALDSON: Finally, at 11:30 Eastern Time this morning, George
Stephanopoulos will be online to discuss the crisis in the White House.
That's abcnews.com on American Online, key word " "ABC N e w s . "
�A n d t h a t ' s all f o r u s . U n t i l n e x t w e e k , t h a t ' s T H I S W E E K .
END
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Subject: INTERNAL TRANSCRIPT: US News and World Report Interview
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
Internal Transcript
January 13, 1998
INTERVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT
BY
U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT
The Oval Office
11:40 A . M . EST
Q
Let me just start off with sort of resuming our
conversation we had coming back from South America on Air Force One
where you were talking about sort of your reading of history and you
sort of briefly touched on -- at that point, you were looking at
presidencies of the Guilded Age. And I just wanted to get a sense
from you in a broad way what your reading of history has given you
insights into about where we are today and what your role in history
is and where your presidency is, and what you can accomplish, if
there are some parallels that you've seen particularly in other
presidencies.
THE PRESIDENT: I believe that throughout the history of
the country we have been very blessed to have essentially a two-party
system -- although from time to time at periods of great change, we
have had more than t w o parties. We had four parties when Abraham
Lincoln was elected the first time. We had three parties when
Woodrow Wilson was elected. We had three parties when I was elected.
And we had three and a half parties last time -- Ralph Nader got a
big vote in at least t w o states that didn't affect the outcome of the
states. It affected my vote, but not the outcome of the states. We
had a big -- we had four parties in the '48 election.
�But, by and large, we had t w o parties. And one party
has essentially been for strengthening the nation and focusing the
attention of the nation on the challenges of the moment, always
arguing that whatever action needed to be taken was a logical
extension of the principles of the Constitution to the challenges of
the moment.
One of the reasons that I spent a lot of time last year
reading - I read a biography, a great biography of Grant - Geoffrey
Perret -- biography of Grant. I read Ari Hoogenboom's biography of
Hayes, Rutherford Hayes. And then I went back and read Nagel's
biography of John Quincy Adams and Jean Edward Smith's terrific
biography of John Marshall. And I was trying to sort of put all of
that into the larger context of American history. And essentially,
my belief is that - if you look at - the other party always argued
that, well, we shouldn't do that because the nation should not -- the
most important thing was to worry about the dangers of government,
that government was inherently dangerous and that we should have more
power in private hands or local hands, and that, if you look at it,
that that debate has been constant throughout history, from John
Marshall and Alexander Hamilton and James Madison all the way up to
the present day. And so the first thing I tried to do is fulfill
what I think the number one historic responsibility of the President
is, which is to define the larger purpose of the nation and keep the
nation together and get the nation to meet the challenges of the
moment.
Now, in terms of history, I still believe the time in
history that this most approximates is the shift from the
Agricultural to the Industrial Age. There are parallels, there are
dramatic differences, and the transformation that there is no fixed
point in history, but we normally associate that with the
administrations of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson - although to
be sure, a lot of it began well before them and a lot of it was not
resolved until the Great Depression and World War II. So these
things go on a long time. But I think that's the point in history it
most approximates.
So, what does that mean in terms of me? It means, I
think, several things. First of all, we have to define the moment.
What is this moment characterized by? Primarily, it's characterized
by enormous globalization of the economy and increasingly of
non-economic functions. Number t w o , it's characterized by a
breathtaking revolution in information and telecommunications and the
biological sciences. Number three, it's characterized by an increase
in the scope and pace of change in the way ordinary people work and
live, relate to each other and relate to the rest of the world. And,
fourthly, it's characterized by great, new challenges to the role of
government and to societies, generally, to preserve their values.
That's the time we live in.
Now, what I've been trying to do since I got here was to
�get this country - to use my metaphor -- cross that bridge into a
new century and a new millennium, with the American Dream alive for
everybody w h o would work for it, with America's leadership in the
world for peace and freedom and prosperity still strong and
unquestioned, and with our American community coming together instead
of being driven apart with all the forces at work today that tend to
drive people apart.
I think that a lot has been done in the last five years.
I think a lot still has to be done. But if you were to ask me what
has been the central contribution we've made so far, I would say,
first of all, I do believe we have successfully advanced a different
philosophy of government, kind of going beyond the old argument that
government was the problem -- or that government is the solution to
which people are entitled, I've tried to move beyond the entitlement
versus enemy dichotomy of government.
My mantra has been opportunity, responsibility and
community -- that you can't create opportunity in the end without
responsibility from citizens, and we have to be one community because
we can't fulfill our individual or family aspirations unless we go
forward as a country.
I've also tried to move with that formulation to try to
remind the American people that politics is always about more than
economics; that economics is very important, but we have to move
beyond materialism. We can't possibly meet the challenges that we
are going to face as a people unless we have that philosophy grounded
in values that embrace more than just economic goods. So that's the
first thing.
And let me just briefly say, the second thing I think
that we have done that is quite important is to focus on the central
importance of the global economy and this concomitant revolution in
information technology. The third thing I think we've done that's
important is to redefine the operational role of government away from
an all-or-nothing sort of dichotomy toward a government that operates
to give people the tools and to create the conditions to solving
their problems - one that operates more in partnership with local
government in the private sector, and in partnership with people
beyond our borders. It recognizes increasing interdependence, and
one that operates as a catalyst.
You know, I've been criticized a lot for so-called
"small ideas," but if you just look at what we did with the school
uniform thing and you see the percentage of school districts that now
have school uniforms that didn't before I went to Long Beach, I think
this whole idea of government is catalyst. The national service work
is a catalyst. There are a lot of other things we've done that I
think have been very successful in that regard.
The fourth thing we've done is to put in place I think
an economic policy that is well-suited to the present moment and that
works, that focuses on fiscal discipline, expanding trade and
�investing in people. And I think the final thing that we've done
that will be of enduring significance is this whole focus on one
America, not only in terms of bridging the racial divides, but also
in terms of citizen service.
Now, let me just make one other kind of introductory
point, because you've talked about what do you hope to accomplish.
It seems to me that this era, not only for us but for other advanced
countries -- and in some ways for emerging countries as well -presents us with a number of dichotomies - you know, real serious
choices that have to be made. There is the apparent conflict between
the present and the future. You see it in America in terms of the
most - shall we give a tax cut or take care of the entitlements.
You know, the present versus the future. But we've had that in a lot
of - and I always argue that the present would be better off if you
were taking good care of the future, which has certainly proved right
in getting the deficit d o w n .
The second big dichotomy is the dichotomy between this
new, super-charged global marketplace and what we think of as the
social contract. Obviously, the sort of guarantees that people grew
up with in the Industrial Age and after World War II have been frayed
around the edges. Not all of them have. We have - homeownership
and work force participation are both at an all-time high. But
that's why w e ' v e worked so hard on the most critical ones balancing work and family, if you work for small companies and you
travel around - how do you get lifetime education, how do you have a
secure retirement, how do you get access to health care, what do you
do about child care - those questions.
And just t w o more - one is economic growth versus the
environment, which is most starkly stated by the climate change
issue. There I would say we're doing quite well with the
environmental challenges that are right before us the ones that are a
little over the horizon are more difficult to deal w i t h .
So, for example, we've got cleaner air, cleaner water,
fewer toxic waste dumps, safer food supply, more land set aside,
according to Bruce Babbitt, than any administration except the t w o
Roosevelts' heritage. But this climate change, I've still got to get
the country to come together with that.
And then the final one, I would say, in the global sense
is kind of community versus chaos. We see this world that's
increasingly interconnected and we all get together and do Bosnia and
we feel good about it. But there are explosions of population and
poverty; there is the possibility of spreading disease; there is the
environmental degradation in the poor countries; there is the
possibility of the spread of weapons of mass destruction; there are
governments that seem to have popular support that still practice
ethnic cleansing.
So you're going to have - I would say, the market
against the social contract, the present against the future, the
�environment and the economy and the chaos and community -- I think
these are the four big global challenges, and you can see them in
America and you can see them around the world. That's the larger
landscape on which I'm operating right now.
Q
There is just one other thematic point, and then we
have some specific policy themes and other themes you wanted to get
into. But to what extent, given the good times' now and the country
at peace and things going well, do you feel this is an opportunity to
sort of use this as a w i n d o w to limit these dark forces that have
been in our history before? Racism -- you've mentioned a two-year
race initiative and we've had the problems with class hatreds, with
xenophobia and so on. What kind of a moment is this in which you can
sort of close the w i n d o w or at least limit —
THE PRESIDENT: Well, that's obviously what I'm trying
to do on the race front and in other areas. You know, I spoke at the
Human Rights Campaign Fund dinner last year. I've tried to find ways
to reconcile the religious differences in America with the work
Secretary Riley and Attorney General Reno and I did, trying to
explain to people what they could and couldn't do in terms of their
religious convictions in the schools. Very, very important, I think,
in terms of the practical way people live. I think that's important.
I think it's also important for us to be -- this is an
important time to deal w i t h the entitlements issue, and I want to do
that in the next three years. It's an important time for us to try
to construct insofar as we possibly can a global framework that will
provide the means by which my successors - I don't mean just
presidents, but the American people - can work with others to solve
their problems, which is w h y I'm so concerned about continuing to
follow the momentum on trade and also just resolving these issues
surrounding the United Nations and the other international
organizations.
I think that we're going to have to do more of this
problem-solving together. The United States can lead the way, but we
have to be able to work with other people, and we can't do it if, for
whatever reason, we don't seem to be carrying our o w n load.
Q
You talked there as you went through the principle
of the idea of government as catalyst. And when you were up in The
Bronx the other day in Charlotte Gardens, you talked about that same
notion of government as sort of providing impetus for people to deal
w i t h problems at the local level. The critics of that approach
basically say it's a way to justify a smaller federal role at a time
when there isn't a lot of public support for the federal role or a
lot of money. If you have more money to spend, if there was more
money to spend, would you be doing things differently in urban policy
and other areas, or do you think this approach fundamentally makes
sense no matter what the scale?
�THE PRESIDENT: I think it makes sense no matter what
the scale. If I had more money to spend, I would be doing more of
the same thing. Let me give you an example. Look at the child care
thing. How did we propose to spend the child care money? Through a
big increase in the block grant to the states. Why? Because the
reality of the child care delivery system is different from state to
state, indeed from community to community; they're in a better
position to do that. All we can do is, we can raise the income level
and the people can get a little help. Through an expansion of the
child care tax credit, that goes -- money directly to people. We
empower people to do things. And then we do things that we think
will make the system better. The rest of the money is spent on
guaranteeing more safe child care centers and a better educational
and developmental component for the kids once you get in there,
putting, if you will, the values base component there.
