-- Leon Panetta
White House Chief of Staff

I N T E R V I E W

-- James Baker
Former Secretary of State

I N T E R V I E W

-- Dave McCurdy
Former Congressman

I N T E R V I E W

-- Garry Wills
Author and Historian

I N T E R V I E W

Former California Congressman Leon Panetta joined the Clinton White House as Chief of Staff in 1994. Panetta was fired from the Nixon administration in 1970. He switched parties and won a house seat as a Democrat in 1977. Panetta rose to become chairman of the House Budget Committee in 1989.

When you came to this job (in June 1994) what was it that you felt about the administration, the way the White House was being run that needed to be changed?

Well, there were really three basic areas that I thought needed to be addressed when I became Chief of Staff. The first was the discipline of the operation and the fact that there had to be greater authority exerted to ensure that everybody responded to our superior, that we didn't have people that were just kind of wandering through the White House, or going into the Oval Office, sometimes wandering around into meetings. There was no disciplined organization in which people knew there was a chain of command here and an organization box.

Secondly, was the importance of establishing a better focus to the operation in terms of the President's schedule and what was happening. So that each day there was, in fact, a particular focus. It wasn't just bouncing around, it wasn't just going from place to place or doing a series of events, that there was a focus to what had to be done each day.

Thirdly, when you have an institution like the White House, it is extremely important that everything that had to go to the President had to funnel through the Chief of Staff. So that what I did was I basically said, look decisions that have to flow to the president, rather than having them go in indirectly have to flow through the Chief of Staff. So I created a flow through the chief of staff's office that said, what goes to the president, I have a chance to see it, make sure that it is in a form that can be presented to the president, ensure that he is presented with options that have been thought out so that there is a an ability to ensure that there is an organizational presentation that goes to the president.

So it was basically discipline, focus and ensuring that Chief of Staff control the flow to the president.

Were there too many issues in the first two years, too many different things that were being done, while health care was the big issue on the side?

Well, the president came in with an agenda that he wanted to implement on behalf of the country. And he had a pretty clear idea of what needed to be done. Now, I can remember when I first went to Little Rock, to talk with the president, he had a fairly clear idea at that time. He knew he had to confront the budget, he knew that there were some clear investments that he wanted to make in education, the environment. He knew he wanted to take on the crime issue. But, fundamental to all of it was basically dealing with the economic issues and the economy.

So he had a pretty aggressive and ambitious agenda, there's no question about it and we had a Democratic Congress, and the feeling was that this was the moment to strike, that in fact you could work with a Democratic Congress, you could get these things done. As a matter of fact, I think one of the reasons I left my position as chairman of the Budget Committee was, instead of having to just talk about dealing with the deficit, you really had the opportunity not only to develop a budget plan, but in fact to see it happen. And I think the president felt that way, too.

And I think what he understood was that as aggressive an agenda as you have--- and the accomplishments were significant, whether it was the budget or family leave or the crime bill or NAFTA or GATT-- that unless you're bringing the American people along, that ultimately your support is going erode, because, you know, the American people don't see how this picture comes together. And I think that was the fundamental difference.

As important as it was, the health care bill didn't even come out of committee, why did '94 become such referendum on the president?

There's no question that the Republicans basically decided they would make it a referendum on the president and they used that successfully. But, I honestly think that what it was about was the fact that change was coming at the American people in pretty rapid order, at that point, that we had, in fact, passed a huge budget, that even when you pass a huge budget like that, in terms of trying to reduce the deficit, that that's not something in which you immediately reap the reward of it, you're setting in place a five, six-year process to get you to a reduced deficit. It's working, people see that now, they didn't see it then.

I think the fundamental difference, now, is that the American people see what these programs, in fact, have produced in terms of their daily lives and that's what's making the difference. The other thing is that the president, as I said, began to understand what the bully pulpit is all about. That the presidency, particularly the reason the second two years produced that is because he knew he was dealing with a Republican Congress that would be much more confrontational in terms of what he was trying to do for the country. And so by virtue of that he had to bring the message directly to the American people, had to use the executive powers that were part of the presidency, had to use whatever changes he could do without having to resort to the Congress.

In a way, President Clinton already has had two terms hasn't he?

Well, the second two years was obviously different in the sense that what we had to confront with the Congress basically made a transition, in the sense that you couldn't just simply say to the Congress, you know -- we did say, we want more money for Headstart, we want more money for education, we want to be able to make these changes, but we also knew that we were confronting a Congress that basically wanted to cut education by $30 billion. So, in light of that, where do we go with education?

