American Experience (1988–…): Season 24, Episode 3 - Clinton, Part 1 - full transcript

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We interrupt your
regular program

for quite
an extraordinary moment

in the history
of the United States.

A short while ago, President
Clinton's staff came to tell us

that he was going to come
to the Rose Garden now



and make some remarks.

Peter, the president
will make another attempt

to say he's sorry
about what he's caused.

Bill Clinton had come
into office

with notions
of an heroic presidency,

to inscribe his name in history
alongside FDR and JFK.

Good afternoon.

But on the afternoon
of December 11, 1998,

he came to the Rose Garden
of the White House

to apologize
to the American people.

I am profoundly sorry
for all I have done wrong

in words and deeds.

I never should have misled
the country, the Congress,

my friends, or my family.



Quite simply,
I gave in to my shame.

It's almost as if all of this
was just too easy for him.

It's almost as if he had
to set up these barriers

that he could then leap across,
or stagger across,

but get across
in any event, always.

I'm going to give you
this election back.

And if you'll give it to me,
I won't be like George Bush.

I'll never forget who gave me
a second chance

and I'll be there for you
till the last dog dies.

And I want you to remember that.

How many second chances, right?

How many second chances
does any one person deserve?

Clinton's view is
as many second chances

as a person is willing
to try to take.

You know, I mean,
as many times as you fail,

don't you deserve the chance
to redeem yourself?

Isn't history loaded with people
who have fallen and gotten up,

and fallen and gotten up,
and fallen and gotten up

and done great things?

We will together build a bridge
to the 21st century

wide enough and strong enough to
take us to America's best days.

Will you do that?

There's a stick-to-itiveness
about him

that's just phenomenal.

An abiding belief that if he
can just have enough time,

he can win over
just about anybody.

The central repetitive theme
of Bill Clinton's life

is loss and recovery.

Never count him out

because, always,
he will find his way back.

I end tonight where
it all began for me.

I still believe in a place
called Hope.

Where does it come from?

The unwillingness
to quit on himself,

on the things he believed in,
on the people he cared about?

He disappoints them every time
on some level,

but he always gets up
and tries to make it better.

You know, what else can you ask
from a sinner?

Success, misjudgment,

in some cases catastrophe,
followed by comeback.

That resilience is central
to who he is as a politician.

I think it's central
to who he is as a man.

He would emerge

from the political backwaters
of Arkansas...

"like a country tornado,"
one newspaper wrote...

A political natural unlike
anyone had seen in a generation.

But in the winter of 1992,

as Bill Clinton began
campaigning for president

in New Hampshire,
he was still a relative unknown,

eager to win over voters
and his young campaign staff.

It was just so clear

that he was exceptionally
talented politician

from the kind of get-go.

How do you get the ideas
we develop in America

in the manufacturing jobs here?

There are literally...

His ability to adapt,
his ability to walk into a room,

to size up an issue,
to understand...

I've never seen a candidate,
I've never seen a human being

who, with the most
limited briefing,

can understand the dimensions,
the parameters,

the nuances of everything

of any kind of a policy
or political problem.

If we had a broad-based
national health policy,

it would never be in anyone's
interest not to hire you...

He could see six sides
to the Pentagon.

All right, Bill!

In a primary field crowded
with Democratic candidates,

Clinton's determination
and skill

quickly distinguished him
from his rivals.

His aides nicknamed him
after a legendary racehorse,

Secretariat.

You spent $200 on medication?

Yes.

There was this famous instance

just before the New Hampshire
primary.

A woman started talking about
that she couldn't afford

the drugs that she needed
to survive.

And she started to cry.

And Clinton's reflex action
was to get down on his knees,

put his arms around her,
and he's crying, too.

I'm really sorry.

It isn't right, it isn't right.

The story that I heard
from people over and over was,

"For that one moment,
he looked me in the eye,

"he touched me on the arm,
he listened to my story,

and I felt like I was
the only person in the world."

And he did it over
and over and over.

And the only way
you can have that moment

over and over and over
is if you really are interested.

Throughout New Hampshire...

In union halls, truck stops
and diners...

Clinton heard stories
of depressed wages

and vanishing jobs,
as the state and the nation

struggled to emerge
from a recession.

Ten years ago, we had the
highest wages in the world.

Now we're tenth,
and we're dropping.

What else do you think
we ought to do?

He knew these people,
knew what they were thinking,

knew their concerns, and felt
that government in Washington,

in large measure, was just not
addressing those concerns.

The mostly white,
working-class voters

Clinton met in New Hampshire,

like those in his own state
of Arkansas,

had been fleeing the
Democratic Party for years.

Bill Clinton knew that Democrats

were not going to regain
the presidency

until they re-established
a connection

with these middle-class
and lower-middle-class voters

who had been attracted
for various reasons

to Republican politicians
and to conservative ideas.

For nearly a decade,

as he rose through the ranks
of Democratic politics,

Clinton had been
honing a message

to win back these so-called
"Reagan Democrats."

The entire thrust of the
traditional Democratic Party

was based on entitlements
and endowments.

They would bestow money
on people.

Bill Clinton's
incredibly bold idea

was to change the grant
to a transaction...

"We'll give you something,
but we demand something back."

The way he would phrase it is,
"We'll give you opportunity

but you have to take
responsibility."

If you want the right
to receive welfare benefits,

you have to assume the
responsibility to get educated,

to have job training, and to go
to work if you can do it...

When he went out and said,

"We need opportunity for all,

but responsibility
from all Americans,"

that was different from what
Democrats had been saying.

Preaching his "New Democrat"
message in New Hampshire,

Clinton began to catch fire.

People say I'm not
a real Democrat

and I say I'm against brain-dead
politics in both parties.

By mid-January,
he'd pulled ahead

of his strongest competitors
and into the lead.

Then, with just weeks to go,
it all seemed to fall apart.

Democratic presidential
candidate Bill Clinton

is again denying a report
of an extra-marital affair.

The report is in the Star,
the supermarket tabloid.

The first time I heard of
Gennifer Flowers was a rumor.

I mean, the rumors of him
messing around were out there.

And the stories were out there.

And it was something that
his handlers talked about.

You know, "How are we going
to deal with this

if it actually happens?"

I would like to introduce my
client to you, Gennifer Flowers.

At first, nobody was really
that worried about it.

But then the woman appeared.

And not only did
the woman appear,

but she was a lounge singer.

And everybody thought,
"Oh yeah, absolutely."

And she had tapes.

I didn't think it would start
this quickly.

But I think, Bill,
you're being naïve

if you think that these other
shows like A Current Affair...

I expect them to come
looking into it

and interview you and
everything, but I just think

that if everybody is on record
denying it, you got no problem.

Hold on just a sec here, people.

Where'd he go?

At first, Clinton's response
to the scandal was evasive...

She did call me, I never
initiated any calls to her,

and whenever she called me she
basically wanted reassurance...

There was this growing sense
and skepticism in the press

that this guy was just
a big phony.

I mean, he was too slick.

He was too smooth, and he would
lawyer answers to questions.

I said... that's not true.

Even if your name gets used,
in the absence of proof,

nobody can prove you're guilty,
don't worry about it.

The press called him
"Slick Willie," and it stuck.

The general thinking was that
he was dead.

Politicians didn't survive
this thing.

As many began
to abandon Clinton,

one person rose strongly
to his defense.

Bill Clinton is a smart guy,
a very smart guy.

But he will tell you

that Hillary is much smarter
than he is.

She's much tougher than he is.

She is more of a pragmatist.

If Clinton is a dreamer,
Hillary is Miss Reality.

She raised him up, and said,

"Look, get that pity
out of your body

"and all that defeatism
out of your back

"and let's deal with this issue,

and let's move on
to the next issue."

At the height of the scandal,

millions tuned in to see Bill
Clinton answer questions

on the CBS program 60 Minutes.

But it was Hillary
who stole the show.

You know, I'm not sitting here,
some little woman,

standing by my man
like Tammy Wynette.

I'm sitting here because
I love him and I respect him

and I honor what
he's been through,

and what we've been
through together,

and you know, if that's
not enough for people,

then heck, don't vote for him!

By praising him, defending him,
attacking the press,

she brought Clinton back
from the dead.

How do you think
it went, Governor?

You think you answered
the questions?

We did our best
and we feel good about it.

The American people
are the judges now,

we're going to let them judge.

So you can see why he was
so attached to her,

because she had the power
to save him.

The partnership of Bill Clinton
and Hillary Rodham

began at Yale Law School
in 1971.

Clinton was fresh
from a Rhodes scholarship

at Oxford University in England

and already planning
a career in politics.

Bill loved to discuss issues.

He loved to be at the center
of discussions.

He, in a way, loved to perform.

He wasn't a great student.

He didn't care
about being a student;

he was not there
for being a student.

He was there
to make connections.

Hillary was so much more
obviously intellectual.

Her power was so much more
disciplined than his.

She was a leader.

She was a doer.

Bill eyed Hillary for weeks
before the two finally met

during one of his rare visits
to the library.

He was totally blown away

by how confident
and challenging she was.

Here he is, this tall,
gorgeously handsome hick

with Elvis sideburns
and high-water pants.

