All language subtitles for (2012) American Experience. Bill Clinton. II Blood Sport.eng

Ladies and gentlemen,

the president of the
United States of America,

William Jefferson Clinton.

On a crisp January morning
in 1993,

Bill Clinton
took the oath of office

as the 42nd president
of the United States.

Promising a new start,

he sounded the themes
of change and optimism

that had won him
the White House.

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

but the engine
of our own renewal.

There is nothing wrong
with America

that cannot be cured by
what is right with America.

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

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

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

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

in a three-man race,

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

Clinton's victory had come
despite a deep divide

in the country.

Millions had responded to his
campaign message of change.

But millions of others feared
where the country was heading

and did not trust their
inexperienced new president

to lead them through
uncertain times.

There was a group of people

who had a visceral dislike
for Bill Clinton.

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

with his personal problems.

They thought that he represented
a 1960s generation

that was always trying
to pull a fast one

and not playing
by traditional rules.

They despised him and thought
there was something illegitimate

about his presidency.

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

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

He was loathed because,
in the first place,

I think we've all known somebody
like Bill Clinton

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

And the wife
was terrifying as well.

She was pushy,
she was humorless,

she couldn't get her hair
figured out.

There were just so many things
about Hillary

that we didn't like.

Despite all their education
and experience,

the Clintons were unprepared for
their reception in Washington.

MIKE McCURRY:
He still labored
under the assumption

that he could
bring people together

through power of persuasion.

It was stunning to him

that Republicans would just very
blatantly tell him,

"We're not here
to cooperate with you

"and this is going
to be open warfare

from the very beginning."

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

and to the world's capital,

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

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

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

people played behind curtains,
you just never knew

what was going to come out
and strike you.

90 seconds.

Is there a teleprompter?

What are we going to do
about the teleprompter?

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

No governor ever elected
to the presidency

has ever understood
what they were getting into.

And he looked more unprepared
than most.

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

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

it looked like a big mistake
had happened

and some little kid had been
allowed in there

with his $12 digital watch.

Everything about him suggested
he was not up to this.

Clinton ran his White House

as if it were an extension
of the campaign,

filling his staff
with 30-year-olds

with little Washington
experience.

He wanted to be part
of the hurly-burly,

to hear every opinion,
weigh in on every decision.

The atmosphere
in the White House

in that first year was chaos.

He wanted to do everything.

He wanted to deal
with every problem.

He was in the middle
of every conflict.

They would have these
college bull sessions

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

The meetings were endless,

especially if Clinton
was in the meeting,

it would go on and on and on.

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

making a decision tentatively
at midnight

and then waking up
the next morning and saying,

"Let's rethink this."

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

as staffers wandered freely
in and out of meetings.

It wasn't the kind
of orderly process

that Republicans
brought to the table.

It was all these discordant
voices, informal voices,

people who didn't even wear
ties and jackets

when they went into
the Oval Office, my God!

You've got to be a little grand.

Because the American people
want it.

It's the biggest job
in the world,

and I think we
underestimated that.

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

As Clinton took office
in the winter of 1993,

the economic crisis that had
propelled him into office

showed few signs of abating.

We had had a recession.

We had high unemployment.

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

was going to get
on its feet again

or whether we could be in
for a long period

of real difficulty.

So he came into a very
difficult environment.

During the transition,
Clinton had promised

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

But he quickly discovered
how easily

his focus could be deflected

by an unscripted comment
to a reporter.

Do you intend to keep
your commitment

to lift the ban on gays
in the military?

Yes.

I want to... I have...

you know what my issue
on this is:

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

have performed with great
distinction in the military.

I don't think status alone

in the absence of some
destructive behavior

should disqualify people.

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

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

"and in furtherance of that,

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

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

But he didn't.

He just said the first part.

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

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

was derailed
to a, you know, a lurid issue

in the minds of many people.

Mr. President, would you
consider backing down

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

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

We're here to discuss
the economy,

which is all
I discussed yesterday

with congressional leadership,
contrary to the press reports.

But would you consider...

We're here to discuss
the economy.

Trapped by his own promise,

Clinton attempted
to lift the ban,

but ran into heavy resistance
from two allies:

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
Colin Powell

and Democratic senator Sam Nunn.

