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I have told our people that I think we should use the pattern that Canada and the United States used with regard to polluted air-or polluted water along our borders. And we were very successful in cleaning up the lakes and the streams that either crossed our borders or that were very close to them. And we worked together on that. And that is the pattern that I said I thought we should follow here. And we are in consultation. And we have a great deal of work to do ourselves on pinning sources and so forth. But all of that is going forward. It is not something that you can just say that we will do it at 10 a.m. in the morning. But we intend to work closely with Canada and find an answer to the problem. Many Japanese people are hoping that the United States will lift the sanctions as a result of the semiconductor codes prior to the Venice summit. Is there any chance that the United States will lift the sanctions prior to the summit? We are looking forward to doing that as quickly as we can, but it depends on those Japanese concerns agreeing to the-or abiding by the terms that were agreed to earlier. And then that agreement was violated, and this is what brought about our retaliation. I do not know that it can be done as quickly as our going to the summit, which is almost upon us, but it will be done as soon as, as I say, all those conditions are met. And I know that Prime Minister Nakasone is doing his best and is being most cooperative in trying to arrive at a settlement. ENTITY, you have always emphasized that progress in arms control should be linked with progress in human rights. You are making progress in arms control at the moment, and as you are going to Berlin next month and as you are going to see the wall which divides the city, do not you think that the time has come for a new initiative on human rights? Well, I do not know what his message might be, but I am quite sure that I will make reference to the wall and what it represents. I believe that we have made progress, some progress in human rights, not as much as we would like or as fast as we would like. There is a greater distance to go, much more to be done, but at least we are seeing the signs of improvement in that field of human rights. I think another thing also has to do-that is tied into arms reduction, must be the regional aspect.

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And there, I think the Soviet Union-they have expressed their desire to get out of Afghanistan, and I think we all should be encouraging them to make good on that statement and move as fast as possible to end an assault that has seen almost 5 million people have to flee their country as refugees and live in neighboring countries. And it is a brutal assault on the people who remain. We are seeing attacks on children-deliberately aimed at children by the use of weapons that are made to look like child's toys, but which, when picked up, cause either the death or the severe injury of the children. I recently had five children in this office right here who'd been brought to our hospitals from Afghanistan. And one of them, a small, tiny girl, was horribly disfigured by burns. But the other four were either missing a leg or an arm. Over the years, Britain, irrespective of which political party is in power, has enjoyed a strong, special relationship with the United States, including an American military presence with nuclear weapons on British soft. Irrespective of the result of the general election now being fought in Britain, will you do everything in your power to maintain this relationship in general and specific terms? It is difficult for me to conceive of a time when we would not have the almost family relationship that we have between our two countries. I have admired your Prime Minister and the progress that has been made in many fields there, but I know that I cannot go beyond that, because I am not going to, again, intervene or express an opinion with regard to your politics. But the relationship between our two countries does go back many, many years, and I think it would take more than an election in either one of our countries to change that. ENTITY, may I go back a moment to the Persian Gulf?. People say, especially in Congress, that there is a danger of war. And in any case, confrontation with Iran could cause a resurgence in terrorism and dampen the peace process in the Middle East. Do you think these objections are true, and what do you expect the Europeans to do to help you there? Specifically, what do you expect Italy, for instance, to do to help you? Well, in the economic summit last year in Japan, we came to quite some sizable agreements with regard to terrorism and the cooperation between all of our countries on that. There is no question but that the Iranian Government does support terrorism.

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And I would think that the issues, as I expressed them earlier, about simply defending ourselves with regard to our own ability to maintain trade in the open waters-I do not see that as bringing on a war. As a matter of fact, we are doing everything we can, working with other countries to try and bring about an end to the war that we have. Now, Iraq has already expressed a willingness to simply end the war, both sides retreat to their own borders, no one gain any territory or suffer any penalty, just simply end the war. Iraq has expressed a willingness to do this, and the only holdout is Iran. We are going to continue to try and press for peace there. It is my understanding that war has taken about a million lives so far. I do not think that they would like to take on the United States in addition to Iraq. And we are not going to start a war, so it would have to be them if they tried to start one. In case of an agreement about the double zero option, what will you answer to those who fear denuclearization of Europe? Well, I think we are a long way from denuclearization of Europe. You have really three sets of weapons. The ones that we are talking particularly about in having a zero option are the intermediate range. But even if that should be done, you have that third group which, in the case of the allies, would number someplace in 4,000 warheads. These are the battlefield weapons, the airplane-carried weapons and so forth, and some nuclear submarines that are dedicated to our agreement with the European nations. Then I would have to point out that as you proceeded-if you did-into that field that is where it would absolutely have to include conventional weapons. conventional weapons. ENTITY, you just talked a moment ago about freedom of navigation in the Gulf. Ottawa is planning to buy 10 to 12 submarines from Europe to force your Navy to ask permission when you send ships in the Northwest Passage. Are we going towards a confrontation of some kind? I see a great deal of merit on Canada's concern with regard to the islands north of Canada, which throughout much, if not all, of the year many of them are connected by permanent ice connections with people living on that ice-that this is somewhat different than most of the other points in the world where there could be the same type of concern as to whether a water is international or territorial.

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We have to worry about an action that could set a pattern, a precedent, that then in other parts of the world we would find-what is it, about 16 chokepoints in the world that must be kept open if the free world, not only ourselves but others, are to be able to get the necessities of life. And someone that wanted to attack the free world-obviously their naval strategy would be to close those down. You seem to be saying that Canada had some legitimate claim to sovereignty for that- And I am hopeful that we can-and the good neighbors that we are-that we can find an answer to that and that will, at the same time, will not set a dangerous precedent with regard to other international waters. ENTITY, I would like to ask concerning the value of the dollar. Is the United States Government planning any measures to maintain the value of the dollar, and will you make an announcement at the summit on this? Now, wait a minute, I missed out there at the first. I'd like to ask regarding as-in the value of dollars.- So, is the United States Government planning any measures to maintain the value of the dollar? Well, I do not think we want any more precipitous nosediving of the dollar. We do think that there was a readjustment that was needed, that our dollar, in relation to other currencies, was overpriced. And it was making competition a little unfair in worldwide trade; we were being priced out of the market. Sometimes when we see the dollar adjust as it has, I have often wondered if we are describing it accurately or if we should not be saying that other currencies that have so far been undervalued have gained some value that is more realistic worldwide. Are you going to reappoint Mr. Volcker as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board? We have not even met or discussed that as yet. I know that I am going to be faced with that decision down the road, or perhaps he has a decision he wants to make himself. But we just have not made a decision. But I think that out of the economic summit also, in the whole field of macroeconomics, we will be touching on the need for some stability with regard to currencies worldwide and cure any runaway volatility. If I may ask you a more personal question, you have experienced the worst political crisis of your life during the last months.

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Your wife has been criticized by some American columnists. You lost your Chief of Staff. Did it ever occur to you during this crisis to resign? And what gave you the strength to carry on? Well, I think the strength to carry on was because there was not any truth, and is not any truth, in the charges that are being leveled at me. I did not know that there was money deposited with regard to our arms purchase in accounts or that any of that money was then going to be used for the contras. We had sold $12 million worth of arms. We got our $12 million. And it was not until the covert operation that we were-or meetings that we were having-not with Khomeini's government. These meetings were with people who were looking forward to what might be the Government of Iran in the absence of the Khomeini and wanted to establish better relations with the United States. They could probably get executed for what they were doing. But anyway, when the whole thing did leak and burst in all the press of the world, it was only then that word was brought to me that apparently someone in the go-between in the arms transaction had raised the price and there was excess money and it had been put in a Swiss bank account. Now, I still do not know who did that, how much, where it went, who is gotten any of it; and I am still waiting for these investigations to reveal it. So frankly, I sleep very well at night. There was information that had evidently been withheld from me by some of those who are testifying. And I do not feel that I am faced with any crisis, and, no, I never considered resigning. ENTITY, Secretary Shultz, before the House Appropriations Committee last March, was talking about the impossibility of the United States living up to any undertaking of confidentiality. He said that the result is that other countries are increasingly hesitant in dealing with us and they even hesitate to communicate with us because as soon as they put anything down, somebody will leak it. How big is the problem of leaks in the American Government, and does it affect the allies in Europe? During these last several years, I was not prepared for how much leaking does go on from the White House or from-let us just say in Washington. It is not just confined to the White House.

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Many times, if there is something in which you have to give information to the Congress, you know you are going to read about it in the paper almost immediately. As a matter of fact, may I say something here that might sound a little critical? A great deal of the leaking is not the leaking of valid information, it is the leaking of a rumor, an unsubstantiated statement. And yet our press goes all out, including the headlines with it. Now, I recognize the right of the free press; I do not want censorship. And I know also that the press, at least in our country, has a tradition of protecting its source. So, when I see those stories that are written with according to a White House source -no name. But since many times they print as fact this statement by this unnamed source, does not the press have a responsibility, if they want to protect their source, of at least before they go with the story checking out to see if the story is true? Would it kill them to make a telephone call and find out is this true, did you say this, or did you do that? And it is destructive to our relationship with other countries. As I say, a number of times I have had to pick up the phone and call one of my counterparts in another country because of embarrassment caused to them by a leak. And we have done, and continue to do, everything we can to try and find out who is responsible for these leaks, and we have not been able to determine them, to pin them down. Was there a leak, or is not just the attributing of the story to an unnamed source a way of writing a story someone wants to write, particularly among columnists? When are you meeting Mr. Gorbachev, ENTITY? It is up to him to tell us when he can come. He has agreed; he did agree to a summit in the United States; and that invitation is still open. And I am hopeful that, before the year is out, we will have that meeting.

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We think that a lot of people responded to a theme, or at least I think so, in the presidential campaign of sacrifice to cut the deficit as long as that sacrifice is equal. The Btu tax was designed originally on the concept of equal sacrifice. But then all of these exceptions were added, and it really makes it appear that it is one of the most complicated proposals ever. Did you make a mistake allowing all the special exceptions to be included in the Btu tax? Some of them were included in the House of Representatives bill, and I did not agree with all of them. But let me say what I think was a good criticism of the tax and that is that we wanted the tax to restrain energy consumption in ways that promoted energy conservation and also supported fuel switching to more environmentally beneficial and more available natural gas. That bill, as drawn, would be a big boon to the natural gas industry in Texas and Oklahoma and throughout the United States. And that is one of the things we were trying to do. Now, some of the oil companies did not like it, but the people that were in the gas business liked it. We had a big Texas gas company, headed by a person who strongly supported President Bush in the last election, endorsed the economic program. ARCO and Sun Oil both endorsed the economic program, including the Btu tax. So Secretary Bentsen, who, as you know, has represented you in the Senate for a long time, offered the Senate a modified Btu tax which, instead of having all those particular exemptions, would basically have alleviated the burden of the Btu tax on industry and agriculture on the production sector but still given them an incentive to move toward natural gas wherever possible and would also have cut the Btu rate and would have replaced that with more spending cuts. From my point of view, unfortunately, we could not pass that through the committee because Senator Boren had said he would not vote for any tax based on the heat content of fuel. But I still think it was a good concept, and it will be interesting to see what happens if the Senate's version of the economic plan passes, to see what happens in the conference and what we come up with. What we have now is a gasoline tax that is been passed by the Senate committee, and you have called that regressive in the past. How can you sell that, if you have to, to House Members who did risk some political capital by supporting you on the Btu tax?

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I think anything that comes out has to be a combination of agreement between the House and the Senate. It is hard to get 218 House Members and 51 Senators to agree on anything that is tough. I mean, everybody can talk about cutting the deficit, but it is one thing to talk about it and quite another to do. But I think they will be able to do it. No one was particularly happy with the form of the Btu tax, or very few people were, that passed the House, but everybody thought that Secretary Bentsen could come up with a plan that would make it good for the economy and could achieve what we were trying to do in terms of promoting domestic energy, and I think he did. The Senate preferred a tax that was a gas tax and a tax on some other fuels. It, at least, is small enough so that it is not particularly unfair to people in rural areas. It is not as big as what some had wanted, and certainly I did not want just a big old gas tax. I also think it is important to point out in Texas, in light of the rhetoric in the recent political campaign, that it is simply not true that there is no spending cuts in this plan. There is $250 billion in spending cuts, and they affect everything. They affect agriculture and veterans and Medicare and the whole range of discretionary spending of the Government. They affect foreign aid; they affect defense. And the tax increases, two-thirds of them, fall on people with incomes above $200,000, three-quarters on people with incomes above $100,000. Families of four with incomes below $30,000 are held harmless, and people who work for a living 40 hours a week and have kids in the house who are now in poverty would actually be lifted above poverty by these tax changes in ways that promote the movement from welfare to work. It was developed, and in a very aggressive way, by Lloyd Bentsen and by Leon Panetta, who used to be chairman of the House Budget Committee, to be fair, to have equal spending cuts in taxes, and to drive the deficit down so we could bring interest rates down. That is good for Texas, and that is good for everybody in America. And also, it leaves some room for investments that are critical to our future. And as you know, I support you were implying this before I got on I support the space station and the super collider projects because I think they are good for America's future.

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And if you are going to spend money on those things, you have to spend money on them. You cannot play games; they do cost some money. ENTITY, how long can you guarantee that support for the super collider and the space station? Will they fall if that is the only way to meet your overall deficit reduction goal? Well, my overall deficit reduction goals can be met in my plan with the space station and the super collider. I do want to emphasize that we have already shaved $4 billion off the 5-year budget for the space station and some money off the 5-year budget for the super collider by redesigning the space station, based on a team of exceptional national experts who analyzed the project and recommended that it be redesigned and also that NASA's management be changed rather dramatically. And we just delayed the implementation schedule on the super collider some, so that none of the opponents of the space station and the super collider could claim that there had been no spending cut there. So we have done that. But I strongly feel it would be a mistake to abandon those. Now, I would be less than candid if I did not tell you that there are a lot of people in other parts of the country who want to cut those projects. There was always a lot of opposition to them, and because of the last election and all of the rhetoric and all the claims in Texas that there were no spending cuts in this budget, that has given real energy to the opponents of the space station and the super collider. It was not true that there were no spending cuts, but there are a lot of people up there who have been wanting to kill these projects for years who are just gleeful at the way the rhetoric in the last election played out in Texas. They think that they have been given a license by the people of Texas to kill the space station and the super collider. And it is going to be very much harder for me to keep them alive. ENTITY, I am informed that our time has run out, by one of your aides, I believe. I enjoyed it.

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I am very pleased indeed to welcome ENTITY and his delegation, Mrs. ENTITY, and young Barbara. It is very important for us because of the importance of the United States to our future and the United States to the future of our continent. We have had very good discussions with ENTITY, able to cover quite a wide field. We are very pleased with the development of the bilateral relations, strong economic links, growing all the time. Continued attention by the U.S. corporate world on South Africa is very critically important for us. AGOA has had a very big impact in terms of the development of our economy, and we continue to work on all of these matters. It also gave us a chance to convey our thanks to ENTITY for the support with regards to meeting the African continental challenges. That includes questions of peace and security, the NEPAD processes, again, very important for the future of our continent. That, of course, also gave an opportunity to discuss some of the specific areas of conflict around the continent. I must say, ENTITY, that at the end of these discussions, we, all of us, feel enormously strengthened by your very, very firm and clear commitment to assist us to meet the challenges that we have got to meet domestically and on the African Continent. We-the visit will certainly result in strengthened bilateral relations and strengthened cooperation to meet these other challenges that we face together. It is a pleasure to be in South Africa. Your Nation's recent history is a great story of courage and persistence in the pursuit of justice. This is a country that threw off oppression and is now the force of freedom and stability and a force for progress throughout the continent of Africa. I appreciate our strong relationship, and it is a vital relationship. And ENTITY, I want to thank you very much for working hard to make it a vital and strong relationship. We have met quite a few times in the recent past, and every time we have met, I have -I feel refreshed and appreciate very much your advice and counsel and your leadership. I appreciate ENTITY's dedication to openness and accountability. He is advancing these principles in the New Partnership for African Development, the leader in that effort. ENTITY and I believe that the partnership can help extend democracy and free markets and transparency across the continent of Africa. ENTITY has shown great leadership in this initiative, and our country will support the leaders who accept the principles of reform, and we will work with them.

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South Africa is playing a critical role in promoting regional security in Africa, and we discussed ENTITY's leadership, for example, in Burundi. South Africa has helped achieve the peaceful inauguration of a new ENTITY. Or in the Congo, South Africa brokered an agreement on the creation of a transitional government. And in Zimbabwe, I have encouraged ENTITY and his Government to continue to work for the return of democracy in that important country. I also discussed with ENTITY the importance of the continued cooperation in the global war on terror. The United States and South Africa are working together to strengthen this nation's border security and law enforcement. And we are devoting $100 million to help countries in eastern Africa increase their counterterror efforts. We are determined to fight and to join our friends to fight terrorists throughout this continent, throughout the world. We are also committed to helping African nations achieve peace. In Liberia, the United States strongly supports the cease-fire agreement signed last month. President Taylor needs to leave Liberia so that his country can be spared further grief and bloodshed. Yesterday, I talked with President Kufuor of Ghana, who leads ECOWAS. I shared with the President our conversation. I assured him the United States will work closely with ECOWAS and the United Nations to maintain the cease-fire and to enable a peaceful transfer of power. We are also pressing forward to help end Africa's long-running civil war in Sudan. My Special Envoy, Senator Jack Danforth, is returning to the region. We are making progress there. And his efforts are making good progress. ENTITY also discussed our action to combat ENTITY/ENTITY. South Africa has recently increased its budget to fight the disease, and we noticed and we appreciate that. America is now undertaking a major new effort to help governments and private groups combat ENTITY. Over the next 5 years, we will spend $15 billion in the global fight against ENTITY. People across Africa had the will to fight this disease but often not the resources, and the United States of America is willing to put up the resources to help in the fight. We are committed to helping the people of Africa defeat hunger. We provided more than 500,000 metric tons of food aid to southern Africa over the past 18 months. This year we will provide nearly $1 billion to address food emergencies. We care when we see people who are hungry. We look forward to working with ENTITY to alleviate suffering. We are also working to expand trade, which I believe is the key to Africa's economic future.

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The African Growth and Opportunity Act is creating jobs and stimulating investment across the continent. Right here in South Africa, exports to the United States under AGOA have increased by 45 percent in the last year alone-significant progress. We are working with five nations of the Southern African Customs Union on a free trade agreement to help expand the circle of prosperity even wider. ENTITY, our countries have many common interests. We also share a fundamental commitment to the spread of peace and human rights and liberty. By working in close partnership, we are serving both the interests of the people of South Africa and the United States. I want to thank you for your friendship, appreciate the hospitality. It is been a great honor to be in your country. I understand that two U.S. journalists and two South African journalists will pose some questions. I'd like to direct the question to both Presidents, and it does concern the issue of ENTITY/ENTITY and the $15 billion grant. Did you manage to reach some kind of understanding or consensus on the issue of how South Africa will access that money, on what terms South Africa will be able to access that money? And ENTITY, did you give any undertakings in terms of using your influence to ensure that there will be cheaper access-access to cheaper drugs and medicines? And to ENTITY, sir, did you-- Did you give any undertaking in terms of the running out of the national treatment plan? Well, as ENTITY had indicated, we did indeed discuss this. The situation is that we received a request from the U.S. Government to say, can we make proposals as to how to access the fund, for what purposes-a program, a program that we would present. So we are working on that. We want to respond to that request from the United States Government as quickly as is possible. We will do that and convey it. So it will be out of that process of discussion that will result, out of that proposal between the U.S. Government and ourselves, that then will come a program, a particular concrete kind of action, with the necessary costing when we get to that stage. So the matter will be discussed in that way. And ENTITY had indicated in our discussions that of course the U.S. Government is taking a comprehensive approach to this, which would, therefore, include questions of awareness, questions of health infrastructure, questions of treatment, and so on. So we will look at the totality of those and-in the proposal that we would make.