If you look at what - the kind of stuff that Andrew
Cuomo has done and what Henry Cisneros did when he was here; if you
look at the success Dennis Archer had with the empowerment zone -- a
lot of these strategies where the social problems still exist in
America you have to have local participation, local buy-in and local
entrepreneurial skills coming out of the private, the nonprofit or
the public sector. And it just doesn't make sense for the United
States to have a bunch of federal employees go in and basically try
to direct how that happens. It's far better if you have to create
the conditions for a vibrant, thriving community.
So if I had more money, I would have more incentives for
people to invest in these communities to bring enterprise. Just in a
couple of days from now, I'm going up to New York, to Wall Street
with Jesse Jackson, to make an argument that he has made several
times quite compellingly, I think, that one of the great untapped
markets for American g r o w t h is the unemployed and the underemployed
neighborhoods of urban and rural America.
We just had an announcement that appeared in the press a
couple of days ago - and Bill Daley is out in California, I think,
talking about it today - we're going to try to do something a little
different w i t h Labor Department funds. We're going to try to have a
crash training program for people in these information-based job
shortage areas.
You know, there are almost 4 0 0 , 0 0 0 computer-related jobs
going begging today. There was an article in The Washington Post a
few weeks ago which said that in this area, there are 2 5 , 0 0 0 jobs,
openings in computer-related jobs, not all of which require advanced
degrees of any kind where people could be trained. So if I had more
money, I would do more of that. I would train more people more
quickly. I would go in and I would try to create more
entrepreneurialism. I would try to have more community development,
financial institutions making more loans. I think you've got to
create the conditions of a coherent, successful community in order to
make any progress in these social policies.
�Q
And yet, you want to at least, certainly -- in the
campaign of '92 and then moving further in ' 9 5 , you have argued that
Democrats have to sort of bind their commitment to activism within a
sort of jacket of fiscal restraint and now -THE PRESIDENT: I agree with that.
Q
-- and now government balance, that should be part
of the party message.
THE PRESIDENT: I believe that. Why? Because, among
other things, your obligation always has to be to make the country
work first. The country has to work first. And, secondly, you have
to serve a majority of the people. Keep in mind, we have work force
participation at over 64 percent now, for the first time in history,
and we have more than two-thirds of the people in their o w n homes for
the first time in history. I don't believe any serious person thinks
that would have happened in the last five years if it hadn't been for
fiscal responsibility.
We still have fundamentally a private economy, and the
rules of that economy, particularly in terms of capital investment,
are increasingly being set, if you will, by people who can put their
money anywhere in the world. That's what you see in the Asian
financial crisis. So governments have to stipulate sound economic
policy as a precondition of achieving their social objectives because
at any given time, except in war-devastated countries, more than half
the people are on the job. More than half the people are out there
in the private society succeeding at their o w n lives. They're doing
what has to be done. So in order to make real progress you have to
build on success. You can't threaten the success of the 90-plus
percent of the people in order to reach the problems of the others.
Q
Do you believe there is a consensus now in the
Democratic Party behind these central ideas, sticking with fiscal
discipline, government is the catalyst, balancing opportunity and
responsibility, opening up the global market -- do you believe the
party is fundamentally Clintonite in effect at this point?
THE PRESIDENT: I wouldn't use the last w o r d , but I
think there is a consensus. I think -- first keep in mind, we got
two-thirds of the House caucus to vote for the balanced budget bill.
We had - a higher percentage of Senate Democrats and Senate
Republicans voted for the balanced budget amendment. Vast majorities
of our group voted for the crime bill in ' 9 4 . And we had a majority
in the Senate — I don't know if we had a majority in the House or
not on the welfare reform, but it was Q
Even in the House and a majority in the Senate.
THE PRESIDENT: And basically that was just over the
question of - in the House we would have had a huge majority there
but for the non-welfare reform provisions on food stamps and
immigrants - we largely had done away w i t h . And I don't even think
�trade is a real exception there. We had a clear majority in the
Senate for our trade policy and an overwhelming majority among
Democratic state and local officeholders.
In the House you have a
where I think they have legitimate
solution is w r o n g . That is, I think
continue to open new avenues for
the dislocations of trade. We can
want to.
particular set of problems there
concerns, but I think their
defeating the attempt to
American trade is not the answer to
talk more about that later if you
So I think, on balance, there's been a - w i t h the
exception of the trade vote in the House of Representatives, there is
a new consensus within the Democratic Party. And I think it is
absolutely consistent with the values in the Democratic Party going
all the way back -- going back to Franklin Roosevelt and Woodrow
Wilson. I don't think there's any difference there, I just think
--what we're doing is applying our values - we basically believe
that nobody should be discriminated against, everybody ought to have
a chance, and if somebody deserves it they ought to have a hand up.
That's basically what we believe. And Roosevelt always talked about
the imperative of work, the dignity of work, the moral worth of work.
We're just applying that to a new century, a new economy, a new world
out there. No one could expect the institutional arrangements of the
last 50 years to work for the next 50, given the nature of changes
we're facing.
Q
So the changes you pushed going back really to '91
and '92 and the original campaign, you think these are rooted in the
party line, that this is a turning point?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I hope so, I do. But this has not
been a short-term thing. I remember in the early '80s when I
proposed teacher testing in Arkansas, I was practically burned in
effigy. And now you've got both the NEA and the EFT out there saying
they think there ought to be national tests, there ought to be
national standards.
I think there is - just to give you one example - I
believe that there is a consensus. Now, can the consensus be frayed,
might we turn back around and go the other way? I mean, anything
could happen. But I believe that there is a strong conviction -even on the trade debate, the people that voted with me and the
people that didn't, we all agreed on something that a lot of people
in the Republican Party don't agree on. We all agreed that
environmental issues and labor issues as well as child labor issues,
all these things should be part of the mix of global negotiations as
we go f o r w a r d . These are things that countries have to work on
together.
I was just in south Texas, you know, where there is
strong support there for my trade position, but also strong support
�for investing more in environmental cleanup on both sides of the
border, for doing more for the people in El Paso who lost their jobs
when they moved across the border, for -- in other words, creating a
different kind of social compact that moves more quickly to help
people w h o were dislocated adversely from changes in the global
economy.
Q
I wanted to ask a couple of specific policy
questions. On the entitlement issue, have you decided whether a
special session would make sense? I understand there's been some
talk w i t h the Hill leadership at least at the staff level, and I
wonder where you feel that goes now -- Social Security THE PRESIDENT: No, I haven't made a decision on that.
We've got the Medicare commission meeting and we reached agreement
with the Senate and House Republican and Democratic leadership on
Medicare process, and I'm hoping that we can reach agreement on the
Social Security process but accelerate this. I was very worried
that, to be fair to them, both the House Democrats and the House
Republicans felt more vulnerable for different reasons on Social
Security and felt that it would be almost impossible for me to
construct a framework in which there wouldn't be some adverse
political reaction.
My sense of that, by the way, is that that's absolutely
wrong. I believe - for one thing, most people on Social Security
now are not going to be much affected, if at all, by anything that is
recommended and implemented. And I don't talk to anybody my age and
younger -- and I'm the oldest of the baby boomers -- I don't talk to
anybody my age and younger who doesn't feel that we have to do
something to preserve the safety net of Social Security for our
generation without bankrupting our children who are going to be
taking care of our grandchildren.
So, therefore, what my intense focus has been - I mean,
you and I know what all the options are, but my focus -- for
substantive changes - but my focus has been on trying to get a
process that would bring the players in line who would have to make
these decisions sometime in the next three years. I very much want
to do it before I leave office. I think, for one thing, I should
have credibility w i t h the American people w h o , first of all, know
that I care very much about Social Security and Medicare and the
people w h o need them most, and secondly, who know that I'm not
running for reelection so I don't have to pull any punches, but that
I do have the values - it's kind of like President Nixon going to
China. I want to preserve these things for the next generation, but
I want to do it in a way that makes sense.
It's the same argument as the fiscal discipline argument
you asked me about. The Democrats ought to be out there leading the
charge to say we will need a social safety net for retirees and
Social Security. We certainly need a health care program. We don't
want to not have universal health care for seniors; we see the price
of not having it for other people. But we have to make the changes
�necessary to accommodate the new realities in lifespan, medical
technology, health care choices and the generational - just the
sheer numbers in these different generations.
Q
You mentioned lifespan there. In ' 9 4 the Terry
Danforth Commission proposed the same thing you have — something
similar to what you have recently developed, allowing an early buy-in
into Medicare. But that was half of the equation. The other half
was raising the age of full eligibility and, in effect, they saw the
early buy-in as a way to deal with the problems of that. As your
proposal moves into Congress would you support an effort to reconnect
these t w o ideas and raise the age of full eligibility as a part of
the process of allowing the early buy-in?
THE PRESIDENT: No - well, no, but I think that should
be debated, that issue should be debated in the context of what we're
going to do w i t h Medicare reform, because, to be fair to Terry
Danforth's Commission, unlike the later congressional proposal, which
just wanted to raise the retirement age Q
- both -
THE PRESIDENT: But the later congressional proposal
didn't. So we had this huge number of uninsured people. I think
that ought to be done in the context of Medicare reform.
Q
Do you think it should be done, though?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it depends on what else is done.
It depends on whether health insurance is really affordable for
people. It depends on -- I don't think we ought to do anything that
reduces the percentage of people with health care coverage and
creates more dislocation in the health care delivery system. And
whatever I think I wouldn't say it now because anything I say will
weaken the chances that we get a bipartisan consensus agreement on
the Medicare commission.
I think once I've turned over the commission I'll be
glad to offer my opinion about their recommendations when they give
them. But I think we ought to let the work and do their work now.
Let me come back. Our proposal is more limited than
their original let everybody at 62 buy in. It may prefigure that.
Some of my Republican friends are worried that it prefigures that.
But keep in mind, what we proposed is that people who were promised
retirement by their -- health insurance by their companies when they
took early retirement and didn't get it, and people who are
dislocated over 55 should get in, dislocated workers can't get back
in the work force - and then people who are 62 to 65 who lost their
health insurance because their spouse got on Medicare principally.
But our proposal, unlike Terry Danforth's which was a sliding scale
of subsidies, our proposal is fully paid for in the balanced budget,
almost all of it by premiums, out-of-pocket premiums. We do have a
small subsidy related to changes we're going to make in the
�administration of the program to reduce abuses in it, but it's not
significant.
Q
I feel hot breath on my neck, so let me ask them
very quick. Minimum wage -- since you granted the minimum wage in
'96 the terrible things that were predicted have not happened.
Unemployment has continued to drop, the economy has continued to do
well. Is there a case for raising it again?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it's still not -- in terms of
purchasing power, it's still not where it was in the '60s and early
'70s. And I had been asked to consider that and so I've asked the
Council of Economic Advisors and my economic team here to do the best
they can -- it's really not possible to fully evaluate the impacts of
it, but it obviously hasn't been very damaging. We've got 14 million
jobs, so we're doing pretty well.
So I've asked them to review that and come back and give
me a recommendation. I've generally always been sympathetic to that.