So, you have the military
leadership bucking him,

the Democratic congressional
leaders, led by, you know,

chairman of the Armed Services
Committee saying no,

and the president is powerless
to do anything about it.

And so he's now put
into a position

where he has to try to negotiate

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

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

After weeks of fruitless
wrangling,

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

That few could even understand.

An open statement
by a service member

that he or she is a homosexual

will create a rebuttable
presumption

that he or she intends to engage
in prohibited conduct,

but the service member
will be given an opportunity

to refute that presumption.

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

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

so you could move on.

Other capitulations
quickly followed.

He dropped a stimulus bill
and campaign finance reform

in the face of congressional
opposition.

It became very apparent
very soon

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

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

crack heads,
push his weight around,

say to any members of Congress
in the leadership that,

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

"because I'm going
to remember it.

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

You know,
LBJ knew how to use power.

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

When attorney general nominee
Zoe Baird got into hot water

over her failure to pay taxes
for household help,

Clinton hardly put up a fight.

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

"We're having problems
with Zoe Baird."

To me this is a big deal,
personally,

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

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

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

and the press is on my back."

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

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

And he decided no.

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

and I'm going to start
this afternoon

looking for an attorney general.

In order to placate the opposing
party's criticisms

and media criticisms,
which began on day one,

the Clinton administration
kept folding, kept giving in.

I think that undermined
his presidency.

It showed he could be rolled.

The media, which had embraced
Clinton during the campaign,

now began to turn on him.

When his nomination
of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg

to the Supreme Court
took a tortuous course,

reporters pounced.

Your turn late, it seems,
to Judge Ginsberg

may have created an impression,
perhaps unfair,

of a certain zigzag quality

in the decision-making
process here.

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

perhaps disabuse us
of any notion

we might have along those lines.

Thank you.

I have long since
given up the thought

that I could disabuse
some of you

of turning
any substantive decision

into anything
but political process.

How you could ask a question
like that

after the statement she
just made is beyond me.

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

Did I make a good decision
or not?"

But as president, every decision
that Bill Clinton makes,

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

is receiving merciless scrutiny.

The messiness of the process
became part of the story

and Bill Clinton
found it maddening.

The Clintons arrived
in Washington

in the midst
of a media revolution.

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

created an insatiable appetite

for colorful coverage
of Washington.

Cable television was beginning
to become a force.

And the competition
among cable news

became a vicious fact
of Bill Clinton's life.

Sex sold.

Corruption sold.

Throughout the spring of 1993,
a series of scandals,

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

Hillary found it hard to shrug
off the negative press.

Stories, like the one alleging
that she broke a lamp

during a heated argument
with the president,

embarrassed and humiliated her.

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

"but I guess I've been rezoned."

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

that she wanted to see done.

She couldn't understand
why the media

was focusing constantly
on their private life.

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

The lawyer chosen to lead
the Clintons' defense

was their close friend
and deputy White House counsel

Vince Foster.

Vince, he got very upset
with the attacks.

He felt we couldn't stop
these attacks,

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

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

This is the partisan game
down here.

And I kept trying
to calm him down.

But I did see him getting
sadder and sadder.

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

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

that he was going out
for a few minutes.

That evening, his body
was found in a secluded park

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

A torn-up note
was found a few days later

at the bottom
of Foster's briefcase.

"I was not meant for the job

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

"Here, ruining people
is considered sport."

I was very concerned

that, knowing how close
Vince Foster was

to both Bill and Hillary,

that it would be
sort of the final straw

for Bill Clinton and Hillary
Clinton in Washington.

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

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

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

That something very intangible
would be lost.

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

The pain goes deeper
with Hillary,

and it can stay there longer.

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

Far from destroying
the Clintons,

Foster's death steeled them
against their adversaries.

For Hillary, there could be
no more illusions:

this would be a war
with only one winner.

They were toughening up
by this time.

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

that people are trying
to kill you

and nothing is going
to make them happy.

Foster's suicide only fueled

the media's fascination
with scandal.

Within days of the discovery
of his body,

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

The immediate reaction
to Vince Foster's death was,

"What happened here,
and were the Clintons involved?

Were they covering
something up?"

There begins bubbling up
this notion

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

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

he's having an affair
with Hillary...

