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THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
Internal Transcript
April 23, 1993
INTERVIEW OF THE PRESIDENT
AND THE FIRST LADY BY
KEN WALSH OF U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT
The Rose Garden
Q
I wanted to just, since this has been such an
extraordinary week, take maybe five minutes to just ask you, just
coming off the news, if I could -- I know you're having a press
conference this afternoon -- given the events of this week, how you
deal with sort of the emotional part of a Waco or a Bosnia.
If you
could sort of cut that off, if you can put that out of your mind; if
you even should? If there's an aspect of this dealing with a crisis
that you have to sort of divorce yourself emotionally from it at some
point?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think there's a point at which
you have to let it go because you have to go on to other things. But
of course, it affects you personally. Those things do. We talk
about them at night and when we come home -- In some ways it's more
difficult here because you kind of work where you live and it's all
-- that's nice in some ways because it gives our family a lot more
immediate access to one another.
You don't spend as much time going
to and from work as we used to.
But it ha.d an effect, obviously, on us and -- a couple
times I just picked up the phone and called Janet Reno to see how she
was doing with that. Those things happen. And you can't -- the life
we've lived all these years, it's just impossible to leave everything
at the office. You can't do it.
Q
Is it helpful to you that you 'feel that you really
,.,
should ieave things at the office? I mean, there can't be that sort
of separation between sort of your own emotions and dealing with
something ~and -
THE PRESIDENT: For example, we've spent a lot of time
over the last month or so talking about the situation in Bosnia in
our personal -- (inaudible) -- but we also, at some point, try to let
it go. We try to spend some time every night after we go to bed
reading, and talking, just doing something that has nothing to do
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with work, because if you don't, it's very hard to get replenished
for the next day.
Q
Right. And the other side of it is on the policy
side, where you didn't get your stimulus proposal through the Senate.
When you deal with a setback like that, is it a matter that you get
angry, that you feel that you just sort of leave it there and don't
take things personally? How do you deal on the policy side of the
setback?
.
THE PRESIDENT:
I think when something like that happens
-- for one thing, that's a very different sort of thing.
I dealt
with a very -- kind of contentious and difficult legislative
situation from time to time for over a decade as a governor. Some of
the changes I have fought for, particularly in the area of political
reform, took 10 years to get done. The country's been going in a
certain direction for more than a decade; I'm trying to turn it
around.
I've been here less than 100 days, so I don't take that
personally. There are all kinds of political, as well as economic
elements in that whole issue. And what we try to do when something
like that happens is to regroup, analyze what happens, what were the
motivations of the people who were on all sides of the issues, why
did it come out the way it did, what could we have done differently
to make it come o~t better.
There will be sort of an endless string of these back
and forth with Congress over these domestic issues.
Frankly, I was
amazed they adopted the budget resolution as quickly as they did,
more or less intact. I mean, these things are -- it's not just
politics, there are also real ideas at stake. There's a certain
mindset that I'm trying to break in this town and I knew it would
take a while to do. So I'm not particularly discouraged about it.
In fact, I'm like everybody elsei if I can win 100 percent of the
time, I'd do it. But you can't do that. You just have to keep
going.
Q
Is part of that mindset that the 100 days -- I
mean, is that even a realistic gauge of anything?
THE PRESIDENT: Not anymore.
I mean, when Roosevelt had
his 100 days, he had two advantages I didn't have.
Number one, he
,
didn't have to start until March.
So he got a hugely greater time tol
get started. And, secondly, there was a level of receptivity because
one in four people were unemployed, and the government was -
thirdly, the government was much less bureaucratic.
I'm amazed at
just how long it takes once we nominate someone to go through their
FBI checks.
It just takes forever -- too long to get things done.
But we've done a lot in 100 days, and we've got to do some more. And
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on the looth day, we're going to introduce the national service bill.
And then after that, there's a lot more coming.
We've got our whole empowerment strategy for 'the cities
coming. We've got all the political reform things that are coming -
campaign finance reform, more on the lobbying front and a number of
other issues, in terms of reforming the government. We've got the
big welfare reform initiative still coming this year. But I was
telling Hillary this morning and we were laughing about it a little
bit -- when I was elected Governor in '82, we had until September to
develop an education program which was a big, complex thing, but not
as complex as health care. So I think we're moving this pretty
quickly.