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We just named Tobias to be the Ambassador, nominated him to be the Ambassador, and he is -upon confirmation-will be working with the countries such as South Africa to develop a strategy-is what we need. We need a commonsense strategy to make sure that the money is well-spent. And the definition of well-spent means lives are saved, which means good treatment programs, good prevention programs, good programs to develop health infrastructures in remote parts of different countries so that we can actually get antiretroviral drugs to those who need help. The cost of antiretroviral drugs has dropped substantially. But we did talk about the pharmaceutical union in a broader context. As you may know, the United States supported a moratorium on the enforcement of patent laws concerning those drugs related to diseases that were causing pandemics. And we will continue to work with South Africa as well as other countries to see if we cannot reach a commonsense policy that, on the one hand, protects intellectual property rights and, on the other hand, makes, you know, lifesaving drugs or treatment drugs for, in some cases, lifesaving, in some cases that are proper for treatment, more widely available at reasonable costs. But one reason I felt emboldened to ask the Congress for a substantial amount of new money for the ENTITY Initiative was because of the cost of antiretrovirals, and it is significantly lower than it was a couple of years ago. So we are making good progress. And I look forward to working with ENTITY on putting together a sound strategy that saves lives. That is what our country is interested in. We are interested in dealing with this pandemic in a practical way. But whatever you do, do not fall into that bad habit of asking both of us three or four questions. ENTITY, you have an assessment team in Liberia now to help you decide whether to send in U.S. troops as part of a peacekeeping effort. U.S. troops are getting shot at increasingly in Iraq every day. We have troops in Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Korea. What do you say to critics who suggest that our forces may be spread too thinly now to engage in further initiatives? And to ENTITY, do you think that the United States should play a more active role in peacekeeping, specifically in Liberia? Well, first, my answer to people is that we will not overextend our troops, period.

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Secondly, we have made a commitment that we will work closely with the United Nations and ECOWAS to enforce the cease-fire, see to it that Mr. Taylor leaves office, so that there can be a peaceful transition in Liberia. We have made that commitment. I have said it clearly more than one time, like yesterday in Senegal, for example. So nothing has changed from about 12 hours ago on that question. We do have assessment teams there to assess what is necessary to help with the transition. And ENTITY brought up the question, and he can answer it his own way. And we are now determining the extent of our involvement. Yes, certainly, we discussed this question with ENTITY many years ago and agreed that it is critically important that we as Africans should, indeed, take responsibility for the future of peace and stability on the continent. So that is a principal obligation that falls on us as Africans. So as you would know, the West African states, ECOWAS, have agreed to send in troops into Liberia. And they are trying to move that process forward as quickly as is possible. We appreciate very much the point that was made by ENTITY of the commitment of the United States to lend sup-port-the assessment teams are there to assess that-to lend support to those processes, processes of restoration of peace, making sure people do not starve, making sure that there is a restoration of democracy in Liberia. So the U.S. will cooperate with the African troops that will go there. So it is not- we are not saying that this is a burden that just falls on the United States. It really ought to principally fall on us as Africans. Of course, we need a lot of support, logistics-wise and so on, to do that, but the will is there. I think our money has helped train seven battalions of peacekeepers amongst African troops. And it is a sensible policy for us to continue that training mission, so that we never do get overextended. And so one of the things you will see us do is invigorate this-reinvigorate the strategy of helping people help themselves by providing training opportunities. I think we have trained five Nigerian battalions, if I am not mistaken, one Senegalese. So we have got-but it is in our interest that we continue that strategy, Tom, so that we do not ever get overextended.

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During the past week, the two Presidents or the Governments of-the Government of the U.S. and South Africa have expressed sharp differences about the best way to deal with the Zimbabwean question. And having met this morning, I wonder if the two Presidents have found the best approach or have agreed about the best approach to deal with Zimbabwe. Can we get from the smiles that you now have a formula to deal best with Zimbabwe? I did not know, ENTITY, that we'd expressed sharp differences. We are absolutely of one mind, the two Governments and ENTITY and myself are absolutely of one mind about the urgent need to address the political and economic challenges of Zimbabwe. It is necessary to resolve this matter as quickly as is possible. We have said, as you would know, for a long time that the principle is rooted- principal responsibility for the resolution of these problems rests with the people of Zimbabwe and, therefore, have urged them-both the ruling party and the opposition, the Government and the opposition-to get together and seriously tackle all of these issues. I did tell ENTITY that, indeed, the Government-ZANU-PF and the MDC are indeed discussing. They are engaged in discussions on all of the matters that would be relevant to the resolution of these political and economic problems. We have communicated the message to both sides that-indeed, as we agreed with ENTITY-that it is very, very important that they should move forward with urgency to find a resolution to these questions. Of course, again, as ENTITY was saying, that apart from these important political issues about democrats and so on, you actually have ordinary people who are hungry in an economy which cannot cope with them, and you cannot allow that kind of situation to go on forever. We had discussed this matter earlier, sometime back, with the U.S. Government that we have to find-we have got to find a way of getting a political solution, and we would indeed count very much on such economic, financial support as would come from the United States afterwards, in order to address the urgent challenges that face Zimbabwe. So we did not fight about any of what I have just said. We were smiling because we were certain a clever reporter would try to use the Zimbabwe issue as a way to maybe create tensions which do not exist. Look, Zimbabwe is an important country for the economic health of Africa.

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A free, peaceful Zimbabwe has got the capacity to deliver a lot of goods and services which are needed on this continent in order to help relieve suffering. And it is a very sad situation that is taken place in that country. Look, we share the same objective. He represents a mighty country in the neighborhood who is , because of his position and his responsibility, is working the issue. And I am not-not any intention of second-guessing his tactics. We share the same outcome. And I think it is important for the United States, whether it be me or my Secretary of State, to speak out when we see a situation where somebody's freedoms have been taken away from them and they are suffering. And that is what we are going to continue to do. ENTITY is the point man on this important subject. He is working it very hard. He is in touch with the parties involved. He is-he is making-he believes, making good progress. And the United States supports him in this effort. Do you regret that your State of the Union accusation that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa is now fueling charges that you and Prime Minister Blair misled the public? And then, secondly, following up on Zimbabwe, are you willing to have a representative meet with a representative of the Zimbabwe opposition leader, who sent a delegation here and complained that he did not think ENTITY could be an honest broker in the process? Well, I think ENTITY can be an honest broker, to answer the second question. The first question is-look, there is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world peace. And there is no doubt in my mind the United States, along with allies and friends, did the right thing in removing him from power. And there is no doubt in my mind, when it is all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth. And so there is going to be a lot of, you know, attempts to try to rewrite history, and I can understand that. But I am absolutely confident in the decision I made. Do you still believe they were trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa? I mean, the statement you made-- One thing is for certain, he is not trying to buy anything right now. If he is alive, he is on the run. And that is to the benefit of the Iraqi people. But look, I am confident that Saddam Hussein had a weapons of mass destruction program.

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Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan. What is your assessment of those three theaters? And looking back in perspective, would you do anything different? Well, that is an interesting question on doing anything different. Of course, history is going to be the judge of that. But the decision, for example, on Iraq, to remove Saddam Hussein, was the right decision then, and it is the right decision now. The progress in Iraq has been substantial. For a period of time, it-the democracy was in doubt, primarily because sectarian violence was really unacceptable. I decided to put more troops in, rather than pull back, and now the violence is the lowest it is been since March of 2004. So I am encouraged about Iraq. Afghanistan is also difficult because of new democracy emerging from the shadows of a brutal regime. Last year, of course, the Taliban announced they were going to go on the offense. In fact, our coalition went on the offense and, from a security perspective, made some progress against the Taliban. The best progress, though, is the advance of better trained police forces-and I thank the Italian Government for helping-as well as a better Afghan ENTITY, which over time needs to provide the security for the country. Iraq will probably-progresses quicker cause it is got wealth. Iran-the free world must continue to send a clear message to the Iranians that their ability to enrich, which could be transferred to a program to develop a nuclear weapon, is unacceptable. And so I will continue to work on this trip to talk about the dangers of a nuclear Iran-not civilian nuclear power, but a program that would be aimed at blackmail or destruction-and that we have got to work to stop them from learning how to enrich. Should Iran resist the international pressure, military option remains open? Italy wants to join the 5plus-1 group of contacts negotiating with Iran. Germany is skeptical; they do not want us. What do you say? I say that whatever is effective in terms of sending a clear message to Iran. I will be spending time talking to this with the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. I have talked to Condi about this issue. Italy can be an effective voice in sending a message to the Iranians. And that you do not have to choose isolation; there is a better way forward. And Italy can be a critical part of that.

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And so we will work-I have not really taken the temperature that much, but my judgment is, Italy can be a very important contributor. The relationship between the United States and Europe has been strained sometimes in the recent past. During your trip, what do you suggest we can do together vis-a-vis the oil crisis, food crisis, and the recession coming? Yes, you know-first of all, let me talk about strained relations. Look, I have had great relations with many of the leaders. Do we agree on every issue? But do we agree on common values? We believe in human rights and human dignity and free press and free religion. And so what unites us is a heck of a lot stronger than those moments where we do not necessarily agree on every single issue. And so I will remind people of that. I will remind people that we have got a lot of work to do. In terms of the current energy issue, look, we are too dependent on hydrocarbons. World demand is such, relative to supply, that the price of energy is high. And therefore, we need to be spending monies on new technologies to enable us to become less dependent on oil. one, less dependency on hydrocarbons; and two, it will make us better stewards of the environment. I mean, if you are concerned about global warming, one thing you ought to be concerned about then is making sure that we have got power generated from a clean source of energy, a renewable source of energy, which is nuclear power. The food prices concern me, obviously. But the truth of the matter is, one reason why food prices are so high is because energy prices are high. fertilizer is an energy; driving a tractor is an energy; crops to markets require energy. And so the crux of a lot of the problem is the energy prices. Talking to Prime Minister Berlusconi, what areas do you-will you encourage Italy to work with the United States, especially? Well, Iran, of course, because I just happen to see it as a major threat. Afghanistan-and I will thank the Italian people for their sacrifices to help this young democracy. Silvio Berlusconi and I worked a lot of big issues together in the past. I know him well, I trust him, I like him. I am -I find him to be one of the really interesting world leaders.

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And I am really looking forward to seeing him again in his capacity, once again, as the Prime Minister. We ought to work on trade matters. We ought to work on diseases like ENTITY/ENTITY and malaria on the continent of Africa, for example. You met the Pope while in the United States, and how do you see his role in trying to reopen the dialogue between different civilizations and religions? And we had a fabulous visit here, and it was such an honor to welcome him to the South Lawn of the White House. I wish you could have seen it. But you-maybe you did see it. I wish your viewers could have seen the reception he was given here. I think it was one of the largest crowds ever on the South Lawn, like 13,000 people. And my own personal visit with him was so uplifting. And we did talk about the interfaith dialogue, that I think is really important for people to find common ground through religion to, like, deal with the violence that is used by some in the name of religion, to perpetuate an ideology, and to remind people that peace-religion is peace. I talked to the King of Saudi Arabia about his visit with the Holy Father, and those are two very important figures when it comes to obviously Christianity and Islam. Yes. How do you see vitality of the American democracy, looking at this? Well, look, I am for McCain, and everybody knows that. On the other hand, I thought it was a really good statement, powerful moment when a major political party nominates a African American man to be their standard bearer. And it is good for our democracy that that happened. So I think it is a good sign for American democracy. And I am in an interesting position. I ran hard for the Presidency twice; I campaigned hard in the off years, and now I will be passing the mantle on to Senator McCain, particularly at the convention when he becomes the official nominee of our party. Obviously, he is going to be the nominee, but there is a moment at the convention where it is , Here he is. And I will do my part to help him win, and- but it is going to be up to him. That is - he will be the man sitting in the Oval Office making the tough decisions for peace and security. You mentioned history at the beginning of this interview. And you know-you are aware that history will ask you about Iraq.

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Republicans are already out saying what you are talking about so far, for Wednesday night, is not going to create any new jobs. You know, I would suggest that they save the rebuttal for after the speech -- -- since they have not really -- they have not really heard what we are proposing. But what is it going to be? We are going to talk about how we can, first of all, focus on job creation and growth. And I met with the Republicans, so I have their ideas. And some of the things we propose are things that actually should get some strong bipartisan support. Right. Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs. in infrastructure -- Here is what I said was that our number-one priority was stopping the economic contraction. And we did create or save several million jobs. But we still lost 7 million jobs. There are reports now of other potential suicide bombers coming out of Yemen. Osama bin Laden, as we know, has issued a tape championing the Christmas Day attempted bomber. Do you have any indication that they are already here? Since 9/11, we have put in a series of measures that make us much safer now than we were before 9/11. Al Qaeda itself is greatly weakened from where it was back in 2000. Bin Laden sending out a tape trying to take credit for a Nigerian student who engaged in a failed bombing attempt is an indication of how weakened he is because this is not something necessarily directed by him. Ever in the middle of all this coming at you, do you think maybe one term is enough? You know, I would say that when I -- the one thing I am clear about is that I'd rather be a really good one-term president than an mediocre two-term president. And I -- and I believe that. You know, there is a tendency in Washington to think that our job description of elected officials is to get reelected. I will not slow down in terms of going after the big problems that this country faces. I am not backing off the need for us to tackle these big problems in a serious way.

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Iwhat did you say, nice tie? I wore it for the national service signing today. It is interesting, we just had a lunch with a number of columnists Audience members. Would it make you feel better if I said I did not enjoy it? I mean anyway, and they knew you were all here, and we had 700 or 800 people out on the lawn for the national service signing. And four or five of these folks that have been covering Washington for 20 years said they had never seen the White House so busy. I did not know if they were happy or sad about it, but anyway, it is busy. I thank you for coming today. I hope this will be the first of a number of opportunities we have to provide people who have radio talk shows and who communicate with millions of Americans on an intimate basis, daily, to come to the White House to have these kinds of briefings. You have already heard all the basic approaches that the administration is going to take on health care and that will be hopefully crystallized in a compelling way in my address to the Congress and to the country tomorrow evening. So, I thought what I would do is make a general statement about how this fits into the overall approach the administration is taking and then answer your questions. I'd rather spend time just answering your questions. But let me just make a general comment, that I think you canthat runs through the thread of debate that we had on the economic program, on the health care issue, on NAFTA, on the crime bill that is coming up, on the welfare reform issue, on all the major things we are trying to come to grips with. It is now commonplace to say that we are living through a time of profound change, not only in our country but around the world. People are trying to come to grips with a rate and nature of change that comes along less frequently than once a generation. I mean, they are going through these things, trying to come to grips with what it means to be a democracy and what it means to try to change the economy. In our country, if we are going to continue to be the leading power of the world, not just militarily but economically, socially, the shining light of the world, this has to be a good place for most Americans to live. Most people have to know that if they work hard and play by the rules that they can make the changes that are sweeping through this country and the world their friends and not their enemies.

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They have to believe that as citizens they can work together and trust the major institutions of our society to function well, to meet these changes, to respond to them. the size of the deficit, the fact that we have an investment deficit, too, in many critical areas, the health care crisis, at a time when most people are quite insecure in their own lives and most Americans have worked harder for stagnant or lower wages for the last 10 to 20 years, when they are paying more for the basics in life, when they have lost faith in the fundamental capacity of political institutions to represent them and to solve problems. I think you can see that in the 700,000 letters we got on health care. The number of people who would say, you know, What is wrong with me? I worked hard all my life, and I lost my health insurance, or My child got sick, and now I can never change my job, or My wife and I spend 60 hours a week running our business. And our health insurance was $200 a month 4 years ago, and it is over $900 a month today, you know that things are out of control. I say that because I believe providing security in the health care area and in meeting the other objectives we talked about, quality and choice and cost controls and all, is a necessary precondition, not only to improve the health care of the American people but to help root the American people again in this moment, to make them freer to face the other challenges that we face. I see in this debate over NAFTA which I have wrestled with in my own mind, that is, the whole nature of our trade relations with Mexico and other countries and where we are going for far longer than I have been ENTITY, I had to deal with it when I was a Governor. I see people, some of them looking ahead with confidence in the future that we can triumph in the world of the 21st century, that we can compete and win, that we can create tomorrow's jobs, and others so uncertain about it, just trying to hold on to today and to yesterday's jobs. So, what I am trying to do is to give the American people a greater sense of security over those things that are basic to their lives that they can control and at the same time challenge our people to assume responsibility for dealing with our problems and for marching confidently into the future.

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That is what this national service issue is all about that we celebrated today on the White House lawn. And therefore, the health care issue is about more than health care. It is about restoring selfconfidence to America's families and businesses. It is about restoring some discipline to our budget and investment decisions, not only in the Government but in the private sector. It is about giving us the sense that we actually can move forward and win in the face of all these changes. I cannot underor I guess I cannot overstate how important I think it is, not only on its own terms but also for what it might mean for America over the long run. Does anybody really know whether this will work, from the administration? Have you parsed the numbers that fine, that you can say if this is passed in toto, it will indeed do what you say, cut costs, maintain quality of care, cover everybody? We know it will do that, but that is not exactly what you asked. That is, we know that if this plan is adopted, it will provide universal coverage, that it will achieve substantial savings in many areas where there is massive waste. Koop, who was, you know, President Reagan's Surgeon General, who was with us yesterday, and the doctors that we had, said that in his judgment, there was at least $200 billion of waste, unnecessary procedures, administrative waste, fraudulent churning of the system, at least, in our system. So, we know that those things will achieve those objectives? No we do not know that because nobody can know that exactly. But I would like to make two points. Number one, our administration has gone further to get good health care numbers than anyone ever has before. Until I became ENTITY I did not know this, but the various Agencies in the Federal Government responsible for various parts of health care financing and regulation had never had their experts sit down in the same room together and agree on the same set of numbers and the same methodologies for achieving them. No wonder we had so much fight over what something was going to cost and the deficit was going crazy. The Government had never gotten its own act together. Then the second thing we did was to go out and solicit outside actuaries from private sector firms who made a living evaluating the cost of health care and asked them to review our numbers.

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Now, that is very important that you understand that, because there is going to be there should be a debate over whether the course I have recommended is the best course to achieve the goals we all want to achieve, whether there is a better course, whether we can achieve the Medicare and Medicaid cuts that we say we can achieve without hurting the quality of care. But I want you to understand that we really have killed ourselves at least to get the arithmetic right, to give people an honest starting point, a common ground to start from, so that we can have the arguments over policy. Do you feel that your plan places undue hardship on business with the employer mandate versus an individual plan that has been proposed with other proposals? First of all, let us just look at the employer mandate. Most employers cover their employees. I like your question in the sense that the question assumes that we should have universal coverage, and that is a good assumption. If you do not have universal coverage, you can never really slow the rate of waste in cost, because you will always have a lot of cost shifting in the system. That is, people who are not covered will still get health care, but they will get it when it is too late, too expensive, somebody else will pay the bill, and it will have real inefficiencies and distortions, as it does today. If you want to cover everybody, there are essentially three ways to do it. You can do it the way Canada does. You can abolish all private health insurance premiums, raise taxes to replace the health insurance premiums, and have a single-payer system, just have the Government do it. That is, the Canadian system has very low administrative costs, even lower than Germany and Japan. The problem is, it is not very good for controlling costs in other ways, because the Government makes all the cost decisions. The citizens know they have already paid for this through government. So they make real demands on the system. Whereas if you have a mixed system where employers and employees are actually in there knowing what they are spending on health care and lobbying for better management and to control costs, like in Germany, you do not have costs go up as fast. So the Canadian system, even though it is administratively the cheapest, is the second most expensive in the world. We are spending 14 percent of our income; they are spending 10 percent of theirs. Everybody else is under 9.

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The problem with the individual mandate is that it couldand again, I want a debate on this. I think the Republicans are entitled to their day in court on this, and I want them to have it. I mean, I want an honest, open discussion on this. I am so impressed with the spirit that is pervading this health insurance we had 400 Members of Congress show up for 2 days at our health care university just trying to get everybody to have enough information to be singing out of the same hymnal when we talk to one another. The dangers of the individual mandates are that it could cause the present system we have for most Americans, which is working well for most Americans, to disintegrate. That is, you have to have some subsidies with an individual mandate. So will companies that now cover their employees basically start covering their upper income employees or not their lower income employees? Will they dump all their employees and make them go under the individual mandate system? How are you going to keep up with all these individuals when you realize who you have got to subsidize or not? In other words, we believe it has significantly more administrative burdens, and it has the potential to cause the present system to come undone. But they deserve their day in court on it, and we will debate it. Let me just say this. We propose to keep lower the premiums of small businesses with fewer than 50 employees, including all those that are just starting up. And they get more if their wages of their employees are low, and low-wage workers also get a subsidy to try to make sure nobody goes out of business. But the point I want to make is, most small businesses who do cover their employees, and that is the majority of them, are paying too much for their health insurance. They are being burdened by it. That is one reason 100,000 Americans a month permanently lose their health insurance, as well as at any given time in a year, as many as one in four may be without it. So what we propose to do will actually help more small businesses than it will hurt. And over the long run, they will all be better off, because if you put everybody under this system, then the rate of increase in health care costs will be much lower. And it is just not fair, at some point, for anybody who can pay something to get a free ride, because keep in mind, we all get health care in this country.