All of these terrible things.

Attention focused
mostly on some files

mysteriously removed from
Foster's office after his death,

including documents related to
an old Arkansas land deal:

Whitewater.

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

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

At the time, Bill Clinton
was a young attorney general

making just over $25,000 a year.

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

was the family's
main breadwinner.

When an old friend named
Jim McDougal approached her

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

Hillary decided to invest.

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

"Put a little money
into this thing."

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

and this is going to be great."

Well, I guess in hindsight,

every person promoting
any sort of land scheme

thinks it's going
to be a world-beater

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

Like many of McDougal's
real estate projects,

Whitewater went belly-up.

To prop up his scheme,

he made illegal transfers
from his own savings and loan,

Madison Guaranty.

McDougal was charged with fraud.

President Clinton, you just
mentioned James McDougal,

your former business partner.

A lot of questions
have been raised

about his business practices.

Fifteen years later, President
Clinton was asked by reporters

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

To the best of my knowledge,

he was honest in his dealings
with me,

and that's all I can comment on.

The White House was totally
unprepared for it.

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

I had nothing to do with
the management of Whitewater.

Hillary had nothing
to do with it.

We didn't keep the books
or the records.

There were some of us who said,

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

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

"It's a little deal
down in Arkansas

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

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

and as new things leaked out,

as inconsequential
as they might be,

the press would say,

"Oh, the Clintons
have been hiding stuff."

And there was built up
relatively quickly

that the Clintons
were just stonewalling.

The emergence
of the Whitewater scandal

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

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

as his first major piece
of legislation...

The federal budget...

Was headed for a showdown
in Congress.

We knew that if Bill Clinton
lost that vote,

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

and the Senate
to go along with him.

That means he doesn't
have power.

That's the definition
of lacking power.

And if this early
in the administration

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

Abandoning his campaign promise
to cut taxes

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

of the administration's
deficit hawks

to reduce spending
and raise taxes.

Bill Clinton's
first big decision

was an intellectual act
of faith.

We're on the eve
of historic action.

Without deficit reduction,

we can't have sustained
economic growth.

He gambled in the midst
of a recession

that he'd get
more economic growth

if he was fiscally conservative,

and if he began
to reduce the deficit

that would convince
the bond market

to start reducing interest rates

and the economy would grow.

That was just a theory.

No one knew it would work.

More than anything,

Clinton had wanted to invest
in the middle class.

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

He didn't become president
to say no.

He didn't become president
to administer pain.

He didn't become president

because he wanted to placate
Wall Street.

But, in fact,

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

As the budget reached Congress,

Clinton knew it was
on a knife-edge.

With Republicans
unanimously opposed,

the president needed
nearly every Democratic vote

to pass the bill, but the party,

like the administration,
was in disarray.

Liberal Democrats complained
about the cuts in spending,

while conservatives
opposed the tax hikes.

I think that the president
will fail,

the party will fail,

and the country will fail
if we enact this budget.

Faced with the possibility
of a catastrophic defeat,

Clinton got down to work.

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

"nothing else would matter."

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

He would call, he would meet.

He would grovel,
he would strong-arm.

He would use every tactic
any leader has at his disposal

to try to get this thing done.

But the days when a president
could command votes,

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

Bill Clinton was used
to Arkansas.

You know, he knew
the good old boys,

he knew who he had to go to.

He could walk on the floor
of the legislature

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

he could get any vote he wanted.

That wasn't true,
here in Washington.

And in many ways it was
frustrating for him

because he really felt

that he knew what was best
for the country

and that by the sheer power
of his personality

and his words and his smile,

that somehow he could
make it work.

The budget wended its way

through a series of committee
and floor votes

in the House and Senate.

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

Getting calls during the voting
process that someone had turned,

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

Imagine that.

This is the budget, this is
like his entire presidency

goes down if he fails,

and you're up to one vote
each time.

In early August,

the final budget bill reached
the floor of the House.

With the vote still in doubt,

all eyes turned
to a freshman Democrat

from an historically
Republican district,

Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky.

We had her down as voting yes,

and she votes no early on.

And so we said,

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

try to turn her vote around."

First of all,
as a former member,

if you're going to vote
against the leadership,

vote and get the hell
out of there.