She's the one
who crosses the room,

holds out her hand and says,

"If you're going to keep
staring at me

"and I'm going to keep
looking back at you,

we better get to know
each other."

Bill Clinton, who always
had lots of girlfriends,

looked at Hillary and said,

"I've never had a girlfriend
like that.

"I can't believe
that somebody as smart

and as virtuous as Hillary,
that she wants to be with me."

Hillary looked at Bill Clinton...

Outgoing, popular, successful...
And thinks,

"I can't believe that somebody
like that wants to be with me."

And I think they're both
kind of mystified

that the other person
is attracted to them.

Hillary graduated from Yale
in 1973

and soon landed a coveted job
in Washington

with the House committee
investigating

the Watergate scandal.

One night, she said she wanted
to introduce me to somebody

who's going to come up to visit
her the next day, I think.

She says, "His name is
Bill Clinton."

I said, "Oh, you know,
what does he do?"

She said, "Well, he graduated
Yale Law School

and he's from Arkansas, and he's
going back to Arkansas."

I said, "Oh, well, that's fine.

What law firm is he going to?"

She said, "Oh, no, no, he's not
going to go to a law firm.

He's thinking
of running for office."

I said, "He just graduated
Yale Law School.

What's he thinking
of running for?"

"Running for Congress."

I said, "Well, it's kind
of premature.

How old is he, 26, 27?"

She said, "Oh, no, no, he's
going to run for Congress

"and he thinks he's going to win
and I think he's going to win.

"In fact, Bernie, he's going
to go past Congress.

"He's going to be a senator
or a governor.

He's going to be president
of the United States."

That Bill Clinton would make
politics his life's work

had never been in doubt
to anyone who knew him.

I think he was born
with political ambition.

And I think that he was using
every step of his life

as a classroom to build
the foundation

to where he ultimately
wanted to go.

William Jefferson Clinton

was born in Hope, Arkansas,
on August 19, 1946.

His mother, Virginia Cassidy,
was a nurse,

outgoing and vivacious;

his father, Bill Blythe,
a charming traveling salesman

whom he would never know.

When Virginia
was six months pregnant,

her husband's car flipped over
on a rain-slicked highway.

The accident killed him.

"My father left me
with the feeling

that I had to live for two
people," Clinton would write.

"If I did well enough,

somehow I could make up for
the life he should have had."

I think that the notion
of the fleeting nature of life

was one of the currents
of Bill Clinton's ambition

from the very beginning.

He would intensely focus on
how quickly life could go.

And I think that much
of his urgency

comes from that sensibility.

Four years after
her husband's death,

Virginia married a raffish Buick
salesman named Roger Clinton.

The couple moved
with six-year-old Billy

to Roger's hometown,
Hot Springs, Arkansas.

If Hope was a sleepy
Baptist town,

Hot Springs was the opposite...

A rollicking resort, attracting
people from across the country

to its mineral pools
and gambling parlors.

Virginia took to Hot Springs
as if she'd been born to it.

She was exuberant in her living.

She pushed the envelope
a little bit

in her dramatic makeup
and hairstyles and jewelry.

She was fun.

Outwardly, Clinton enjoyed

a happy small-town
American childhood.

But inside his gabled house
on Park Avenue,

he was leading a far more
turbulent life.

His parents' relationship
had deteriorated

into serial affairs

and screaming matches
that reverberated

through the thin walls.

As Roger Clinton descended
into alcoholism,

he grew more and more violent,

beating Virginia in front
of Bill and young Roger, Jr.

My life was "full of uncertainty
and anger,"

Clinton would recall,

"and a dread
of ever-looming violence."

Most of his buddies had no clue.

They saw Bill Clinton
as a happy-go-lucky guy.

They didn't see the turmoil that
was raging within that family.

As a child of an alcoholic,

there's a part of your world
that is so shaken,

that's filled with so much pain,

that you don't want
to share it with anybody.

If you wallow in it, then
you're dealing with self-pity

and you ruin yourself.

The only way you can really deal
with it is to block it off.

Bill Clinton became adept
at keeping secrets,

living, he remembered,

"an external life
that takes its natural course

"and an internal life
where the secrets are hidden.

No one can live parallel lives
with complete success."

He decided to pretend
it didn't exist.

To pretend that everything
was all right.

To go to church, you know,
with his Bible under his arm

and be sunny and energetic
and positive

and simply not accept it.

With fierce enthusiasm,

Clinton threw himself into
his life outside his home.

Hot Springs High had never seen
anything like him.

National Merit Scholar
semifinalist,

first chair
in the Arkansas State Band,

student government leader.

By his senior year,
he held so many honors

that the principal barred him

from running
for class president.

Bill Clinton
always found himself

trying to redeem
and rescue his family.

Part of doing that is to sort of
put yourself in the position

of rescuing not just your
family, but everybody,

including yourself,
by doing good.

By the early 1960s,

Bill Clinton's generation
had a new hero.

President John F. Kennedy's
youth and charisma

reached all the way to Arkansas

and sparked the teenager's
idealism

with a call to public service.

Ask not what your country
can do for you,

ask what you can do
for your country.

We loved living in a time
when JFK was president.

He was so young, he made
public service seem accessible,

so if we had ever
entertained thoughts

of a life in public service,

he made it seem
all the more possible.

In 1963, Bill Clinton traveled
to Washington

as a delegate to Boys Nation,

a program for aspiring
future leaders.

During a visit
to the White House,

he rushed to the front of the
line to shake his idol's hand.

It's a moment that is just
emblazoned in your mind.

To have a president
of the United States

look you in the eye,
take your hand, speak to you...

the world stops.

Bill said to me, "We will never
forget that, will we?

We will never forget that."

A decade later,
after leaving Arkansas

to study at Georgetown,
Oxford and Yale,

Clinton returned home

to begin his own long march
to the White House.

Bill Clinton went back
to Arkansas for politics,

pure and simple.

He knew the people there,
and he was of that place.

He could see
his political future

and that he was destined
for something much larger

than Hot Springs or Arkansas.

In his first political race
at age 28,

Clinton took on a conservative
Republican congressman

named John Paul Hammerschmidt.

I know that I can
make a big difference

for our district
and for our people

if I can have the opportunity
to serve them in Congress.

Few gave Clinton
a chance to compete.

People are saying,
"Hey, he's smart,

"but why does this guy
want to be a congressman?

"He's too young, he hasn't
been elected to anything,

he doesn't know
what he's really doing."

It wasn't just his inexperience;

many worried that
in his time away,

Clinton had lost touch
with Arkansas and its values.

There always has been with him
a suspicion

that this guy is not
to be trusted.

"This guy's too liberal for us."

And he encountered that.

But, initially in Arkansas,

he just totally overpowered it
with his charm,

with his political skill,

with his ability
to connect and relate.

In this small state, politics
is art and it's entertainment.

And he was the best we had seen.

♪ There's a fellow here
been talking some ♪

♪ About being
our next congressman ♪

♪ He's a new man,
Bill Clinton is his name... ♪

For weeks on end,

Clinton drove the back roads
of northwest Arkansas

sleeping on couches,
waking up at dawn

to catch the shift-change
at nearby factories.

♪ Bill Clinton's ready,
he's fed up, too ♪

♪ He's a lot like me,
he's a lot like you... ♪

He's got an extra battery.

After about four or five days
with him,

I was ready to go home.

I had all the fun I could stand,
and he would just keep going.

We might stop
at a service station

or a restaurant or whatever.

He would want to meet the cooks.

He would go back in the kitchen
and meet everybody back there.

He would not leave a place,
I think,

where he had not met everyone.

Sometimes people say,
"Won't this guy go home?"

Because we don't want to
embarrass him by just leaving,

but he won't leave!

♪ Bill Clinton's ready,
he's fed up too ♪

♪ He's a lot like me,
he's a lot like you ♪

♪ Bill Clinton wants
to get things done ♪

♪ So we're going to send him
to Washington. ♪

Make Bill a U.S. congressman.

Got to get those
food prices down.

You remember, and vote for that.

As Bill Clinton campaigned
for Congress,

Hillary Rodham left her
high-powered job in Washington

and decided to follow him
to Arkansas.

She could have had lots of jobs
in Washington.

Instead she elects to go,
not even to Little Rock,

but Fayetteville, Arkansas?

You know, her friends thought
she was absolutely mad.

"He's just a country lawyer.

What do you see in him?"

When Hillary arrived
in Arkansas...

A Chicago-born feminist
in the Deep South...

She felt unwelcomed
by Bill's campaign staff.

She had big glasses
and curly hair.

She had a Midwestern accent.

She just seemed different.

There was just something about
her that put people off.

I said, "Look, you know, we got
enough problems here as it is."

She comes in here and I say,

"I don't mind her being on the
inside doing everything she does

because she's sharp as a tack."

But I said, "Taking her out
on the road,"

I said, "that's going to create
a little bit of a question."

And he said, "Why?"

And I said, "Well,
she's got outcroppings

"of where she grew up in Chicago

and her parents all came
from Pennsylvania."

I said, "You know, she's never
really overcome all of that

to get involved in what we're
doing here in Arkansas."