But I think, again, that's part of what - the minimum wage, the
earned income tax credit, the changes we made in retirement savings
-- and I hope, by the way, to do some more on that. I'm going to try
to do more to make retirement - to encourage people to save for
their o w n retirement more.
That's another point that needs to be made on the Social
Security. No matter what we do on Social Security, only half the
American people now are saving for their o w n retirement. Hardly
anybody can retire on Social Security alone and maintain the living
standard they had before they retired. There are very few people who
are at that low level of income. So we also have to do more to
encourage private savings. We're having a big conference on that
later this year that was authorized by a congressional bill, and the
Republican leadership and the Senate leadership and I, each of us get
to put 100 people in there. But even before that, I'll probably have
some more retirement proposals.
Q
Have you thought at all about the proposal of Bill
Galston and others they're promoting about wage insurance?
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. It's a fascinating idea. I just
don't know what the costs are. We have to work through the costs.
It's a fascinating idea as a way of recognizing that there are a
relatively small number of people who can take quite a big hit in
their lives because of technology or trade-related dislocation and
maybe ought to be able to take out an insurance policy that goes
beyond the traditional unemployment system. But he sent me that idea
and I asked our people to do some work on it, and I just don't know
enough about the costs and the difficulties of it to have an opinion.
I'm fascinated by the idea because, obviously - what
I'm looking for are the ways that keep the dynamism of this economy
�going, that get the benefits of it for our people, and still allow us
to take the places where people's sense of -- if I am a responsible
person, if I work hard, if I'm trying to raise a good family, what do
I need to be able to look forward to. Well, they've got a better
chance of having a job, they've got a better chance at owning a home
than they have in a long, long time. But what's still out -- they
also -- they have a better chance of going to college than ever
before, virtually open the doors to college, and going back and
getting further education and training in their lifetime. So those
are three huge things.
But what are the problems still? The long-term
stability of Social Security and Medicare; the availability of
private retirement; and access to health insurance; and what happens
if I'm a person with a pretty good job without much education and my
job goes away - it disappears into a machine, I lose it in trade, my
company fails - what happens while I'm getting retrained? Those are
the places where if we could figure out a way to do that, that
reinforces the market economy, that's obviously the best way to do
it.
So that's what we're grappling w i t h . Galston's got a
good idea; I just don't know if it will work, I don't know how much
it costs.
Q
Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Interesting interview, guys.
Q
Thank you. On a legal matter, are you resigned to
this Paula Jones thing going to trial, does that seem to be
inevitable?
THE PRESIDENT: Probably. I let other people talk for
me on that because I just try to put it over in a little box and go
and do my work. It's just another -- it's someone else's politics,
not mine. So I've just got to focus on what I'm interested in.
Q
The walking out question. There's an understanding
now about how little college freshmen are interested in politics, and
I wonder if -
THE PRESIDENT: Do you think that's true?
Q
Well, I wanted to ask you what you thought and if
Chelsea, for instance, has given you any ideas about what new
freshmen are like.
THE PRESIDENT: My impression from talking - I don't
have a representative sample, I wouldn't say that. But I know that
when we - I only have one example, besides Chelsea. We started this
America Reads program and we began with the colleges. And we said we
�w o u l d like t o h a v e t h e c o l l e g e s set aside a c e r t a i n n u m b e r of t h e s e
w o r k - s t u d y s l o t s t o g e t v o l u n t e e r s t o be part -- w e l l , so w e g o t 8 0 0
c o l l e g e s i n t e r e s t e d in it, a n d I d o n ' t k n o w h o w m a n y , but a v e r y
s u b s t a n t i a l n u m b e r of t h e m t o l d us t h a t t h e y had all t h e s e kids
s h o w i n g up w h o w e r e n ' t eligible f o r w o r k - s t u d y w h o also w a n t e d t o be
a p a r t of i t .
So w e had t e n s of t h o u s a n d s of c o l l e g e v o l u n t e e r s o u t
t h e r e d o i n g t h i s A m e r i c a Reads t h i n g . T h a t d o e s n o t i n d i c a t e t o m e
t h a t t h e r e ' s s o m e g r e a t loss of t h e spirit of s e r v i c e or c i t i z e n s h i p
o u t t h e r e . I w a s a c t u a l l y a little s u r p r i s e d t o see t h e s t u d y .
END
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Jonathan Murchinson
Elizabeth R. Newman
Julia M. Payne
Joshua Silverman
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Michael Waldman
terri tingen
RUBIN E @ A1@CD@LNGTWY
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�Copyright 1997 The Washington Post
The Washington Post
November 23, 1997, Sunday, Final Edition
SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. C03
LENGTH: 1423 words
HEADLINE: A LOOK AT . . . Divided Parties; A Forgotten Founder Could Save the Democrats
BYLINE: Michael Lind
BODY:
On Jan. 20, 1993, Bill Clinton began his first administration with a symbolic trek to Capitol
Hill from Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. The symbolism was poorly chosen. Jefferson
is the philosophical ancestor, not of today's Democrats, most of whom are northern and/or black, but
of states-rights Southern conservatism, now the foundation of the Republican Party.
Clinton would have done better to have started his trip at the Grange, the historic home of
Jefferson's archenemy, Alexander Hamilton, in New York City. It is Hamilton who is the ancestor
of what is best in 20th-century liberalism. And it is Hamilton who is the best guide to a revival of
the American center-left in the 21st century.
Most Americans don't know anything about Hamilton (1755-1804), except perhaps that he
was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr. Some remember that he was the major author of "The
Federalist Papers," and that he was the inspiration behind both West Point and the protective tariff
that helped American industry develop in the 19th century. But he was also one of the most
influential statesmen of the early American republic.
Compared to the Jefferson of legend, Hamilton is a difficult figure to love. But just as there
is more to the Jeffersonian tradition of democratic localism than Jefferson, so the Hamiltonian
tradition of democratic nationalism is more important than Hamilton himself.
Hamilton, a self-made man who grew up in the West Indies, served as an aide to George
Washington in the American war for independence and became a lifelong supporter of a strong
military for the new nation. He became Washington's secretary of the Treasury and devoted himself
to using the new national government to promote economic modernization. He argued for the use
of tariffs and subsidies to promote American industry and supported the Society for Useful
Manufactures, a kind of industrial pilot project. He believed that manufacturing success depended
on the "interference and aid" of the government.
Jefferson and his allies railed against Hamilton's First Bank of the United States and, in the
1830s, Andrew Jackson destroyed its successor, the Second Bank. Jeffersonian Democrats were
�hostile to Hamilton, but Whigs like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster and Republicans like Abraham
Lincoln shared Hamilton's view, expressed in the Federalist No. 85, that "a nation, without a national
government, is . . . an awful spectacle."
Since then, Hamiltonianism has gone through two phases. In the first phase, the national
government was deployed as the engine that turned the United States into the world's leading
industrial power by 1900. The problems generated by this success — social inequality and agrarian
discontent ~ were addressed by the second wave of 20th-century Hamiltonians who favored federal
regulation and reform: the Progressives and the New Dealers.
Theodore Roosevelt declared "the betterment which we seek, must be accomplished, I
believe, mainly through the national government." TR failed in his effort to convert his fellow
Republicans to progressivism. His first Democratic successor, Woodrow Wilson, broke with the
Jeffersonian tradition of hostility to central banking by supporting the creation of the Federal
Reserve, and TR's cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, welcomed many former Republican
progressives to his New Deal coalition. The success of national industrial development, FDR said,
required "distributing wealth and products more equitably."
The greatest obstacle to the achievement of that goal has been the American racial caste
system. Hamilton was a foe of it from the start. During the Revolutionary War, he favored
emancipating and arming the slaves. Although the impetus for anti-slavery and anti-segregation
movements came from black and white religious leaders, it was presidents with a broad Hamiltonian
conception of presidential authority ~ chiefly Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson ~ who used the
power of the federal government to destroy slavery and formal segregation.
As the Democratic Party drifted from its Jeffersonian roots after World War II, southern
conservatives began to migrate to the GOP. The Democrats were further weakened in the late 1960s,
when George McGovern and his followers (including the young Bill Clinton) abandoned the
Rooseveltian version of the Hamiltonian tradition for what became known as "left liberalism" — a
peculiar amalgam of social democracy, anti-military isolationism and black nationalism, imitated
by other groups in the form of multiculturalism.
Only in entitlement policy is there any continuity between the FDR-to-LBJ Democrats and
the McGovern-to-Clinton Democrats. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the left-liberal Democrats
defended New Deal entitlements like Social Security, and tried to enact universal health care, the
missing wall in the edifice of the New Deal. However, the solicitude of the post-1968 Democrats for
the economic interests of working Americans was not enough to overcome the handicaps imposed
by their cultural leftism and isolationism.
Although New Deal Democrats planted military bases and NASA facilities throughout the
South and the West, in the post-Vietnam era, the Democrats ceded the "Gun Belt" to the GOP.
In 1992 and 1993, Clinton had a chance to revitalize the Democratic Party by moving it to
the right on issues like affirmative action and to the left on economics. Instead, Clinton has
combined social liberalism and free-market economic conservatism. While collaborating with
�Republican conservatives to destroy programs helping the black poor, he bought off liberals with
rhetorical support for affirmative action -- a form of tokenism that chiefly benefits the black and
Latino middle classes. He has proven to be a consistent adversary of the white working class ~
favoring reverse discrimination in the form of affirmative action against them and their children,
while siding with big business against labor when it came to NAFTA and the debate over the future
of international trade.
The best way for the Democrats to regain a stable majority is to return to
the principles — though not necessarily the specific programs — of the
HamiltonRoosevelt tradition. A new Democratic Hamiltonianism would have more in
common with the New Deal/Cold War liberalism of 1932-68 than with post-'60s left
liberalism, with respect to national unity, national government, activist
government and foreign policy.
National unity: Neo-Hamiltonian Democrats would repudiate multiculturalism
and affirmative action in favor of color-blind, class-conscious programs devoted
to integrating the poor of all races into the broad middle class, while shifting
the tax burden to those who can afford it most.
National government: Neo-Hamiltonians would support a strong and efficient
federal government and national standards in areas like education and welfare
(in order to prevent a "race-to-the-bottom" in social benefits among the 50
states).
Activist government: Neo-Hamiltonian Democrats would continue the effort to
complete the New Deal by promoting a universal health care program. They might
even favor new middle-class entitlements, paid for by an equitable tax system in
an aging society.
Foreign policy: Hamilton wrote that although "an individual may . . .
meritoriously indulge the emotions of generosity or benevolence . . . at the
expense of his own interest," a nation-state "can rarely, if all, be justifiable
in pursuing a similar course." A new generation of Hamiltonian Democrats,
favoring a national-interest foreign policy of selective engagement, would
reject both the "sole superpower" delusions of the right and the "Come Home,
America" isolationism of the left.