Well, what the president said to the country is, look, education is important, so I'm going to continue to try to push education issues on the American people. I'm going to focus on kids in school, in terms of safe and drug-free schools. I'm going to focus on uniforms. I'm going to focus on discipline. I'm going to focus on the kind of issues that families get involved with when the kids go to school. I'm going to continue to focus on college opportunities, the $1,500 tax credit, the deduction on college, the ability to take your deduction on tuition. Those are the issues then that the president could, as president, continue to address.

In the meantime, Dole, frankly, never even took up the issue of education, except to say he was against the Department of Education and that school teachers are basically part of a union operation and therefore he was opposed to it. Without recognizing that the American people, fundamentally, are concerned about an issue like education. I think the president has driven that issue far ahead of Dole, in terms of where the American people are at.

James Baker, III, served as Ronald Reagan's White House Chief of Staff from 1981-85, and treasury secretary from 1985-88. He then ran George Bush's successful 1988 presidential campaign, later serving as secretary of state and chief of staff in the Bush White House. Presently, Mr. Baker is a senior partner of the law firm Baker & Botts.

For a number of years, I was quite supportive of his foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East and Russia, where I thought he was doing the right thing. I think that my criticism is related primarily to the fact that overall we have lost credibility abroad. I don't think America is feared by our adversaries or respected by our allies the way we used to be. And that's my primary criticism.

I have given him credit, and do give him credit, for pursuing peace in the Middle East. I've crtiticized the lack of results in a situation where you make 25 trips, for instance, to Syria and then you don't bring anything home. I think that has a way of diminishing U.S. leadership and U.S. credibility. I don't think you send the president of the United States to Damascus and not get anything for it. That's a big chit and I 've been critical of that.

Bill Clinton came into office bashing the Chinese on human rights and bashing George Bush on coddling dictators, if you will, and now, of course, his policy has been to embrace the Bush policy of constructive engagement towards China. But we're still sending mixed signals. We're still sending confusing signals. We tell the Chinese, for instance that we're not going to grant a Visa to Lee Teng-Hui, the president of Taiwan, and then four days later the White House overrules the Secretary of State. We told the Chinese at the Chinese Foreign Minister level that we weren't going to do this. Four days later the White House overrules this and we've got the visa. And naturally the Chinese go absolutely ballistic when they read about it in the Taiwan press, and that's how they learned about it. Now, that's inexcusable.

With respect to Bosnia, I've been very critical because I think that for two years we sent mixed signals. It's a kind of overall generic criticism that I have leveled at the Clinton administration foreign policy. I think it's really important that a president of the United States see his resolve match his rhetoric, and he threatened military action in Bosnia over a period of quite some extensive period of time, always backing off, maybe for good reason. Maybe the allies wouldn't come along, or something else. But he never should have threatened it in the first instance if he wasn't going to follow through.

Under the Bush administration, when the Gulf War came along, there was a lot of attention paid to putting together an international coalition. President Clinton has not had the support of many of those allies. Why?

I don't know whether it was just a failure of consultation or whether we were simply unable to persuade them through leadership. I simply don't know. But I do think it's extremely regrettable that we have now seen the fraying of that coalition that was so painstakingly put together.

It's too bad that there's a power vacuum in northern Iraq now, at least in part because we let the Kurdish situation get so out of control. We were evidently not paying the kind of attention we should have been paying to the Kurdish leadership up there to keep them from beginning a civil war that resulted in one of them asking Iraq to come in and the other playing footsies with Iran. Now there's a power vacuum. Sadaam Hussein has very adroitly moved into it. I think that's a failure of American leadership or a failure of American diplomacy. We should have been able to prevent that.

For a substantial period of time, the Clinton administration bet everything on Boris Yeltsin. What did you think of that policy?

I've been constantly supportive of their support of Boris Yeltsin. Why? Because I worked with Boris Yeltsin. I know him to be a reformer. I do not buy this old canard that they have stuck with Yeltsin too long. After all, he is the first freely elected president of Russia. Who else should we deal with?

It's like the people who criticized the Bush administration for sticking with Gorbachev too long. We didn't lose one thing by hanging in there with Gorbachev because we knew he was changing the system and he was reforming it. And so what happened? We saw the collapse of Communism and the end of the Soviet Union, saw it go out with a whimper and not a bang. It happened peacefully because we stuck with Gorbachev. And for the same reason I support the Clinton administration sticking with Boris Yeltsin.