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But if we are not insured, we get it when it is too late, too expensive. Usually we show up at the emergency room, the most expensive of all, and then somebody else pays the bill. That is one of the things that is driving these costs out of sight. We have heard a lot about every group today, except for the doctors. And from the doctors that I am hearing from, they are saying that this is going to hit them in their pockets. In my experience before in being in operating rooms and seeing doctors after the diagnostic related groups started setting some prices of procedures back in the eighties, a lot of doctors that went into business for themselves were either multiusing single-use items or resterilizing items that were made for single-use so that they would not lose any of the money that was going to be coming to them, so they would not take a personal hit out of it. How does your plan guarantee us an uncompromised medical plan? Well, for one thing, the quality standards that govern medical care today will still be in effect. That is, most of them are professional standards, and they are not enforced by the Government today. They are talking about doing more procedures to make up the money. They are saying, Well, I am going to have to see more patients and spend less time with them. I mean, the truth is that as we have tried to control the costs of Medicare and Medicaid, particularly Medicare, by holding down costs, you see dramatically increased numbers of procedures. What we want to do is to remove the incentive for having large numbers of procedures by having big blocks of consumers pay for their annual health care needs in a block, so that you will not have so much fee-for-service. I would also point out to you that one of the big problems we have had with doctor costs going up is that doctors are having to negotiate their way through the mine field of 1,500 separate health insurance companies writing thousands of different policies, having to keep up with it in ways that no doctors anywhere in the world but our doctors have to deal with. We have already had the American Academy of Family Practice and a lot of other doctors groups have endorsed our plan. The AMA has been quite interestingly supportive in general terms. They say they want to see all the details. Koop has agreed to come in and sort of moderate this discussion. But we had a couple hundred doctors here yesterday, most of whom were extremely supportive.

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And let me just give you one big reason why. This is the flip side of the argument you made. In 1980, the average doctor was taking home 75 percent of the money generated by a clinic. In 1990, the average doctor was taking home 52 cents on the dollar, 52 percent of the money generated by a clinic. Twenty-three cents on the dollar increase in the amount of money the doctor was having to spend on people, basically to do clerical work in the clinics. The Children's Hospital at Washington told us last week that the 200 doctors on staff there spent enough time in non-health-care-related paperwork every year because of the administrative cost of this systema dime on the dollar more than any other system in the worldto see another 500 patients each a year, 10,000 more kids a year. So, a lot of doctors are going to feel very liberated by this because they are going to be freer to practice medicine, and the incentives to churn the system just to pay for all their paperwork will be less. I guess I have the opportunity, I will make it a two-part question because it is a rare opportunity, and I appreciate it. First of all, if you receive everything that you want, that you are hoping for, and we hear about the 37 million uninsured and the many underinsured people, I am wondering if there is anybody that will be disappointed with the new system if you get everything you want, and who those people might be? And secondly, I hear very little about medical fraud and medical malpractice problems, as if it is not a major problem, and we are led to believe that it is. Maybe I should answer that question first, because it is a quicker one. Then let me try to tell you how to sort through the winners and losers. First of all, in this system if you put consumers of health care, employers and employees, particularly the small businesses, in large buying groups where they will have more market power and more oversight authority, you will inevitablywe are going to change the economic incentives as well as the private sector oversight to reduce fraud and abusewe are definitely going to see big savings there. Secondly, what was the other thing you asked me? One of the things that we do not know is how much extra excess procedures and tests are done as defensive medicine or to churn the system, to go back to your other question.

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The economic incentives to churn the system will be dramatically reduced under these kind of payment plans. It will be more like the way the Rochester, New York, system works, the way the Mayo Clinic system works. More and more people will be in a system where they pay up front, and then they take what they need. And the doctors are going to get paid out of that. We will propose some significant reforms, including limiting the percentage of income lawyers can get in contingency fees in lawsuits. But I have to tell you, what I think the most significant and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms but I think the most important one will be permitting the professional associations to draw up medical practice guidelines which, when approved, will protect the doctors to some extent, because if they follow the guidelines in any given case, it will raise a presumption that they were not negligent. And that will be a real protection against just doing an extra procedure because you are trying to hedge against a lawsuit. The State of Maine pioneered this because they wanted more general practitioners in rural Maine to do more things for people like help deliver babies because they did not have anybody else to do it. So, the idea of giving people practice guidelines I think is very good. Can we talk through that? I will tell you who will have to pay more. You know, there will be some people who will have to pay more. The news magazines this week did a pretty good job of analyzing this. If we go to community rating, so that we can allow people, for example, who have had a sick child not to be bankrupt by their insurance costs and to move from job to job, and you put everybody in a broad community, it means young, single, super healthy people will pay more in the first year of this than they would have otherwise. Now, here is why I think that is a good deal for young, single, super healthy people. So even though they might pay more this year, within 5 to 8 years, if this plan goes through, everybody will be paying less than they would have. So, they would pay more. They will have to pay something. There are others who insure but only for catastrophic. They will have to pay more, but they will get much better benefits, and their rates will go up less. So, there will be some people who will pay more now than they were paying.

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But I believe that if we cankeep in mind, if we can stop the cost of health care from going up at 2 and 3 times the rate of inflation, if we can get it down where the rate of increase is much lower, by the end of the decade everybody will be way better off than they were. ENTITY do you approve ofBoris Yeltsin's announcement that he is going to dissolve the Parliament, and does the United States support him in his power struggle with his opponents? Well, first of all, let me say I have had only a sketchy briefing about this, and I have not talked to President Yeltsin yet. I would like to reserve the right to issue a statement after I attempt to talk to President Yeltsin. In any case, I will issue a statement before the end of the day, but I think at least I should have a direct briefing. ENTITY Clinton, tomorrow you will be speaking before a joint session of Congress and there are 535 people, individuals, in Congress that will have their own specific plans of what they want If you could say that you could put your name on one or two or three specific parts of this that you want to say, This is my health care plan, that you want to see no matter what 535 other people want to see, that you feel you want to be part of your Clinton health care program, what two or three items, specifically? Number one, every American would have security in their health care system. You would be able to get health insurance, there would be adequate benefits, and you would not lose them. Number two, the system would impose a far higher level of responsibility for managing costs than it does now on all the players, including the consumers. Number three, people would keep their choice of physicians and medical providers. And number four, we would guarantee adequate access to preventive and primary care so we could stop some of the big things that are happening to us before they get going. And five, we would have market incentives to bring costs down. Those are the things that I want to be the hallmark of our program.

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I have been sports director of WHO Radio since 1944. And obviously we are honored and excited today to have the President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, who sat behind this microphone on many occasions from 1933 to 1937 when he had my job. He was sports director here at WHO. Now, the memories that this microphone right here evokes in you what are they? It is like a film montage there of everything, the various events and the I remember probably one outstanding occasion the microphone of that kind out at Birdland Park, and they were having the Olympic tryouts out there, the AAU tryouts for the Olympic team. And we were feeding network going to feed the NBC network, and that was really tops. We had half an hour to fill. And some of the Olympic officials got in an argument, and I was on the air for 30 minutes, nationwide and they did not run off one single swimming event. I think I described every drop of water in the pool everyone that was warming up, and what they were doing, and talking about, what events were going to be held. Went off the air and 2 minutes after we were off the air, they had the first event. But your ad-lib ability was really put to a super test with that machine right there, the old Western Union ticker tape that used to bring in the Chicago Cubs re-creations to you. And you had a stick one time in that famous story you fouled it off 34 times, 35 times. Curly Waddel was the operator, sat on that side with the headphones, and he would type and slip it under the window to me. And they used to keep track because there'd be seven or eight stations competing and broadcasting, and most of them live, right at the park and we were within half a pitch of right up with the live ball game all the time. To do that, he had to abbreviate things down, like in would come the paper, and it would say, Out 4-3. Well, that meant out from second base to first base, that meant it had to be a grounder. So, you'd take it, and you'd say, And Dean comes out of the windup, and here comes the pitch, and it is a hard hit ground ball down toward second base. So-and-so going over after the ball, picks it up, flips it over to first, just in time for the out.

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And by this time you are waiting for the next one. Or he would send you S-1-C. So, you'd say, He is got the sign, comes out of the windup, here is the pitch, and it is a called strike, breaking over the outside corner just above the knees. But the thing that you are talking about was the time that it was the ninth inning, the Cards and the Cubs, tied up 0-0, and he was typing, and I thought there is a play coming. And he kept shaking his head when I had and it was Dean on the mound and I had Billy Jurgess at the plate. And I had him getting a sign from the catcher, and finally here comes the slip of paper, and it said, The wires have gone dead. And I knew in that ninth inning if I suddenly said, Well, we will have a little interlude of music while we get back connected with the ballpark, we'd lose every they'd all turn on some of those other stations. foul ball. So, I had Jurgess foul one, and then I had him foul another. And then I had him foul one that missed a home run by a foot. Then I described two kids down back of third base that were in a fight over the ball that had gone into the stands there. And pretty soon I know I am beginning to set a world record for somebody standing at the plate and hitting successive fouls, if anyone ever kept those figures. And I was beginning to sweat a little, because I knew now that if I told them we'd lost the wire they'd know I had not been telling the truth. Who finally did get the hit in that game? And I had him throw another pitch, and in came the slip, and I had trouble getting it out, because the slip said Jurgess popped out on the first ball pitched. Charlie Gross, let us bring you in here. You were known as kind of a meticulous perfectionist at the time. Did he live up to your standards when you were here? You kind of made him toe the line? This was the source of all sports news around here that is, by way of radio this gentleman here, The President. Did you project in him at that time, when he was 22, 23 years old, the qualities that enabled him to become President of the United States? He belonged to the wrong party at this time, but The President.

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Yeah, but I outgrew that. Yes, but he outgrew it. No, I never thought, of course, that he would become President of the United States and that I would be here at his side tonight. ENTITY, this microphone brings back you were selected Wheaties Sportscaster of the Year one time. the Wheaties commercial, you did the Kentucky Club commercial Yeah, they sponsored an awful lot of baseball, Wheaties did. And when you came into Des Moines today, down Fleur Drive from the airport did you notice some changes about the city of Des Moines? Well, long about the time we got here by the time that I got here, I was just prepared to turn right and go to 914 Walnut Street. And here I am in a whole new institution. I want to hear one that you have got down here.- Well, let me just tell you, he is a pioneer, and a true pioneer. Under the Fair Trade Practices Act back in the those depression days, radio was not allowed to do news, because it would be unfair. They thought that you could just go and put it in a microphone instead of having to have it put in print and out on the streets. And B. J. Palmer, who was then the head of the central broadcasting, decided that he was going to challenge that and we were going to have news. And only one news service would provide us with a newswire. And Charlie was the whole news department, including the writing and rewriting of the stories. And we went on the air with news, and it was a first in radio. It became a daily twice-a-day feature for his news. And then, of course, he was a pioneer in another thing, as you know when he went to Congress. It was no surprise to those of us that knew him that he would be known as the conscience of the Congress, that his colleagues would go to him because they knew he had read the bills, and they'd go to him before they voted to find out. Okay, ENTITY, you told me when I did an interview with you in 1974 on the 50th anniversary of WHO Radio that the 5 years you spent here were 5 of the happiest years of your life. Do you still look back on those that fondly? They were really those were foundation years, and I think everything that happened came out of this.

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Well, it is the true American hero story hitchhiking to Davenport, I believe, to get the job in the first place. Had a rather unusual audition from Pete McArthur, who was the program director then. I had been told that in looking for a job in those depression days and I'd hitchhiked all the way around the country quite a bit I'd been told that you should ask an employer not for what you wanted to be a sports announcer just tell him you'd take any job to get in the station and then take your chances on moving up from there. So, I made my usual pitch of that kind after a number of turndowns to Pete. We auditioned 90 people and hired an announcer. And on my way out the door, I said, How do you ever get to be a sports announcer if you cannot get in a station? , and went on down to the elevator, which, fortunately, was not there. And Pete, who was badly handicapped with arthritis and on two canes I did not know until I heard him thumping down the hall yelling at me and he asked me what that was I said about sports. And I told him that is what I'd like to be. And he said, You know anything about football? And I said, I played it for 8 years. He said, Do you think you could tell me about a game and, if I was sitting there listening, I could see the game? And he took me in a studio, put me in front of one of these. And he put me in front of that, and he said, When the red light goes on, you start broadcasting an imaginary football game. And I did for about 15 minutes. I knew I had to have names. So, I picked a game that I'd played in in college, the previous fall-which we'd won in the last 20 seconds by a 65-yard touchdown run I did not make the run. So, I chose that game and said, when the light came on, started that we were in the 4th quarter. You know, I had everything. The famous long, blue shadows ENTITY Yes the chill wind coming in through the end of the stadium-we did not have a stadium, we had bleachers. And I did it for about the 15 minutes and made that winning touchdown.

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As a running guard, coming out and around and leading the interference on that play, that day, Eureka College, I missed my man, the first man in the secondary. And I do not know how Bud Cole got by and reversed the field, because I missed him. In the broadcast, I nailed him. It was a magnificent block key to the whole success of the play. And he came in and told me to be there on Saturday, that I was broadcasting the Iowa-Minnesota game, and he would give me $5 and bus fare. No, I am saying that facetiously. Well, ENTITY, obviously we are just thrilled and happy to have you here to reminisce about the old let me ask you one question, from sportscaster to sportscaster would you have stayed a sportscaster if the telegram had not come from Warner Brothers, do you think? Well, we have about eight to ten thousand people, I think, a full house waiting up at the auditorium. Can you tell us what you are going to tell them up there tonight? Well, I do not think anything that I say has been said by any of the eight other candidates who've been running around the State. I might have a little different twist on things than that. But I am going to talk about this recovery that we have going and what I think is needed to keep it going. How does it feel to be back in Des Moines? It is too short, as always, but give me another 7.5 minutes, and I'd be so far down nostalgia lane .- Let me ask you one question a lot of people ask of me about you. What type of sportscaster were you? I mean, how do you categorize your style? I always thought I always had in mind a listener out there, and I thought that I was painting a word picture. If I was in the stadium over at University of Iowa broadcasting an Iowa football game, I always tried to use references like saying not just that they are on the 20-yard line, 15 yards in from the side of the field; I would say, They are down here to the right on their own 20-yard line, 15 yards in from this side of the field or place them. I always figured that he that viewer out there he or she must be able to get a picture in their minds of what it looked like. Well, you gave them a lot of pictures, ENTITY.

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Well, I am happy to have a chance to say welcome, and particularly when there are at least six here from California. But all of you are just as welcome. I know you have been briefed on a number of subjects, and so almost anything that I might say would be plowing ground that is already been plowed. And yet I will do that, just to put emphasis on one, and that is what I think is the overall problem here of trying to get control of Federal spending and a realistic approach to the budget. We are now into the 14th month that we have been without a budget. Our entire year of '81 went through with nothing but continuing resolutions and no budget. And we are now 2 months into this fiscal year, and still no budget. And I frankly do not know of a State that has ever run itself that way. Part of it is evident reluctance of some to see any curb put on Federal spending. So, we are still working on that. And now I am going to save all of the rest of the time here for whatever questions you may have. Let me just say that with regard to our program, which has only just now begun to be put into effect, contrary to the impression that a lot of people seem to have had that it is been tried and found wanting and is a failure, and that was decided before it started-we do not believe it is, and we think that some of the signs are very encouraging already. And that is that a year ago, or when we took office, inflation was above 12 percent, around 12 1/2 percent. For the first 10 months of this year, it is down to 9.6 and last month came in at 4.4. Interest rates, which were 21 1/2 , have of late begun to drop and are down to 15 3/4, and we think are going to continue coming down. The wholesale inflation rate has been running 7 1/2, which means that I think we can look forward to further drops in the days ahead, because the wholesale inflation rate determines, in advance, what the regular cost-of-living index is going to be just a ways down the road. But I know that you must have some questions, and I'd rather try that than continuing, as I say, plowing this already plowed ground.

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ENTITY, you talked about the great need to cut spending, yet on this emphasis of the need to get a budget, you have appeared before a veterans' group and you have said that you are not going to make them make any sacrifices. You appeared before a council on aging and you told them you are not going to make them make any sacrifices. What groups are you prepared to appear before and say, You have to make the sacrifices? No, I think with regard to the veterans, we were talking about medical benefits for the veterans and so forth. And I do believe that this is a contract that you have to take care of those who have served their country. Social security-what I said to them was-and this was the basis of the plan that we submitted, but which was widely distorted in the debate that followed and I think for pure political demagoguery-that all the way through the campaign I cited the immediate problem of social security, of its running out of funds, and the long-range actuarial imbalance which is in the trillions of dollars, if you look on down the road, for those people who are just beginning their working years. What I pledged to do was to have a social security-to put it on a sound fiscal basis, and yet not at the expense of those people who are presently retired; that you pull the rug out From under them and reduce their benefits. The only thing that could be called a reduction in any way in the proposal we made, of those existing benefits, was we were going to try and get social security onto the fiscal year basis with regard to the cost-of-living adjustment. That would mean that for 1 year alone, they would go 15 months instead of 12 before their cost-of-living adjustment was computed. And that would, as we figured it out, average probably a $90 reduction of increase, not a reduction of existing benefits, reduction of their increase over their lifetime. The other things that we had suggested in that program were not aimed at deserving and eligible recipients. They were aimed at the abuses in the program, people that are collecting disability benefits and are not disabled. A recent story of a family, a heartbreaking story, that made it look as if we had suddenly taken this family off disability benefits-and we looked into it to find out if this was true.

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We found out they were taken off of their disability benefits under the previous administration, and they were taken off because for 3 years, the disabled household head had been working. And now the question is, working, moonlighting on the side-a cheek is being made to see whether he was paying income tax all that time. This is the type of thing that we think there is much more of it than anyone realizes, as was evidenced in Chicago a couple of years ago with the-or a few years ago-with the welfare queen who went on trial. And it was found that in addition to collecting welfare under 123 different names, she also had 55 social security cards. So, this is where we were going to try and make some of the changes. What do you see as the Federal role with regard to California in terms of the Medfly, which is a terribly expensive battle, and also the vast number of refugees from Asia that have moved into, particularly, Los Angeles? What do you see as the role there to perform? Well, we have been dealing with a reform of the immigration laws on all of this, except that with regard to the refugees-people who are fleeing persecution and who, if they were made to return to their own country, would probably face death or imprisonment-I think that our traditions-there is no way that we can abandon those traditions or the words that are on the base of the Statue of Liberty. And we have a particular problem, I know, with our neighbor to the South. But we think that this program is going to meet our needs and the needs of the refugees coming in, so that we will not be abandoning that. We are also looking at how we can handle these and probably a fairer distribution in our country. I know, in 1980-the administration then was caught by the great exodus from Cuba in addition to the Haitian overflow and so forth. No planning had been made for that. We are also looking at available sites and facilities for a detention center for those who are apprehended and are illegal aliens, who will probably be returned. ENTITY, one of the potential detention centers that you are considering is in northern New York, where I am from, where the climate is about as different as you can get from the Haitian climate and still be in the country. How humane is it to consider that, a site like that? Well, I know the climate problem, and we have thought about that and talked about it.