She didn't do that,
she stayed there.

So suddenly these guys
are all pouring on her,

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

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

This is important
to the administration."

She then says something like,

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

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

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

And I said, "Absolutely!

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

With the vote
and his presidency on the line,

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

We're all crowded around
this little television set,

really with quite a high level
of uncertainty.

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

With an equally narrow victory
in the Senate,

Clinton's final budget
became law.

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

It contributed enormously
to what turned out to be

the longest economic expansion
in the nation's history.

22 million new jobs were
created, productivity went up.

Incomes rose at all levels.

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

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

in Clinton's fortunes.

After passing his budget,

Congress approved the North
American Free Trade Agreement

with overwhelming
Republican support.

The same month,
he signed the Brady Bill,

instituting background checks
for anyone purchasing a firearm.

NAFTA and Brady culminated
ten months

of intense focus
on domestic affairs,

but beyond America's shores,

a troubled world
would wait no longer

for the president's attention.

The Cold War had kept
a lot of tensions quiet

and a lot of groups quiet.

And now, with that over,

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

Ethnic hatreds, regional
tensions that had been

under that iceberg
of the Cold War...

Were now popping out
and were real problems.

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

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

Were those worthy of our time
and attention?

This was uncharted territory.

We were all reaching for,

all searching for some new
grand unifying theory.

Give us a new way of looking
at the world.

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

The first president
since World War II

who had not worn
a military uniform,

he lacked confidence
as a commander-in-chief.

Clinton came to the White House

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

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

To a great many people
in this country,

that was legitimately
something to be worried about.

Clinton's first major
foreign policy crisis

came in the African nation
of Somalia,

where a warlord named
Mohamed Farah Aidid

was terrorizing
the local population

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

Clinton inserted U.S. Special
Forces into Somalia

to capture Aidid.

During a mission on October 3,

two Blackhawk helicopters
were shot down.

American forces
sent in to assist

were pinned down
by overwhelming firepower.

Before they could be extracted,

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

Around the world, images
of a dead American soldier

being dragged through the
streets enflamed public opinion.

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

it had expanded
on Bill Clinton's watch.

So when things turned bad,
it was hugely unpopular,

and Bill Clinton bore
the brunt of that.

You need to understand
the average citizen.

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

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

"Why are we there?

"Why should we continue to help?

"Why are you keeping
the boys there?

Bring the boys home."

That sort of political pressure

that President Clinton
and his team had to deal with.

The backlash in public opinion

contained what seemed a clear
lesson for the young president:

military intervention, without
a compelling national interest,

came with unforeseeable
risks and costs.

It sent a chill
through the administration

and made them much more
reluctant to intervene

in other parts of the world.

And where that came home
in the most profound way,

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

was in Rwanda.

Rwanda, an African nation

a thousand miles to the west
of Somalia,

was suffering through its own
civil war between two tribes,

Hutus and Tutsis.

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

The Hutu government
blamed Tutsi rebels.

When the plane was shot down,

all hell broke loose,

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

The killing caught
the Clinton administration

entirely by surprise.

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

on the television screen
there was shooting going on.

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

What is that?"

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

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

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

He said, "Yes, sir."

Ultimately, some 800,000 Tutsis
would be killed.

But with the Black Hawk Down
incident still fresh,

the Clinton administration
did virtually nothing

to stop the slaughter.

We needed international support
in Rwanda,

but the will to intervene
was not there.

They knew what was happening,

but they were not about
to take the risks.

Rwanda lived in the shadow
of Somalia

and paid the price for what
had happened in Somalia.

Clinton's foreign policy

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

If Somalia had demonstrated the
risks of military intervention,

Rwanda proved the costs
of doing nothing.

I know the president
felt awful afterwards.

Awful.

As it came out
and we understood the scale,

the enormity, we realized that
there are sins of omission

as well as sins of commission.

This was a horrible omission.

Here we go.

All right, flip it, Chelsea.

Battered by a year Hillary
described as "hellish,"

the Clintons
were looking forward

to their first Christmas
in Washington.

Escaping the White House,

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

Bill and Hillary had always been
doting parents to Chelsea,

trying to keep her life
as normal as possible.