What do you think Bob Dole's foreign policy would be like in terms of differentiating it from Clinton's?

I think that Bob Dole's foreign policy would be much like the foreign policy of Ronald Reagan or George Bush. I believe that America's word was respected when those two men were president of the United States. I say that with all my bias hanging out as one who served with them in high positions, but I say it also as somebody who still travels extensively throughout the world, and I hear what people are saying in private about America and American leadership and American resolve.

Bill Clinton has made a political recovery that has been pretty amazing. As a political strategist, how do you explain this?

I don't ascribe that recovery to anything that he has done or really not done in foreign policy. I don't think he has touched it. It's what happened on the domestic side, and it's what's happened as a consequence, frankly, of the stunning and overwhelming defeat that the Democratic Party suffered in 1994 - the emergence of a Republican Congress, both houses, for the first time in so many years, and the fact that the negotiations between the White House and Congress were won and won solidly, I think, by the executive branch. I think those were the things that did it.

Dave McCurdy, a Democrat from Oklahoma, was elected to Congress in 1980. He introduced Bill Clinton at the 1992 Democratic convention. Like Clinton, he chaired the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization that has tried to move the Democratic Party to the center of the poltical spectrum. McCurdy ran for a Senate seat in Oklahoma in 1994, but was defeated.

You, at one point, after the '94 elections gave the president a lecture. Tell me about that, what did you tell him?

Well, I don't think it was a lecture, we had a meeting at the White House after the '94 election. Having campaigned in 30-some-odd states for the president, and worked very closely throughout his campaign, and first years in his office, I was disappointed in the early performances on certain issues. The president brought to this party, and I think to the country, a message of hope, one of inclusion and opportunity and equal opportunity, but not guaranteed outcomes and responsibility, and yet the first few proposals seemed to move away from that, and I think it was a disastrous outcome in '94. I think the American public spoke, rendered a judgment on the first two years and it was not good.

Do you consider the '94 election results pretty much a referendum on President Clinton's first two years?

Oh, absolutely. And the Democratic Congress. It was clear in 1992, just before the president was sworn in, at a dinner at Pamela Harriman's home, we had a chance to talk and one of the cautionary pieces of advice I gave at that point was, I said, Mr. President, you campaigned against a brain-dead Congress, don't hook up life support to them now. Unfortunately, I think many of the President's advisors within the White House saw the Congress as a vehicle to their success, where many of us actually saw Congress as a vehicle of its downfall, if anything, and they hooked up too closely to the leadership.

The congressional Democratic agenda at that time was different than what Bill Clinton ran on as for President and what I thought he should govern to be successful. Ironically, the '94 loss actually helped the president. It helped him shift course. It clearly brought out some of his better political instincts from the standpoint of being able to compromise, to work, and I think it honed his message, and you've seen real success since then.

If you had to point to a single mistake that you thought was particularly costly in the opening days of the administration, what would it be?

Well, I think there were a couple of mistakes. I mean, tactically, the gays in the military became a signature item for the administration, and it was an unfortunate one. I think the stimulus package, again, sent a signal that we're, rather than balancing the budget and reducing the deficit and being under fiscal control, it looked like there was going to be a kind of a giveaway or big government approach. But the straw that broke the camel's back, even more than the tax measures, I think was the health care proposal. Many of us, Jim Cooper from Tennessee and myself and others, urged the president and the first lady to look at what was really broken in the health care sector and try a more incremental approach, try to address those issues, get a success under the belt, and then move forward. Unfortunately, Ira Magaziner and others looked at a much broader solution than perhaps there was even a problem, and I think it sent a signal that this was a party, again, that was resorting to big government, when, in fact, the president was calling for a smaller government, a more responsive government.

The point in time I think here and, again, after our meeting at the White House and our discussions after the '94 election, the point that I say there was a clear point of departure, when the president in his State of the Union said that the era of big government is over. That was what we had been hoping for all along, because that was a signal that this was going to be a different kind of administration.

Bill Clinton has been, you know, there is no better politician perhaps in the country, and he's had a lot of political lives, and he had the opportunity in one four-year term to actually almost cram two terms into it, the first two years and the second two years.

Delineate the difference between the first two years and the second two years.