Now it's ten years later and there's a lot more kind of
bureaucracy in the government. We've got federal -- all these
federal forces, so we're going to keep pushing it.
I hope the people
will be a little patient with the administration and understand what
the realistic time frames are.
Q
On that same thing, Mrs. Clinton, we want to ask
you, obviously, Americans really felt for you and your father
recently.
I think they're also curious just how momentous a personal
event like that affects your views of health care and whether a very
recent experience with physicians and hospitals made you think
differently about health care, or think anew about it?
MRS. CLINTON: You know, I haven't really processed all
that.
It's something that we went through, and we had a very good
relationship with all of the doctors. They were all friends of ours.
We knew the people at the hospital, and it was a very supportive
environment for my whole family.
Obviously, I would like to see
everyone have the same kind of opportunity to be supported when they
go through something like that.
It certainly reinforced for me how, at the bottom of all
of this talk about financing health care and organizing the delivery
of it and all of the ways that they talk about it in Washington, at
the bottom are these very profound human relations. What we're
trying to do is to free up people in health care to once again take
care of patients and not fill out forms and not be second-guessed by
bureaucrats and try to strip away a lot of paperwork and the red tape
that really does stand in the way of people actually coming together
as human beings around these really profound and difficult issues of
life and death.
So I think it reinforced me in my fundamental belief
about what is at the end of this process and what it is we're trying
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to do for every American to make them secure and feel the way that my
family felt at the end of a very difficult experience.
Q
Just on the main reason we asked you to talk to us
today -
MRS. CLINTON: Can I move a little closer to you?
feel like I'm not really hearing you as well as I'd like to.
I
Q
Great. Basically, on the point of -- so many
American working families have to juggle their jobs and their
personal lives, find time for each other for activities and still
pursue their careers. And I wonder if you have some guiding
principles on how you do that balancing, if you carve tim~ out for
each other or for Chelsea and how that's done.
THE PRESIDENT: We're still trying to get it right.
(Laughter.) After all these years.
I don't know that this is
particularly an appropriate time for us to evaluate it because we're
still trying to establish a routine here. But, basically, we do try
to have dinner every night together. We think that's important. And
I try to get Chelsea up every morning.
I talk to her a while then.
It appears now that -- it used to be that the mornings
were the best time for Chelsea and me at least.
I would always take
her to school. But now, that's not practical. I mean, I could do
it, but it would be terrible for her because of the press pool and
all that -- (laughter)-- a lot of it is no fun when you're 13 to be
taken to school by a caravan. But now we can at least meet at home
at night.
But the real trick for us now, I think, is trying to
find some time -- family time, and time for Hillary and me to be
together at this time when we're trying to do all this health care
and all these other things that we need to do that just swallow up
your whole weekend. One of the things we really have to fight for is
some time on Sunday -- sometimes a little bit on Saturday where we
can just be together and do nothing
just do nothing.
One of the
things Hillary has worked for years is to try to get me to do
nothing.
'
Q
I hear that from your staff as well.
But is it -
what do you think the most valuable family time is for the Clinton
family these days? Is it having dinner together? Is it the time you
both can spend together or one on one with Chelsea? What is most
important to you?
MRS. CLINTON:
I think all of that is.
I think that
we've worked really hard to establish some time in the evening so
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that when we have dinner together, we try to do it as informally as
possible so that it's a real family time and not something that is
too structured. And we also try to spend time afterwards just
talking, just finding out what's going on and helping with homework
and -- just really being with each other.
I think that organized
activities are great, and we have movies here together and we've gone
to Camp David once and we're going to do that again because that's
really a good environment for all of us.
But just kind of being with
each other and letting the thoughts come out that are there -- how we
feel about what's going on and -- that's the best time for us.
Q
It seems like you've made a real effort to try to
have a lot of friends in and keep in touch with folks and sort of
avoid the bubble. How do you think all that is going ?
MRS. CLINTON: We have tried. We have tried. And we've
tried to have our families here a lot, too.
In fact, we had dinner
with our mothers last night, with Chelsea. And it's really important
to have our friends and our family around, and it's really important
to Chelsea, too, to be with familiar people and people that knew us
before we lived here.
So we like to do a lot of that, and hope that
we'll be able to keep that up.
Q
Has it been easy for your friends to feel intimate
with you and to feel as comfortable around you as they always have?