To make matters worse,

Hillary had to deal
with Bill's constant womanizing.

I mean you got to understand,
at one time,

there was at least 25 women
per day coming through there

trying to find him.

And I'd tell them he's out
on the road, you know,

and they'd get out the door.

But Lord, it was bad.

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

He draws women in

and they are literally
mesmerized by this man.

It was absolutely like
fly to honey.

And he needed that.

He needed that kind
of adoration.

I don't think there's any
question that Hillary was hurt,

whether it was me
or anyone else.

Despite Bill's infidelities,

Hillary decided

to stay in Arkansas

and dedicate herself

to their mutual goals.

A common sense of commitment
to social justice,

of working on improving
the lives of families,

of being concerned
about the disenfranchised.

But ultimately all along,
thinking about going to the top.

There's no question
that there's a sense

of the possibilities
being unlimited.

The highest you can achieve,
obviously,

is to be president
and first lady.

On October 11, 1975, the couple
wed in a simple ceremony

in their living room.

Most of the people I know

who have been around the
Clintons for a long time

come to the conclusion
that I've come to.

The two of them are in love.

Walter Lippmann,
the great columnist, said,

"Love endures when the lovers
love not just each other,

but love many things together."

That, I think, is the essence
of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

They had a common love,
which is for politics,

for the game.

They love it.

It's their life.

With Hillary firmly behind him,

there was no stopping
Bill Clinton.

Though he narrowly lost
his congressional bid,

he had positioned himself
as a rising star.

The morning after he lost that
congressional race in 1974,

he was out in the town square,
shaking hands again.

Every Democratic figure
in the state knew

that he was the next big figure
in Arkansas politics.

Two years later, he was easily
elected attorney general.

I think the governor
of this state ought to be...

Two years after that,
he ran for governor,

brimming with youthful
confidence and ambition.

I'm Bill Clinton, and one of the
reasons I want to be governor

is to make sure that every child
in this state

has a chance
to go to kindergarten.

Clinton won with more than
60% of the vote.

I believe that
if you and I together

can practice what we preach
about government,

I know that you and I together

want to do what is right
for our people.

In the late 1970s,

most of Arkansas was poor
and undeveloped.

Bill Clinton was determined
to turn that around.

He did love his state.

And he knew, growing up there,
how many troubles it had.

The saying in Arkansas was,
"Thank God for Mississippi."

Because Mississippi
ranked 50th in everything,

and Arkansas 49th.

Not much had been done
for 150 years in Arkansas.

Spending on education,
per capita income,

our highway system was one
of the worst in the country.

So Bill Clinton comes in
and he has all these ideas.

He's going to transform
the state at once.

Feeling, as he recalled, "an
urgent sense to do everything,"

Clinton and his staff

took on entrenched interests
in Arkansas.

He created new regulations,
revamped rural health care,

reorganized school districts
and took on utilities.

They were young

and they were full
of themselves,

and they thought they could
change the world.

Well, you know, and they could
stop clear-cutting of timber

and clean up poultry practices
and those sorts of things.

And that was... that was perhaps
a little overly optimistic.

Most ambitious of all was a
project to fix Arkansas roads.

It was paid for by a steep hike
in taxes on car licenses

and was a political disaster.

Every month,
1/12 of the people of Arkansas

went down to the courthouse
to get their...

renew their license plates
for the following year,

and instead of being $19,
it was $36.

That became extremely unpopular,

and he realized that late
in the election of 1980.

He'd go early in the morning
to a factory gate

and all these guys refused
to shake his hand.

They said, "No,
you raised my truck tag,

and I'm not going
to vote for you."

After one term,
Clinton ran for reelection

against an obscure Republican
businessman named Frank White,

who pounded away at Clinton's
youth and arrogance.

He tells you he can create
jobs... he's never had a job!

To Clinton's dismay,
White's tactic worked.

I regret that I will not have
two more years

to serve as governor,
because I have loved it.

I have probably loved it
as much as any person

who ever had this office.

Since he was a teenager,

Bill Clinton had prepared
himself to be president.

Now, just 34, with his new baby
Chelsea to support,

he feared his political career
might already be over.

He took it incredibly hard.

He knew those folks
and he thought they loved him,

and it turned out they didn't.

He was totally out of sorts.

And when you see him, he wants
to talk about one thing.

"What'd I do wrong?"

That's... you see him
at the Forest Heights track,

where he's jogging.

"Hey, let me talk to you.

What did I do wrong?"

See him in the aisle
at the grocery store,

"What'd I do wrong?"

One day, I'm driving
from the state capitol

back to the Arkansas Gazette
to...

pass him walking
along the street,

and I rolled down the window,
and I said, "Where you going?"

And he said, "Car is in the shop
down here at Bale Chevrolet."

I said,
"I'll give you a ride."

He hops in.

We drive three blocks, but then
we just park in front of there

and we talk for 45 minutes,
about what?

"What did I do wrong?"

Hillary was as devastated
by that defeat as Bill was

and as determined to make amends
and figure out a way back.

I mean, here she had devoted
her life and given up a lot

to go out to Arkansas
for their rise together.

And at this very early age,

it seemed like
it was all vulnerable.

So she was not going
to allow that to happen.

Hillary traded in her thick
glasses for contact lenses

and her unkempt hair
for a fashionable blonde bob.

To quiet some of her critics,

she took her husband's
last name.

And just to put it to rest,

I will forever be known
as Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Frustrated by what she regarded
as poor advice,

she took over her husband's
reelection campaign.

Hillary was the mastermind
in that comeback.

Most of his people advised him
at the time,

"Don't run again,
wait two years."

Hillary says, "You can come back
and you can do it again."

He didn't trust himself
as much as he trusted her.

Determined never to lose again,

Clinton studied the results of
his defeat precinct by precinct.

He resolved to win back
every, single one.

Hi, Judge, how are you?

Congratulations.

I remember one day, we leave
Fayetteville in a little plane

and a storm is coming in.

And he said, "Fly fast,"

because we can see the cloud
coming in behind us.

By the time we get
20 minutes away

to the mountain town of
Harrison, the pilot says,

"Can't put it down.

Fog is too thick."

"Got to," says Clinton, "got to.

"I understand from the office
that I got 150 people there.

I've got a chance
to get some votes here."

I'm sitting across from him
thinking, "This is it.

"I'm going to die,

"and I'm going to be the last
paragraph of the obituary,

after all, about him."

He says,
"This is going to get hairy.

I'm going to sleep."

And he leans back
and appears to go to sleep.

And the third time, we made it.

And before the plane
stops taxiing,

he opens the door and jumps out,

because he's already
an hour late.

That's madness.

The crowd has waited,
they're ready to celebrate.

It's been a long two years.

If victory is ours tonight,

I have been given something
that few people get in life:

a second chance to serve
the people of Arkansas.

Clinton had learned
from his mistakes.

Rather than take on
every problem in Arkansas

with his second term,

he narrowed his focus
to a single issue

that he knew would serve the
people and his political future:

education.

I still believe that
until we have a system

which guarantees competence
in basic learning skills,

we will never be able
to prepare our people

for higher level
of achievements.

I don't care what else we do.

It's a winning issue.

The people are willing
to go that way.

And it's something we can get
done if we focus on that.

He has settled on the strategy.

Now, who's the right person?

Who's my point person?

Hillary.

We know it's a huge task,

but we're very optimistic

that we're going to be able to
make a substantial improvement

in what our students receive.

She went from town to town
all over Arkansas

and met with civic groups
and PTAs and school groups

and talked about
what they wanted to do

about improving schools
in Arkansas.

By the time it was over,

I think she was one of the most
popular people in the state.

One legislator popped up
at a hearing one day and said,

"We elected the wrong Clinton."

It just resurrected him.

He needed a success and it made
him the education governor

at a time when education was
a vital issue in the country.

And he was able to use that to
open all kinds of doors for him.

Over the next few years, Clinton
began to catch the attention

of the media and national
Democratic leaders

desperate to find a candidate

who could loosen Republicans'
grip on the presidency.

He would spend a huge amount
of time

meeting with, impressing and
charming his fellow governors

and other elected officials.

And after a day
and a night with him,

talking about philosophy
and politics,

you came away
with the impression

this was the smartest guy
in the class,

and that essentially if you were
going to have a president,

it probably should be this guy.

In 1987, during his fourth term
as Arkansas governor,

Bill Clinton was finally ready
to leap onto the national stage

with a long-shot run
for the presidency.

In July, he summoned the
national media to Little Rock

for the big announcement.

Then, abruptly, he sent them
home with hardly an explanation.

I need some family time,
I need some personal time.

Behind the scenes,

an old weakness had come back
to haunt him.

Just the day
before the press conference,

when he was going to announce
that he was going to run,

Betsey Wright, his ferociously
protective campaign manager,

sat him down with a list
of names of women

and went through
one after the other:

how many times,
where did you meet her,

how likely is she to talk?

For each name, he said,
"Oh, she'll never say anything."

And Betsey Wright said,
"But you don't know that.

"You don't understand,
on a national scale,

"people will investigate... your
opponents will investigate it.

The media will investigate it."

"The problem is, we're
not just talking about you.