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One of our problems is finding a facility that would have all the factors and the capacity that we need for estimated larger numbers, and also finding one that the inhabitants of the State would be willing-you'd be surprised how difficult it is to find some State that wants it. We think that the one that we have settled on not only meets the needs but also happens to be in an area that would benefit economically from having an installation of that kind there because of the abnormally high unemployment rate, economic problems. ENTITY, the State of Florida claims the Federal Government owes a lot of money to the State because of the refugee problem. Although you did not inherit it, are you considering additional funds, or- To tell you the truth, I cannot answer that right now. We have not come in with the-we have not had our meeting yet with the new presentation from OMB of suggested budget cuts for '83, so until we do, I do not know just how some of these problems have been treated. Any thought being given to changing any of the benefits that have been cut or restoring any? Well, again, this would be something that we will face when we see the '83 budget, although I do not believe that the so-called safety net has been much changed. This recession-remember that when we came here, January 20th, we had a great unemployment problem, severe in several areas far more than in others. It is easy to look at, say, an 8 percent inflation rate and think of that as the nation as a whole. We have States, and some of you are probably from those States, where inflation is approaching the 20 percent mark. That is like the Great Depression of the thirties, due to the particular industries that have been affected-in addition to construction, the steel industry, automobiles, and so forth. We think that the best thing that we can do is to go forward with this plan, which we think is going to stimulate the economy. I think we are due, for several months yet, of hard times, but I think that in '82 we are going to see-later in the year-a change in the situation. The falling interest rates indicate that-the inflation rates that I mentioned-so that I think the safety net is still there for those people of real need. Is there an unemployment level at which you rethink that? I do not think anyone is going to stand by and see people in actual distress.

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Let me just say one thing about that particular problem. I was as surprised as anyone when suddenly the announcement was made that in a month we have increased the unemployed by 500,000. Now, as you know, there is no accurate way of counting the unemployed. There is an accurate way of counting the people who are in the work force. And it is difficult for me to understand this sudden surge of unemployment when, at the same time, there are 266,000 more people employed in the work force than there were on January 20th, when this administration started. I cannot believe that we have suddenly added three-quarters of a million people to our population. But let me point out one reason why there could be some fluctuations. First of all, any unemployed, other than those who are voluntarily between jobs, is too much. So, I do not want to sound callous about that. As a matter of fact, there is nothing that is harder for me to do than to think of putting somebody out of a job. I came into the work force myself in the depths of the Great Depression. I saw what took place there. But unemployment is determined by some 60-odd thousand telephone calls, like a Nielsen rating on a TV show, throughout the country-random. And the question is, Is anyone in the household looking for work? And on the basis of these calls and the percentage, the percentage of unemployed is determined. Suppose it is a housewife who says to you on the phone, Well, you know, the children are getting along now and if I could find something that did not interfere with family and was right, yes. Well, the person can put that down as she is looking for work, or the person from this end of the phone can put that down as no. Nor are we dividing between all those teenagers, that on the other end of the phone someone might answer and say, Well, my son would love to have an after-school job if he could find one, and so you can put him down unemployed. The millions of unemployed are not, all of them, heads of household, leading a family without earnings. Maybe I am overly suspicious, but I keep remembering that when I was Governor of California, they decided to do some changing in counting the unemployed, here in Washington. I protested as loud as I could, but did not get anyplace with it.

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Our unemployment rate in California at the time was 5.2 , and in 24 hours, our unemployment rate went to 7.2, just based on a little change in the procedures here in Washington. So, I have been a little worried here that sometimes we-and I do not mean to do any less about trying to get them the work, we are going to-but I think that our program is aimed at that. I am aware that-I know somebody is waiting to tell me I have to leave- -but I am also aware that when Kennedy had his across-the-board tax cuts, aimed at the same thing, to stimulate the economy, and the same economists and many of the same voices were raised, advising against it and saying that was absolutely the wrong thing to do, he persisted. And immediately thereafter the rate of savings, personal savings in the country-the percentage went up from 2.9 percent of the earnings in the country to 8 percent. The rate of increase in employment-not unemployment, in employment-doubled. The percentage of the gross national product or, I mean, the gross national product increased sizably, and the government's revenues increased at the lower rate of taxation. Now, one of the economists who has previously, and all these past months, been opposed to our proposal, Walter Heller, a very distinguished economist, when the recession was announced a short time ago, Walter Heller said how lucky we were that our tax reduction was just going into effect and that that just turned out to be exactly the right medicine for a recession. Well, if it is the right medicine to maybe help cure the recession, why would not it have been good medicine to have prevented the recession? If we, taking those personal savings-if we could increase by 2 percentage points the rate of savings in this country, through these tax cuts, that adds $40 billion to the capital pool that is available for investment and for people for mortgages and so forth. And incidentally, since the construction industry is one of the hard hit things right now in this recession, we have taken action-and I maybe sticking- ENTITY. I do not want to be one of the White House leaks. This morning we had a group from the construction industry in, and we have-over in the Labor Department-made some definite changes in regulations. Those changes are going to free up the billions and billions of dollars in pension funds for-that they can now be invested in home mortgages.

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Previous to this, they have not been able to. The total pension money available for investment in this country is over a trillion dollars-will be 3 trillion by 1984-and for the first time, this money will be made available for that kind of investment, which we think should go a long way toward beginning the revival of the housing industry. You know, part of the lull in housing construction right now is the lowering of interest rates. The slump was caused by the high interest rates, but when the high interest rates start down, there is a lull while everybody says, Well, let us wait till they get lower. Maybe we can, with this new decision, maybe we can increase the speed with which those rates come down. What would be your advice, ENTITY, to Americans who want to know how to volunteer their time and their effort in a program that you have talked about-voluntarism? Listen- we just had a meeting yesterday of our national task force. That is exactly what they are set up to do-is to not only spread the word of where volunteer efforts have been tried someplace and are working successfully, and then spread that so that other people can do it, but also to answer that question of the many people who are trying to volunteer. There is an estimated $100 billion worth of time and effort right now being contributed in this country in work in voluntary causes, in addition to $47 billion in actual cash contributed in volunteer efforts. And some of the things we are finding-and the mail that I am getting is the most inspiring thing in the world-of communities that have just moved and said, Why have we been sitting here, letting government do this? We should have been doing it long ago. I believe this is beginning to sweep the country. So, people like that, I think will find that they are being sought out by the task force. If they do not get their volunteering in beforehand, somebody will be around to see if they want to volunteer.

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You are here at this historic place, trying to speak with a sense of history. And I was thinking of past presidents that I know you have studied and commented on. And a couple came to mind who were able to express what they were trying to do in the world in about a sentence. Reagan wanted to roll back communism by whatever means. Lincoln has a famous letter in which he says, I would save the union by the shortest means under the Constitution. As you look at the moment of history that you occupy, do you think you can put into a sentence what you are trying to accomplish in the world? I am not sure I can do it in a sentence because we are fortunate in many ways. We do not face an existential crisis. We do not face a civil war. We do not face a Soviet Union that is trying to rally a bloc of countries and that could threaten our way of life. Instead, what we have is, as I say in the speech, this moment in which we are incredibly fortunate to have a strong economy that is getting stronger, no military peer that threatens us, no nation-state that anytime soon intends to go to war with us. But we have a world order that is changing very rapidly and that can generate diffuse threats, all of which we have to deal with. And I think that the most important point of the speech today for me is how we define American leadership in part is through our military might, but only in part, that American leadership in the 21st century is going to involve our capacity to build international institutions, coalitions that can act effectively, and the promotion of norms, rules, laws, ideals and values that create greater prosperity and peace, not just in our own borders, but outside as well. Is your sentence then pursuing U.S. interests abroad without going to war? Well, there are going to be times where we might have to go to war. And that is why I think it is very important for us not to get into these simplistic ways of thinking about it, either we pull back entirely and we are isolationist, or alternatively, every problem around the world is ours to manage. Rather, you know, what we have to do is clearly define where is it in our national interests to use military force, sometimes unilaterally.

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And typically when we have direct interests, core interests, our safety, our security, our livelihoods, the protection of our allies, you know, international opinion matters, but we may have to act on our own. When it comes to the kinds of issues, though, that dominate the headlines - a conflict in Syria, a Russian incursion into Ukraine, the kidnapping of 200 young girls in Nigeria - in those circumstances, we are going to be most effective when we use a wide range of tools - diplomacy, sanctions, appeals to international law. In some cases, a judicious use of military force may make sense. But in those circumstances, it has to be in a multilateral system where other countries are participating, we are not going alone, because when we make sure that other countries are participating, that means that we have done our homework, we have thought through the consequences, we have built legitimacy, and we are not carrying the burden entirely on our own. What should leaders like Syria's Bashar Assad or Russia's Vladimir Putin take away from this speech, in which you did speak passionately about not going to war unnecessarily and said you were haunted by the deaths of American soldiers? Well, I think they can take away from it that they have to be on guard when they act outside of international norms, that we are going to push aggressively against them. We are not always going to push using military actions initially. There may be circumstances in which we mobilize in the international community to take international action. But as I spoke about, when you look at events in Ukraine over the last two months, there is no doubt that our ability to mobilize international opinion rapidly has changed the balance and the equation in Ukraine. I just spoke yesterday to the newly elected president of Ukraine. Putin has just announced that he is moving his troops back from the borders of Ukraine. And that is an application of American leadership that is sustainable, consistent and is most likely to produce the kinds of results we want. It is interesting about Ukraine, though, ENTITY, because a lot of analysts have looked at that situation and said this is an area where Putin may have had a weak hand, but he gained. He gained Crimea. He asserted his influence over Ukraine. You speak of Ukraine, though, as a success. Do you feel that you have been successful in achieving your aims? You know, I think it is a mistake to think that somehow Mr. Putin reflected strength in this situation.

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Ukraine is not just next door to Russia. Ukraine, in the minds of most Russians, has been a central part of Russia for decades, for centuries. And from Mr. Putin's perspective, he was operating from a position of weakness. He felt as if he was being further and further surrounded by NATO members, folks who are looking west economically, from a security perspective. And even in Ukraine, the crown jewel of the former Soviet system, outside of Russia, a oligarchy that was corrupt was rejected by people on the streets. And so what you saw was a scrambling, a reaction to people in the Ukraine saying, we want a different way of life. The fact that Crimea, which historically is dominated by native Russians and Russian speakers, was annexed illegally does not in any way negate the fact that the way of life, the systems of economic organization, the notions of rule of law, those values that we hold dear, are ascendant, and you know, the other side is going to be on the defense. That does not mean that we think that Ukraine should not have a good relationship with Russia. And I have said directly to Mr. Putin we want, ultimately, Ukrainians to make a decision about their own futures, and that, I assume, will include strong relations with Russia as well as with Europe. You are going to make Russia give Crimea back. Do you have the ability or the leverage to do that? Well, you know, I think we are going to have to see how it plays itself out. I am going to see Mr. Poroshenko, the newly elected president of Crimea - or newly elected president of Ukraine, next week, and I am sure that'll be a topic of discussion. Let me ask about Syria, ENTITY. White House officials have said that you are reviewing the possibility of military training for Syrian rebels. There has been, it is said, limited training by intelligence agencies up to now. This seems to fit with something you described in your speech when you talked about a $5 billion counterterrorism fund, which would affect places including Syria. I'd like to understand what you think has changed in Syria; what, if anything, is different about the situation in Syria, as opposed to a couple of years ago, when some of your advisers wanted larger-scale training of the rebels, and I believe you declined. Well, I think that is not an accurate portrayal of either what we have done or what the debate's been about.

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The issue has always been in Syria how do we most effectively support a moderate opposition, recognizing that there are going to be limits to how rapidly we can ramp up the capacity of that opposition. And what we do not want to do is set folks up for failure. What we do not want to do is make promises that we cannot keep. I cannot speak to all the work that has been done with respect to both the political opposition as well as the armed opposition that are fighting against Mr. Assad, but I think it is been stated publicly we have been supporting them. Ultimately, I did not think then and I still do not believe that American military actions can resolve what is increasingly a sectarian civil war, and I also believe that, ultimately, the only way you are going to get a resolution that works for the Syrian people and the region is going to - is going to require some sort of political accommodation between the various groups there. But what we can do is to work with the neighbors in the region - Jordan, Turkey, the Gulf states, Lebanon - to deal with the refugee flows that are coming out of Syria, to deal with the humanitarian crisis that exists there and to build on the framework, the progress that we have made over the last couple of years. We have seen some success in the Syrian opposition gaining more capacity, gaining more training, gaining more effectiveness; and building on some of that success, it is conceivable that in combination with the other work that is done on the diplomatic front, that we are able to tip what happens in Syria so that it is more likely that we can arrive at a political resolution. Are conditions better now, then, for a more robust aiding of the rebels and training of the rebels than in the past? I think, in many ways, the conditions are worse. But the capacity of some of the opposition is better than it was before, which is understandable. The moderate opposition, as opposed to the jihadists that have seen the chaos there as an opportunity to gain a foothold, those are hardened fighters. When you talk about the moderate opposition, many of these people were farmers or dentists or maybe some radio reporters who did not have a lot of experience fighting. What they understood was, is, that they had a government that was killing its own people and violating human rights in, in the most profound way, and they wanted to do something about it.

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But creating a capacity for them to hold ground, to be able to rebuff vicious attacks, for them to be able to also organize themselves in ways that are cohesive - all that takes, unfortunately, more time than I think many people would like. I want to ask about China, ENTITY; East Asia more broadly. You worked to reassure U.S. allies in the region. It is understood, of course, the U.S. has specific commitments; for example, to defend Japan - I'd like to know if you have a larger objective in East Asia. Does the United States have an interest beyond its specific alliances in preventing China from dominating East Asia and the waters around East Asia, where China's been making some aggressive moves? Well, we do not have an interest in stopping China from becoming successful. China is the most populous country on Earth, at some - But I am asking their power, not their success. But at some level, they are going to be a big dog in that neighborhood, and we welcome China's peaceful rise. In many ways, it would be a bigger national security problem for us if China started falling apart at the seams. So we - we want the Chinese people to steadily have a higher standard of living; we want China to have increased capacity to participate in international efforts around issues like climate change. We have a very specific concern when China is not following basic international norms, basic rules of the road, where it does not feel bound by the kind of international practices that have helped to underwrite China's rise. I mean, part of the reason China's been successful is there is been relative peace in Asia, there has been freedom of commerce in Asia, freedom of navigation in Asia. All that facilitates the trade that is creating great wealth inside of China. Well, if in fact that international order has benefited China, then we expect China to help uphold the very rules that have made them successful, not take advantage of them. And so there are basic principles that big countries do not just push little countries around by virtue of size. There are mechanisms whereby, through international law, maritime disputes can be resolved. And what we have done then is worked with the countries of the region to say let us create a code of conduct that - in which, without taking any position on whether this particular rock in the middle of the water belongs to this party or that party, let us find a systematic, legal way for us to resolve these disputes without resolving to conflict.

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And so to - just the bottom line here is China is going to be a dominant power in Asia, not the only one, but by virtue of its size and its wealth, it is going to be a great power in Asia. We respect that. And we are not interested in containing it because we are in any way intimidated by China; we are concerned about it because we do not want to see constant conflicts developing in a vital region of the world that also, you know, we depend on in terms of our economy being successful. You know, those are a lot of markets out there, we sell a lot of goods out there, and, you know, we do not want to see these conflagrations that can end up impeding, you know, our own interests. Sounds like you want to avoid tripwire over any particular rock in the ocean, as you said. Well, you know, I think, more than that, what we also want is to be able to strengthen and constantly reinforce international norms because we believe, I believe, that America benefits when those norms are not only being upheld by us individually but where all countries buy in, where there is a sense that all of us benefit from some basic rules of the road. And China now as a rising power needs to be part of that responsibility of maintaining rules that maintain peace and security for a lot of countries. You have made some statements recently, ENTITY, that it seems you have been trying to put yourself in a historical context, if you can. You have talked about hitting singles and doubles on foreign policy. You talked about handing a baton from one ENTITY or one person in history to another. I wonder if you are at a point in your second term where even though there is well over two years to go, that you have to think about narrowing possibilities and a more limited list of things that you can realistically accomplish in the time you have left. That was the case the first day in the Oval Office. You know, you do not walk into the presidency and completely remake the world and ignore history and ignore the problems that are already sitting there in the inbox. So you have to make choices about what is important and what is not. It is interesting, though, you know, the comment I made about singles and doubles I think is - is only a partial quote.

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What I said was that when it comes to foreign policy, that oftentimes the United States has made mistakes not by showing too much restraint but by underestimating how challenging the environment is out there, not thinking through consequences, that there is a lot of blocking and tackling to foreign policy, to change sports metaphors, or, if you want to stick to baseball, that a lot of what you want to do is to advance the ball on human rights, advance the ball on national security, advance the ball on energy independence, to put the ball in play. And every once in a while, a pitch is going to come right over home plate that you can knock out for a home run. But you do not swing at every pitch. And we have opportunities right now, for example, and I talked about today, to advance an Iranian agreement on their nuclear program that could be historic. We may not get it, but there is a chance that it could still happen. I have not yet given up on the possibility that both Israelis and Palestinians can see their self-interest in a peace deal that would provide Israel security that is recognized by its neighbors and make sure that Palestinians have a state of their own. And what we want to do is make sure we are in a position to seize those opportunities when they arise. But in the meantime, the work that we do to help countries in North Africa secure their borders and root out terrorism, the work that we do to, you know, make sure that we have higher standards for labor protection and environmental protection when it comes to trade in Asia, the work that we do in making sure that young people in Latin America are coming to the United States to study through exchange programs so that - and that U.S. students are able to go to those countries to develop the commercial ties and cultural ties in the Western Hemisphere, you know, that stuff's not sexy. It is not going to be on the front page of the newspapers. But in many ways, that is what is going to ultimately be most effective; that is going to be what is going to most determine whether or not the United States retains its primacy and its leadership on the world stage in the 21st century. Let me ask about one ball you have tried to advance your entire term. You wanted to close Guantanamo in your first year. About a year ago you gave a speech in which you said you wanted to close Guantanamo. You referred to it again in this speech here at West Point.

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In the year since your last speech in which you said you wanted to close Guantanamo, it is our understanding that only 12 - about 12 prisoners have been sent back to their home countries, repatriated. Has that problem proved to be so difficult there is a good chance you may hand Guantanamo over your successor? Not if I can help it. I think it is very important for us to close Guantanamo. I think it is very important as we end the war that originally gave - gave life to Guantanamo that we now wind it down. Could you not send more prisoners back now? Well, the - you know, Congress has placed some restraints on us. But they have loosened those restraints. And I promise you that we are using every possible available avenue. In some cases, it is hard to return prisoners because the countries where they come from do not want them or cannot provide us assurances that they can control them. But what I know is that we cannot in good conscience maintain a system of indefinite detention in which individuals who have not been tried and convicted are held permanently in this legal limbo outside of this country. That is contrary to U.S. traditions. It feeds terrorist propaganda. It is not ultimately going to be effective when it comes to dealing with the long-term terrorist threat. It makes it harder for us to get cooperation from our partners. I mean, we spend 10, 15 times more, in many cases, for these prisoners than we would do in a normal supermax syst - prison in our federal system. So for all kinds of reasons, it does not make sense. And I am going to keep on pushing because I want to make sure that when I turn the keys over to the next president, that they have the ability, that he or she has the capacity to - to make some decisions with a relatively clean slate. Making sure that we have the right legal architecture for how we conduct counterterrorism and that there is greater transparency, as I discussed today, that is another. Making sure that people have a sense that when we use drones, we do so lawfully in a way that avoids civilian casualties and in ways that are appropriate. Making sure that our national security apparatus is - has, you know, enough legal checks and balances that ordinary folks, not just here in the United States but around the world, can feel assured that their privacy is being respected.

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You know, it is exactly 3 years since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. And Mrs. Rabin said she was rather disappointed that you failed to mention her husband during the East Room ceremony last Friday. How do you respond to that? Well, you know, the agreement is actually supposed to enter into force on the third anniversary of his passing, of his killing. And I think that if, in fact, it does do so, it is a fitting thing, because none of us would be here if it had not been for him. He really started all this in a profound way. I know that the Madrid conference started before his election, but it was his conviction and his strength and security that he conveyed to the people of Israel, I think, that made this whole peace process possible. And I never do anything in the process that I do not think about him. ENTITY, from the tragic assassination to the current situation, Prime Minister Netanyahu might put himself at the same risk as Mr. Rabin. So perhaps it is unjustified to put pressure on him to follow the Oslo accord or the Oslo track. Well, I do not think there is any question that the Prime Minister has put himself at some physical risk in pursuing the peace process. But I believe that it is important that the people of Israel know that, at least in my opinion, it is a good agreement; that it strengthens Israel's security needs; that the agreements made with the Palestinians are fully consistent with Oslo. And the Prime Minister worked very, very hard to advance Israel's security interests. Just for example, there was the whole issue of what should be done with the people whom Israel believes have committed acts of violence and terrorism against Israelis. And I am convinced that the Palestinians will now act against these people in a way that is consistent with the agreement and that will meet the Prime Minister's and Israel's needs. So that is an example of a whole array of security advances that were embedded in this agreement. And I think all Israelis who support the peace process should support the agreement because I think it furthers the cause of peace. ENTITY, is it really the PNC, the Palestinian National Council, that is going to convene to revise the Palestinian covenant with your presence? Well, it is the PNC plus a number of other groups.