Or is this whole setting a little off-putting sometimes?
THE PRESIDENT:
I think a lot of -- it's hard to
generalize. One of the nice things about it is that we have --our
families can come and stay with us more comfortably and more closely
than they did before. That's -- (inaudible) -- a lot of -- nearly
everybody that comes by from home, would come by and we'd have a
visit -- that's been very nice. Very nice.
The thing that I find more difficult, with the exception
of my morning run, is just the opportunities that I used to take in a
very consistent way to try to keep -- (inaudible.)
I always found
that was much more valuable than polling or all that kind of thing.
Polls come and go.
You get a real sense of people's lives and the
language they speak and the way they look at the world when you can
relate to them in a kind of an unstructured way, that I could always
do as Governor, and even as a candidate for president.
It's much
more difficult
Q
Is there anything you've been able to do, like
dipping into the mail or -
THE PRESIDENT:
Yes, I do that every -- I'll tell you
what I do -- I get a representative sample of mail every week, and I
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sign a fair number of the letters that go out every week just to real
citizens, talking about their problems or what they think, and that's
important.
I must say one of the most rewarding but frustrating
aspects of this -- and I don't want to get off the -- (inaudible)
we're getting more mail than any family ever had, and we just can't
keep up with it. We cut back the number of people working on the
staff, but we've dramatically increased the volunteers dealing with
the mail. We've got - we must have over 200 people helping us with
the mail. And we're still - we've got 500,000 letters over there.
Q
We've seen stacks of them in the halls in the Old
EOB.
MRS. CLINTON: It's really distressing us because we
always answered every letter and felt a real obligation if people
reached out to do that.
It is very distressing to us personally that
we have just been deluged. I mean, the good news is that people want
to share their thoughts, and there are a lot of very not only
heartfelt letters, but good ideas coming in from people. And the bad
news is, we're just incapable right now of getting all that answered.
And it really makes us feel bad.
Q
Is there a pattern to what people are asking about
in the mail, or is it just -
THE PRESIDENT: No.
I mean, it depends on what's in the
news. We'll get more letters on' a subject in the new,s in a given
week. We also are getting an awful lot of letters where citizens
have done and write about things. We understood when we got here
and I'm somewhat more sympathetic to it now than I was -- that
previous administrations have not answered as much as two-thirds of
the mail that -- (inaudible) -- but we came in with the hope that we
could answer all the letters. Maybe even especially those were
critical -- especially if they were geniune
instead of, you know,
just "I don't agree with you, why don't you do this" -- that kind.
And, yet, with 34,000 a day or something 60ming in, the
highest volume they've ever recorded, we're still -- we'll get it
down. We'll figure out how to do it.
But I hope that -
THE FIRST LADY:
THE PRESIDENT:
THE FIRST LADY:
sometime, trust us.
We want everybody reading -
Well-
It's -- you will get an answer
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THE PRESIDENT:
We're working hard on it.
THE FIRST LADY:
I felt so bad when I was in Montana.
This really attractive boy came up to me, and his whole high school
class had written letters. Each one had written about whatever it is
that they were concerned about. They had written last month. And he
said, you know, we haven't heard back. And I said, I'm so sorry, I
said, I'll see if we can't try to find your letters for you.
(Laughter.)
Q
But I mean, it's nice if there's a -- people still
feel there should be that personal connection, and can be. They
expect it.
THE FIRST LADY:
In addition to the letters that have
come in just in general, we have now processed probably, I think,
60,000 -- and stacks more of those wait. But those were really
impressive letters. I mean, just amazing letters. People doing
things like, saying, I was in the hospital last year in two different
places, and I got these bills, and look at how they differ. You
know, it was just fascinating that people went to that trouble.
THE PRESIDENT: Themail on the health care has been
very helpful to the work of Hillary's task force.
THE FIRST LADY:
It sure has.
THE PRESIDENT: And weive gotten a lot of letters from
doctors, not in an organized way, writing in, saying I want to help,
here are the changes that I'd be prepared to make, here are the
changes I wouldn't be prepared to make, here are the things that
really detailed - immensely helpful. And we have had the staff
Q
They've been given
THE FIRST LADY:
Yes.
THE PRESIDENT: - the health care credits. And people
who would understand what they were reading.
So that's.been a great
-- it's been amazingly helpful.