"We're talking about
your wife, Hillary;

we're talking about
your child, Chelsea."

She said,
"I don't think you can run."

I mean, it just became clear
that night

it was not the time
for him to do it.

It just was not the time.

He felt for quite a while

that that probably was the last
real chance he would ever have

to run for president.

That was it, it was over.

You know, where would he go

now that he wasn't
going to run for president?

What could he do in the future?

I think that,
over the next few months,

that became a tough time
for them.

With Hillary and Bill's
mutual dream in tatters,

thanks to his extramarital
affairs,

their relationship hit
rock bottom.

It did put into question
their whole marriage.

And it was very unnerving
to Hillary

because she had put
everything on the line

for him to pursue
the presidency.

And if he had
too much of a record

of reckless behavior to do that,

then what had she been doing
for the last 15 years?

It is now time to place
the name in nomination

for president of the United
States, Michael Dukakis.

Just when it seemed things
couldn't get worse,

Clinton was asked
to give the speech

nominating Michael Dukakis at
the 1988 Democratic convention.

I'm honored to be here tonight

to nominate my friend
Michael Dukakis

for president
of the United States.

That piece was supposed to be
the set piece

to launch him
on the national stage,

and it turned out
to be something

that almost killed his career
before it got started.

And I'd like to talk a little
about Mike Dukakis, the man...

The speech was going on
and on and on.

Mike's old-fashioned, all right.

He's the kind of man who plays
it straight and keeps his word.

We want Mike!

The crowd was just
getting restless.

And we said,
"Oh, man, we dead," right?

He was going by the script that
the Dukakis folks has approved.

And he has to carry it out.

Now, I want you all to calm down

so I can tell
the rest of the country

why they should want Mike.

Of course, the famous thing was
when he said,

"In conclusion," he got a round
of applause, finally.

In closing...

Linda, my wife, and I
are at our house

and we're looking on
in disbelief.

Sometime in the wee hours,
Linda wakes me up, and she says,

"Look, he's got to go on the
Carson show to make this right."

My first question is,
"How are you?"

I'm fine.

I watched the speech,

and as a performer, I kind of
felt for you in a way.

What happened?

It just didn't work, I mean,

I don't know,
what can I tell you?

I really... my sole goal
was achieved, however.

I wanted so badly to make
Michael Dukakis look great

and I succeeded beyond
my wildest expectations.

In an instant,
he had turned it around,

because the next day, papers
were full of good things

and had kind things
to say about him.

And so it erased
almost all of it in one day

and made him more visible
than he had ever been.

It's tenor sax you play, right?

That's right.

We're going to play
a short song.

He recovers better

than anybody I have ever known.

It's extraordinary.

I mean, he can have horrible
things crash down upon his head,

but he crawls out from under it
and keeps on going.

Bill and Hillary Clinton
were back on the map.

Having faced a crossroads

in their personal
and political lives,

they decided that whatever the
costs, they would stay together

and continue to pursue the goal
they'd shared for 20 years:

the presidency
of the United States.

Four years later,
in the snows of New Hampshire,

Clinton held a comfortable lead
in the Democratic primary.

With the Gennifer Flowers
scandal behind him,

he was campaigning with the
confidence of a frontrunner.

"Unless a second shoe drops
to indicate he's a liar,"

declared the New York Times,

"Clinton has emerged
more clearly

as the Democrats'
likely nominee."

But just 12 days
before the primary,

the second shoe
not only dropped,

it nearly shattered
the campaign.

An old letter had surfaced,

written by Bill Clinton
more than 20 years earlier

when facing the possibility
of being drafted

to fight in Vietnam.

In the letter, Clinton thanked
his local ROTC commander,

Colonel Eugene Holmes,
for "saving me from the draft."

Though he never took
the deferment,

Clinton's letter sounded to many

like the confession
of a draft dodger

and sparked a second round of
attacks against his character.

The Friday story in the
Wall Street Journal appears

about the ROTC
and Colonel Holmes

and the polling numbers
just started collapsing.

Governor, are you
a draft dodger?

Did you burn your draft card?

No, I had a lock-cinch
four-year deferment.

I gave it up
after less than two months

because I didn't think
it was right.

I went back into the draft,
then this lottery came along.

I got a high number
and I wasn't called.

Stan Greenberg, our pollster,
came in and said,

"The bottom's fallen out."

You know, we dropped
18 points in a weekend

and we didn't have
that many points to start with.

Of course I've had some problems
in the polls.

All I've been asked about
by the press

are a woman I didn't sleep with
and a draft I didn't dodge.

I think a lot of us thought,
you know, "This is over."

But I mean, Clinton...
Clinton, he never flinched.

You know, he willed himself
back into that race.

How you doing?
I need your help!

For the next week, Clinton
campaigned 20 hours a day,

pushing himself to the limits
of his endurance.

I don't have another speech
in me.

I can barely talk.

We have to reject
the political philosophy

that gripped this country
in the 1980s...

With only days left,
his voice ragged,

Clinton spoke at an Elks Lodge
in Dover, New Hampshire.

These were Yankees who had been
really beaten down

by the loss of
manufacturing jobs

in that part of the country,

and they didn't seem to have
other opportunities.

I'll tell you something,

I'm going to give you
this election back,

and if you'll give it to me,
I won't be like George Bush.

I'll never forget who gave me
a second chance

and I'll be there for you
till the last dog dies.

And I want you to remember that.

"I'll be there for you
till the last dog dies."

And we knew we'd seen

one of those astonishing
political performances.

I don't promise you a miracle,
I promise you a movement.

Let's take our country back,
and see this country win again.

Thank you very much
and God bless you!

How many second chances, right?

How many second chances
does any one person deserve?

Clinton's view is
as many second chances

as a person is willing
to try to take.

You know, I mean,
as many times as you fail,

don't you deserve the chance
to redeem yourself?

Isn't history loaded with people

who have fallen and gotten up,
and fallen and gotten up,

and fallen and gotten up,
and done great things?

You know, who's to say?

Bill Clinton.

You've definitely
got my support.

Thank you.

I need you tomorrow, thanks.

On Feb. 18,

the voters of New Hampshire
went to the polls.

Despite the one-two punch of
Gennifer Flowers and the draft,

Clinton finished a strong second

behind former Massachusetts
senator Paul Tsongas.

Let me say that while
the evening is young...

and we don't know yet
what the final tally will be,

I think we know enough
to say with some certainty

that New Hampshire tonight

has made Bill Clinton
the "Comeback Kid."

In the weeks to come,

Clinton rolled up primary
victory after primary victory.

In Florida, in Tennessee,
in Mississippi...

In early June, he surpassed
the number of delegates needed

for the Democratic nomination by
winning the California primary.

The election for America's
future begins tomorrow.

It is not about me,
it's about all of you.

Even though he's winning
voters over

and winning these primaries
with bigger and bigger margins,

the news coverage, you know,
for the general electorate,

is one of a politician

you would never make president
of the United States.

You could not possibly
trust this guy.

The polls would ask the question
whether he has the honesty

and character to be president.

The numbers got worse
and worse and worse.

Now we reached a point where we
said, "We can't just allow that

"to be the narrative
through to the convention.

Let's restore
the sense of trust."

A team of top campaign aides

planned a complete overhaul
of Clinton's image,

culminating in a nostalgic film

shown during the Democratic
National Convention in New York.

It was called "A Man From Hope."

I was born in a little town
called Hope, Arkansas,

three months
after my father died.

I remember living
in that old two-story house

where I lived
with my grandparents...

The film, I think,
brought people back,

"Okay, here's who this guy is.

"Here's what we're really about,

and we really have
a strong candidate."

- We want Bill!
- We want Bill!

My fellow Americans,

I end tonight where
it all began for me.

I still believe
in a place called hope.

God bless you,
and God bless America.

With a rock anthem
from the 1970s

as the campaign theme song,

Clinton staffers positioned
their candidate

as the young, dynamic face
of a new generation.

To complete the image,

Clinton chose
as his running mate

the youthful senator
from Tennessee, Al Gore.

It turned the conventional
wisdom on its head.

He believed you don't
dilute your message,

you put a big underline
and exclamation point

and this is a new generation,
new ideas,

a new Democratic party.

Totally energized the general
election campaign.

♪ Don't stop thinking
about tomorrow ♪

♪ Don't stop,
it will soon be here... ♪

Heading into the fall,

Clinton had surged ahead
of President George H.W. Bush

and third-party candidate
Ross Perot.

With the economy
still faltering,

Clinton had found his issue
and his voice.

The crowd that's running
Washington today

has had 12 years
to test their economic theory,

and it's failed.

The decisive event came
in mid-October,

at the second presidential
debate in Richmond, Virginia,

when Clinton turned
a question from the audience

into a defining
political moment.

A woman stood up
and asked a question

that was on a lot
of people's minds.

How has the national debt

personally affected
each of your lives?

And if it hasn't,
how can you honestly find

a cure for the economic problems
of the common people

if you have no experience
in what's ailing them?

And President Bush said,

"I don't get it,
I don't get the question."

Are you suggesting
that if somebody has means

that the national debt
doesn't affect them?

I'm not sure I get it.