Such a program would be opposed by free-market globalists, advocates of
racial preferences, employers of cheap labor, religious zealots, anti-military
isolationists, socialists and supporters of campaign-finance privileges for the
rich. But it could unite middle-class Americans, organized labor, the military,
defense industries, good-government Reform Party types, moderate social
democrats and immigrants who seek integration into American society.
Who knows? The president may already be born who will lend his or her name to
�the third incarnation of the Hamilton-Roosevelt tradition of American democratic
nationalism.
Michael Lind is the editor of "Hamilton's Republic: Readings in the American
Democratic Nationalist Tradition" (The Free Press).
GRAPHIC: Illustration, david dark for The Washington Post
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
LOAD-DATE: November 23, 1997
�WIRED 5.07: The Long Boom
http://www.hotwired.eom/wired/5.07/longboom.html
1$)
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F E A T U R E S I Issue 5.07 - July 1997
The Long Boom: A History of the Future, 1980 - 2020
Special Offer!
Order color magazine reprints of this cover story.
We're facing 25 years of prosperity, freedom, and a better environment for the whole
world. You got a problem with that?
by Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden
A bad meme - a contagious idea - began spreading through the United States in the 1980s:
America is in decline, the world is going to hell, and our children's lives will be worse than
our own. The particulars are now familiar: Good jobs are disappearing, working people are
falling into poverty, the underclass is swelling, crime is out of control. The post-Cold War
world isfragmenting,and conflicts are erupting all over the planet. The environment is
imploding - with global warming and ozone depletion, we'll all either die of cancer or live in
Waterworld. As for our kids, the collapsing educational system is producing either
gun-toting gangsters or burger-flipping dopes who can't read.
By the late 1990s, another meme began to gain ground. Borne of the surging stock market
and an economy that won't die down, this one is more positive: America is finally getting its
economic act together, the world is not such a dangerous place after all, and our kids just
might lead tolerable lives. Yet the good times will come only to a privileged few, no more
than a fortunate fifth of our society. The vast majority in the United States and the world
face a dire future of increasingly desperate poverty. And the environment? It's a lost cause.
But there's a new, very different meme, a radically optimistic meme: We are watching the
beginnings of a global economic boom on a scale never experienced before. We have
entered a period of sustained growth that could eventually double the world's economy
every dozen years and bring increasing prosperity for - quite literally - billions of people on
the planet. We are riding the early waves of a 25-year run of a greatly expanding economy
that will do much to solve seemingly intractable problems like poverty and to ease tensions
throughout the world. And we'll do it without blowing the lid off the environment.
If this holds true, historians will look back on our era as an extraordinary moment. They
will chronicle the 40-year period from 1980 to 2020 as the key years of a remarkable
transformation. In the developed countries of the West, new technology will lead to big
productivity increases that will cause high economic growth - actually, waves of technology
will continue to roll out through the early part of the 21st century. And then the relentless
process of globalization, the opening up of national economies and the integration of
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markets, will drive the growth through much of the rest of the world. An unprecedented
alignment of an ascendent Asia, a revitalized America, and a reintegrated greater Europe including a recovered Russia - together will create an economic juggernaut that pulls along
most other regions of the planet. These two metatrends - fundamental technological change
and a new ethos of openness - will transform our world into the beginnings of a global
civilization, a new civilization of civilizations, that will blossom through the coming
century.
Think back to the era following World War II, the 40-year span from 1940 to 1980 that
immediately precedes our own. First, the US economy was flooded with an array of new
technologies that had been stopped up by the war effort: mainframe computers, atomic
energy, rockets, commercial aircraft, automobiles, and television. Second, a new integrated
market was devised for half the world - the so-called free world - in part through the
creation of institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. With the
technology and the enhanced system of international trade in place by the end of the 1940s,
the US economy roared through the 1950s, and the world economy joined in through the
1960s, only to flame out in the 1970s with high inflation - partly a sign of growth that came
too fast. From 1950 to 1973, the world economy grew at an average 4.9 percent - a rate not
matched since, well, right about now. On the backs of that roaring economy and increasing
prosperity came social, cultural, and political repercussions. It's no coincidence that the
1960s were called revolutionary. With spreading affluence came great pressure from
disenfranchised races and other interest groups for social reform, even overt political
revolution.
Strikingly similar - if not still more powerful - forces are in motion today. The end of the
military state of readiness in the 1980s, as in the 1940s, unleashed an array of new
technologies, not the least of which is the Internet. The end of the Cold War also saw the
triumph of a set of ideas long championed by the United States: those of the free-market
economy and, to some extent, liberal democracy. This cleared the way for the creation of a
truly global economy, one integrated market. Not half the world, the free world. Not one
large colonial empire. Everybody on the planet in the same economy. This is historically
unprecedented, with unprecedented consequences to follow. In the 1990s, the United States
is experiencing a booming economy much like it did in the 1950s. But look ahead to the
next decade, our parallel to the 1960s. We may be entering a relentless economic expansion,
a truly global economic boom, the long boom.
Sitting here in the late 1990s, it's possible to see how all the pieces could fall into place. It's
possible to construct a scenario that could bring us to a truly better world by 2020. It's not a
prediction, but a scenario, one that's both positive and plausible. Why plausible? The basic
science is now in place for five great waves of technology - personal computers,
telecommunications, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and alternative energy - that could
rapidly grow the economy without destroying the environment. This scenario doesn't rely on
a scientific breakthrough, such as cold fusion, to feed our energy needs. Also, enough
unassailable trends - call them predetermined factors - are in motion to plausibly predict
their outcome. The rise of Asia, for example, simply can't be stopped. This is not to say that
there aren't some huge unknowns, the critical uncertainties, such as how the United States
handles its key role as world leader.
Why a positive scenario? During the global standoff of the Cold War, people clung to the
origina ideological visions of a pure form of communism or capitalism. A positive scenario
too often amounted to little more than surviving nuclear war. Today, without the old
visions, it's easy enough to see how the world might unravel into chaos. It's much more
difficult to see how it could all weave together into something better. But without an
expansive vision of the future, people tend to get short-sighted and mean-spirited, looking
out only for themselves. A positive scenario can inspire us through what will inevitably be
traumatic times ahead.
So suspend your disbelief. Open up to the possibilities. Try to think like one of those future
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historians, marveling at the changes that took place in the 40-year period that straddled the
new millennium. Sit back and read through the future history of the world.
The Boom's Big Bang
From a historical vantage point, two developments start around 1980 that will have
profound consequences for the US economy, the Western economy, then the global
economy at large. One is the introduction of personal computers. The other is the breakup of
the Bell System. These events trigger two of the five great waves of technological change
that will eventually help fuel the long boom.
The full impact can be seen in the sweep of decades. In the first 10 years, personal
computers are steadily adopted by businesses. By 1990, they begin to enter the home, and
the microprocessor is being embedded in many other tools and products, such as cars. By
the tum of the century, with the power of computer chips still roughly doubling every 18
months, everything comes with a small, cheap silicon brain. Tasks like handwriting
recognition become a breeze. Around 2010, Intel builds a chip with a billion transistors 100 times the complexity of the most advanced integrated circuits being designed in the late
1990s. By 2015, reliable simultaneous language translation has been cracked - with
immediate consequences for the multilingual world.
I
The trajectory for the telecommunications wave follows much the same arc. The breakup of
Ma Bell, initiated in 1982, triggers a frenzy of entrepreneurial activity as nascent companies
like MCI and Sprint race to buildfiber-opticnetworks across the country. By the early
1990s, these companies shift from moving voice to moving data as a new phenomenon
seems to come out of nowhere: the Internet. Computers and communications become
inextricably linked, each feeding the phenomenal growth of the other. By the late 1990s,
telecom goes wireless. Mobile phone systems and all-purpose personal communications
services arrive first with vast antennae networks on the ground. Soon after, the big satellite
projects come online. By 1998, the Iridium global phone network is complete. By 2002,
Teledesic's global Internet network is operational. These projects, among others, allow
seamless connection to the information infrastructure anywhere on the planet by early in the
century. By about 2005, high-bandwidth connections that can easily move video have
become common in developed countries, and videophones finally catch on.
The symbiotic relationship between these technology sectors leads to a major economic
discontinuity right around 1995, generally attributed to the explosive growth of the Internet.
It's the long boom's Big Bang - immediately fueling economic growth in the traditional
sense of direct job creation but also stimulating growth in less direct ways. On the most
obvious level, hardware and infrastructure companies experience exponential growth, as
building the new information network becomes one of the great global business
opportunities around the tum of the century.
A new media industry also explodes onto the scene to take advantage of the network's
unique capabilities, such as interactivity and individual customization. Start-ups plunge into
the field, and traditional media companies lumber in this direction. By the late 1990s, the
titans of the media industry are in a high-stakes struggle over control of the evolving
medium. Relative newcomers like Disney and Microsoft ace out the old-guard television
networks in a monumental struggle over digital TV. After a few fits and starts, the Net
becomes the main medium of the 21st century.
The development of online commerce quickly follows on new media's heels. First come the
entrepreneurs who figure out how to encrypt messages, conduct safe financial transactions
in cyberspace, and advertise one to one. Electronic cash, a key milestone, gains acceptance
around 1998. Then come businesses selling everyday consumer goods. First it's high tech
products such as software, then true information products like securities. Soon everything
begins to be sold in cyberspace. By 2000, online sales hit US$10 billion, still small by
overall retail standards. Around 2005, 20 percent of Americans teleshop for groceries.
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Alongside the migration of the traditional retail world into cyberspace, completely new
types of work are created. Many had speculated that computer networks would lead to
disintermediation - the growing irrelevance of the middleman in commerce. Certainly the
old-style go-betweens are sideswiped, but new types of intermediaries arise to connect
buyers to sellers. And with the friction taken out of the distribution system, the savings can
be channeled into new ventures, which create new work.
The Birth of the Networked Economy
New technologies have an impact much bigger than what literally takes place online. On a
more fundamental level, the networked economy is bom. Starting with the recession of
1990-91, American businesses begin going through a wrenching process of reengineering,
variously described at the time as downsizing, outsourcing, and creating the virtual
corporation. In fact, they are actually taking advantage of new information technologies to
create the smaller, more versatile economic units of the coming era.
Businesses, as well as most organizations outside the business world, begin to shift from
hierarchical processes to networked ones. People working in all kinds of fields - the
professions, education, government, the arts - begin pushing the applications of networked
computers. Nearly every facet of human activity is transformed in some way by the
emergent fabric of interconnection. This reorganization leads to dramatic improvements in
efficiency and productivity.
Productivity, as it happens, becomes one of the great quandaries stumping economists
throughout the 1990s. Despite billions invested in new technologies, traditional government
economic statistics reflect little impact on productivity or growth. This is not an academic
point - it drives to the heart of the new economy. Businesses invest in new technology to
boost the productivity of their workers. That increased productivity is what adds value to the
economy - it is the key to sustained economic growth.