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And some of these groups are embedded within the PNC; that is, they are dual membership for some of the people-in the Government, in the executive council, in the other councils involved. And some are outside the PNC. But among other things at that meeting, we will seek a clear renunciation of the offending parts of the charter and a general endorsement of the agreement, this whole agreement, so that the process can be seen to be going forward with the support of those who represent grassroots Palestinian opinion. The Prime Minister wanted me to support this provision, this effort, and he fought very, very hard for this, as did a number of members of his Cabinet who were there, because they thought that there needed to be a debate in a Palestinian forum, even if it was controversial and heated, which would give to the Palestinian people some evidence not only of a commitment to follow an agreement but of a changing of the heart, an opening of the heart of the Palestinians toward the Israelis. And I thought that argument had a lot of appeal, even though it was not without its hazards for Mr. Arafat. Because it is been 18 months since anything big has happened, and because there is a lot of-he has his problems, too, among them the fact that the standard of living for most Palestinians is lower today than it was when the peace process began, because the enemies of peace keep interrupting the flow of normal life. So I agreed that if it was that important to Israel and Chairman Arafat were willing to try to accommodate that condition by the Israelis, that I would go to Gaza and address this group and ask them to support the peace and to renounce forever the idea of animosity toward and opposition to the existence of the state of Israel, and instead embrace the path not only of peace but of cooperation. I want to ask you about your visit to Gaza. Do not you think, ENTITY, that this trip may be seen as a first step in recognizing an independent Palestinian state? Well, if so it would be, I think, wrong, because I have tried strictly to adhere to the position of the United States that we would not take a position on any final status issue.

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One of the reasons that I worked so hard at Wye to try to bring the parties together is, I thought it imperative to take this next big step along the peace process so that we could launch the final status talks and get them underway in good faith, so that neither side would seek to prejudge a final status issue. That is not what I am doing in going there. The Prime Minister wanted me to go there and wanted us all to make this pitch. I asked them if they would make some joint appearances and if they would both make the same speech to Palestinian and to Israeli audiences. And they said they would do that. It would help the Palestinians to see Yasser Arafat saying the same thing to the Israelis he says to the Palestinians. It would help the Israelis, I think, also. And it would be a good thing for the Prime Minister to be able to give the same speech-whatever they decide to say, just say the same thing to both communities so that no one thinks that there is any evasion or shading or anything. I think, just little things like this to open up a little awareness of the other's position and build a little confidence, I think would be quite good. ENTITY, why will not you release Jonathan Pollard? Well, I agreed to review his case and to take the initiative to review it. I have not released him in the past because since I have been ENTITY in the two previous normal reviews-that is, the ones that were initiated by his request for clemency-the recommendation of all my law enforcement and security agencies was unanimously opposed to it. But the Prime Minister felt so strongly about it-and I might say, every Israeli Prime Minister I have dealt with on every occasion has asked me about Pollard. But you argued pretty-you had pretty harsh exchanges with Netanyahu, reportedly, about that? I thought then, I believe now, and I think the public opinion in Israel bears this out, that it was in Israel's interest to do this agreement on its own merits because it would advance the cause of Israeli security and keep the peace process going. I think there is been a lot of reporting about this with which I do not necessarily agree. That is no criticism; I just want to tell you my perception. Bibi Netanyahu argued strongly for Pollard's release. He made the arguments that anyone who knows a lot about the case and thinks he should be released would make. But I took no offense at that.

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He was representing what he believes to be the interest of the State of Israel. And he did it in-you know, he does not make arguments halfway. You observe the Prime Minister, he is an aggressive person; he fights hard for what he believes. I took no offense at it at all. And I would ask you all to remember, when evaluating reports that tempers were frayed or strong language was used-now, remember, the three of us, Mr. Arafat and Mr. Netanyahu and I, we were there for over 8 days. Most nights I was there, I went home at 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning. The last time we were there on this last day, I was up for 39 hours and so were they. Now, I am amazed that we did not have more disruptive conduct and more harsh words, given how exhausted and frayed we were. But it shows you how hard the parties were trying, on the one hand, to make peace, but on the other hand, to protect their security interests. He was desperately trying to find a way to make peace or to advance the peace process that would enable him to go home and sell it to his Cabinet and his constituency. And this Pollard issue was very important to him. But I took no offense at that. But still, ENTITY, there were many reports that you were very upset with Mr. Netanyahu and were quoted saying that his behavior was despicable. And this is the first opportunity I have had to say that. There was a moment in the negotiations when the two guys split apart, and there was an issue raised that I thought was wrong. And I said so in very graphic terms. But I never used the word despicable to describe the Prime Minister. I did not do that. There was a moment where I thought-there were various moments in these negotiations when I thought-at least from my perspective, trying to be an honest broker-they were both wrong. You would expect this over 8 days. But at that moment, the issue at stake had nothing to do with Pollard. It was an issue, a dispute between the Palestinians and the Israelis; it had nothing to do with Pollard. And it is true that there was a moment in which there was a heated exchange in which I said something rather graphic, but I did not adversely characterize the Prime Minister in the way that is reported. I'd like to talk about the late Yitzhak Rabin.

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I think you know, ENTITY, that when you said the phrase, shalom chaver, goodbye friend, I think you touched many many Israelis in a very, very special way. And we have been curious, how did you come up with this? I even noticed you have a pin that says shalom chaver on your desk right here in the Oval Office. I have many Jewish Americans working for me here, and they all knew how close I felt to Prime Minister Rabin. And we were-everybody was sort of coming up with ideas. And Shimon Peres later told me that he had not seen those two words used together before because chaver, it is sort of a special word; it goes beyond normal friendship. And one of my-I wish I could say that I knew enough Hebrew that I came up with it, but one of my staff members suggested that I say it. And they explained it to me, what it meant, and it seemed to be perfect for what I was trying to say. I must say, for me, that was more than a political loss. I felt very close to the Prime Minister, to Mrs. Rabin. I got to know their children, grandchildren. And I think always when I am pushing the peace process forward that I am doing it not just for myself but maybe also a little for him. And I must say, in these last negotiations I was very pleased to see that Prime Minister Netanyahu-I saw in his eyes, I could almost see in his eyes the moment when he really made the decision that, well, maybe the Palestinians were going to make sufficiently specific security commitments that would be on a sufficiently clear timetable that he could sell not just to the Israeli public at large but to a decisive portion of his own constituency, which is a very different thing, as all of you know better than I do. And he could see that, that he could personally believe that it would advance Israel's security. And I saw that look in his eyes. I felt from that point on that eventually we would get an agreement. And that is the look that you want to see in a leader's eyes in a situation like that, because I still believe that the right formula is peace and security, and that you really cannot have one without the other.

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As you know, in the Tampa/ St. Pete area, we are around 11 percent unemployment, among the highest in the country really, that number actually went up in 2009 after your first stimu-lus. So what would you tell Floridians wondering if you deserve another chance? Well, I think what I would say is that we are nowhere near where we need to be, but keep in mind that when I took office, we had already lost one million jobs in the previous quarter. We had lost more than four million in the previous quarter and we lost another four million in the three months when I came into office, so our economic plan had not even had the chance to take effect. We know the economy was contracting by nine percent when I came in. It was growing by four percent by the time the end of the year came around, so obviously the Recovery Act had an impact. We have got to do more, and that is why we have put together this jobs plan that incorporates the best ideas from Democrats and Republicans, rebuilds our roads, our bridges, our infrastructure, puts teachers back in the classroom. It would have a direct impact on what is going on in Florida, and what we need right now is Congress to go ahead and act, and they have been not acting in the inter-est of Floridians or the American people. You won over a lot of the independent Florida voters, much of them, a couple of years ago base on your theme of Hope and Change. The last couple of days we have had a lot of people tell us they have not seen much change and given our economic outlook, they do not see much hope. Do you feel you have let them down? No, and look, Florida's had a tough time partly because it was ground zero in terms of the housing bubble bursting and real estate has a huge impact on every state. But when you look at Florida, Arizona, Nevada, those places that had the biggest housing bubbles, they have been impacted the most. That is part of the reason why we are not just waiting for Congress to act. This past week, we went ahead and said we are going to help families refinance their homes that could save thousands of dollars for homeowners, keep people in their homes that might be worried about making mortgage payments. We are, for example, working with NASA and the private sector to bring additional jobs to central Florida. Boeing just made an announcement that we are very happy about.

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You are proposing registering guns like cars. But if you are going to do that, then why not take the next step and regulate guns, as we do cars? After all, if there is something seriously wrong about cars, the Government can regulate automobiles. Are you willing to do that? Well, first of all, I do not think we should minimize the impact that licensing handgun owners themselves would have. That is what I want to do. Now, it is tough to pass in this Congress because most of the Republicans agree with the NRA that guns are different, and even though it might save lives, we should not do it. But I think if we would begin the process of making handgun owners get a license before they can buy a gun, pass a Brady background check, and then have a gun safety course, I think it would make a difference. I think if we did that, plus had child safety locks, closed the big loophole in the background registration law by covering the gun shows and the urban flea markets, and then continue this technology into safe guns so that as soon as possible we can sell guns and adjust them so that, by fingerprints, they can only be fired by the adults who own them, all these things together would make our country a much safer place. And I am going to continue to fight for it. We need to start by passing this legislation that the Congress has had for 8 months now. The Senate passed a pretty strong law, with the Vice President casting the tie-breaking vote. The House passed a much weaker law. And they have just been sitting on this for 8 months. I hope that these last 2 tragic days will finally move the Congress to act. And I am going to meet with the leading conferees on the two bills in the next few days to try to do that. But you are not prepared to take the step to try to regulate guns? I think that the most important thing we can do now is to pass the legislation before the Congress, and then try to pass legislation that would require the owners themselves, people who want to buy handguns, to be licenses, just as car drivers are. I think that is the next big step, and I think it will make a big difference. Just with the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban and the more police on the street, we have got the murder rate down to a 30-year low. And the accidental death rate from children is astronomical. It is 9 times higher than the next 24 industrial nations combined.

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So we have got to do more with this. And I want to focus on this agenda. I think it will drive the death rate down from guns both for murders and from accidental death rates. ENTITY, how, if in any way, would your new proposals have prevented or even helped to prevent the shooting of this 6-year-old girl in Michigan? One is something that is still in the bill. If this gun had a child trigger lock on it, then the child, in all probability, could not have figured out how to undo the child trigger lock and fire the gun. Then I had a provision which neither the Senate nor the House passed, to make national a law that today I think fewer than 20 States have, which would hold adults responsible for the kinds of activities that this young boy tragically engaged in when he killed that little girl. I think that it ought to be national, not just in a few States. And so I hope the Congress, and maybe the conference, will reconsider that, even though even the Senate would not pass that. They ought to take a look at this now, because clearly the adults bear the primary responsibility here. And people would think twice before just leaving a gun hanging around the house that a kid could walk off with if that were the case. ENTITY, there are so many questions about this issue that run so deep in the American character, as well as our history. With, as you have mentioned, at least 200 million guns out there, what about the argument that says, listen, there is really no chance that we are going to have meaningful gun control in this country unless you go out and get those guns back, and that is simply not practical? Well, I think, first of all, you never want to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Look how much good the Brady bill has done. It is kept a half million felons, fugitives, and stalkers from getting handguns. And that is one of the reasons that the murder rate is at a 30-year low. So it will not solve all the problems, but it will solve some. Secondly, especially if we could license people when they come in to buy handguns, we could then couple that with a very aggressive gun buyback program. Keep in mind, yes, there are more than 200 million guns out there, but a lot of them are in the hands of collectors and not regularly in use.

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What we need to do is to get these cheap guns off the streets, and with an aggressive gun buyback program we could do that. Just with the few million dollars we spend on it every year, we get a huge number of guns, offering about $50 a gun. If you could get a lot of the older guns that are just out there floating loose off the street, if you could license the handgun owners, if you could have child safety locks, and then if we could proceed with this safe-gun technology so that in the future all the guns that were sold could only be fired by the adults who are their rightful owner, I think you'd go a long, long way toward making this a much, much safer country. And it would not in any way infringe on the rights of hunters and sport shooters, except to ask them to do what the rest of us do when we go through airport metal detectors or get driver's licenses. We undergo a little bit of inconvenience so that society as a whole would be a lot safer. And I think we have neglected this far too long. As I said, there is not enough urgency in the Congress. You have got a dozen kids a day still getting shot to death out there, and this bill has been up there for 8 months. So this is one place where I think the United States Congress is completely out of touch with the American people, largely because of the genuine fear people have of the organized NRA interest back in their district. And they just no longer reflect the views of the majority of the people. I had a woman tell me yesterday, when I was touring a high-tech facility in northern Virginia, that her husband was a Republican and an avid hunter who strongly supported these initiatives. It is time for Congress to get in step with the American people and take these actions that will make our children safer. Now, we have some Democrats who live in rural districts where there are a lot of hunters and where they are afraid of this, because when I passed the assault weapons ban and the Brady bill back in '93 and '94, there is no question that the NRA beat about a dozen of our Members. These people who voted with us to make our streets safer and save lives gave up their seats in Congress. And this is primarily a problem of the leadership in the Republican Congress being unwilling to part from the NRA.

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And I hope that they will do it now, because I think a lot of their Members want to. And almost all these Members of Congress could vote for this legislation and not be threatened at all, and they need to do that. When I talk to the Republican leadership in Congress, they-and I will say, somewhat gleefully-say, Look, there are at least 60 Democrats in the House who no way, no how are going to vote for any additional gun control legislation. Well, that leaves us with about 140 on our side, which means they only have to produce 80 for us to have a majority. So they ought to do that. There is 80 Republicans who come from suburban districts where their constituents strongly support this and where they would not be defeated by the NRA if they went with us. You have mentioned the NRA several times. Everybody knows the National Rifle Association pours a lot of money into a lot of campaigns to beat just this kind of legislation that you have proposed. But is it or is it not reality that what you have are tens of millions of Americans who own guns and, whatever their party affiliation, however they feel about you, are just adamant about not controlling guns any further, and that is the real problem? Well, it is, but most of them- a lot of gun owners-keep in mind, I am convinced a majority of hunters and sport shooters, once they understand that these regulations do not in any way, shape, or form, impact their ability to conduct their lawful affairs, will support what amounts to a minor inconvenience- doing a background check at a gun show, for example, having a child safety lock on a handgun-to save lives. In New Hampshire, we lost a Democratic Congressman who voted for the assault weapons ban and the Brady bill. He lost his job in '94. And I went up there in '96 and met with a bunch of people who were hunters and sportsmen, and I said, Now, the NRA told you we were going to take your guns away and inconvenience you. And I said, If you missed a day in a deer season, I want you to vote against me, too. But if you did not , they did not tell you the truth, and you need to stick with us. And as a society, we all undergo minor inconveniences so that our children can grow up safe.

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And it is ridiculous-the United States is the only country in the world that would allow this kind of, I believe, recklessness with the public interest. Nobody else does it, and that is why we have the highest murder rate and the highest accidental gun death rate of children, because we do not take these commonsense measures. And we can do it, I will say again, without interfering with people's right to hunting and sport shooting. ENTITY, I know you have a meeting to go to. You have been very generous with your time. So many people, when I talk to them, they say, Look, it is fine for the ENTITY to talk this way, but he is going to see rocks grow and water run uphill before he sees any real gun control legislation. Now, you have made it clear you do not believe that. What can you do to move this along? Can you call the Members of Congress to the White House for a special meeting to compromise? What can you do? Well, I am going to bring down the leaders of the House and the Senate, the Republicans and Democrats, who are in charge of this bill in the conference. The House and the Senate version are in a conference. They are supposed to come up with a unified bill and let the House and Senate vote on it. And I do not have any doubt if they report out a good bill, it will pass. And I am going to do everything I can to pass it. I do not believe that. They said-once they said we'd see water run uphill before we had Brady background checks, and then before we banned assault weapons, and then before we banned these large capacity ammunition clips. We did all that, but we left some loopholes in the law that we ought to close. We ought to require child safety locks. We ought to invest in safe-gun technology. And we ought to license handgun owners. You know, every significant reform in a controversial area is considered to be impossible when you start. I'd love to come by sometime and talk to you about Colombia and China and Taiwan. But I appreciate you taking time today to do this. ENTITY, I really appreciate you taking time to do this. I will do it.

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We are very pleased to be joined by the ENTITY . This is an interview about the Super Bowl and issues important to sports fans. We will get to the news of the day shortly. I am very good, thank you, ENTITY. ENTITY, you sit with Bob Kraft, you communicate with Bill Belichick, Tom Brady is a friend. Can we take that, from your personal relationships, that you are rooting for the Patriots today? Well, I guess you have to say that. They have been great friends of mine for a long period of time, and they are terrific people. And I have to tell you, the Falcons have terrific people also. But I have known them a long time, so I guess we are allowed to do that every once in a while. Have you communicated with Tom Brady or Bill Belichick this week? And if so, what advice have you given them? Well, I do not have to give them advice. And I speak to them on occasion, but I do not have to really speak very much about winning. They know how to do it. And it is a lot of pressure on them, but probably less so because they have been there and they have done it before. So more pressure always on the ones that have not done it. ENTITY, how do you feel about the abuse that is being directed to Tom Brady because he is a friend of yours? Well, I have not seen it. I mean, honestly, I have been so busy doing other things I have not seen that. I have not noticed it. But I can tell you that, generally speaking, that is a two-way street. There may be some people that are not liking the fact that he may feel good about me, but there are a lot of other people that like him a lot better because of it. There have been many instances of that, where people have sort of said a little bit negative about whatever it may be, even a store or a chain, and the chain's business goes through the roof. I mean, we have had cases like that too. ENTITY, what are your thoughts on Deflategate and the way that Tom Brady was treated? And it is over with, and we do not have to discuss it, but it was a rough period of time, and it was very sad. And look at the season he is had missing four games, and look at the great season he is had.

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So I just think it was an unfortunate experience, and I think it was bad for probably everybody involved. And that is all behind us, so that is a good thing. You have had some very strong negative opinions about Roger Goodell in the aftermath of his decisions on domestic violence and Deflategate. You are now President; he is obviously the commissioner of the NFL. If you were to see him and your paths were to cross, what would you say to him? Well, I'd just say good luck, just do a good job with the NFL. I mean, he handled the various situations this was prior to me running for office and he handled the various situations in his way, and I hope he is happy with it. But people can disagree on everything. I may not have disagreed I may really have looked upon the way he handled it a little bit differently than others, but you know what, it is the NFL. You plan to pardon Tom Brady? Well, Tom is always pardoned, you know that. Tom does not need a pardon. Tom his game pardons him, and his talent. So I think his game really pardons him. With all the head injuries and concussions, a big concern now with football, would you allow your grandchildren and Barron to play if they wanted? If they wanted, I would allow them to play, but I will say that they have to be very careful, because that would be the big risk to the NFL if it gets to a point where people are afraid to let their children play. That would not be a good thing for the NFL, certainly. But it depends on the level. I mean, I know I played football at a certain level, and I will tell you, it is a rough game, it is a tough game. But it is a rough game, and a lot of people are deciding the other way. But regardless, I would also leave it up to the young person in the family. I think I would have to do that. ENTITY, the NFL Players Association is fighting to legalize the use of medicinal marijuana for its players. These guys take a physical beating. Would you support them in this fight? Well, I have no opinion on it. They are going to have to take a look at that. They are going to talk with the league; they are going to be talking to, obviously, government officials wherever it may be. And when it comes up to the level of the Presidency, I will have an opinion.