Help me with the question
and I'll try to answer it.

Clinton understood
that she wasn't talking

about the deficit or the debt.

What she was talking about
was the economy.

And the recession.

And the body language

was absolutely crucial
at that point.

He took two steps toward her.

Tell me how it's
affected you again?

You know people who've lost
their jobs and lost their homes.

Uh-huh.

Well, I'll tell you
how it's affected me.

I see people in my state,
middle-class people,

their taxes have gone up
in Washington

and their services
have gone down

while the wealthy
have gotten tax cuts.

I have seen what's happened
in this last four years

when, in my state,
when people lose their jobs,

there's a good chance I'll know
them by their names.

That was giving
the American public

precisely what they wanted
at that point.

They had this brilliant
foreign policy president.

What they needed was someone
who cared about them

and who was as scared
about the economy as they were.

And in that moment,
he encapsulated that.

I think what we have to do is
invest in American jobs,

American education.

He was on his way to winning.

But that was the deal closer.

He closed the deal.

Like a marathon runner
nearing the finish line,

Clinton spent the final 24 hours
of the campaign

in an all-out sprint,
touching down in nine states.

His voice gone, he could
only wave at adoring crowds.

Sometime during the course
of this half hour,

the man who liked to call
himself the "Comeback Kid,"

Bill Clinton of a town called
Hope in Arkansas,

will be projected the winner

of the presidential candidacy
of 1992.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton

and Chelsea Clinton.

It was just unbelievable.

Such a moment of pride,
happiness.

It felt like we had a new
opportunity to seize the day

for America with fresh ideas
from a man who had

the right heart,
the right spirit, loved service

and could face anything that
life was about to throw at him.

My fellow Americans,

on this day,

with high hopes and brave
hearts, in massive numbers,

the American people have voted
to make a new beginning.

There was this joy and buoyancy

and he had so much promise
about him.

Those of us who believed
in Bill Clinton, and I did,

had a sense of,
"Wow, this is going to be

really, really good
for the country."

After 20 years of thrilling
highs and gut-wrenching falls,

Bill and Hillary had at last
achieved their highest goal.

But if they had won
the presidency,

the Clintons had yet
to win over the country.

And in this moment of triumph,

few could imagine
the turmoil that lay ahead.

He got 43% of the vote, but
none of us thought about that.

To us, it felt like a landslide.

Clinton believed
in a strong government;

he wanted to be a big president.

He revered Kennedy,
he revered Roosevelt,

he thought
about the heroic presidents

and he wanted to use
the presidency that way.

But the country was turning away
from government,

it was skeptical
that government could work,

and there were these roiling
undercurrents of anger

that we knew were there,

but we didn't realize how they
could quickly consume even us.

Ladies and gentlemen,

the president of the
United States of America,

William Jefferson Clinton.

On a crisp January morning
in 1993,

Bill Clinton
took the oath of office

as the 42nd president
of the United States.

Promising a new start,

he sounded the themes
of change and optimism

that had won him
the White House.

Our democracy must be not only
the envy of the world,

but the engine
of our own renewal.

There is nothing wrong
with America

that cannot be cured by
what is right with America.

He did have heroic visions of
what he might do as president.

He felt that the winds of change
were blowing heavily at his back

and that he could ride them to
great, magnificent victories.

The harder reality was that he
only won with 43% of the vote

in a three-man race,

and that's not exactly
a heady mandate for governing.

Clinton's victory had come
despite a deep divide

in the country.

Millions had responded to his
campaign message of change.

But millions of others feared
where the country was heading

and did not trust their
inexperienced new president

to lead them through
uncertain times.

There was a group of people

who had a visceral dislike
for Bill Clinton.

They felt that he had stayed
just one step ahead of the posse

with his personal problems.

They thought that he represented
a 1960s generation

that was always trying
to pull a fast one

and not playing
by traditional rules.

They despised him and thought
there was something illegitimate

about his presidency.

There's a sense of him
being a used car salesman.

There's a sense of guy
being a charming hick.

He was loathed because,
in the first place,

I think we've all known somebody
like Bill Clinton

and we don't want them to be
president of our country.

And the wife
was terrifying as well.

She was pushy,
she was humorless,

she couldn't get her hair
figured out.

There were just so many things
about Hillary

that we didn't like.

Despite all their education
and experience,

the Clintons were unprepared for
their reception in Washington.

MIKE McCURRY:
He still labored
under the assumption

that he could
bring people together

through power of persuasion.

It was stunning to him

that Republicans would just very
blatantly tell him,

"We're not here
to cooperate with you

"and this is going
to be open warfare

from the very beginning."

It's a big leap, from the state
capital to the nation's capital

and to the world's capital,

and the Clintons found that
Washington was a shock for them.

The rules were very different,
people weren't as friendly,

people had other agendas,
a lot of knives were out,

people played behind curtains,
you just never knew

what was going to come out
and strike you.

90 seconds.

Is there a teleprompter?

What are we going to do
about the teleprompter?

He had no comprehension of the
rules of the road in Washington.

No governor ever elected
to the presidency

has ever understood
what they were getting into.

And he looked more unprepared
than most.

Wait a minute, how long are you
going to have to...

His first address from the Oval
Office, sitting behind the desk,

it looked like a big mistake
had happened

and some little kid had been
allowed in there

with his $12 digital watch.

Everything about him suggested
he was not up to this.

Clinton ran his White House

as if it were an extension
of the campaign,

filling his staff
with 30-year-olds

with little Washington
experience.

He wanted to be part
of the hurly-burly,

to hear every opinion,
weigh in on every decision.

The atmosphere
in the White House

in that first year was chaos.

He wanted to do everything.

He wanted to deal
with every problem.

He was in the middle
of every conflict.

They would have these
college bull sessions

that would go on, you know,
late into the night.

The meetings were endless,

especially if Clinton
was in the meeting,

it would go on and on and on.

He was often thinking out loud,
making decisions on the fly,

making a decision tentatively
at midnight

and then waking up
the next morning and saying,

"Let's rethink this."

The West Wing was littered with
pizza boxes and Coke cans,

as staffers wandered freely
in and out of meetings.

It wasn't the kind
of orderly process

that Republicans
brought to the table.

It was all these discordant
voices, informal voices,

people who didn't even wear
ties and jackets

when they went into
the Oval Office, my God!

You've got to be a little grand.

Because the American people
want it.

It's the biggest job
in the world,

and I think we
underestimated that.

People felt like, "What is it,
a fraternity house over there?"

As Clinton took office
in the winter of 1993,

the economic crisis that had
propelled him into office

showed few signs of abating.

We had had a recession.

We had high unemployment.

And it was a lot of uncertainty
about whether the United States

was going to get
on its feet again

or whether we could be in
for a long period

of real difficulty.

So he came into a very
difficult environment.

During the transition,
Clinton had promised

to focus on the economy
"like a laser beam."

But he quickly discovered
how easily

his focus could be deflected

by an unscripted comment
to a reporter.

Do you intend to keep
your commitment

to lift the ban on gays
in the military?

Yes.

I want to... I have...

you know what my issue
on this is:

number one, we've got a study
that says that a lot of gays

have performed with great
distinction in the military.

I don't think status alone

in the absence of some
destructive behavior

should disqualify people.

Now, Bill Clinton, with his wits
about him, would have said,

"Oh, yes, I'm going to stick
to my campaign pledge

"and in furtherance of that,

"we're going to appoint
a blue-ribbon commission

that will report back to my
successor 100 years from now."

But he didn't.

He just said the first part.

You know, "I'm going to keep
my campaign pledge."

And all of a sudden, the
laser-like focus on the economy

was derailed
to a, you know, a lurid issue

in the minds of many people.

Mr. President, would you
consider backing down

on your... the ban
on gays in the military?

We haven't... we're not here
to discuss that.

We're here to discuss
the economy,

which is all
I discussed yesterday

with congressional leadership,
contrary to the press reports.

But would you consider...

We're here to discuss
the economy.

Trapped by his own promise,

Clinton attempted
to lift the ban,

but ran into heavy resistance
from two allies:

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
Colin Powell

and Democratic senator Sam Nunn.

So, you have the military
leadership bucking him,

the Democratic congressional
leaders, led by, you know,

chairman of the Armed Services
Committee saying no,

and the president is powerless
to do anything about it.

And so he's now put
into a position

where he has to try to negotiate

some kind of a resolution
to this that will save face.

Therefore, the practice,
now six months old...

After weeks of fruitless
wrangling,

Clinton announced a compromise...
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell"...

That few could even understand.

An open statement
by a service member

that he or she is a homosexual

will create a rebuttable
presumption

that he or she intends to engage
in prohibited conduct,

but the service member
will be given an opportunity

to refute that presumption.

Nobody was particularly happy
with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell,"

but it was the best that you
could do to get it off the table

so you could move on.

Other capitulations
quickly followed.

He dropped a stimulus bill
and campaign finance reform

in the face of congressional
opposition.

It became very apparent
very soon

that Bill Clinton as president
was not going to be an LBJ.

He was not going to assert
his authority, make deals,

crack heads,
push his weight around,

say to any members of Congress
in the leadership that,

"If you don't follow me,
you're going to pay for this,

"because I'm going
to remember it.