Research by a few economists, like Stanford University's Paul Romer, suggests that
fundamentally new technologies generally don't become productive until a generation after
their introduction, the time it takes for people to really learn how to use them in new ways.
Sure enough, about a generation after the introduction of personal computers in the
workplace, work processes begin mutating enough to take full advantage of the tool. Soon
after, economists figure out how to accurately measure the true gains in productivity - and
take into account the nebulous concept of improvement in quality rather than just quantity.
By 2000, the US government adopts a new information-age standard of measuring
economic growth. Unsurprisingly, actual growth rates are higher than what had registered
on the industrial-age meter. The US economy is growing at sustained rates of around 4
percent - rates not seen since the 1960s.
The tum of the century marks another major shift in government policy, as the hidebound
analysis of inflation is finally abandoned in light of the behavior of the new economy.
While the Vietnam War, oil shocks, and relatively closed national labor markets had caused
genuine inflationary pressures that wreaked havoc on the economy through the 1970s, the
tight monetary policies of the 1980s soon harness the inflation rate and lead to a solid
decade with essentially no wage or price rises. By the 1990s, globalization and international
competition add to the downward pressure. By 2000, policymakers finally come around to
the idea that you can grow the economy at much higher rates and still avoid the spiral of
inflation. The millennium also marks a symbolic changing of the guard at the Federal
Reserve Bank: Alan Greenspan retires, the Fed lifts its foot off the brake, and the US
economy really begins to take off.
More Tech Waves
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Right about the tum of the century, the third of the five waves of technology kicks in. After
a couple false starts in the 1980s and 1990s, biotechnology begins to transform the medical
field. One benchmark comes in 2001 with the completion of the Human Genome Project,
the effort to map out all human genes. That understanding of our genetic makeup triggers a
series of breakthroughs in stopping genetic disease. Around 2012, a gene therapy for cancer
is perfected. Five years later, almost one-third of the 4,000 known genetic diseases can be
avoided through genetic manipulation.
Throughout the early part of the century, the combination of a deeper understanding of
genetics, human biology, and organic chemistry leads to a vast array of powerful
medications and therapies. The health care system, having faced a crossroads in 1994 with
President Clinton's proposed national plan, continues restructuring along the more
decentralized, privatized model of HMOs. The industry is already booming when biotech
advances begin clicking in the first decade of the century. It receives a further stimulus
when the baby boomers begin retiring en masse in 2011. The industry becomes a big jobs
provider for years to come.
The biotech revolution profoundly affects another economic sector - agriculture. The same
deeper understanding of genetics leads to much more precise breeding of plants. By about
2007, most US produce is being genetically engineered by these new direct techniques. The
same process takes place with livestock. In 1997, the cloning of sheep in the United
Kingdom startles the world and kicks off a flurry of activity in this field. By the tum of the
century, prize livestock is being genetically tweaked as often as traditionally bred. By about
2005, animals are used for developing organs that can be donated to humans.
Superproductive animals and ultrahardy, high-yielding plants bring another veritable green
revolution to countries sustaining large populations.
By the end of the transitional era, around 2020, real advances begin to be made in the field
of biological computation, where billions of relatively slow computations, done at the level
of DNA, can be run simultaneously and brought together in the aggregate to create the
ultimate in parallel processing. So-called DNA computing looks as though it will bring
about big advances in the speed of processing sometime after 2025 - certainly by the middle
of the century.
Then comes the fourth technology wave - nanotechnology. Once the realm of science
fiction, this microscopic method of construction becomes a reality in 2015. Scientists and
engineers figure out reliable methods to construct objects one atom at a time. Among the
first commercially viable products are tiny sensors that can enter a person's bloodstream and
bring back information about its composition. By 2018, these micromachines are able to do
basic cell repair. However, nanotechnology promises to have a much more profound impact
on traditional manufacturing as the century rolls on. Theoretically, most products could be
produced much more efficiently through nanotech techniques. By 2025, the theory is still
far from proven, but small desktop factories for producing simple products arrive.
By about 2015, nanotech techniques begin to be applied to the development of computing at
the atomic level. Quantum computing, rather than DNA computing, proves to be the heir to
microprocessors in the short run. In working up to the billion-transistor microprocessor in
2010, engineers seem to hit insurmountable technical barriers: the scale of integrated
circuits has shrunk so small that optical-lithography techniques fail to function. Fortunately,
just as the pace of microprocessing power begins to wane, quantum computing clicks in.
Frequent increases in computing power once again promise to continue unabated for the
foreseeable future.
The Earth Saver
All four waves of technology coursing through this era - computers, telecom, biotech, and
nanotech - contribute to a surge of economic activity. In the industrial era, a booming
economy would have put a severe strain on the environment: basically everything we made,
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we cooked, and such high-temperature cooking creates a lot of waste by-products. The logic
of the era also tended toward larger and larger factories, which created pollution at even
greater scales.
Biotech, on the other hand, uses more moderate temperature realms and emulates the
processes of nature, creating much less pollution. Infotech, which moves information
electronically rather than physically, also makes much less impact on the natural world.
Moving information across the United States through the relatively simple infotechnology
of the fax, for example, proves to be seven times more energy efficient than sending it
through Federal Express. Furthermore, these technologies are on an escalating track of
constant refinement, with each new generation becoming more and more energy efficient,
with lower and lower environmental impact. Even so, these increasing efficiencies are not
enough to counteract the juggernaut of a booming global economy.
Fortunately, the fifth wave of new technology - alternative energy - arrives right around the
tum of the century with the introduction of the hybrid electric car. Stage one begins in the
late 1990s when automobile companies such as Toyota roll out vehicles using small dieselor gasoline-fueled internal-combustion engines to power an onboard generator that then
drives small electric motors at each wheel. The car runs on electric power at low RPMs but
uses the internal-combustion engine at highway speeds, avoiding the problem of completely
battery-powered electric vehicles that run out of juice after 60 miles. The early hybrids are
also much more efficient than regular gas-powered cars, often getting 80 miles to a gallon.
Stage two quickly follows, this time spurred by aerospace companies such as Allied Signal,
which leverage their knowledge of jet engines to build hybrids powered by gas turbines. By
2005, technology previously confined to aircraft's onboard electric systems successfully
migrates to automobiles. These cars use natural gas to power the onboard generators, which
then drive the electric motors at the wheels. They also make use of superstrong, ultralight
new materials that take the place of steel and allow big savings on mileage.
Then comes the third and final stage: hybrids using hydrogen fuel cells. The simplest and
most abundant atom in the universe, hydrogen becomes the source of power for electric
generators - with the only waste product being water. No exhaust. No carbon monoxide.
Just water. The basic hydrogen-power technology had been developed as far back as the
Apollo space program, though then it was still extremely expensive and had a nasty
tendency to blow up. By the late 1990s, research labs such as British Columbia-based
Ballard Power Systems are steadily developing the technology with little public fanfare.
Within 10 years, there are transitional hydrogen car models that extract fuel from ordinary
gasoline, using the existing network of pumps. By 2010, hydrogen is being processed in
refinery-like plants and loaded onto cars that can go thousands of miles - and many months before refueling. The technology is vastly cheaper and safer than in the 1960s and well on
its way to widespread use.
These technological developments drive nothing less than a wholesale transformation of the
automobile industry through the first quarter of the new century. Initially prodded by
government decrees such as California's zero-emission mandate - which called for 10
percent of new cars sold to have zero emissions by 2003 - the industrial behemoths begin to
pick up speed when an actual market for hybrid cars opens up. People buy them not because
they are the environmentally correct option but because they're sporty, fast, and fim. And
the auto companies build them because executives see green - as in money, not trees.
This 10- to 15-year industrial retooling sends reverberations throughout the global
economy. The petrochemical giants begin switching from maintaining vast networks that
bring oil from remote Middle Eastern deserts to building similarly vast networks that supply
the new elements of electrical power. Fossil fuels will continue to be a primary source of
power into the middle of the 21st century - but they will be clean fossil fuels. By 2020,
almost all new cars are hybrid vehicles, mostly using hydrogen power. That development
alone defuses much of the pressure on the global environment. The world may be able to
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support quite a few additional automobile drivers - including nearly 2 billion Chinese.
Asia Ascendant
While the end of the Cold War initiates the waves of technology rippling through our
40-year era, that's only half the story. The other half has to do with an equally powerful
force: globalization. While it is spurred by new technologies, the emergence of an
interconnected planet is propelled more by the power of an idea - the idea of an open
society.
From a historical vantage point, globalization also begins right around 1980. One of the
souls who best articulates this idea of the open society is Mikhail Gorbachev. It's Gorbachev
who helps bring about some of its most dramatic manifestations: the fall of the Wall, the
collapse of the Soviet empire, the end of the Cold War. He helps inititate a vast wave of
political change that includes the democratization of eastern Europe and Russia itself. To
kick it off, Gorbachev introduces two key concepts to his pals in the Politburo in 1985, two
ideas that will resonate not just in the Soviet Union but through all the world. One is
glasnost. The other is perestroika. Openness and restructuring - the formula for the age, the
key ingredients of the long boom.
An equally important character is China's Deng Xiaoping. His actions don't bring about the
same dramatic political change, but right around the same time as Gorbachev, Deng initiates
a similarly profound shift of policies, applying the concepts of openness and restructuring to
the economy. This process of opening up - creating free trade and free markets - ultimately
makes just as large a global impact. No place is this more apparent than in Asia.
Japan grasps the gist of this economic formula long before the buzz begins, pulling a group
of Asian early adopter countries in its wake. By the 1980s, Japan has nearly perfected the
industrial-age manufacturing economy. But by 1990, the rules of the global economy have
changed to favor more nimble, innovative processes, rather than meticulous, methodical
economies of scale. Many of the attributes that favored Japan in the previous era, such as a
commitment to lifelong employment and protected domestic markets, work against the
country this time around. Japan enters the long slump of the 1990s. By the end of the
decade, Japan has watched the United States crack the formula for success in the networked
economy and begins to adopt the model in earnest. In 2000, it radically liberalizes many of
its previously protected domestic markets - a big stimulus for the world economy at large.
Japan's rise, however, is but a prelude to the ascendance of China. In 1978, Deng takes the
first steps toward liberalizing the communist economy. China slowly gathers force through
the 1980s, until the annual growth in the gross national product consistently tops 10 percent.
By the 1990s, the economy is growing at a torrid pace, with the entire coast of China
convulsed with business activity and boomtowns sprouting all over the place. Nineteen
ninety-seven - a year marked by both the death of Deng and the long-awaited return of
Hong Kong - symbolizes the end of China's ideological transition and the birth of a real
economic world power.