I don't know if any endeavor like
this before has ever been genuinely influenced by the spontaneous
mail of citizens. -But this one has, just because they're writing -
you know, go back to the original -- one of the things that we've
always struggled with over the years that I think we really -- we've
been trying to reassess here lately is that part of why people feel
this personal connection is because we tried to be real people. And
one of the things that we had to keep reminding ourselves of is that
we have four years to work on this, we can't get it all done today,
and we just have to keep pulling back and trying to make time for
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each other and Chelsea and -- and our family and our friends.
know, if you lose that, that's part of what enabled you to -
You
Q
Well, that -- I'm not -- each other. How do you do
that? You have to be flexible. All working couples have to figure
this out.
I mean, do you try to -- do you still call each other a
lot during the day?
Q
And is it a mix of policy and -
THE FIRST LADY:
Q
Person
Personal stuff?
THE PRESIDENT:
When we talk on the phone during the day
it's -
THE FIRST LADY:
THE PRESIDENT:
in five -- I don't know -
Usually personal.
Almost never policy.
One in four, one
Q
And do you just pick up the phone and call each
other, or do you try to touch base like once a day without fail, or
THE PRESIDENT: Sometimes I just pick up the phone to
see how she's doing. Sometimes I just get lonesome in there.
I've taken a good whipping I'll stop and -.
Q
Are you able to sort of have lunch together alone
at all?
MRS. CLINTON:
Yes, we've done that a couple of times."
THE PRESIDENT: We have done that a couple of times.
We've got a little garden here in the White House and now that it's
warming up.
MRS. CLINTON:
Or in the study next to the oval Office.
THE PRESIDENT: You know, it's interesting. That's the
one thing I never did before I came here is I never have eaten lunch
regularly. Ever.
I always just work through lunch four out of five
times unless I had
speech or, you know, some working lunch.
I just
didn't do it. NOW, I've tried to adjust my diet -
a
Q
-- lunch every day.
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THE PRESIDENT: It's really quite nice to be here where
I can see Hillary and -- (inaudible.)
Q
I wanted to get back to Chelsea for a moment. As
parents, ,how do you divide sort of responsibilities or sort of
priorities in everything ranging from who handles what with her
homework to, I understand, for instance, that when Chelsea gets home
from school every day as most children do, call one of her parents
and say I'm home. And then you go over to see her most days just to
see how she's doing.
Is that what happens?
MRS. CLINTON: Or she comes over to see us. She'll come
over and see her dad sometimes and, on a few occasions, you know,
bring her homework with her. He's the algebra homework -
THE PRESIDENT:
I do the math.
MRS. CLINTON: He does the math. That's absolutely his
domain. Then kind of depending upon what's going on we'll check in
and see what 'she needs. Maybe she'll call and say, you know, I want
to go to a friends house. Because we're both here she can find
either one of us which is kind of nice.
Q
Right.
MRS. CLINTON: And then we try to meet her friends that
she's making, you know, new friends here.
So, we have them over.
We've had girls over for meals and for overnights and we both try to
be there when that happens so that we can meet them and meet the
parents as they pick them up or drop them off.
I got to go to two soccer games and the softball games
keep getting rained out, so I haven't got to those yet.
But it's
pretty much like most working families.
You try to be there as much
as you possibly can physically and you then try to stay in touch by
phone and other ways. But what we try to do is to schedule this time
at night to know that we're going to have dinner together and know
we're going to spend time together.
She and her dad like to watch terrible movies together.
THE PRESIDENT:
MRS. CLINTON:
We like adventure movies.
What I view terrible.
THE PRESIDENT:
-- there was a James Bond. One of the
networks were showing two James Bond movies back to back so after
Chelsea did her homework she came and we watched the end of one of
the James Bond ,movies. She got in the bed and she laid in front of
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her mother, who didn't like them as much.
Connery.
411-
MRS. CLINTON:
from my youth.
Oh, she kind of likes Sean
Yes, I like Sean Connery.
Yes, that's
THE PRESIDENT: Last night after she finished he~
homework, she came into my office that's up in the residence and we
watched the end of the incredible Philadelphia 76ers and the Portland
Trailblazers last night. -- (inaudible) -- the lead changed hands
three times in the las~ minute.
It was unbelievable.
Q
Is she a basketball fan?