You're not going to get this,
you're not going to get that."

You know,
LBJ knew how to use power.

Bill Clinton knew much of that,
but he also wanted to be liked.

When attorney general nominee
Zoe Baird got into hot water

over her failure to pay taxes
for household help,

Clinton hardly put up a fight.

The first day I was in the White
House, the president said to me,

"We're having problems
with Zoe Baird."

To me this is a big deal,
personally,

and I suspect it is
to a lot of Americans...

He says, "Well, I'm hearing
from Democratic senators

"that it's really
going to be a problem,

and the press is on my back."

My position was, "Look,
you've already nominated her,

she's an excellent person,
we should stick with Zoe Baird."

And he decided no.

I feel very badly about it,
but I'm responsible for it

and I'm going to start
this afternoon

looking for an attorney general.

In order to placate the opposing
party's criticisms

and media criticisms,
which began on day one,

the Clinton administration
kept folding, kept giving in.

I think that undermined
his presidency.

It showed he could be rolled.

The media, which had embraced
Clinton during the campaign,

now began to turn on him.

When his nomination
of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg

to the Supreme Court
took a tortuous course,

reporters pounced.

Your turn late, it seems,
to Judge Ginsberg

may have created an impression,
perhaps unfair,

of a certain zigzag quality

in the decision-making
process here.

I wonder, sir, if you could
kind of walk us through it,

perhaps disabuse us
of any notion

we might have along those lines.

Thank you.

I have long since
given up the thought

that I could disabuse
some of you

of turning
any substantive decision

into anything
but political process.

How you could ask a question
like that

after the statement she
just made is beyond me.

What he wanted people to do,
"Just look at the result.

Did I make a good decision
or not?"

But as president, every decision
that Bill Clinton makes,

and not just the decisions but
how he makes these decisions,

is receiving merciless scrutiny.

The messiness of the process
became part of the story

and Bill Clinton
found it maddening.

The Clintons arrived
in Washington

in the midst
of a media revolution.

The advent of cable television
and the 24-hour news cycle

created an insatiable appetite

for colorful coverage
of Washington.

Cable television was beginning
to become a force.

And the competition
among cable news

became a vicious fact
of Bill Clinton's life.

Sex sold.

Corruption sold.

Throughout the spring of 1993,
a series of scandals,

including "Travelgate" and
"Hairgate," flared in the press.

Hillary found it hard to shrug
off the negative press.

Stories, like the one alleging
that she broke a lamp

during a heated argument
with the president,

embarrassed and humiliated her.

"I've always believed in a zone
of privacy," she said,

"but I guess I've been rezoned."

She had an agenda, changes
in the country, in the world,

that she wanted to see done.

She couldn't understand
why the media

was focusing constantly
on their private life.

But the more she fought it, the
more she drew attention to it.

The lawyer chosen to lead
the Clintons' defense

was their close friend
and deputy White House counsel

Vince Foster.

Vince, he got very upset
with the attacks.

He felt we couldn't stop
these attacks,

and yes, no, we couldn't
stop these attacks.

You know, this is the nature
of the game down here.

This is the partisan game
down here.

And I kept trying
to calm him down.

But I did see him getting
sadder and sadder.

And then... then that day came
when he took his own life.

On the afternoon of July 20,
Vince Foster told an assistant

that he was going out
for a few minutes.

That evening, his body
was found in a secluded park

ten miles from the White House,
a bullet hole through his head.

A torn-up note
was found a few days later

at the bottom
of Foster's briefcase.

"I was not meant for the job

or the spotlight of public life
in Washington," it read.

"Here, ruining people
is considered sport."

I was very concerned

that, knowing how close
Vince Foster was

to both Bill and Hillary,

that it would be
sort of the final straw

for Bill Clinton and Hillary
Clinton in Washington.

They would just think,
"This town's impossible."

You know, "We've lost one
of our best friends.

He's taken his life
in the midst of this melee."

That something very intangible
would be lost.

Bill Clinton's one of the most
resilient people I've ever met.

The pain goes deeper
with Hillary,

and it can stay there longer.

She's strong,
but she's also vulnerable.

Far from destroying
the Clintons,

Foster's death steeled them
against their adversaries.

For Hillary, there could be
no more illusions:

this would be a war
with only one winner.

They were toughening up
by this time.

They were seeing now that
we're in a blood sport,

that people are trying
to kill you

and nothing is going
to make them happy.

Foster's suicide only fueled

the media's fascination
with scandal.

Within days of the discovery
of his body,

there was speculation about
the "real cause" of his death.

The immediate reaction
to Vince Foster's death was,

"What happened here,
and were the Clintons involved?

Were they covering
something up?"

There begins bubbling up
this notion

that there's a conspiracy, that
Vince Foster's been murdered.

You know, on one account,
his body rolled up in a rug,

he's having an affair
with Hillary...

All of these terrible things.

Attention focused
mostly on some files

mysteriously removed from
Foster's office after his death,

including documents related to
an old Arkansas land deal:

Whitewater.

Whitewater... the scandal that
would haunt Clinton's presidency

longer than any other...
Had its roots in the late 1970s.

At the time, Bill Clinton
was a young attorney general

making just over $25,000 a year.

Hillary, an associate at the
Rose Law Firm in Little Rock,

was the family's
main breadwinner.

When an old friend named
Jim McDougal approached her

with a plan to build vacation
homes along the White River,

Hillary decided to invest.

Here's a guy, McDougal,
that comes to him and says,

"Put a little money
into this thing."

He said, "Boy, you'll be rich
and you'll make money,

and this is going to be great."

Well, I guess in hindsight,

every person promoting
any sort of land scheme

thinks it's going
to be a world-beater

and we're going to be rich as
Midas by the time it's over.

Like many of McDougal's
real estate projects,

Whitewater went belly-up.

To prop up his scheme,

he made illegal transfers
from his own savings and loan,

Madison Guaranty.

McDougal was charged with fraud.

President Clinton, you just
mentioned James McDougal,

your former business partner.

A lot of questions
have been raised

about his business practices.

Fifteen years later, President
Clinton was asked by reporters

what he and Hillary knew about
McDougal's illegal activities.

To the best of my knowledge,

he was honest in his dealings
with me,

and that's all I can comment on.

The White House was totally
unprepared for it.

There was no memo on it,
there was no defense group.

I had nothing to do with
the management of Whitewater.

Hillary had nothing
to do with it.

We didn't keep the books
or the records.

There were some of us who said,

"Keep the walls up,
keep it back," you know.

"It's none of their business,
uh, nothing happened.

"It's a little deal
down in Arkansas

that has nothing to do with the
presidency, and it'll go away."

It didn't go away,
but that built up a suspicion,

and as new things leaked out,

as inconsequential
as they might be,

the press would say,

"Oh, the Clintons
have been hiding stuff."

And there was built up
relatively quickly

that the Clintons
were just stonewalling.

The emergence
of the Whitewater scandal

couldn't have come at a worse
time for President Clinton.

In the late summer of 1993, he
needed broad political support,

as his first major piece
of legislation...

The federal budget...

Was headed for a showdown
in Congress.

We knew that if Bill Clinton
lost that vote,

the signal would be, he can't
get the Democrats in the House

and the Senate
to go along with him.

That means he doesn't
have power.

That's the definition
of lacking power.

And if this early
in the administration

our new president lacks power,
where do we go next?

Abandoning his campaign promise
to cut taxes

and invest in the middle class,
Clinton instead took the advice

of the administration's
deficit hawks

to reduce spending
and raise taxes.

Bill Clinton's
first big decision

was an intellectual act
of faith.

We're on the eve
of historic action.

Without deficit reduction,

we can't have sustained
economic growth.

He gambled in the midst
of a recession

that he'd get
more economic growth

if he was fiscally conservative,

and if he began
to reduce the deficit

that would convince
the bond market

to start reducing interest rates

and the economy would grow.

That was just a theory.

No one knew it would work.

More than anything,

Clinton had wanted to invest
in the middle class.

The realization that he couldn't
left him deeply disappointed.

He didn't become president
to say no.

He didn't become president
to administer pain.

He didn't become president

because he wanted to placate
Wall Street.

But, in fact,

his agenda did require, to some
extent, doing all those things.

As the budget reached Congress,

Clinton knew it was
on a knife-edge.

With Republicans
unanimously opposed,

the president needed
nearly every Democratic vote

to pass the bill, but the party,

like the administration,
was in disarray.

Liberal Democrats complained
about the cuts in spending,

while conservatives
opposed the tax hikes.

I think that the president
will fail,

the party will fail,

and the country will fail
if we enact this budget.

Faced with the possibility
of a catastrophic defeat,

Clinton got down to work.

"I knew if I didn't get the
economy going," he said,

"nothing else would matter."

There wasn't anything
he wasn't willing to do.

He would call, he would meet.

He would grovel,
he would strong-arm.

He would use every tactic
any leader has at his disposal

to try to get this thing done.

But the days when a president
could command votes,

even from members of his own
party, were long over.

Bill Clinton was used
to Arkansas.

You know, he knew
the good old boys,

he knew who he had to go to.