The first decade of the new century poses many problems for China domestically - and for
the rest of the world. The overheated economy puts severe strain on the fabric of Chinese
society, particularly between the increasingly affluent urban areas on the coast and the 800
million impoverished peasants in the interior. The nation's relatively low tech smokestack
economy also threatens to single-handedly push the global environment over the edge. The
Chinese initially do little to reduce their level of dependence on coal, which in the late
1990s still supplies three-quarters of the country's energy needs. Only sustained efforts by
the rest of the world to ensure that China has access to the very best transportation and
industrial technology avert an environmental catastrophe. Occasionally using draconian
measures, China manages to avoid severe internal disturbance. By 2010, the sense of crisis
has dissipated. China is generally acknowledged to be on a path toward more democratic
politics - though not in the image of the West.
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With the reemergence of China's economic might, the 3,500-year-old civilization begins to
assert itself and play a larger part in shaping the world. Chinese clan-based culture happens
to work very well within the fluid demands of the networked global economy. Singapore
and Hong Kong prove the point through the 1980s and 1990s, when the two city-states with
almost no land mass or natural resources become economic powers through pure human
capital, primarily brainpower.
For years, Chinese expatriates have established intricate financial networks throughout
Western countries, but especially in Asia. Many Southeast Asian economies - if not
governments - are completely dominated by the overseas Chinese. By about 2005, the
mainland Chinese decide to capitalize on this by formalizing the Chinese diaspora. Though
the entity has no legal status vis-a-vis other governments, it has substantial economic clout.
That date also marks the absorption of Taiwan into China proper.
By 2020, the Chinese economy has grown to be the largest in the world. Though the US
economy is more technologically sophisticated, and its population more affluent, China and
the United States are basically on a par. China has also drawn much of Asia in its economic
wake - Hong Kong and Shanghai are the key financial nodes for this intricate Asian world.
Asia is jammed with countries that are economic powerhouses in their own right. India
builds on its top-notch technical training and mastery of the lingua franca of the high tech
world, English, to challenge many Western countries in software development. Malaysia's
audacious attempt to jump-start an indigenous high tech sector through massive investments
in a multimedia supercorridor pays off. The former communist countries Vietnam and
Cambodia tum out to be among the most adept at capitalism. The entire region - from the
reunited Koreas to Indonesia to the subcontinent - is booming. In just 20 years, 2 billion
people have made the transition into what can be considered a middle-class lifestyle. In the
space of one full 80-year life span, Asia has gone from almost uninterrupted poverty to
widespread wealth.
The European Shuffle
Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, the new principles of openness and restructuring
are applied first in politics, then economics. In the aftermath of the spectacular implosion of
the Soviet Union, most energy is spent promoting democracy and dismantling the vestiges
of the Cold War. With time, an equal amount of energy is applied to restmcturing and
retooling economies - in some obvious and not so obvious ways.
First, Europe at large has to reintegrate itself, both economically and politically. Much of
the 1990s is spent trying to integrate eastern and western Europe. All eyes first focus on the
new Germany, which powers through the process on the basis of sheer financial might. Next
the more advanced of the eastern European countries - Poland, Hungary, the Czech
Republic - get integrated, first into NATO, with formal acceptance in 2000, and then into
the European Union in 2002. The more problematic countries of eastern Europe aren't
accepted into the union for another couple years. Alongside this East-West integration
comes a more subtle integration between the western European countries. With fits and
starts, Europe moves toward the establishment of one truly integrated entity. The European
currency - the euro - is adopted in 1999, with a few laggards, like Britain, holding out a few
more years.
Though the UK may have dragged its feet on the European currency measure, in an overall
sense it's far ahead of the pack. The economic imperative of the era is not just to integrate
externally but to restructure internally. Right around 1980, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald
Reagan begin putting together the formula that eventually leads toward the new economy.
At the time it looks brutal: busting unions, selling off state-owned industries, and
dismantling the welfare state. In hindsight, the pain pays off. By the mid-1990s, the US
unemployment rate is near 5 percent, and the British rate has dropped to almost 6 percent. In
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contrast, unemployment on the European continent hovers at 11 percent, with some
individual countries even higher.
Indeed, through the 1990s, the rest of Europe remains trapped in the legacy of its welfare
states, which maintain their political attractiveness long after they outlive their economic
worth. By 2000, chronic unemployment and mounting government deficits finally force
leaders on the continent to act. Despite widespread popular protests, especially in France,
Europe goes through a painful economic restructuring much like the United States did a
decade before. As part of this perestroika, it retools its economy using the new information
technologies. This restructuring, both of corporations and governments, has much the same
effect it had on the US economy. The European economy begins to surge and create many
new jobs. By about 2005, Europe - particularly in the northern countries like Germany even has the beginnings of a serious labor shortage as aging populations begin to retire.
Then the Russian economy kicks in. For 15 years, Russia had been stumbling along in its
transition to a capitalist economy, periodically frightening the West with overtures that it
might return to its old militaristic ways. But after almost two decades of wide-open
Mafia-style capitalism, Russia emerges in about 2005 with the basic underpinnings of a
solid economy. Enough people are invested in the new system, and enough of the
population has absorbed the new work ethic, that the economy can function quite well - with
few reasons to fear a retrenchment. This normalization finally spurs massive foreign
investment that helps the Russians exploit their immense natural resources, and the skills of
a highly educated populace. These people also provide a huge market for Europe and the
rest of the world.
The Global Stampede
By the close of the 20th century, the more developed Western nations are forging ahead on a
path of technology-led growth, and booming Asia is showing the unambiguous benefits of
developing market economies and free trade. The path for the rest of the world seems clear.
Openness and restructuring. Restructuring and openness. Individually, nations begin
adopting the formula of deregulating, privatizing, opening up to foreign investment, and
cutting government deficits. Collectively, they sign onto international agreements that
accelerate the process of global integration - and fuel the long boom.
Two milestones come in 1997: the Information Technology Agreement, in which almost all
countries trading in IT agree to abolish tariffs by 2000, and the Global Telecommunications
Accord, in which almost 70 leading nations agree to rapidly deregulate their domestic
telecom markets. These two developments quickly spread the two key technologies of the
era: computers and telecommunications.
Everyone benefits, particularly the underdeveloped economies, which take advantage of the
leapfrog effect, adopting the newest, cheapest, best technology rather than settling for
obsolete junk. IT creates a remarkable dynamic that brings increasing power, performance,
and quality to each new generation of the technology - plus big drops in price. Also,
wireless telecommunications allow countries to avoid the huge effort and expense of
building wired infrastructures through crowded cities and diffuse countrysides.
This all bodes well for the world economy. Through most of the 1970s, all the 1980s, and
the early 1990s, the real growth rate in the world's gross domestic product averages 3
percent. By 1996, the rate tops a robust 4 percent. By 2005, it hits an astounding 6 percent.
Continued growth at this rate will double the size of the world economy in just 12 years,
doubling it twice in just 25 years. This level of growth surpasses the rates of the last global
economic boom, the years following World War II, which averaged 4.9 percent from 1950
to 1973. And this growth comes off a much broader economic base, making it more
remarkable still. Unlike the last time, almost every region of the planet, even in the
undeveloped world, participates in the bonanza.
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Latin America takes off. These countries, after experiencing the nightmare of debt in the
1980s, do much to vigorously restructure their economies in the 1990s. Chile and Argentina
are particularly innovative, and Brazil builds on an extensive indigenous high tech sector.
But the real boost from 2000 onward comes from capitalizing on Latin America's strategic
location on the booming Pacific Rim and on its proximity to the United States. The region
becomes increasingly drawn into the booming US economy. In 1994, the North American
Free Trade Agreement formally links the United States to Mexico and Canada. By about
2002, an All American Free Trade Agreement is signed - integrating the entire hemisphere
into one unified market.
The Middle East, meanwhile, enters crisis. Two main factors drive the region's problems.
One, the fundamentalist Muslim mind-set is particularly unsuited to the fluid demands of
the digital age. The new economy rewards experimentation, constant innovation, and
challenging the status quo - these attributes, however, are shunned in many countries
throughout the Middle East. Many actually get more traditional in response to the furious
pace of change. The other factor driving the crisis is outside their control. The advent of
hydrogen power clearly undermines the centrality of oil in the world economy. By 2008,
with the auto industry in a mad dash to convert, the bottom falls out of the oil market. The
Middle Eastern crisis comes to a head. Some of the old monarchies and religious regimes
begin to topple.
An even more disturbing crisis hits Africa. While some parts of the continent, such as
greater South Africa, are doing fine, central Africa devolves into a swirl of brutal ethnic
conflict, desperate poverty, widespread famine and disease. In 2015 the introduction of
biological weapons in an ethnic conflict, combined with the outbreak of a terrifying new
natural disease, brings the death count to unimagined levels: an estimated 5 million people
die in the space of six months - this on top of a cumulative death toll of roughly 100 million
who perished prematurely over the previous two decades.
The contrast between such destitution and the spreading prosperity elsewhere finally prods
the planet into collective action. Every nation, the world comes to understand, ultimately
can only benefit from a thriving Africa, which will occupy economic niches that other
nations are outgrowing. It makes as much practical as humanitarian sense. The regeneration
of Africa becomes a prime global agenda item for the next quarter of the century.
Future Aftershocks
Riding the wave of the booming economy brings other major social and political
repercussions. Fundamental shifts in technology and the means of production inevitably
change the way the economy operates. And when the economy changes, it doesn't take long
for the rest of society to adapt to the new realities. The classic example is the transformation
of agricultural society into industrial society. A new tool - the motor - led to a new
economic model - capitalism - that brought great social upheaval - urbanization and the
creation of an affluent class - and ultimately profound political change - liberal democracy.
While that's a crude summation of a complex historical transition, the same dynamic largely
holds true in our shift to a networked economy based on digital technologies.
There's also a commonsense explanation. When an economy booms, money courses through
society, people get rich quick, and almost everybody sees an opportunity to improve their
station in life. Optimism abounds. Think back to that period fol owing World War II. A
booming economy buoyed a bold, optimistic view of the world: we can put a man on the
Moon, we can build a Great Society, a racially integrated world. In our era, we can expect
the same.
By about 2000, the United States economy is doing so well that the tax coffers begin to
swell. This not only solves the deficit problem but gives the government ample resources to
embark on new initiatives. No longer forced to nitpick over which government programs to
cut, political leaders emerge with new initiatives to help solve seemingly intractable social
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problems, like drug addiction. No one talks about reverting to big government, but there's
plenty of room for innovative approaches to applying the pooled resources of the entire
society to benefit the public at large. And the government, in good conscience, can finally
afford tax cuts.
A spirit of generosity returns. The vast majority of Americans who see their prospects rising
with the expanding economy are genuinely sympathetic to the plight of those left behind.
This kinder, gentler humanitarian urge is bolstered by a cold, hard fact. The bigger the
network, the better. The more people in the network, the better for everyone. Wiring half a
town is only marginally useful. If the entire town has phones, then the system really sings.