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Today an estimated $5 billion will be wagered, 4.8 billion, unregulated and untaxed illegally. Well, what I'd do is I'd sit down with the commissioners. I would be talking to them, and we will see how they feel about it. Some would not want it, and probably others and I have read where others maybe do. But I would certainly want to get their input and get the input from the various leagues, and we will see how they feel about it. I'd also get the input from lots of law enforcement officials, because obviously, that is a big step. So we would not do it lightly, I can tell you. But I would want to have a lot of input from a lot of different people. ENTITY, Los Angeles will bid for the 2024 Olympics in the fall. Do you support that bid, and would it be a good thing for Los Angeles and our country? Well, I have been asked to support it, and I have actually spoken to the Olympic Committee in Europe. And they are I think, were very happy when they spoke to me. They wanted to have an endorsement from me, and I gave it to them very loud and clear. I would love to see the Olympics go to Los Angeles. The United States Committee's members have asked me to speak up about it, and I have. And I think I have helped them. But I'd be very happy and honored if they would choose Los Angeles, and we'd stand behind it. Do you feel your immigration policy and the recent Executive order might hurt the bid and cost L.A. some IOC votes? Well, I do not know, but we have to have regardless, we have to have security in our country. We have to know who is coming into our country. We have to have people that are coming in with good intentions, ENTITY. If people are coming in with bad intentions, I want to be able to find out before they get here. You see what is happened in other countries, you see what is happened in our country. So if people want to come into our country, they have to come in with good intentions. And we want to have strong borders. And we want to have extreme vetting, and we want to know what we are doing, frankly. And right now it is tied up in the courts. And I think it is a bad situation for the country.

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We have to know exactly who is coming into our country. And I think most people agree with me on that. And they may not express it, but you are seeing it more and more, people are agreeing with me. I want security for the United States. Now, ENTITY, many Russian athletes were banned from competing in the Rio Olympics last summer due to the Russian state-sponsored doping program. Should that ban continue in 2018 in Korea and 2020 in Tokyo until the Russians can prove that they are clean, and are you willing to express that to President Putin? Well, I think that is going to be really up to the various Olympic committees. They have taken a very strong stand, and that is going to be up to them, much more so than me. So we will see what they have to say, ENTITY. ENTITY, leaving aside your desire to have a productive relationship with President Putin, your comments earlier today to Bill O'Reilly on Fox before the Super Bowl seemed to indicate an equivalency between the actions of our Government and the actions of the Russian Government. Can you kind of clarify that statement? Well, I do not have to clarify it. The question was, do you respect him? He is the head of a major country. He is actually very popular in his country if you listen to various reports that are actually put out by polling agencies and various groups within our country, whether they like it or not. But they asked me whether or not I respect him. He is the leader of a major country, and you know what my answer was. And frankly, there are a lot of bad things going on in a lot of places in this world, and if we got along with Russia I do not know that we will. I do not know the gentleman, but I have had two conversations or three conversations with him. He called to congratulate me on the Inauguration recently and called to congratulate me previously on the election. And it was very nice, and I appreciated the call. But I have been called by virtually every leader of the world. And we have been called by just about everybody, so I do not put a lot of credence to that. I will say this. If we got along with Russia and other countries I mean, I want to get along with all countries but if we got along with Russia, if we got along with China, if we got along with Japan and the Prime Minister is coming next weekend.

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In fact, he is coming to the White House, and then he'd like to play golf, and we are going to come down to Florida, Palm Beach, and we are going to play golf. We are going to have a round of golf, which is a great thing. You get to know somebody better on a golf course than you will over lunch. So if we are able to get along with other countries, that is a good thing, not a bad thing. Will you have a bet? I think I know he loves the game, and we are going to have a lot of fun. ENTITY, people feel that divides are getting deeper in our country. The first couple of weeks in office, you see what is happening across the country. Today, in sports, right here on the field and in the military, we see people with different backgrounds come together for the common good. What concrete plans do you have to unite our country and bring our Nation together? And one of the reasons I won the election is because of the fact that we were such a divided country. And we had a tremendous group of people that you look at issues and you look at what is going on, and there was such division in our country. And I think a lot of people think that I am going to be able to bring it together, and I think I will be able to do that. But we have been a very, very divided country for a very long period of time. And you know, I guess they consider me to be very much of an outsider, but it is an outsider that can bring us together. And I think I will be able to do that. Well, boxing is an interesting I have had many, many fights, as you know. I have been involved with just about everybody in that business, and I really enjoy the boxing, and I enjoy what they have done with the UFC, Dana White and all of the folks, the families that have done such a great job with that. And I enjoy sports at any kind. I enjoy virtually every sport. And but I have great respect for what they are doing and what they are doing with the I think today's game is terrific, and I think it is going to be terrific. You have now been in office a couple of weeks. It is been tough on a lot of people because we are breaking the glass a little bit. We are being strong on vetting; we are being strong on coming into the country.

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It has been a great day so far, not only yesterday but so far this morning, and I am looking forward to a real fine time on this trip to Florida. When you said anything to the right of your philosophy cannot win in Florida, are you speaking specifically of the philosophy of Ronald Reagan and Ronald Reagan in particular? I have said that anyone further to the right than my philosophy, on a nationwide basis, cannot win the general election. I think it is important for that philosophy, which is a middle-of-the-road philosophy, is the right philosophy for the United States. And anyone on the right or on the left of my philosophy just cannot win because most Americans believe in a moderate, middle-of-the-road philosophy. Would you put Ronald Reagan in that category? I will let the American people make that decision. Also, how do you plan to alter your campaign strategy to have at least a confident victory or feeling of victory in Florida? I have been tremendously encouraged by the fine turnouts that I have received in Orlando, in Ft. Lauderdale, and elsewhere. So, I think we have got the initiative, we have the right programs, we have some great leadership in Lou Frey and Bill Young and Skip Bafalis1 and all of the others. But have you got the votes for it? I think the votes will turn up on March 9. Are you planning to step up your Florida campaigning, sir? Well, I think we had a pretty busy day yesterday, as well as today, and as I said, we are most likely to come back again. And I have to emphasize--because it is very important--that my principal responsibility is to be ENTITY, and that takes a good bit of time. We will find a way to come down and see our friends and encourage our workers and to give recognition to our leaders. I think my principal job is to work at the responsibilities of being ENTITY. On the other hand, I think it is equally important, with the time that is available, to come out and see the people and let the people know from me personally what my philosophy is and what my programs are. So we will try to mesh the two. ENTITY, the last time you were in this county was 2 years ago, when you were Vice President. You defended President Nixon then, and it was only a few months before he resigned. Is not that association with President Nixon going to hurt you in this campaign, and is not it hurting you already?

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It is another groundbreaking for one of these battery plants. It is an attempt to show some positive results from a stimulus program that is being received a little more skeptically by the public now, even as opposed to where things were 15 months ago. The first thing to know is specifically what is happening here in Holland, Michigan, but also all across the country. When we came into office, America accounted for about 2 percent of the advanced-battery markets for electric and hybrid cars. And what we did was we said, Look, let us put up $2.4 billion that has to be matched by private dollars. And now you have got nine advanced-battery manufacturing facilities already up on line. And we expect that by 2015 we are going to have about 40 percent of the market in advanced-battery technology. And that is going into, by the way, a couple of the cars that we saw today, the Chevy Volt as well as the Ford Focus. So this is an example, I think, of what our economic strategy has been from the start. We had a disaster on our hands. We have been able to stabilize the economy and prevent the free fall. Instead of 750,000 jobs a month being lost, we have now gained jobs in the private sector for five consecutive months. But we have still got a long way to go. And so, not surprisingly, the American people, who are out of work, who are still struggling to pay the bills, they still want to see more action when it comes to jobs. And I do not blame them. But what I do want to point out is the very specific things that are being done as a consequence of some tough votes that were taken by Democrats last year. Were there more things in the stimulus -- you talked about the public-private partnership. We are seeing a ton of private capital not in the game right now. Well, it turns out that we are actually getting three dollars in private investment for every dollar that went into the recovery act. So that leveraging is taking place. You have got to remember also that about a third of the recovery act last year was tax cuts. And nobody talks about it, but those were not just tax cuts to individuals. They were also tax cuts to small businesses. And so that is why, for example, next week I hope the Senate takes up the proposal to get small businesses loans, because although big companies are now getting loans, you are still seeing problems with respect to small companies getting credit.

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You had this meeting yesterday with Warren Buffett, President Clinton, some other CEOs. And I understand the issue of private capital getting into the market, I assume, came up. What are they telling you -- what are these CEOs telling you of why this money is not being spent right now to create jobs? You know, you hear that it is We do not know what the government's going to do. Is that what you are hearing? Yeah, I will tell you exactly what Warren Buffett said. He said we went through a wrenching recession, and so we have not fully recovered. But we have still got a long way to go. And the reason people have not fully invested yet and started creating as many jobs as we would like is because it takes some time to come back. He used a good example in the housing market, where about 1.2 million households are formed that buy a house each year. But we went through a span of time, four or five years, because of the bubble and subprime lending and all the shenanigans that were going on with the mortgage market, where we were building 2 million homes a year. Now we are building 500,000. And what Warren pointed out was, Look, we are going to get back to 1.2 , but right now we are soaking up a whole bunch of inventory. So a lot of the challenge is to work our way through this recession, try to accelerate not only profits, because companies now are making money primarily because they cut costs, but also to see the opportunities out there. And that is what we were trying to show with this plant. We just have to seize them. I understand Warren Buffett told some business leaders last week at a conference that he no longer fears a double-dip recession. I am confident that we are moving in the right direction. The economy is definitely growing and we are definitely seeing additional hiring. Should we fear a double dip? Well, here is what we should fear, that if we do not keep track, keep on track with the policies that we put in place -- if we started seeing, for example, a wrenching reversal in investment, the kinds of plants that we saw today, we could end up having problems. We could further slow growth. The other thing that -- the main thing that keeps me up at night right now is we lost 8 million jobs. The month I was sworn in, we lost 750,000 jobs.

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We have regained about 600,000 this year so far. And if we stay on pace, hopefully we will gain several hundred thousand more. And that is going to require us tapping into the new sectors like the clean-energy economy, where there is growth to be had. It also means that we have got to start selling more than we are buying, which is why I am emphasizing export growth so much. But, look, nobody in the White House is satisfied with where we are right now. What we absolutely are convinced of, though, is that we are on the right track. And I think that the statistics bear that out. You know, in your remarks in Holland, you seemed to also make a political argument about the other side, saying that they, you know, were not for these plans. What do you tell the person who may have voted for you, cannot find a job or got laid off since you took office, why they should still keep the Democrats in charge? Because they are not feeling any of the positive yet. Look, if somebody's out of work right now, the only answer that I am going to have for them is when they get a job. Up until that point, from their perspective, the economic policies are not working well enough. And you are okay if they hold you accountable for that, if they cannot find a job. That is my job as ENTITY is to take responsibility for moving us in the right direction. But what I am absolutely convinced of is that we are going to have a choice, not just in November but for years to come. We can go back to all the same policies that got us into this mess, where we basically provide special-interest loopholes; we do not regulate Wall Street; we have a health-care system that is out of control; we provide tax cuts who do not need them and were not asking for them. Or we can take the approach that I have taken since I came in and that I campaigned on, which is to make sure that we start investing in our education system, to make sure that we are investing in clean energy, to get control of health-care costs, to deal with our structural deficit, the fact that we are spending more money through entitlements and through a whole range of other things than we are taking in. And it is hard, because you do not see immediate gratification.

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But what I'd say to the person who is out of a job right now is we are going to be doing everything we can to create the environment where the private sector can come in and start creating jobs. And until they can find a job, I expect to be held accountable. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs sparked a firestorm this week when he said there are enough seats in play in the fall to give Republicans control of the House. During our interview in Michigan, I asked ENTITY if he is prepared for the midterms to be a referendum on both him and his policies. Well, first of all, we have got a long ways before the election, number one. You disagree with Robert Gibbs' assessment? Number two, we have got -- number two, this is going to be a choice between the policies that got us into this mess and my policies that are getting us out of this mess. And I think if you look at the vast majority of Americans, even those who are dissatisfied with the pace of progress, they will say that the policies that got us into this mess, we cannot go back to. They understand that, because they remember that even before the financial crisis, wages were flat-lined. And so now, when they look at Holland, Michigan and they say, Instead of jobs moving overseas, we are seeing jobs move from South Korea here to the United States, that is something that gives them a sense of a future, a vision in which America is strong; it is competing. That is the kind of future I think Americans want. So you are prepared for November to be called a referendum on your policies and this presidency. ENTITY, you are not listening to me. What I am prepared is to be held accountable for the policies that I have put in place. But Americans do not have selective memory here. They are going to remember the policies that got us into this mess as well. And they sure as heck do not want to go back to those. Either you did not want a debate about health care again on Capitol Hill, which got a little raucous a year ago, or, You know what, the Senate process is broken and we have got to go around it ?

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Well, what is true is when it comes specifically to appointments, whether it is judges or critical positions in national security, Homeland Security, FBI, there have been more delays, obstruction and stalling when it comes to just appointing people to run the day-to-day aspects of Washington than any president has experienced in history. And, you know, the fact of the matter is that I cannot play political games with the Senate on these issues. I have got a government to run. And at a certain point, we have to go ahead and just make sure that people are in place to deal with the enormous challenges that are ahead. Well, here is what I am ready to say, that Washington has spent an inordinate amount of time on politics -- who is up, who is down -- and not enough on how are we delivering for the American people. The good news is that, despite no cooperation from the other side, we have, over the last two years, stopped an economic free fall, stabilized the financial sector. We are on the verge of passing a financial regulatory bill that provides consumers the kind of protections they deserve -- Probably will be passed by the time people see this. Will be passed, potentially, by the time we land, I get back to Washington; a health-care bill that not only is going to make sure that everybody has access to coverage, but also is reducing costs. So when you look at the list of things we have been able to accomplish, it does show that when people are determined and are willing to take tough votes even when it is politically inconvenient, we can still get things done. You have had an enormous amount of legislative victories. It is comparable to any president in history. It is not translated into political capital with the public. Is it -- honestly, are you frustrated by that? You know, I am not frustrated, because we were in such a deep hole that even if we got three-quarters of the way up out of the hole, even if I know we are going in the right direction, people are still feeling things are tough. Now, look, when I -- before I was sworn in, I remember talking to some of my guys, and we had just gotten the estimates from the economists about what we might be seeing in terms of not only job losses, but economic contraction.

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I think people would anticipate -- you do not have to be a savvy political analyst like ENTITY to say if unemployment is at 9.5 percent, the party in power is going to have some problems, regardless of how much progress we have made and how much worse it would be if the other side had been in charge. I want to talk about the terrorist attack in Uganda. Clearly your administration is taking this al-Shabab very seriously. You have had a senior official tell us the organization -- the operational abilities of that entity out there is maybe stronger than any other -- -- al Qaeda. Should we be doing more militarily in Yemen than we are now? Well, here is what we have done. Part of the reason that an analyst would say that al Qaeda is stronger in Yemen than just about anywhere else is because we have actually been pretty successful at forcing al Qaeda in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan to hunker down. They have been pinned down, and it is hard for them to carry out big operations. We have got to keep that pressure up. It is absolutely true, though, that al Qaeda in Yemen is dangerous. And what they have been able to do is not mount huge-scale attacks, but they are successfully recruiting individuals who may carry out low-level attacks -- Well, it is scarier, oddly enough, for some people. Well, in some ways it is harder because these are people whose name are not on a list. Abdulmutallab, the guy who tried to blow up the plane over Detroit, is a classic example of the kind of person that al Qaeda in Yemen is recruiting. Many people are traveling to Yemen, getting indoctrinated, and then being sent back to the West. So we have been cooperating with the Yemeni government. We want to make sure that we are entirely on top of it. Are they cooperating with us? Its terrain is a little bit like Afghanistan's. They have got their own ethnic problems there. And so this is a tough part of the world. But we are building up capacity, working with them to make sure that we do not take our eye off the ball, even as we continue to put pressure between Afghanistan and Pakistan. I know the first lady was down there touting it in Panama City, Florida. Are we going to see you guys down there? When we were in Pensacola, the beach looked as pretty as any beach that I have seen.

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Last time I sat down with you here in the White House and had a long conversation, it was just right after Wye, and you were feeling real good and real happy and really accomplished and, today, considerably different. Yes, Friday night I was up all night talking to them. I slept an hour, and then maybe I slept another 30 or 40 minutes in different snippets. Prime Minister Barak had a Cabinet meeting that lasted almost all night last night. And in the middle of it, he came out and announced that the Israelis would suspend their ultimatum, because they had some encouragement and there was so much effort being made by the world diplomatic community. What are you doing from here, in Washington, at your desk talking on the phone with these guys? I mean, how are you able to effect this, and what do you see your role as now? Well, I have spent so much time with both of them, and I know quite a bit about what makes them tick. And I think I understand the pressures they are both under, and I believe I understand what happened here, how they both came to see themselves and their people as victims in this. I think that they both became concerned about 24 hours ago, maybe a little more, that this thing could really slide into a much deeper conflict. So at least today we have pulled back from the precipice. Kofi Annan is out there, and I think he is doing some good work there. So I feel good today, as compared with yesterday. Although, if we can end the violence and if we can get agreement between the two sides on some sort of factfinding commission to figure out how this happened and how to keep it from happening again which was the thing that the U.N. resolution called for, that, in fact, Barak and Arafat had agreed to in Paris. Although they had not agreed to the composition of the commission, they had agreed that it ought to be done. If we can do that, the next big step is to begin the negotiations, the peace negotiations, as immediately as possible, because otherwise the sort of public pressures, both within the Middle East and beyond, will get worse. I was surprised that the feelings on both sides could be stripped to the core as quickly as they did, because they have made so much progress and they got so close.

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But in a funny way, I think that from the Israeli point of view, Camp David made them feel even more vulnerable because Barak, at Camp David and since, went further by far than any Israeli Prime Minister had gone before. And I think the Palestinians, number one, really thought it was not enough to make a peace agreement but also have a different strategy since basically the physical concessions have to be made by Israel except for what the Palestinians have to agree on security, in terms of joint security presence in what would become a Palestinian area in the West Bank. They have to make agreements on the West Bank territory, on the right-of-return language in the U.N. resolutions, who gets to come back, and if they do not come back, what is their compensation. They have to resolve Jerusalem, and they have to deal with security. Interestingly enough, because it was the most concrete with the fewest number of unpredictable consequences in the future, they made more progress at Camp David on security than anything else. They also had a habit of working together on security and getting along. But I think that the Israelis sort of felt aggrieved that they did not get more done, because they offered so much. Then the Palestinians felt provoked by what happened on the Temple Mount with Let us not get too far into this We do not have to get into the weeds, but the point is that then a whole series of events happened where each side began with each successive event it seemed that each side misunderstood the other more. Does any of it tend to piss you off about the relationships that you formed with you formed a very strong relationship with Arafat and also Barak. Did it change your mind any, when you get into this goddammit, Yasser you have the same interpreter, right, that you used to share? So you have got a close relationship. This will all be settled by the time this comes out, so just speak your mind. It will all be settled, or it will not by the time this comes out. The whole thing is frustrating, but you have got to realize we are dealing with fundamental questions of identity. What Jack Lew was saying at Rosh Hashanah, though the Jews go back and read the story of Abraham and Sarah giving birth to Isaac . I was thinking it is interesting how the circumstances under which the sons of Abraham were born and became separated. And it sounds like sort of epic family tragedy, and they just sort of keep replaying it down through the years.

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That is the thing that bothers me. I just hope that somehow, you know, at this moment, however long it takes, we will get beyond that. To the outsider who cares about them both, it seems so self-evident that the only acceptable answer is for them to find a way to live together in peace. When you are out of office, what are the three or four issues you think you are going to want to most focus on and be most concerned with? Well, first of all, I have not quite figured out what to do and how to do it, because I am so into what I have been doing. I have laid the basic plans for my library and policy center. And I know I am going to have an office in New York, because I will be there, as well. And I have talked to a lot of people in general terms about it. But I decided that I would try to be effective in this job right up until the end. And in order to do it, I cannot be spending vast amounts of time kind of planning out my next step. I also think I probably need a couple months to kind of just rest, relax, sleep rest, get a little perspective. I have thought a lot about ex-Presidencies. There have been two really great ones in history, John Quincy Adams and Jimmy Carter, and they were very different. Quincy Adams went back to the House of Representatives and became the leading spokesman for abolition. You see the Washington Monument right behind us that actually, in his last term in Congress, was Abraham Lincoln's only term in the House, and they stood together on that mound when the Washington Monument was dedicated. But Jimmy Carter used the Carter Center to do very specific things. He works on human rights, election monitoring, getting rid of river blindness in Africa, agricultural self-sufficiency. From time to time, he is engaged in various peace issues, primarily in Africa. And he works here at home on Habitat for Humanity, which is now, by the way, the third-biggest homebuilder in America stunning thing and also involved all over the world. I have been to Habitat sites in Africa, or one in Africa, but there are more than one. So the challenge is to trade power and authority broadly spread for influence and impact tightly concentrated.