He could walk on the floor
of the legislature

and basically, you know, with
a smile and a pat on the back

he could get any vote he wanted.

That wasn't true,
here in Washington.

And in many ways it was
frustrating for him

because he really felt

that he knew what was best
for the country

and that by the sheer power
of his personality

and his words and his smile,

that somehow he could
make it work.

The budget wended its way

through a series of committee
and floor votes

in the House and Senate.

We went to some of these votes
not having the votes.

Getting calls during the voting
process that someone had turned,

someone had moved, these things
are being won by one vote.

Imagine that.

This is the budget, this is
like his entire presidency

goes down if he fails,

and you're up to one vote
each time.

In early August,

the final budget bill reached
the floor of the House.

With the vote still in doubt,

all eyes turned
to a freshman Democrat

from an historically
Republican district,

Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky.

We had her down as voting yes,

and she votes no early on.

And so we said,

"Go in there, find out
what the hell's going on,

try to turn her vote around."

First of all,
as a former member,

if you're going to vote
against the leadership,

vote and get the hell
out of there.

She didn't do that,
she stayed there.

So suddenly these guys
are all pouring on her,

and she's standing there,
and they're saying,

"Come on, you've got
to change your vote.

This is important
to the administration."

She then says something like,

"I'll do this, but the president
has to come into my district."

So they call me, back in
the office, and they say,

"Will the president come
into her district to do..."

And I said, "Absolutely!

Whatever it takes,
we're going to do it."

With the vote
and his presidency on the line,

Clinton paced nervously in a
small office in the West Wing.

We're all crowded around
this little television set,

really with quite a high level
of uncertainty.

Finally, Mezvinsky cast her vote
"yes," and the budget passed.

With an equally narrow victory
in the Senate,

Clinton's final budget
became law.

Not even he foresaw the economic
boom it would set off.

It contributed enormously
to what turned out to be

the longest economic expansion
in the nation's history.

22 million new jobs were
created, productivity went up.

Incomes rose at all levels.

And, for the first time in 30
years, we had a federal surplus.

By the fall of 1993, there were
glimmers of a turnaround

in Clinton's fortunes.

After passing his budget,

Congress approved the North
American Free Trade Agreement

with overwhelming
Republican support.

The same month,
he signed the Brady Bill,

instituting background checks
for anyone purchasing a firearm.

NAFTA and Brady culminated
ten months

of intense focus
on domestic affairs,

but beyond America's shores,

a troubled world
would wait no longer

for the president's attention.

The Cold War had kept
a lot of tensions quiet

and a lot of groups quiet.

And now, with that over,

all of the old animosities,
all of the old hatreds...

Ethnic hatreds, regional
tensions that had been

under that iceberg
of the Cold War...

Were now popping out
and were real problems.

How much did the United States
want to get involved in problems

in the rest of the world, which
tended to be localized problems?

Were those worthy of our time
and attention?

This was uncharted territory.

We were all reaching for,

all searching for some new
grand unifying theory.

Give us a new way of looking
at the world.

Clinton had little to offer
in the realm of foreign affairs.

The first president
since World War II

who had not worn
a military uniform,

he lacked confidence
as a commander-in-chief.

Clinton came to the White House

with very little knowledge
of the U.S. military.

Famously, he didn't even know
how to salute.

To a great many people
in this country,

that was legitimately
something to be worried about.

Clinton's first major
foreign policy crisis

came in the African nation
of Somalia,

where a warlord named
Mohamed Farah Aidid

was terrorizing
the local population

in an effort to suppress
his opponents in a civil war.

Clinton inserted U.S. Special
Forces into Somalia

to capture Aidid.

During a mission on October 3,

two Blackhawk helicopters
were shot down.

American forces
sent in to assist

were pinned down
by overwhelming firepower.

Before they could be extracted,

18 U.S. soldiers were killed
with 84 more wounded.

Around the world, images
of a dead American soldier

being dragged through the
streets enflamed public opinion.

Although George H.W. Bush
had initiated that intervention,

it had expanded
on Bill Clinton's watch.

So when things turned bad,
it was hugely unpopular,

and Bill Clinton bore
the brunt of that.

You need to understand
the average citizen.

In their minds, we have gone
there on a humanitarian mission

to offer a helping hand, and we
get attacked and humiliated.

"Why are we there?

"Why should we continue to help?

"Why are you keeping
the boys there?

Bring the boys home."

That sort of political pressure

that President Clinton
and his team had to deal with.

The backlash in public opinion

contained what seemed a clear
lesson for the young president:

military intervention, without
a compelling national interest,

came with unforeseeable
risks and costs.

It sent a chill
through the administration

and made them much more
reluctant to intervene

in other parts of the world.

And where that came home
in the most profound way,

and one that Bill Clinton
came to deeply, deeply regret,

was in Rwanda.

Rwanda, an African nation

a thousand miles to the west
of Somalia,

was suffering through its own
civil war between two tribes,

Hutus and Tutsis.

In early April 1994, the Rwandan
president's plane was shot down.

The Hutu government
blamed Tutsi rebels.

When the plane was shot down,

all hell broke loose,

and that became the trigger
which set off this mass killing.

The killing caught
the Clinton administration

entirely by surprise.

That night, I was leaving the
office and I noticed on CNN,

on the television screen
there was shooting going on.

And I, and I said to my
assistant, "What's going on?

What is that?"

He said, "Oh, it's a,
it's a, it's 'R-wanda.'

There's some kind of operation
going on over there."

I said, "Is that real?
Is that on time?"

He said, "Yes, sir."

Ultimately, some 800,000 Tutsis
would be killed.

But with the Black Hawk Down
incident still fresh,

the Clinton administration
did virtually nothing

to stop the slaughter.

We needed international support
in Rwanda,

but the will to intervene
was not there.

They knew what was happening,

but they were not about
to take the risks.

Rwanda lived in the shadow
of Somalia

and paid the price for what
had happened in Somalia.

Clinton's foreign policy

was trapped in a kind
of no-man's-land.

If Somalia had demonstrated the
risks of military intervention,

Rwanda proved the costs
of doing nothing.

I know the president
felt awful afterwards.

Awful.

As it came out
and we understood the scale,

the enormity, we realized that
there are sins of omission

as well as sins of commission.

This was a horrible omission.

Here we go.

All right, flip it, Chelsea.

Battered by a year Hillary
described as "hellish,"

the Clintons
were looking forward

to their first Christmas
in Washington.

Escaping the White House,

they visited close friends and
even shopped at a local mall.

Bill and Hillary had always been
doting parents to Chelsea,

trying to keep her life
as normal as possible.

Both Hillary and Bill, in their
own way, were fabulous parents,

very protective of Chelsea,

and managed to keep a cordon
of privacy around her,

let her grow up
more or less naturally.

For the most part, the press
respected Chelsea's privacy,

but showed no such consideration
for her parents.

In mid-December,

the first family's hopes for
a quiet Christmas were dashed

when a call
from the Washington Post

once again plunged them
into the roiling currents

of the Whitewater scandal.

I got a call from Bob Kaiser,

who was then the number two
editor at the Washington Post.

And he said,

"David, you know, we've known
each other a long time,

"and we've made numerous
requests to the White House

"for some Whitewater-related
documents,

"that we're getting stonewalled,

and we're about
to go on the attack."

Many on his staff
counseled the president

to turn over his private papers
on Whitewater to the Post.

I said, "Mr. President,
this is a flagship newspaper.

"They're going to put a team of
investigative reporters on this

"if you don't give these
documents over

"and no one, no one knows
where that's going to go.

"Why don't we just do it now

and just, you know,
do the fair and square thing?"

He said, "I agree, let's do it."

He said, "But there's
one problem."

He said, "I'm in this
with Hillary.

You've got to go convince
Hillary."

Hillary's attitude
toward the press,

and thus towards
the Washington Post,

was to pull back,
to reveal nothing,

to keep the media
or anybody else

who's asked questions about
their inside life at bay.

So she's locked down.

Finally, after about two weeks,

I got a call from the counsel's
office saying,

"By the way, David,
"we have now sent a letter

to the Washington Post
and we'll read it to you."

And I said, "Fine,
let me hear the letter."

And basically it said:

"Dear Washington Post,
screw you.

No documents."

Clinton's refusal to turn over
his private Whitewater records

was a red flag to many
of his political enemies.

In early January,
Republican senator Robert Dole

demanded the appointment
of a special prosecutor

to investigate Whitewater.

If there's nothing to hide,
why not lay it all out there?

But every day there's
another little drip

coming from somewhere.

Dole's demand reignited the
argument inside the White House.

Most of Clinton's advisors

urged him to appoint
a special prosecutor,

but Hillary and White House
counsel Bernie Nussbaum

argued against it.

I said to the president,
"They'll investigate you

"and they won't find anything

"because you did nothing
in Whitewater.

"But they'll investigate...
if somebody did something

"in Arkansas
in the last 20 years,

"they will try to find
that person.

"Then they will try to get
that person, to save their neck,

"to remember something
that you did in Arkansas

"in the last 20 years
which was illegal.

"This will last, Mr. President,

as long as you're president
and beyond."