Every person, every business, every organization directly benefits from a system in which
you can pick up a phone and reach every individual rather than just a scattered few. That
same principle true holds for the new networked computer technologies. It pays to get
everyone tied into the new information grid. By 2000, this mentality sinks in. Almost
everyone understands we're deep into a transition to a networked economy, a networked
society. It makes sense to get everyone on board.
The welfare reform initiative of 1996 begins the process of drawing the poor into the
economy at large. At the time, political leaders aren't talking about the network effect so
much as eliminating a wasteful government program. Nevertheless, the shakeup of the
welfare system coincides with the revving of the economy. Vast numbers of welfare
recipients do get jobs, and the great majority eventually move up to more skilled
professions. By 2002, the end of the initialfive-yeartransitional period, welfare rolls are cut
by more than half. Former welfare recipients are not the only ones benefiting from the new
economy. The working poor hovering just above the poverty line also leverage their way up
to more stable lives.
Even those from the hardened criminal underworld migrate toward the expanding supply of
legitimate work. Over time, through the first decade of the century, this begins to have
subtle secondary effects. The underclass, once thought to be a permanent fixture of
American society, begins to break up. Social mobility goes up, crime rates go down.
Though hard to draw direct linkages, many attribute the drop in crime to the rise in available
work. Others point to a shift in drug policy. Starting with the passage of the California
Medical Marijuana Initiative n 1996, various states begin experimenting with
decriminalizing drug use. Alongside that, the failed war on drugs gets dismantled. Both
initiatives are part of a general shift away from stiff law enforcement and toward more
complex ways to deal with the roots of crime. One effect is to destroy the conditions that led
to the rise of the inner-city drug economy. By the second decade of the century, the glorified
gangsta is as much a part of history as the original gangsters in the days of Prohibition.
Immigrants also benefit from the booming economy. Attempts to stem immigration in the
lean times of the early 1990s are largely foiled. By the late 1990s, immigrants are seen as
valuable contributors who keep the economy humming - more able hands and brains. By the
first decade of the century, government policy actively encourages immigration of
knowledge workers - particularly in the software industry, which suffers from severe labor
shortages. This influx of immigrants, coupled with Americans' changing attitudes toward
them, brings a pleasant surprise: the revival of the family. The centrality of the family in
Asian and Latino cultures, which form the bulk of these immigrants, is unquestioned. As
these subcultures increasingly flow into the American mainstream, a subtle shift takes place
in the general belief in the importance of family. It's not family in the nuclear-family sense
but a more sprawling, amorphous, networked sense of family to fit the new times.
The Brain Wave
Education is the next industrial-era institution to go through a complete overhaul - starting
in earnest in 2000. The driving force here is not so much concern with enlightening young
minds as economics. In an information age, the age of the knowledge worker, nothing
matters as much as that worker's brain. By the end of the 1990s, it becomes clear that the
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existing public K-12 school system is simply not up to the task of preparing those brains.
For decades the old system has ossified and been gutted by caps on property taxes. Various
reform efforts gather steam only to peter out. First George Bush then Bill Clinton try to grab
the mantle of "education president" - both fail. That changes in the 2000 election, when
reinventing education becomes a central campaign issue. A strong school system is
understood to be as as vital to the national interest as the military once was. The resulting
popular mandate shifts some of the billions once earmarked for defense toward revitalizing
education.
The renaissance of education in the early part of the century comes not from a task force of
luminaries setting national standards in Washington, DC - the solutions flow from the
hundreds of thousands of people throwing themselves at the problems across the country.
The 1980s and 1990s see the emergence of small, innovative private schools that proliferate
in urban areas where the public schools are most abysmal. Many focus on specific learning
philosophies and experiment with new teaching techniques - including the use of new
computer technologies. Beginning around 2001, the widespread use of vouchers triggers a
rapid expansion in these types of schools and spurs an entrepreneurial market for education
reminiscent of the can-do ethos of Silicon Valley. Many of the brightest young minds
coming out of college are drawn to the wide-open possibilities in the field - starting new
schools, creating new curricula, devising new teaching methods. They're inspired by the
idea that they're building the 21st-century paradigm for learning.
The excitement spreads far beyond private schools, which by 2010 are teaching about a
quarter of all students. Public schools reluctantly face up to the new competitive
environment and begin reinventing themselves. In fact, private and public schools maintain
a symbiotic relationship, with private schools doing much of the initial innovating, and
public schools concentrating on making sure the new educational models reach all children
in society.
Higher education, though slightly less in need of an overhaul, catches the spirit of radical
reform - again driven largely by economics. The cost of four-year colleges and universities
becomes absurd - in part because antiquated teaching methods based on lectures are so labor
intensive. The vigorous adoption of networking technologies benefits undergraduate and
graduate students even more than K-12 kids. In 2001, Project Gutenberg completes its task
of putting 10,000 books online. Many of the world's leading universities begin carving off
areas of expertise and assuming responsibility for the digitalization of all the literature in
that field. Around 2010, all new books come out in electronic form. By 2015, relatively
complete virtual libraries are up and running.
Despite earlier rhetoric, the key factor in making education work comes not from new
technology, but from enshrining the value of learning. A dramatic reduction in the number
of unskilled jobs makes clear that good education is a matter of survival. Indeed, nearly
every organization in society puts learning at the core of its strategy for adapting to a
fast-changing world. So begins the virtuous circle of the learning society. The booming
economy provides the resources to overhaul education. The products of that revamped
educational system enter the economy and improve its productivity. Eventually, education
both sows and reaps the benefits of the long boom.
In the first decade of the century, Washington finally begins to really reinvent government.
It's much the same process as the reengineering of corporations in the 1990s. The
hierarchical bureaucracies of the 20th century are flattened and networked through the
widespread adoption of new technologies. Some, like the IRS, experience spectacular
failures, but eventually make the transition. In a more important sense, the entire approach
to government is fundamentally reconsidered. The welfare and education systems are the
first down that path. Driven by the imminent arrival of the first of many-retiring baby
boomers in 2011, Medicare and Social Security are next. Other governmental sectors soon
follow.
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The second decade of the century marks a more ambitious but amorphous project: making a
multicultural society really work. Though the United States has the mechanics - such as the
legal framework - of an integrated society in place, Americans need to learn how to accept
social integration on a deeper level. The underpinnings of a booming economy make efforts
to ease the tensions among various ethnic and interest groups much easier than before:
people are more tolerant of others when their own livelihoods are not threatened. But people
also come around to seeing diversity as a way to spark a creative edge. They realize that part
of the key for success in the future is to remain open to differences, to stay exposed to
alternative ways of thinking. And they recognize the rationality of building a society that
draws on the strengths and creativity of all people.
Women spearhead many of the changes that help make the multicultural society work. As
half the population, they are an exceptional "minority" that helps pave the way for the racial
and ethnic minorities with fewer numbers. In the last global boom of the 1960s, the
women's movement gained traction and helped promote the rise in the status of women.
Through the 1970s and 1980s, women push against traditional barriers and work their way
into business and government. By the 1990s, women have permeated the entire fabric of the
economy and society. The needs, desires, and values of women increasingly begin to drive
the political and business worlds - largely for the better. By the early part of the century, it
becomes clear that the very skills most needed to make the networked society really hum
are those that women have long practiced. Long before it became fashionable, women were
developing the subtle abilities of maintaining networks, of remaining inclusive, of
negotiating. These skills prove to be crucial to solving the very different challenges of this
new world.
The effort to build a truly inclusive society does not just impact Americans. At the tum of
the century, the United States is the closest thing the world has to a workable multicultural
society. Almost all the cultures of the world have some representation, several in significant
proportions. As the century moves on, it becomes clear to most people on the planet that all
cultures must coexist in relative harmony on a global scale. On a meta level, it seems that
the world is heading toward a future that's prefaced by what's happening in the United
States.
A Civilization of Civilizations
In 2020, humans arrive on Mars. It's an extraordinary event by any measure, coming a half
century after people first set foot on the Moon. The four astronauts touch down and beam
their images back to the 11 billion people sharing in the moment. The expedition is a joint
effort supported by virtually all nations on the planet, the culmination of a decade and a half
of intense focus on a common goal. A remarkable enough technical achievement, the Mars
landing is even more important for what it symbolizes.
As the global viewing audience stares at the image of a distant Earth, seen from a
neighboring planet 35 million miles away, the point is made as never before: We are one
world. All organisms crammed on the globe are intricately interdependent. Plants, animals,
humans need to find a way to live together on that tiny little place. By 2020, most people
are acting on that belief. The population has largely stabilized. The spreading prosperity
nudged a large enough block of people into middle-class lifestyles to curtail high birth rates.
In some pockets of the world large families are still highly valued, but most people strive
only to replicate themselves, and no more. Just as important, the world economy has
evolved to a point roughly in balance with nature. To be sure, the ecosystem is not in perfect
equilibrium. More pollution enters the world than many would like. But the rates of
contamination have been greatly reduced, and the trajectory of these trends looks promising.
The regeneration of the global environment is in sight.
The images from Mars drive home another point: We're one global society, one human race.
The divisions we impose on ourselves look ludicrous from afar. The concept of a planet of
warring nations, a state of affairs that defined the previous century, makes no sense. Far
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better to channel the aspirations of the world's people into collectively pushing outward to
the stars. Far better to tum our technologies not against one another but toward a joint effort
that benefits all. And the artificial divisions we perpetuate between races and genders look
strange as well. All humans stand on equal footing. They're not the same, but they're treated
as equals and given equal opportunities to excel. In 2020, this point, only recently an empty
platitude, is accepted by almost all.
We're forming a new civilization, a global civilization, distinct from those that arose on the
planet before. It's not just Western civilization writ large - one hegemonic culture forcing
itself on others. It's not a resurgent Chinese civilization struggling to reassert itself after
years of being thwarted. It's a strange blend of both - and the others. It's something different,
something as yet being bom. In 2020, information technologies have spread to every comer
of the planet. Real-time language translation is reliable. The great cross-fertilization of
ideas, the ongoing, never-ending planetary conversation has begun. From this, the new
crossroads of all civilizations, the new civilization will emerge.
In many ways, it's a civilization of civilizations, to use a phrase coined by Samuel
Huntington. We're building a framework where all the world's civilizations can exist side by
side and thrive. Where the best attributes of each can stand out and make their unique
contributions. Where the peculiarities are cherished and allowed to live on. We're entering
an age where diversity is truly valued - the more options the better. Our ecosystem works
best that way. Our market economy works best that way. Our civilization, the realm of our
ideas, works best that way, too.
The Millennial Generation
By 2020, the world is about to go through a changeover in power. This happens not through
force, but through natural succession, a generational transition. The aging baby boomers,
bom in the wake of World War II, at the beginning of the 20th century's 40-year global
economic boom, are fading from their prominent positions of economic and moral
leadership. The tough-minded, techno-savvy generation that trails them, the digital
generation, has the new world wired. But these two generations have simply laid the
groundwork, prepared the foundations for the society, the civilization that comes next.