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And I am sure I will be interested; I will try to do a lot on the areas that I have always been involved in, this whole area of racial and religious reconciliation at home and around the world, economic empowerment of poor people, something I am very interested in here and around the world. As we speak, I still do not know for sure whether the new markets initiative that the Speaker of the House and I have built such a broad bipartisan coalition for will pass. We have got 300-some votes for it in the House. It is really got a chance to be one of the signature achievements of this Congress, and it is something that Republicans ought to like, because it basically involves getting private capital into poor areas in America. And then I have got a big initiative to relieve the debt of the world's poorest countries that will put the money into education, health care, and development back home, if they get the debt relief. So that is something that I have always been very interested in. We make 2 million microcredit loans a year around the world, under AID in my administration. The Grameen Bank model. We set up a community development financial institution program here in America, and we fund those here in America, as well. So we have done a lot of work on that. And I am very interested in this whole idea of the relationship of energy to economic growth and the challenge of global warming, which I believe is real. And I believe we can break the iron link between how nations get rich and how they deal with the environment. I do not think I think the energy realities of the world have changed drastically in the last 10 years, and they are about to really change with the development of fuel cell engines, alternative fuels. And there is also we have funded a lot of research on biofuels not just ethanol from corn, but you can make biofuels out of grass. You can cut the grass out here and make fuel out of it. It takes about 7 gallons of gasoline to make about 8 gallons of biofuel. But they are working on research which would lead to one gallon of gasoline making 8 gallons. So I am interested in all that. I am interested in the breakdown of public health systems around the world. ENTITY, TB, and malaria kill one in every four people that die every year now, those three diseases. So you would set up something like you are very mindful of the Carter Center.

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I do not know how I am going to do it. I am thinking about it. I have explored a lot of ideas, but I am going to take some time when I get out to think about it. I also want to make sure that whatever I do, I give the next President time to be President, and whatever I do, I do not get in the way of the next President, because a country can only have one President at a time, and I want to be supportive of that. Well, you must have obviously thought a lot about Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, you are or he are the youngest you are the youngest President since Teddy Roosevelt, to come out of a successful Presidency, and be in your midfifties, because of your powers, really, and energy. Do you compare yourself much to him? Have you thought much about him? Well, I think the time in which I served was very much like the time in which he served. And I think the job I had to do was quite a lot like there are some interesting historical parallels with the job he had to do, because he basically was his job was to manage the transition of America from an agricultural to an industrial power, and from essentially an isolationist to an international nation. In my time, we were managing the transition from an industrial to an information age, and from a cold-war world to a multipolar, more interdependent world. And so I have always thought these periods had a lot in common. But when Teddy Roosevelt left, he served almost 8 full years, because McKinley was killed in 1901, shortly after he was inaugurated. But he thought he really should observe the twoterm tradition that George Washington had established that his cousin would later break in the war before, the election was right before the war. anyway, Roosevelt, when he got out, then he felt Taft had betrayed his progressive legacy. So he spent a lot of the rest of his life he built a whole third-party-new-political movement and promoted what he called the New Nationalism around America. But I think in some ways the impact he might have had was a little tempered by his evident disappointment at not being President anymore. And I think that is not an option for me, because I cannot run again, because now there is the 22d amendment. Roosevelt did not have the 22d amendment. So it is not a real issue for me.

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So I have got to try to use whatever influence and networks and friendships and support I have built up around the world and here at home just to have a positive impact, to be an effective citizen. And I think I will find a way to do it. On the other hand, you have got the advantages of the incumbency; you have got the highest popularity rating of any President; the economy is doing good. It looks like you would have won in a walk. Is it really consistent with democracy, to have this kind of term limit on a President? Congressional? I have never supported legislative term limits. But I think the arguments for executive term limits, on balance, are pretty compelling. I mean, I have an extra amount of energy, and I love this job, and I love the nature of this work. But maybe it is better to leave when you are in pretty good shape, too. Better to leave when you are in good shape. I think maybe they should maybe they should put consecutive there. Maybe they should limit it to two consecutive terms. Because now what is going to happen is see, Teddy Roosevelt was young but not so young for his time. He was the youngest person to have been President, but he died at 61. Now, anybody that lives to be 65 has a life expectancy of 82. So you are going to see people who most people mature, politically and it is like all different activities have gymnasts are tops at 14 or 15, basketball players at 25 or 28. In their early fifties, most Presidents do their best. And now you are going to have more and more people, particularly that come after me, living much longer lives. Is that enough time to repeal the 22d amendment, get that through? This is not really about me, because my time is up. But I think that if you cannot predict all the challenges the country will face in the future and whether someone uniquely suited to a given moment will be there. So maybe they should but I am just saying, you may have people operating at a very high level of efficiency, in politics, from age 50 to age 80 in the future, because of the changes in the human life cycle that are going to come about as a result of the human genome and pharmaceutical developments and all kind of other things we are learning. We may be able to reverse Parkinson's. We may be able to reverse Alzheimer's. So there is going to be a lot of things that are different about aging in the future.

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We are going to have to totally rethink it in ways we cannot imagine. And if it seems appropriate, then I think some future Congress may give the States a chance to at least limit the President to two consecutive terms, and then if the people need a person, a man or a woman, to come back in the future, they can bring them back. It may take decades, but it would not surprise me if it happened simply because of the lifestyle, the length of life we are looking at. Not to drag this out people say that you love campaigning. I mean, that you do not stop campaigning in all aspects. I mean, how are you going to sort of withdraw from that in the next couple of years? I do like politics. But I like governance, too. I like policy. I liked it all. That is one of the reasons why I have been so fortunate in my life; I got to do something that was basically about politics and policy and governing, and in executive positions, being a Governor for a dozen years and President for 8. I got to deal with politics, policy, and governing, the three things that I really loved. And I think I got better at it all as I went along. I am very interested I think I will spend a lot of time helping other people. I am thrilled about Hillary running as we do this interview. I have worked very hard with Tony Blair to try to build this network around the world of kind of likeminded political leaders, and if I can be helpful to them, I want to be. So I am sure that, from time to time, I will get a chance to do a little politics after I leave here. But I am also looking forward to a different chapter in my life. I am still young enough to learn how to do new and different things. And it is exciting to me. There is never been a period in my life that I did not enjoy and find challenging and rewarding. And so I just need a little time to get my bearings and hope I am not too old to change. Going back to the beginning, one of the first things you did in your earlier term was trying to overthrow the military ban on gay people. Why did this backfire, and what did you learn from that? Well, I think it backfired partly because the people that were against it were clever enough to force it, force the pace of it.

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I tried to slow it down, but the first week I was President, Senator Dole, who saw it as, I think, an opportunity, pushed a vote in the Senate disapproving of it. And I tried to put it off for 6 months, and the Joint Chiefs came down and raised hell about it. And I wanted to do it the way Harry Truman Harry Truman issued an order saying, Integrate the military. Come back in 3 years or 2 years, whatever, and tell me how you are going to do it. And a lot of the gay groups wanted it done right away and had no earthly idea of what kind of I think they were shocked by the amount of congressional opposition. So a lot of people think I just sort of compromised with the military because they asked me to. A lot of people have forgotten that. We knew that there were at least 75 percent of the House would vote against my policy. So if I were going to sustain a different policy and have it withstand congressional action, I had to have a veto-proof minority in one House or another. But what happened was, the Senate voted 68-32 against my policy, which meant that I could not sustain my policy in either House, which meant they were going to enact it over my they were going to, in a sense, ratify the status quo in law. And it was only at that time that I worked out with Colin Powell this do not ask, do not tell thing, went to the War College, and explained what the policy was going to be based on, what we had agreed the agreement we had reached together. And then they wrote that into law. And then we had several years of problems where it was not being implemented in any way consistent with my speech at the War College, which General Powell agreed with every word of, which we'd worked out. So Bill Cohen has now changed the training and a lot of the other elements that contributed to the fact that this policy continued to have a lot of abuse in it, and I think it is better now. I think the policy I implemented originally, that I wanted to implement was the right policy. Would you do it any differently? Do you wish you could have done it differently? I think that what I would like to do, what I wish I had been able to do, is to get an agreement on the part of everybody involved to take this out of politics and look at it.

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But the Republicans decided that they did not want me to have a honeymoon, that they wanted to make me the first President without one, that we were living in a 24-hour news cycle, and that the press would happily go along with my not getting a honeymoon and that they would make this the opening salvo. And they understood and I did not understand exactly what I know now about how what we do here plays out in the country. Because they have added up, first but because it was one of my campaign commitments and I refused to back off of it, the message out in the country was, We elected this guy to turn the economy around, and his top priority is gays in the military. Bob Dole's top priority was making this the controversy that would consume the early days of my Presidency, and it was a brilliant political move by him, because at the time I was not experienced enough in the ways of Washington to know how to explain to the American people what was going on. If it happened to me again, I would say, Why is this the Republicans' top priority? I do not want to deal with this now. We can deal with this in 6 months when the study is done; let us take care of the American people now. And if it happened now, all the gay groups, who are now much more sophisticated about dealing in Washington than they were then, would come in and say, That is absolutely right. Why is he doing this? We want to deal with and we would put it back on them. They would be in the hot box, and we could win it. But the country has come a long way on gay rights issues since '93. Because keep in mind, we did drop the ban on gays in security positions, national security positions. We had done a whole lot of other things to advance a lot of the causes that the gay rights community wanted. So we have made a lot of progress there plus all the people I have appointed. And I think the country has moved on that issue. The country is overwhelmingly for hate crimes legislation. The country supports employment nondiscrimination legislation. The only reason that we cannot get those through the Congress is that the leadership of the Republican Party is way to the right of the country. You know, historically, politicians have never, ever done much for gay rights. But gay issues are in the mainstream certainly, for instance, Reagan, who was very funny with gay people and had lots of experience in Hollywood.

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Why did you take it upon yourself, particularly in light of the political heat, to advance the causes of gay people? I believed in it. I just said, from the time I was a kid, I had known people who were gay, and I believed that their lives were hard enough without having to be hassled about it. I saw it as a civil rights issue. I also did not buy the kind of conservative attack on them, that this was sort of a conscious choice to have a depraved lifestyle. I had had enough gay friends since I was a young man to know that to believe, at least, that that is not the case. So I saw it as a civil rights issue. I believed in it. I also thought that as a white southern Protestant, who could obviously talk to a lot of the so-called Reagan Democrats, the people we had lost that came back, that I was in a unique position to do it. And Al Gore, I must say, reinforced that, because he felt it at least as strongly as I did, and he wanted to do something about it. And we thought that we could do that for the same reason we thought we ought to take on the NRA. You know, that if we could not do it, coming from where we came from with our backgrounds and kind of out of the culture we came from, and understanding that opposing elements, who could do it? You know, if that whole gaysin-the-military thing came up today, I do not think it would be handled in the same way. It might not be that we could win it today, but today we would get a civilized response, and we'd have a long study. People would handle this straight. It would not just be a it would be handled in a whole different way today. What about what is going on with the Boy Scouts? Were you disappointed with the Supreme Court decision, and what do you think you, as President, can do about that? Well, I cannot do anything as President about the Supreme Court decision. Were you disappointed with it not about the decision but about the Boy Scouts? I think what the Boy Scouts were reacting to was one of these stereotypes for which there is no evidence whatever, which is that adult gay adults are more likely to abuse children than straight adults, sexually. But I think that I think that is what was behind that. Now, apparently, the Girl Scouts have no such prohibitions and have had no known problems.

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I am not sure about that. I doubt that. Is there something does not the President have an official capacity with the Boy Scouts as, like, an honorary chairperson or something like that? And the gay groups asked me not the gay groups, the press asked me if I would whether I should resign from that. The President is always the honorary chairman of the Boy Scouts. And it is going to be interesting when we have our first woman President, if they make her the honorary chair of the Girl Scouts, or she gets to be the honorary chair of the Boy Scouts. Because I think that first, I think the Scouts do a world of good, and in our time they have begun to be more active in the cities, which I think is really important, to go into a lot of these places where the kids do not have a lot of family or community support. And I think that it is near the end of my term, so it would just be like a symbolic thing that would, in my view, probably cause more harm than good. And I think it is better for me to say I disagree with the position they took and try to persuade them to change their position, which I hope they will do, because I think It seems like there are so many States and communities that are moving to pressure them. Yes, I think there should be a lot of grassroots pressure on them to change. They will change at the grassroots level. But what is happening is look, the overwhelming thing which changes people's attitudes on these issues is personal contact, personal experience. I will tell you a little story. When we did the gays-in-the-military thing, I got not my pollster, another guy that I knew sent me a poll he had done saying this is a political disaster for you, and here is why but that is not the reason, the point I am telling you. The polls showed by 48 to 45, people agreed with my position in 1993. But when asked, do you strongly so I won it, 48-45. But among those who felt intensely, I lost it 36-18 or 15 36-15. No, but for the antis, it was a single-issue vote. For the pros, it was, You know, I am broadminded; I have got a lot of other things on my mind. They are still mad at Cheney for what he said the other day. What did Cheney say?

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He was not hard over against he was not hard enough over against gay marriage or civil unions. Let me make the larger point. But in this poll, interestingly enough now, again, this was '93 there was not a huge gender gap; there was not even a huge regional gap, as you might expect with the South being way bigger than anyplace else. People who identified themselves as evangelical Christians were 72-22 against my position. People who said yes to the question, Have you personally known a gay person? were 66-33 for my position. So this is a matter of personal experience, and the country will come to this. They will come to the right place on this. Most gay people kept their sexual preference secret for a long time. A lot of venerable institutions in society that worry about their respectability and impact and the Boy Scouts is such a venerable institution what they are really dealing with is people coming out much more than affirmative prejudice. It is like, Hey, let us go back to the way it used to be where people did not say and I did not have to deal with this. That is what I believe, anyway. Because I remember I grew up in a southern town. One of my teachers was gay. There was a gay doctor in my hometown that some people knew and did not talk about. So we are dealing with a huge kind of and this goes to the core of how people think about themselves and how you work through all this. But it is a matter of personal contact. In your first year in office, you regularly talked with Richard Nixon. What did you two talk about, and what were your impressions? Do you remember that? He came to the White House. I had Nixon back at the White House. I have got a letter that I treasure that Nixon wrote me about Russia a month to the day before he died. Have you ever seen that letter, Jake? You know, it was sort of his take on where Russia was and the early part of my Presidency. ENTITY He went to Russia right before he died. He wrote me a letter about where he thought things were, and a month later he was gone. Well, I had him back here. I just thought that I ought to do it. He lived kind of in the he had lived what I thought was a fundamentally constructive life in his years out of the White House. He had written all these books. He tried to and he tried to be a constructive force in world affairs.

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And I thought that he had paid quite a high price for what he did, and I just thought it would be a good thing for the country to invite him back. So when he came up, what was it like when he came here? Was that the first time you had met him, in a way that spend any time? Actually it is funny, because I had had two other chances in my life to meet him. We were somewhere in 1969 we were at a dinner. I was working here in the summer 1970 and there was a dinner where he was, and I did not go shake hands with him, because I was young and mad about the Vietnam war. And then in the 1980's sometime, we were in the same hotel in Hong Kong. We were staying in the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. I was there on a trade mission, and I was supposed to meet him, and somehow or another it got messed up. But when he came here, what was that like? What was he like? He met my daughter, who was then going to Sidwell, and his mother was a Quaker, and I think his children went there, or at least had some association with Quaker schools. So he had this long talk with Chelsea about who was then 13 about Sidwell and Quaker schools. But it was rather touching, because he seemed still, after all this time, somewhat ill at ease in personal conversations with people he did not know. But it was obvious to me that he had thought about what he would say when he met my daughter. How was he like to you? I mean, did he treat you like the young man, or was he nervous? He sort of identified it is interesting, he told me he identified with me because he thought the press had been too hard on me in '92 and that I had refused to die, and he liked that. He said a lot of life was just hanging on. So we had a good talk about that. But I found it interesting I always thought that he could have been he did some good things, and I always thought he could have been a great President if he had been more, somehow, trusting of the American people, you know. I thought that somewhere way back there, his something happened in terms of his ability to just feel at home, at ease with the ebb and flow of human life and popular opinion.

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And I think also, some of his weaknesses were reinforced by the way he rose to national prominence, because he got elected to Congress by convincing people Jerry Voorhees was soft on communism, and he got elected to the Senate by convincing people that Helen Gahagan Douglas was soft on communism. Then he busted Alger Hiss and got to be Vice President when he was, I do not know, 38 years old 37. Nixon would have been, had he won in '60, would have been as young as I was when he got elected. So I think all of a sudden, boom, one term in the Congress, a couple years as a Senator, boom, you are Vice President, 8 years as Vice President, and how did you do this? You did this by sort of whipping popular opinion up into this frenzy by demonizing your opponent as being a little pink. And I think that kind of reinforced some of his weaknesses. Whereas, if he had had to run like I did, in a little State, where you had to go to every country crossroads, people expect you to run the Governor's office like a country store, and you were used to brutal campaigns and used to trusting people to sort of see through them, if you fought them out hard enough, I think it might have rounded him in a different way. I think it might have prepared him a little. By all accounts, he was a nicer guy before the Jerry Voorhees campaign and that there is something in that. Well, look, when he ran for President, he got 35 percent of the black vote. If he had a good record on civil rights and for a Republican, he had a good record in the House and the Senate. And you know, there is no when he got to be President, he signed the EPA and OSHA and a lot of other stuff. The guy had some and he had a very fertile policy mind. He could get out of his ideological box. Remember, it was Nixon that imposed wage and price controls in 1971. He understood that. He understood that only a Republican could go to China. Which Presidents do you feel the most affinity for, in terms of the way the problems they faced and the way they have handled them? We spoke a little bit about the similarity with Teddy Roosevelt. Are there any others that you feel a particular kinship to? Well, I think Roosevelt and Wilson except I did not have a war, thank God.

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But Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had the same during that whole period, they were dealing with the kinds of challenges that I have dealt with, both at home and around the world. And so I identified with them a lot. There are a lot of others that I like, but I think Harry Truman, in a funny way even though most of the ideas, like the U.N. and the international institutions, a lot of them were hatched and germinated when Roosevelt was still alive Truman also had to create a new era, had to organize a world where our commitment to the world was not an option after the Second World War. But we had to create a set of international institutions where we could be leaders, but in which we were also interdependent. And that is what not only the U.N. but also NATO, the Marshall plan, and the Bretton Woods institutions that have been that we have tried so hard to modify in my time. And Truman I liked Truman a lot. I am from Arkansas, and we border Missouri. I was raised on Harry Truman. David McCulloch did a great job on that book. If you read Merle Miller's Plain Speaking it is a much earlier book it also made him look pretty good, and he was an old man when he did a lot of that talking. Have you read Wilson and FDR, and it ends in Johnson I cannot remember if he put Truman or Kennedy in it or not but this whole sort of tradition of progressivism, of using Government as an instrument of social justice and economic progress. And so they were Princeton, where obviously where Woodrow Wilson was president, did a seminar, or a 2-day symposium, excuse me, on the Progressive Era, on the Presidencies of Roosevelt and Wilson. So they asked me to come and speak about that and about the relevance of that for the work I had done. So I talked about that. But I also said that they were part of a larger tradition that I also felt that this time was a part of, which was defining the Union, defining what America was. When we started the after we ratified the Constitution, there was a huge debate early on between George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and John Marshall on the one hand, and Thomas Jefferson and all his allies on the other, about whether we would have a strong nation and what did that mean. And

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you know, John Marshall subsequently became Chief Justice, and wrote all the great nationbuilding decisions of the first 20 years of the 19th century. But even before that and Alexander Hamilton you remember, wanted to build a great, strong national financial system. George Washington supported him. They wanted a Federal Government that was strong. The Republicans wanted more than the Articles of Confederation, but not all that much more. Now, as I said, when Thomas Jefferson got elected President, he was glad the other side won, because he used that to buy Louisiana and send Lewis and Clark out, which are two of the most important things in the first half of the 19th century that were done. And Louisiana cost only $15 million, but that was one year's Federal budget at that time. Can you imagine what the Congress would say if I said, Hey, I have got a deal for you, and it just costs $1.9 trillion. Let us go do this ? The second battle was the battle to define the Union in terms of who was part of it. That is what Abraham Lincoln, you know, lived and died for. Gary Wills has argued brilliantly that he, in effect, rewrote the Constitution, the common meaning of the Constitution, for the Gettysburg Address, and brought it closer to the natural meaning of the words the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Then the third time we had to redefine the Union was under Woodrow Wilson Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, whom we had one, we moved into an industrial era, and we had this huge wave of immigrants coming into our cities, into our factories. And we had to define, number one, what the role of the Nation was in incorporating all these people and defining the conditions of civilized life child labor, minimum work week, all that stuff. And number two, what the role of the Government was in mediating between the industrial society and the civil society, which was the antitrust laws, in an economic sense, and in a larger sense, all that land Teddy Roosevelt set aside, when people first began to worry about pollution and using natural resources and all that. Teddy Roosevelt partly was able to be our first great conservation President, because people could see that growth in pollution could take away some of our natural resources. And then, of course, Wilson built on that with a social agenda and then defining our responsibilities in the world in terms of World War I and his argument for the League of Nations, which ultimately prevailed, even though he lost it.