THE PRESIDENT: We like basketball because Arkansas has
had a good basketball team ever since she's been a little girl, ever
since she was born. So, she's kind of gotten into that.
So, we
watched that and played Crazy 8s for a while and just talked.
Q
Well, I understand that during Chelsea's birthday
weekend she had some friends over and -- (inaudible)
they played
hide and seek and one of the girls asked you a place to hide. Could
you tell us where that was?
THE PRESIDENT:
MRS. CLINTON:
It's a secret.
Yes, that's top secret.
That's
classified.
Q
girls over.
long.
But you did help -
THE PRESIDENT:
That was good.
I really liked it when she had all those
She had a
MRS. CLINTON: of course, they all stayed up all night
It was wonderful except we're too old for that any more.
THE PRESIDENT:
EOB and bowled.
They bowled.
They went over to the old
Q
What I want to ask is I'm writing a piece as part
of this package. Just about the question of sort of management in
the White House, and I know you've thought a lot about -- over the
years.
I've been talking to folks here and to people like -
(inaudible) -- I'm curious as to how you think that's going? If you
feel like you've got the kind of process where you want it?
THE PRESIDENT:
I think it's going r~asonably well. No,
I think that the real
I think we've got part of it where we want it.
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~
trick I think is that basically the teamwork is working well. We
have -- I just got a long sort of recommendations today, for example,
on two issues that I care a lot about.
One, is the -- empowerment
agenda and the other is the community development banks which relate
to that. How do we more for the community banks. And I really was
impressed by the way all the relevant folks in the White House and
all the relevant folks in the government got together, worked
together, ,came up with a fairly quick decision and had -- (inaudible)
~- that I still'have to decide myself.
That's where the stuff is going in. And by and large I
think Hillary would say the same about where the health care thing is
working. We brought in all the different government departments and
there's a real sense of teamwork.
We have been, usually but not always,' very good at kind
of involving people outside the White House.
You know, the people in
the Congress, people in the -- (inaudible) -
So, I like all that.
I still am not satisfied with the
level of flexibility and response sort of in -- there's a -- this
place is -- I'm so much more understanding of my previous presidents
who have had difficulty breaking out, changing, doing things
differently; that the whole system is designed basically to slow you
down and just -- (inaudible.)
And I'm working on it but it's just not quite there yet.
I've visited a couple of departments and I want to visit a lot more.
Al Gore's going out -- (inaudible) -- there are just a lot more
things that I want to do.
I think after I've been here about six
months I think I'll have it down.
But it's not quite where I want it
yet.
Q
Just, finally, any sort of advice you'd have for
working folks around the country in how to juggle all these
responsibilities these days in whatever their lives are like?
THE PRESIDENT: All I can say is that, you know, we have
really struggled with it and we've worked at it for 20 years. And
sometimes we've been better at it than others. You always pay a
price if you sacrifice too much -- (inaudible.)
Some guy said to me
four or five years ago, I can't remember who it was, but hardly
anybody ever said on his or her
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Dublin Core
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Lissa Muscatine - Press Office
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First Lady's Office
Press Office
Lissa Muscatine
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1993 - 1997
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<a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/36239" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="http://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431941" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
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2011-0415-S
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<p>Lissa Muscatine first served in the Clinton Administration as a speechwriter. Within the First Lady’s Office, she served as Communications Director to the First Lady.</p>
<p>Lissa Muscatine’s records consist of materials from First Lady Hillary Clinton’s Press Office, highlighting topics such as health care, women’s rights, the Millennium Council, Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, and deal extensively with press interviews given by the First Lady; her domestic and foreign travel; and speeches and remarks, on a wide variety of topics, given by her before and during her time as First Lady. The records include interview transcripts, press releases, speeches and speech transcripts.</p>
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Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
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1,324 folders in 27 boxes
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FLOTUS Press Office Interview Transcripts Volume I 01/29/93---9/30/93 [Binder]: [04/23/93 Walsh, Ken US News and World Report]
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<a href="http://clintonlibrary.gov/assets/Documents/Finding-Aids/Systematic/2011-0415-S-Muscatine.pdf" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="http://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431941" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
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First Lady's Office
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Lissa Muscatine
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2011-0415-S
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Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
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2011-0415-S-flotus-press-office-interview-transcripts-volume-i-01-29-93-9-30-93-binder-04-23-93-walsh-ken-us-news-and-world-report
7431941