The contrary argument was,

"We're trying to run
a presidency

"and a White House here.

"This is not going to go away.

"Yes, you can stave it off
for a while,

but at some point, everything
is going to come out."

And that's when Clinton said,
"I can't take it anymore.

"Tell me what to do.

"You got to, got to give me...

Tell me what to do,"
he screams at me.

We finally persuaded Hillary,

much against her
better instincts,

to call the president

and say that we wanted him to
authorize Attorney General Reno

to appoint a special counsel.

Exhausted and heartsick over
the recent death of his mother,

Clinton did not put up a fight.

On January 20, 1994,
Attorney General Janet Reno,

acting on Clinton's
authorization,

appointed lawyer Robert Fiske
as special counsel

in the Whitewater matter.

Most of the newspapers
in the country asked me

to have a special
counsel appointed.

That's what I have done.

I did it so that I could go on
with my work.

I want a full investigation.

I want this thing to be done,
fully, clearly,

and to be over with.

Years later, Clinton would say,

"It was the worst mistake
of my presidency."

By the spring of 1994,

Bill Clinton had endured
18 months of attacks

by his political enemies, the
press and even other Democrats.

Tired of playing defense,

he set out to reclaim
his presidency

with one grand gesture.

Clinton understood

that very few presidents create
their own greatness.

Greatness is usually
thrust upon them by a crisis.

Abe Lincoln had the Civil War,

Franklin Roosevelt had the
Depression and World War II.

And so that was a challenge
for Clinton.

"What am I going to do that's
going to make me remembered?"

For 60 years, this country
has tried to reform health care.

President Roosevelt tried,
President Truman tried,

President Nixon tried,
President Carter tried.

Every time, the special
interests were powerful enough

to defeat them,
but not this time.

Health care was to be

the giant monument
of the Clinton presidency.

Under our plan,

every American would receive
a health care security card.

Bill Clinton held up
this health care card

that we were all going to get.

Every one of us were going
to get this card

from the government, you know,

certifying that we had
health care coverage,

and we were all certain

that we were absolutely
going to get this done.

To lead the signature initiative
of his presidency,

Clinton turned,
as he always did,

to the person he trusted most.

This is a crucial moment

in the fight for health care
reform in our nation.

We all know our country
needs health security

that's decent, affordable
for every American.

There are those
who would cynically say

he owed her
for standing by her man,

despite Gennifer Flowers and all
the rest during the campaign.

But I think it was
something else.

Clinton adores her.

And he especially
adores her mind.

We cannot provide

primary and preventive
health care in America

if we don't make better use
of our nurses.

Bill Clinton really believed

that if anybody was going
to come up with the answer

to the most vexing public policy
problem out there,

it was going to be Hillary.

It was one of the stupidest
political decisions

that Bill Clinton ever made.

And now it's time for everybody
to board their buses.

Hillary Clinton
took to her new job

with all the energy
and determination pent up

during the previous year.

This is an issue
that affects everybody.

In forums and town meetings
across the country,

she heard stories
of insurance abuse,

exorbitant health care bills,
and poor quality care.

But once back in Washington,

she shut out nearly
every outside voice,

relying on a tight circle
of advisors

to write a 1,300-page plan

that would radically reshape
the nation's health care system.

There was a rigidity and an
unwillingness to really listen.

The mark of a good politician
is to listen

and to be able to understand
what's really being said.

The frailty of Hillary

was it was too cloistered,
too walled off,

and she really thought what she
perceived as the public opinion

in favor of health care

would override the resistance
in Congress

and of the special interests,
and it was a big mistake.

This was covered
under our old plan.

Oh, yeah, that was
a good one, wasn't it?

By the summer, Hillary's plan

was being pilloried by the
health insurance industry

as a big government take-over
of health care.

We spent more than a year

trying to legislate something
the country didn't want.

Having choices we don't like

is no choice at all.

They choose.

We lose.

We scared people by saying,

"The health care system
isn't working,

and here comes the government
to fix it."

And Ronald Reagan had been
schooling this public

for many years now that
the government is the problem.

People didn't think, "Oh great,
here comes the government."

Reagan had won that argument.

Clinton did little to hedge
Hillary's "all or nothing" bet

or avert the looming
political catastrophe.

In the president's mind,

this was something
that he had given to Hillary

and he was very, very reluctant
to override her.

And I think that because
of the husband-wife relationship

that it was not something
that he was willing to take on.

It inhibited Bill Clinton

from following his own
independent judgment,

his own best instincts
of when to compromise.

He found it difficult to defy
her very powerful wishes,

and that's not a position
a president wants to be in.

Socialized medicine
makes me sick!

Socialized medicine
makes me sick!

Throughout the summer of 1994,

as lawmakers heard from
their frightened constituents,

Hillary's health care bill
lost support.

By Labor Day, before it even
came up for a vote in Congress,

the Clinton health care bill
was dead.

The defeat of health care
was a huge defeat.

It was the number-one objective,

and to have it defeated
was a repudiation, in a sense,

or at least felt like
a repudiation

of the Clinton administration.

By the fall of 1994,

the Clinton presidency
was at its lowest ebb.

Weakened by scandal
and the defeat of health care,

Clinton was about
to be challenged

by a new and formidable rival.

I am a genuine revolutionary.

They are the genuine
reactionaries.

We are going to change
their world.

They will do anything
to stop us.

Brimming with self-confidence,

Georgia congressman
Newt Gingrich

had spent more than a decade

planning his assault
on the Democratic Party.

He was a giant personality.

He was one of
the best policy wonks

and thinkers
of new ideas around,

but his style was
very different from mine.

His personality
and approach was...

if it's not arrogance,
it's at least overconfidence.

You know, Clausewitz said that
war is politics by other means.

Newt thought
the reverse was true,

that politics was war
by other means.

Gingrich's ultimate goal was
nothing less than a dismantling

of what he called
the "liberal welfare state."

He would begin
by trying to break

the Democrats'
40-year stranglehold

on the House of Representatives

in the upcoming
midterm elections.

We had some people
that were not satisfied

to just passively go along

with being in an abused,
mistreated minority.

And there were
a lot of Republicans

that had been in the minority
for so long they thought,

"This is where we belong
and this is okay,

if they'll just give us
a crumb or two."

Newt started rockin' the boat.

Gingrich decided that
the best way to achieve

a Republican victory
in the midterms

was to run against Clinton.

Republican candidates
across the country

morphed their Democratic
opponents into the president.

Look at congressman
Tim Johnson's voting record.

It looks just like
Bill Clinton's liberal agenda.

The plan was to nationalize
the election.

Newt saw fundamental flaws

in the Democratic Party's
relationship

with the American electorate.

And he wanted to develop
and exploit those

and run a campaign
based on that.

As the elections approached,
Clinton hit the campaign trail,

hoping that his old magic could
hold back the Republican tide.

Part of Bill Clinton's persona
is an abiding belief

that if he can
just have enough time,

he can win over
just about anybody.

Clinton was sure his record

could yet win over
the American people.

By the fall of 1994,
the economy was growing again.

In September, he added
a new ban on assault weapons

to his list of accomplishments.

But scandals,
the failure of health care,

and foreign policy missteps

weighed heavily
on public opinion.

I remember him saying to me
on God knows how many speeches,

"Harold, if I can just
communicate to enough Americans

"what we have done and where
we want to take the country,

we'll win this."

I now declare the polls open.

One of the big questions
of the day is

whether the Republicans
have been successful

in turning this election into
a referendum on Bill Clinton

as they had wanted.

Our exit polls are turning up
bad news all over the country

for President Clinton
and his party.

I had called a friend at NBC

to find out what the 1:30
exit polls looked like

and she told me,

"Well, Tony, I actually
haven't seen the exit...

"the 1:30 exit polls,
they're holding them back.

"Apparently you guys
are doing so well

that there must be something
wrong with the polling,"

and that was the beginning
of a hopeful evening

that turned into a glorious one.

This is truly
a wildly historic night.

I mean, this is just...

The Republican Revolution
of election '94

shook Capitol Hill
like an earthquake today.

Its reverberations
went into statehouses

and moved the whole political
landscape sharply to the right.

By the end of the night,

Republicans had picked up
54 seats in the House

and eight in the Senate,

winning control of both chambers
of Congress.

The longest walk I took
in my life was from my...

I was still in the basement
in the West Wing,

over to the second floor
of the residence

to tell him
what he already knew,

that we had lost
the House and the Senate.

That Christmas was another
dismal one.

Clinton wandered the corridors
of the White House

obsessing about his defeat.

The old question haunted him:
"What did I do wrong?"

In politics,
you want to be loved.

Politics is about
wanting to be loved,

and suddenly there's a message
that maybe they don't love you.

And how do you deal with that?

He really went through
a lot of, you know,

of kind of internal conflicts.

But again, typical Bill Clinton,
you know, he was angry,

he was mad, he was, you know,
kind of, "What went wrong?"

But at the same time,
he was asking himself,

"How do I fix it?"

There was no doubt in my mind

that Bill Clinton could come
back or would come back.

He always came back.

Bill Clinton was
constitutionally incapable

of not coming back.

The real question was how.

In what form?

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