The millennial generation is coming of age. These are the children bom in the 1980s and
1990s, at the front end of this boom of all booms. These are the kids who have spent their
entire lives steeped in the new technologies, living in a networked world. They have been
educated in wired schools, they have taken their first jobs implicitly understanding
computer technologies. Now they're doing the bulk of society's work. They are reaching
their 40s and turning their attention to the next generation of problems that remain to be
cracked.
These are higher-level concerns, the intractable problems - such as eradicating poverty on
the planet - that people throughout history have believed impossible to solve. Yet this
generation has witnessed an extraordinary spread of prosperity across the planet. They see
no inherent barrier to keep them from extending that prosperity to - why not? - everyone.
Then there's the environment. The millennial generation has inherited a planet that's not
getting much worse. Now comes the more difficult problem of restoration, starting with the
rain forests. Then there's governance. Americans can vote electronically from home starting
with the presidential election of 2008. But e-voting is just an extension of the 250-year-old
system of liberal democracy. Interactive technologies may allow radically new forms of
participatory democracy on a scale never imagined. Many young people say that the end of
the nation-state is in sight.
These ambitious projects will not be solved in a decade, or two, or even three. But the life
span of this generation will stretch across the entire 21st century. Given the state of medical
science, most members of the millennial generation will live 100 years. Over the course of
their lifetimes, they confidently foresee the solutions to many seemingly intractable
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problems. And they fully expect to see some big surprises. Almost certainly there will be
unexpected breakthroughs in the realm of science and technology. What will be the
21st-century equivalent of the discovery of the electron or DNA? What strange new ideas
will emerge from the collective mind of billions of brains wired together throughout the
planet? What will happen when members of this millennial generation possibly confront a
new species of their own making: Homo superior? And what happens if after all the efforts
to methodically scan the skies, they finally latch onto signs of intelligent life?
Just Do It
Beam back down to Planet Earth. Get your head back to 1997, not even halfway through the
transition of this 40-year era. We're still on the front edge of the great global boom, the long
boom. Almost all the work remains before us. And a hell of a lot of things could go wrong.
This is only a scenario of the future, by no means an outright prediction of what is to come.
We can be reasonably confident of the continuation of certain trends. Much of the long
boom's technology is already in motion and almost inevitably will appear within that span.
Asia is ascendant whether we like it or not. Barring some bizarre catastrophe, that large
portion of the world will continue to boom. But there are many unknowns, all kinds of
critical uncertainties. Will Europe summon the political will to make the transition to the
new economy? Will Russia avoid a nationalist retrenchment and establish a healthy market
economy - let alone democracy? Will China fully embrace capitalism and avoid causing a
new cold - or hot - war? Will a rise in terrorism cause the world to pull back in constant
fear? It's not technology or economics that pose the biggest challenges to the long boom. It's
political factors, the ones dependent on strong leadership.
One hundred years ago, the world went through a similar process of technical innovation
and unprecedented economic integration that led to a global boom. New transportation and
communications technologies - railroads, telegraphs, and telephones - spread all over the
planet, enabling a coordination of economic activity at a level never seen before. Indeed, the
1890s have many parallels to the 1990s - for better or worse. The potential of new
technologies appeared boundless. An industrial revolution was spurring social and political
revolution. It couldn't be long, it seemed, before a prosperous, egalitarian society arrived. It
was a wildly optimistic time.
Of course, it all ended in catastrophe. The leaders of the world increasingly focused on
narrow national agendas. The nations of the world broke from the path of increasing
integration and lined up in competing factions. The result was World War I, with everyone
using the new technologies to wage bigger, more efficient war. After the conflict, the
continued pursuit of nationalist agendas severely punished the losers and consolidated
colonial empires. The world went from wild optimism to - quite literally - depression, in a
very short time.
The lessons of World War I contrast sharply with those of World War II. The move toward
a closed economy and society after the first war led to global fragmentation as nations
pulled back on themselves. In the aftermath of World War II, the impetus was toward an
open economy and society - at least in half the world. This led down a path of continuing
integration. World leaders had the foresight to establish an array of international institutions
to manage the emerging global economy. They worked hard to rebuild their vanquished
enemies, Germany and Japan, through generous initiatives like the Marshall Plan. This
philosophical shift from closed to open societies came about through bold leadership, much
of it coming from the United States. In the wake of World War I, American political and
business leaders embraced isolationism - with severe consequences for the world. After
World War II, they did the opposite - with very different results.
Today, the United States has a similarly crucial leadership role to play. There are purely
practical reasons for this. The United States has the single largest economy in the world, a
market with a big influence on the flow of world trade. It has the biggest research and
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scientific establishment by far. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, no other country
features a comparable array of university research facilities, corporate industrial labs, and
nonprofit think tanks. That combination of a huge economy and a scientific elite gives the
United States the world's strongest military; the country can develop the weapons and pay
the bills. For the next 15 years at the very least, America will be the preeminent military
power. These reasons alone ensure that the United States, regardless of the intentions of its
leaders, will have a huge influence on any future scenario. But the role of the United States
is more involved, more complicated than that.
The United States is the great innovator nation, the incubator of new ideas. Just as the new
technologies of the early Industrial Revolution were bom in England, the vast majority of
innovations in the computer and telecommunications fields are happening now in the United
States. Americans are fundamentally shaping the core technologies and infrastmcture that
will be at the foundation of the 21st century. Partly because of that, the US is the first
country to transition to the new economy. American corporations are the first to adopt the
new technologies and adapt to the changing economic realities. As a nation, the United
States is figuring out how tofinessethe new model of high economic growth driven by new
technologies. The American people are feeling the first social and cultural effects. And the
government is the first to come under the strain to change. The United States is paving the
way for other developed nations and, eventually, the rest of the nations of the world.
Even more important, the United States serves as steward of the idea of an open society.
The US is home to the core economic and political values that emerged from the 20th
century - the free-market economy and democracy. But the idea of an open society is
broader than that. Americans believe in the free flow of ideas, products, and people.
Historically, this has taken the form of protecting speech, promoting trade, and welcoming
immigrants. With the coming of a wired, global society, the concept of openness has never
been more important. It's the linchpin that will make the new world work.
In a nutshell, the key formula for the coming age is this: Open, good. Closed, bad. Tattoo it
on your forehead. Apply it to technology standards, to business strategies, to philosophies of
life. It's the winning concept for individuals, for nations, for the global community in the
years ahead. If the world takes the closed route, it starts a vicious circle: Nations tum
inward. The world fragments into isolated blocs. This strengthens traditionalists and leads to
rigidity of thought. This stagnates the economy and brings increasing poverty. This leads to
conflicts and increasing intolerance, which promotes an even more closed society and a
more fragmented world. If, on the other hand, the world adopts the open model, then a much
different, virtuous circle begins: Open societies tum outward and strive to integrate into the
world. This openness to change and exposure to new ideas leads to innovation and progress.
This brings rising affluence and a decrease in poverty. This leads to growing tolerance and
appreciation of diversity, which promotes a more open society and a more highly integrated
world.
The United States, as first among equals, needs to live this concept in the coming decades.
One of the first great tasks will be integrating its former communist adversaries China and
Russia into the world community, in much the same way that it once did Japan and
Germany. This will be the main geopolitical challenge of the next dozen years. We'll know
if we made it by 2010. Then there's the need to create a complex fabric of new global
economic and political institutions to fit the 21st century. Though these need not take the
bureaucratic shape they did in the past, a certain level of coordination of global activities
will continue to fall in the public sphere. In the technical realm, some body needs to mediate
the setting of global technical standards and the allocation of what are, at the moment,
scarce resources like airwaves. In the legal arena, we need to find ways to protect the rights
of creators and consumers of intellectual property. In terms of the environment, the
collective world community needs to get cracking on problems that endanger everyone:
global climate change, loss of the ozone layer, and other cross-border problems like acid
rain. And then there are the issues that fall under security. We spent decades in exemciating
negotiation to disarm and limit nuclear proliferation. In an age of information warfare, we
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face a very different set of security concerns and a laborious process to find global solutions
- starting with a workable accord on cryptography.
The vast array of problems to solve and the sheer magnitude of the changes that need to take
place are enough to make any global organization give up, any nation back down, any
reasonable person curl up in a ball. That's where Americans have one final contribution to
make: optimism, that maddening can-do attitude that often drives foreigners insane.
Americans don't understand limits. They have boundless confidence in their ability to solve
problems. And they have an amazing capacity to think they really can change the world. A
global transformation over the next quarter century inevitably will bring a tremendous
amount of trauma. The world will run into a daunting number of problems as we transition
to a networked economy and a global society. Apparent progress will be followed by
setbacks. And all along the way the chorus of naysayers will insist it simply can't be done.
We'll need some hefty doses of indefatigable optimism. We'll need an optimistic vision of
what the future can be.
Peter Schwartz (schwartz@gbn.org) is cofounder and chair of Global Business Network and
author of The Art of the Long View. Peter Leyden (ley den(a> wired .com) is a features editor
at Wired.
Read the transcript of an online chat with Peter Schwartz, Peter Leyden, and Wired readers.
The discussion took place live Wednesday, July 9, 1997.
Copyright © 1993-97 Wired Magazine Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Compilation Copyright © 1994-97 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.
A wing and no prayer.
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�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Michael Waldman
Description
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<p>Michael Waldman was Assistant to the President and Director of Speechwriting from 1995-1999. His responsibilities were writing and editing nearly 2,000 speeches, which included four State of the Union speeches and two Inaugural Addresses. From 1993 -1995 he served as Special Assistant to the President for Policy Coordination.</p>
<p>The collection generally consists of copies of speeches and speech drafts, talking points, memoranda, background material, correspondence, reports, handwritten notes, articles, clippings, and presidential schedules. A large volume of this collection was for the State of the Union speeches. Many of the speech drafts are heavily annotated with additions or deletions. There are a lot of articles and clippings in this collection.</p>
<p>Due to the size of this collection it has been divided into two segments. Use links below for access to the individual segments:<br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=43&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=2006-0469-F+Segment+1">Segment One</a><br /><a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=43&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=2006-0469-F+Segment+2">Segment Two</a></p>
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Michael Waldman
Office of Speechwriting
Date
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1993-1999
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2006-0469-F
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Segment One contains 1071 folders in 72 boxes.
Segment Two contains 868 folders in 66 boxes.
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Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
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William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
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Adobe Acrobat Document
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paper
Dublin Core
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[State of the Union 1999 - High Points of American Achievement 20th Century]: POTUS Talks and Interviews
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Office of Speechwriting
Michael Waldman
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Box 52
<a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/36404"> Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7763296">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
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2006-0469-F Segment 2
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White House Staff and Office Files
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William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
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Adobe Acrobat Document
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6/3/2015
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7763296
42-t-7763296-20060469F-Seg2-052-003-2015