The first two years was trial and error, I think, and some mistakes. A certain naivete, a certain maybe a little arrogance by a number of his staff and people who felt that they could accomplish anything, and they were going to change the world dramatically and, again, issues such as the gays in military and the stimulus package and the tax bill and health care package really sent the wrong signals.

The second two years, I think he really went back to those roots of the Democratic Leadership Council, the President was chair of (the DLC) and I was chair of (the DLC), he went back to those values issues, community, responsibility, opportunity. Again, trying to reinforce those values. The power of the presidency is not the stroke of the pen, the power of the presidency is to lead and use the bully pulpit to set a tone, and I think the President learned that. In the first two years, it was more kinetic energy and working the 18-hour days and trying to pass legislation. The second two years was much more controlled, much more value-oriented, must more trying to set a tone for the country, a little more international involvement. He matured, his hair got grayer, but I also think he learned a great deal, and I think that's something the American people would judge him on.

You know, the Democrats have been out in the wilderness, so to speak, as far as the administrations, for some time. And there is a learning curve. I think the president and the White House had to learn. The first two years was pretty chaotic, the second two years is a much better running machine and, based on that, I think you're seeing results in the public today.

He almost has had two terms, hasn't he?

I don't recall any administration in recent memory that has had two very clearly defined segments in a four-year term, but the '94 election was a signal to the administration to change things. I mean, the fact that the Congress changed hands. Probably the best thing for Bill Clinton, and maybe even the Democratic Party in the long-run. Most of us would hope not to have to admit that, but I think it's the truth. This president has performed better under a Republican Congress than he has under a Democratic Congress. They reinforced some of the less desirable tendencies of the administration as opposed to helping him kind of reinforcing the good, strong qualities that the president has. And it was important for the American public, too.

I mean, Newt Gingrich overreached. His style overreached. And people saw that one of President Clinton's strengths was that he was a check on the excesses. It's tough to govern as a moderate. It really is, and those who came in and said, if you really want to have signature items then you have to have a legislative agenda. When I said to the president in 1992 that he ran against a brain-dead Congress and he shouldn't hook up life support to them, his response was, but they're going to determine the outcome of my legislative program. And, at that point, it was a signal that we might be in trouble because I don't think a president is gauged or measured by the success of a legislative program. I think he is measured by much broader standards today, and it's that leadership quality in providing vision which is most important.

One of the questions Republicans constantly want to raise is, who shows up for the second term, Bill Clinton of 1992 or Bill Clinton of after the '94 defeat?

I believe Bill Clinton of '94, '94-plus, the last two years of the administration, will show up.

The reeducated Bill Clinton?

I think that the Bill Clinton of community and responsibility and opportunity shows up. If he truly wants to make a mark as a president in history, you know, other than international events which always have an impact, if he wants to do it as a peace-time president who sets the agenda for the 21st Century, I think he's going to have to continue to the direction he's going. Most likely the Congress will not change hands, if it doesn't, then he's forced to continue that direction. If one house were to change, it's still a divided government. So, I think by necessity he's going to do that.

You'll see some changes in the administration. His appointments will be critical. I think there will be some key cabinet positions that will change. We'll have to watch those appointments to see whether, in fact, he appoints people now who, again, represent that moderate message, that bipartisan approach, that message of values and community and responsibility.

Garry Wills, author and educator, has written extensively on the presidency. His books include "Nixon Agonistes" and "Lincoln at Gettysburg", which was awarded a Pulitzer prize in 1993. He teaches at Northwestern University and is presently writing a book about actor John Wayne.

What should the public think of Bill Clinton after one term, heading into a second one?

I don't know that I could give one answer because he's a blur of images and he always has been. He's somebody who seems to lack a center. Most people think now apparently that Dick Morris was hired to do a "soulectomy," taking it out of Clinton. But I don't know that there was that kind of center in him. He's a person who is so extroverted, so good at blending in with the feelings and the sympathies of whatever audience he's dealing with that you wonder if there's anyplace to go home to at night.

Clinton in a way has had two terms already in the White House -- the first two years punctuated by the '94 defeat, health care and the '94 defeat, and then his last two. Describe those for me.

The first one, the first mark of it was a lack of discipline. Remember he was kind of having too much fun in the office and wasting a lot of time, very valuable time in those early days -- showing people through the White House, having movie people in and all that kind of nonsense

So then he began to get his bearings to some degree and was hit with this tremendous reversal of the 1994 elections in which he had to get up and say, "Well, the president's still relevant, we still have a Constitution."