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And then the third great time was Roosevelt in the Depression and in World War II, and afterward, Roosevelt and Truman had this excuse me, the fourth time. You had the beginning, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. Then you had the fourth great period, was this period, because what they were doing is, they had first to essentially bring the Government into the heart of the management of the economy. That is what the Federal Reserve and all that had been created, but we did not really manage the economy until the Depression. Then there was this whole idea that the responsibility of the Government was to help build and sustain a middle class society, everything from Social Security to the GI bill. Then, after the war, what they had to do was create the conditions of permanent involvement of America in the world, because Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson got us involved in the world in a leadership way, and then we just walked away from it and paid the consequences. So the cold war was on us after the war. So basically Roosevelt and Harry Truman built the structures within which America could lead and operate in an interdependent world. And I would argue that this period is the fifth great period of nation-defining. Because we have to define what the role of Government is in an information global society, both in terms of empowering people to make the most of their own lives, dealing with a far greater array of racial and religious and social diversity than we have ever had before, and dealing with a world that is very different than the world of the cold war, or the world before that that we used to move in and out of. So we had to have the permanence of involvement that we had in the cold war, with a greater degree of interdependence than we had in the cold war, because it is not a bipolar world. So we have a different set of challenges. And my election spawned a reaction in the Gingrich revolution, or the Gingrich counterrevolution, where if you go back and look at all their arguments for weakening the Federal Government, for toughening stands against immigrants, for turning away from the civil rights claims of gays, for refusing to strictly enforce the civil rights laws and strengthen laws protecting women, the whole social and economic agenda they had and Government is bad the private sector is good basically, they were trying to rewrite the Progressive Era that we built up over this time, and we, I think, essentially defeated them in three stages.

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One was when they shut the Government down, and we beat their budget back. Then we went on to get a bipartisan welfare reform and Balanced Budget Act and the biggest expansion in child health under the Gingrich Congress, the biggest expansion in child health since Medicaid. And three was when, after Gingrich was gone, I vetoed their big tax cut last year, and the public stuck with me. Now, I do not know if you saw it, but earlier this week Al Hunt had a piece on Rick Santorum saying, Where have all the conservatives gone? , in pointing out that all these guys with these rightwing records were out there running away from what they did, running as the new moderates. And in a way, that is a form of flattery. But the point is, every forward progress in this country has always sparked a reaction. And they won some of their reactions. I did not prevail on health care. I did not prevail on gays in the military. I have not won every fight I have been in. But the big things that would have taken us down and taken the country in a different direction the budget and Government shutdown, impeachment, and the big tax cut those three things were the seminal battles, and we prevailed. And if you look at it, if you look at the arguments that we are having, you can go all the way back to the beginning, and it is the same sort of thing that you saw in the fight that Washington and Marshall and Hamilton had with Jefferson and his crowd; that Lincoln had with the people that were against him, and you know, divided the country; that Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had with the people against them; that FDR and Truman had with the people against them. And there is a story about him going to did I tell you this? In the New York Times, in the story about it, about how everybody that hates me or hates her or hates us both, this is their big deal, so they want to give money to Lazio. So he is at a fundraiser in Alabama Alabama. And there is a guy that says, I just cannot stand him. He says, She is a carpetbagger and he did not mean to New York; he meant to Arkansas and he is a scalawag. Now, the scalawags were the Southerners who supported the Union in the Civil War.

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And after the Civil War, all the Southerners who fought for the Confederacy were disenfranchised. So that guy was actually exhibit A of my argument that I am making. And one of the reasons they dislike me so intensely, that crowd, is they think I betrayed they worked very hard, under the cover of Reagan, being quite nice, to basically have the old, conservative, white southern male culture dominate the political life of America. And they see me as an apostate, which I welcome. I mean, we have this so when I take on the NRA or do something for gay rights, to them it is worse if I do it. So when he said I was a scalawag, the guy knew exactly what he was saying, and he did for anybody that read it, did a great service, because he was absolutely accurate. I have no quarrel with what he said. Like Roosevelt, you are a traitor to your class? But it is very interesting, when you see sometime when an adversary of yours says something that you 100 percent agree with, the guy is absolutely right. That is why he is against me, and that is what I have tried to be in my whole life. I mean, I had a grandfather with a fourth grade education, fifth grade education, who was for integration of the schools. And we were still having the Lincoln fight in the South, when I was a boy in school. They are trying to drag you out of here. I owe it to him. We will do one more. I just love Rolling Stone. They have been so good to me. I'd just like the long view and your philosophy about where we are going, what you have seen, and what you think about America. I want to ask you questions about, you know, what have you learned about the American people. You have had a unique exposure to them that nobody else has ever had. I will tell you this. When I leave office, on January 20th, I will leave even more idealistic than I was the day I took the oath of office, 8 years earlier. Because the American people almost they are fundamentally good, and they almost always get it right if they have enough time and enough information. Now, they have got to have enough information. They have got to have enough time. They have to have a way to access it.

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Can you tell us a little bit about how you have gone about intellectually preparing for your second term as president? I am not sure it is an intellectual exercise as much as it is reminding myself of why I ran for president and tapping into what I consider to be the innate common sense of the American people. The truth is that most of the big issues that are going to make a difference in the life of this country for the next thirty or forty years are complicated and require tough decisions, but are not rocket science. that we have the most competitive workforce in the world, that we have a better education system, that we are investing in research and development, that we have got world-class infrastructure, that we are reducing our health care costs, and that we are expanding our exports. On issues like immigration, we have a pretty good sense of what is broken in the system and how to fix it. On climate change, it is a daunting task. But we know what releases carbon into the atmosphere, and we have tools right now that would start scaling that back, although we'd still need some big technological breakthrough. So the question is not, Do we have policies that might work? It is, can we mobilize the political will to act? And so, I have been spending a lot of time just thinking about how do I communicate more effectively with the American people? How do I try to bridge some of the divides that are longstanding in our culture? How do I project a sense of confidence in our future at a time when people are feeling anxious? They are more questions of values and emotions and tapping into people's spirit. Have you looked back in history, particularly at the second terms of other presidents, for inspiration? I have said this before, but one of the things that happened in the first term was that we had so many fires going on at the same time that we were focusing on policy and getting it right, which means that we were spending less time communicating with the American people about why we were doing what we were doing and how it tied together with our overarching desire of strengthening our middle class and making the economy work. I always read a lot of Lincoln, and I am reminded of his adage that, with public opinion, there is nothing you cannot accomplish; without it, you are not going to get very far.

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And spending a lot more time in terms of being in a conversation with the American people as opposed to just playing an insider game here in Washington is an example of the kinds of change in orientation that I think we have undergone, not just me personally, but the entire White House. Let us talk about that in terms of guns. How do you speak to gun owners in a way that does not make them feel as if you are impinging upon their liberty? Well, in our comments today, I was very explicit about believing that the Second Amendment was important, that we respect the rights of responsible gun owners. In formulating our plans, Joe Biden met with a wide range of constituencies, including sportsmen and hunters. So much of the challenge that we have in our politics right now is that people feel as if the game here in Washington is completely detached from their day-to-day realities. So everything we do combines both a legislative strategy with a broad-based communications and outreach strategy to get people engaged and involved, so that it is not Washington over here and the rest of America over there. That does not mean that you do not have some real big differences. The House Republican majority is made up mostly of members who are in sharply gerrymandered districts that are very safely Republican and may not feel compelled to pay attention to broad-based public opinion, because what they are really concerned about is the opinions of their specific Republican constituencies. There are going to be a whole bunch of initiatives where I can get more than fifty percent support of the country, but I cannot get enough votes out of the House of Representatives to actually get something passed. You spoke last summer about your election potentially breaking the fever of the Republicans. The hope being that, once you were reelected, they would seek to do more than just block your presidency. Do you feel that you have made headway on that? And the Republican Party is undergoing a still-early effort at reexamining what their agenda is and what they care about. I think there is still shock on the part of some in the party that I won reelection. There is been a little bit of self-examination among some in the party, but that has not gone to the party as a whole yet.

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And I think part of the reason that it is going to take a little bit of time is that, almost immediately after the election, we went straight to core issues around taxes and spending and size of government, which are central to how today's Republicans think about their party. Those issues are harder to find common ground on. But if we can get through this first period and arrive at a sensible package that reduces our deficits, stabilizes our debts, and involves smart reforms to Medicare and judicious spending cuts with some increased revenues and maybe tax reform, and you can get a package together that does not satisfy either Democrats or Republicans entirely, but puts us on a growth trajectory because it leaves enough spending on education, research and development, and infrastructure to boost growth now, but also deals with our long-term challenges on health care costs, then you can imagine the Republicans saying to themselves, OK, we need to get on the side of the American majority on issues like immigration. We need to make progress on rebuilding our roads and bridges. There are going to be some areas where that change is going to be very hard for Republicans. I suspect, for example, that already there are some Republicans who embrace the changing attitudes in the country as a whole around LGBT issues and same-sex marriage. But there is a big chunk of their constituency that is going to be deeply opposed to that, and they are going to have to figure out how they navigate what could end up being divisions in their own party. And that will play itself out over years. Are there any forces for reform within the Republican Party, people you have been able to establish some sort of working relationship with? Well, look, I have always believed that there are a bunch of Republicans of goodwill who would rather get something done than suffer through the sort of nasty atmosphere that prevails in Washington right now. It is not a fun time to be a member of Congress. And I think if you talk privately to Democrats and Republicans, particularly those who have been around for a while, they long for the days when they could socialize and introduce bipartisan legislation and feel productive. So I do not think the issue is whether or not there are people of goodwill in either party that want to get something done. I think what we really have to do is change some of the incentive structures so that people feel liberated to pursue some common ground. One of the biggest factors is going to be how the media shapes debates.

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If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you will see more of them doing it. I think John Boehner genuinely wanted to get a deal done, but it was hard to do in part because his caucus is more conservative probably than most Republican leaders are, and partly because he is vulnerable to attack for compromising Republican principles and working with Obama. The same dynamic happens on the Democratic side. And I think at least leaders like myself-and I include Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in this-are willing to buck the more absolutist-wing elements in our party to try to get stuff done. You inspired a lot of people in your first presidential campaign, and with your books, by talking about a new kind of politics. And now, four years later, it is a time in Washington that is characterized by nastiness more often that not. How do you reconcile those two things four years in? I believe that what I talked about in 2008 is still where the country is. And it describes my real-world view of how politics should work. I have always been suspicious of absolutism. I have always been suspicious of ideological litmus tests. I am not somebody-when I look back on American history-who believes that one party has got a monopoly on wisdom. So I guess the issue is not that the concept in 2008 was wrong. I think the issue is that we have these institutional barriers that prevent what the American people want from happening. Some of them are internal to Congress, like the filibuster in the Senate. Some of them have to do with our media and what gets attention. Nobody gets on TV saying, I agree with my colleague from the other party. People get on TV for calling each other names and saying the most outlandish things. Even on issues like the response to Hurricane Sandy, Chris Christie was getting hammered by certain members of his own party and media outlets for cooperating with me to respond to his constituents. That gives you an indication of how difficult I think the political environment has become for a lot of these folks. And I think what will change that is politicians seeing more upside to cooperation than downside, and right now that is not the case. Public opinion is going to be what changes that. When you talk about Washington, oftentimes you use it as a way to describe this type of dysfunction.

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It can seem as if you are apportioning blame not just to one party, but to both parties- In fact, that is one of the biggest problems we have got in how folks report about Washington right now, because I think journalists rightly value the appearance of impartiality and objectivity. And so the default position for reporting is to say, A plague on both their houses. On almost every issue, it is , Well, Democrats and Republicans cannot agree -as opposed to looking at why is it that they cannot agree. Who exactly is preventing us from agreeing? And I want to be very clear here that Democrats, we have got a lot of warts, and some of the bad habits here in Washington when it comes to lobbyists and money and access really goes to the political system generally. It is not unique to one party. But when it comes to certain positions on issues, when it comes to trying to do what is best for the country, when it comes to really trying to make decisions based on fact as opposed to ideology, when it comes to being willing to compromise, the Democrats, not just here in this White House, but I would say in Congress also, have shown themselves consistently to be willing to do tough things even when it is not convenient, because it is the right thing to do. And we have not seen that same kind of attitude on the other side. Until Republicans feel that there is a real price to pay for them just saying no and being obstructionist, you will probably see at least a number of them arguing that we should keep on doing it. It worked for them in the 2010 election cycle, and I think there are those who believe that it can work again. I disagree with them, and I think the cost to the country has been enormous. But if you look at the most recent fiscal deal, I presented to Speaker Boehner a package that would have called for $1.2 trillion in new revenue-less than I actually think we need, but in the spirit of compromise-and over nine hundred billion dollars in spending cuts, some of which are very difficult. And yet, I am confident we could have gotten Democratic votes for that package, despite the fact that we were going after some Democratic sacred cows. And had we gotten that done, it would have been good for the economy, and I think it would have changed the political environment in this town.

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Democrats, as painful as it was, as much as we got attacked by some of our core constituencies, were willing to step up because it was the right thing to do. And the other side could not do that. It seems as if you are relying more on executive orders to get around these problems. You have done it for gun control, for immigration. Has your view on executive authority changed now that you have been president for four years? I continue to believe that whenever we can codify something through legislation, it is on firmer ground. It is not going to be reversed by a future president. So a great example of that is the work we did on do not ask, do not tell. There were advocates in the LGBT community who were furious at me, saying, Why do not you just sign with a pen ordering the Pentagon to do this? And my argument was that we could build a coalition to get this done, that having the Pentagon on our side and having them work through that process so that they felt confident they could continue to carry out their missions effectively would make it last and make it work for the brave men and women, gays and lesbians, who were serving not just now but in the future. And the proof of the pudding here is that not only did we get the law passed, but it is caused almost no controversy. It is been almost thoroughly embraced, whereas had I just moved ahead with an executive order, there would have been a huge blowback that might have set back the cause for a long time. But what I do see is that there are certain issues where a judicious use of executive power can move the argument forward or solve problems that are of immediate-enough import that we cannot afford not to do it. And today, just to take an example, the notion that we would not be collecting information on gun violence just to understand how it happens, why it happens, what might reduce it-that makes no sense. We should not require legislation for the CDC to be able to gather information about one of the leading causes of death in the United States of America. Have you ever fired a gun? Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time. Not the girls, but oftentimes guests of mine go up there. And I have a profound respect for the traditions of hunting that trace back in this country for generations. And I think those who dismiss that out of hand make a big mistake.

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Part of being able to move this forward is understanding the reality of guns in urban areas are very different from the realities of guns in rural areas. And if you grew up and your dad gave you a hunting rifle when you were ten, and you went out and spent the day with him and your uncles, and that became part of your family's traditions, you can see why you'd be pretty protective of that. So it is trying to bridge those gaps that I think is going to be part of the biggest task over the next several months. And that means that advocates of gun control have to do a little more listening than they do sometimes. Sticking with the culture of violence, but on a much less dramatic scale: I am wondering if you, as a fan, take less pleasure in watching football, knowing the impact that the game takes on its players. I am a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I'd have to think long and hard before I let him play football. And I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence. In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe will not have to examine our consciences quite as much. I tend to be more worried about college players than NFL players in the sense that the NFL players have a union, they are grown men, they can make some of these decisions on their own, and most of them are well-compensated for the violence they do to their bodies. You read some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on. That is something that I'd like to see the NCAA think about.3 The last question is about Syria. I wonder if you can speak about how you personally, morally, wrestle with the ongoing violence there. Every morning, I have what is called the PDB-presidential daily briefing-and our intelligence and national security teams come in here and they essentially brief me on the events of the previous day. And a big chunk of my day is occupied by news of war, terrorism, ethnic clashes, violence done to innocents.

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We just had a few things we wanted to get your views on. What has Sullivan told you about his views on Roe versus Wade? Can you straighten that out? Exactly what you heard him say when he was announced. He has supported my position 100 percent. The only thing he said, and that is what he said. So, you do not envision dropping him under any circumstances? I have not heard one single person suggest that. If Roe versus Wade is overturned, as you support, how concerned would you be about women being allowed to have abortions in cases of rape, incest, and -- -- We will have to wait and see what the decision is on Roe versus Wade. Obviously you have to comply with the law, and what the law is is defined by the courts. What about this new Brady option we are hearing about on S&L's -- the idea of charging for insurance for depositors? It has not come to me as a formal recommendation. And so, I am not going to say what I am going to do, but that is one option. I will answer the question with a question. Is it a tax when the person pays the fee to go to Yosemite Park? Using the park -- there will be a lively debate on this, but I would simply leave that rhetorical question out as one way of answering your question. I do not want to signal that this is what we are going to do. I am not trying to suggest that. But it sounds like you are receptive to the idea, though? I am receptive to any idea that will solve this problem. I am not receptive to a tax increase. Governor Sununu said over the weekend -- he was talking about whether your no-tax pledge increase is a 1-year increase or is it throughout your term. Can you sort of clarify your thinking on that? I am not thinking beyond anything other than to say I will not raise taxes, and I have got to stay with that approach. And again, we are going to, you know, just send a proposal up there that solves this budget problem without raising taxes. And the fundamental reason for that is, I want to keep the economy going. I want to keep the recovery -- not recovery, but the growth going in this economy. I do not want to kill off investment or employment opportunity. And the higher the taxes, the more you do that.

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So, I really feel strong on that particular point, and I have not thought beyond 1 year, Jerry, or anything of that nature. You mentioned in your Inaugural Address that you wanted to eliminate the scourge of drugs. How can you do that? I mean, what do you have in mind when President Reagan was unable to eliminate drugs? I think the elimination of drugs is going to stem from vigorous change in the society's approach to narcotics. The answer to the problem of drugs lies more on solving the demand side of the equation than it does on the supply side, than it does on interdiction or sealing the borders or something of that nature. And so, it is going to have to be a major educational effort, and the private sector and the schools are all going to have to be involved in this. I would like to think that we can funnel more money into it, but I also have this overriding problem of the deficit to contend with. So, the question is, we cannot permit the measure of concern on any issue -- drugs or education or environment -- to be determined simply by how much Federal money goes after the problem. We cannot do it. We have got to use this office to encourage all elements in our society to participate in the fight against drugs, in the fight to improve education, or working to make the environment better. Because we are dealing with scarce resources in terms of Federal money. And the law has constraints on all of us in that regard. Secretary Baker said in the confirmation hearing that he was concerned about going ahead with the Moscow summit on human rights in 1991. Are you concerned about that? Well, I think that we need to look for performance. And I think the Soviets know that we feel this way after the Secretary's testimony. And I think that Mr. Gorbachev knows of my commitment to human rights because I had several meetings with him. And I'd say that there has been definite improvement in some ways there. But let us see what develops as we move towards that conference date. What are your views on Mr. Greenspan's comments on inflation from yesterday? I have not read them yet, and I want to be sure to read them. I must say I am encouraged that the markets, at least recently, have been saying that things are reasonably stable and certainly not there is no signals out there in the markets that this economy is in real trouble.

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