But what's interesting is how well he's done whatever he's done in these two years. He's come back from nowhere, from sunk below sight to this now generally commanding position. And it took a lot of scrambling. It took living moment by moment by moment, bluffing with Gingrich -- holding out long enough, then yielding just enough. That's probably the best kind of politics for Clinton. He can feel all the pressures of the moment and can respond for the moment. Long-term views don't necessarily enter into that, and you can contradict yourself as long as you survive because that's the job. Where you get through the day and you're still alive, you've done your job.

Clinton said following the '94 election, "I agree with a lot of what the electorate said yesterday." And it struck me that this was the guy who lost the '80 Arkansas gubernatorial race and stepped out there and said, "My God, you rejected me."

Yes, but in both cases he said: "I'm sorry. I must have done something wrong. I'm sorry. I'll win your good graces again." So in that case, when he said, "They must be right. I was doing something wrong and I'll have to agree with them," it's like his saying to businessmen, "You resent the fact that I raised your taxes and I agree with you and I apologize." That's a difficulty if somebody wants to please everybody all the time.

What do you think the Clintons, both Hillary and Bill, learned from the experience of health care?

The misconception, obviously, was that Hillary Clinton was so good on education reform in Arkansas -- the one thing that he could claim some credit for -- that she could do the same here. She couldn't for a lot of reasons, some accidental. The fact that her father died in the formative point of the debate and that she was absent a lot of the time I think made a big difference. She turned a lot of things over to Ira Magaziner and others that she otherwise might not have. She tried to be too secretive. She tried to be too clever to kind of trick insurance companies into compliance or into cooperation. It was too big to take on at that stage of the game and she was not skillful enough. She was out of her league at that point.

And I think what they've learned is to be less ambitious in their goals, or at least I hope they've learned that. They should have learned that. And they probably should have had a fail-safe fallback position, which they didn't. They should have said, "We'll go for this, and if we can't get it, we'll go for this or this or this," so that they could come away with some kind of victory. And they didn't. They're both fairly good politicians, but Clinton was not enough involved in it himself. He's the day-to-day tactical politician better than she is. So I suppose they learned a lot of things, and one of them is that she will not live in such an exposed position henceforth.

You've written a fair amount about the scandals that have been visited upon the Clintons, or they've visited upon themselves. How important do you think these will be?

They're important, obviously, because they were a constant clog upon the president, and I think he handled it badly. His wife handled it badly. They dragged their feet. They refused to release information even though very good advice was given to them very early on that they should.

On the other hand, it was very complicated. So that's hard for the public to understand. Most of it was in the past. Now people are saying Filegate, et cetera is not. Arkansas was an exotic world to people -- big business in the boondocks -- and very hard to see.

But the trouble with all of these is that they're cumulative, that there is something to some of them. He did associate with people who have been convicted, not of things that he was directly involved in. And, of course, there are all the womanizing rumors, and again, he's had to resort to really quite strange things, like saying that the commander-in-chief's role gives him a military exemption from being prosecuted by Paula Jones. That's so dumb to try to pull that. They've had a very hampering effect.

And they have strengthened within a certain group of people this really ferocious hatred of him and of his wife -- I think even more of his wife. There were always people who resented people, who thought the President -- LBJ or FDR -- was a liar. But this really visceral hatred -- you have Falwell putting out tapes that say they're complicitous in murder. I don't know if you went through the emporium of the convention center in San Diego, but they were selling "Dismemberment Dolls" there, where you can buy a Hillary doll. And the guy demonstrated. He pulled off an arm and threw it to the ground, pulled off a leg, pulled off the head and pretended he was going to eat it. This is an incredible hatred.

In a second term, which Bill Clinton shows up?

Well, I don't know that there's a choice between A and B. People said he ran right and governed left, but I really don't see all that difference. There's not been a great deal of left that I can see. The trouble with him is that he runs in campaigns simultaneously all the time, and he runs and governs all the time, and he runs and governs right and left all the time. I think that there's not two Bill Clintons, we're going to get one or the other. There is this blurry Bill Clinton who reacts to situations, and perhaps that's a good gift in a time when we are in such a time of tremendous disorienting change, this blurry onslaught of demographic and technological and educational change.

He is a policy wonk. He is fascinated by that. He does explore ways to approach it much more than most presidents would. His unpredictability is clearly a flaw and a fault, but it may also be a qualification and the kind of thing that might carry him through.