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

very protective of Chelsea,

and managed to keep a cordon
of privacy around her,

let her grow up
more or less naturally.

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

but showed no such consideration
for her parents.

In mid-December,

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

when a call
from the Washington Post

once again plunged them
into the roiling currents

of the Whitewater scandal.

I got a call from Bob Kaiser,

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

And he said,

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

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

"for some Whitewater-related
documents,

"that we're getting stonewalled,

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

Many on his staff
counseled the president

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

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

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

"if you don't give these
documents over

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

"Why don't we just do it now

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

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

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

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

You've got to go convince
Hillary."

Hillary's attitude
toward the press,

and thus towards
the Washington Post,

was to pull back,
to reveal nothing,

to keep the media
or anybody else

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

So she's locked down.

Finally, after about two weeks,

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

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

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

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

And basically it said:

"Dear Washington Post,
screw you.

No documents."

Clinton's refusal to turn over
his private Whitewater records

was a red flag to many
of his political enemies.

In early January,
Republican senator Robert Dole

demanded the appointment
of a special prosecutor

to investigate Whitewater.

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

But every day there's
another little drip

coming from somewhere.

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

Most of Clinton's advisors

urged him to appoint
a special prosecutor,

but Hillary and White House
counsel Bernie Nussbaum

argued against it.

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

"and they won't find anything

"they will try to find
that person.

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

"to remember something
that you did in Arkansas

"in the last 20 years
which was illegal.

"This will last, Mr. President,

as long as you're president"

"We're trying to run
a presidency

"and a White House here.

"This is not going to go away.

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

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

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

"Tell me what to do.

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

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

We finally persuaded Hillary,

much against her
better instincts,

to call the president

and say that we wanted him to
authorize Attorney General Reno

to appoint a special counsel.

Exhausted and heartsick over
the recent death of his mother,

Clinton did not put up a fight.

On January 20, 1994,
Attorney General Janet Reno,

acting on Clinton's
authorization,

appointed lawyer Robert Fiske
as special counsel

in the Whitewater matter.

Most of the newspapers
in the country asked me

to have a special
counsel appointed.

That's what I have done.

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

I want a full investigation.

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

and to be over with.

Years later, Clinton would say,

"It was the worst mistake
of my presidency."

By the spring of 1994,

Bill Clinton had endured
18 months of attacks

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

Tired of playing defense,

he set out to reclaim
his presidency

with one grand gesture.

Clinton understood

that very few presidents create
their own greatness.

Greatness is usually
thrust upon them by a crisis.

Abe Lincoln had the Civil War,

Franklin Roosevelt had the
Depression and World War II.

And so that was a challenge
for Clinton.

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

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

President Roosevelt tried,
President Truman tried,

President Nixon tried,
President Carter tried.

Every time, the special
interests were powerful enough

to defeat them,
but not this time.

Health care was to be

the giant monument
of the Clinton presidency.

Under our plan,

every American would receive
a health care security card.

Bill Clinton held up
this health care card

that we were all going to get.

Every one of us were going
to get this card

from the government, you know,

certifying that we had
health care coverage,

and we were all certain

that we were absolutely
going to get this done.

To lead the signature initiative
of his presidency,

Clinton turned,
as he always did,

to the person he trusted most.

This is a crucial moment

in the fight for health care
reform in our nation.

We all know our country
needs health security

that's decent, affordable
for every American.

There are those
who would cynically say

he owed her
for standing by her man,

despite Gennifer Flowers and all
the rest during the campaign.

But I think it was
something else.

Clinton adores her.

And he especially
adores her mind.

We cannot provide

primary and preventive
health care in America

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

Bill Clinton really believed

that if anybody was going
to come up with the answer

to the most vexing public policy
problem out there,

it was going to be Hillary.

It was one of the stupidest
political decisions

that Bill Clinton ever made.

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

Hillary Clinton
took to her new job

with all the energy
and determination pent up

during the previous year.

This is an issue
that affects everybody.

In forums and town meetings
across the country,

she heard stories
of insurance abuse,

exorbitant health care bills,
and poor quality care.

But once back in Washington,

she shut out nearly
every outside voice,

relying on a tight circle
of advisors

to write a 1,300-page plan

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

There was a rigidity and an
unwillingness to really listen.

The mark of a good politician
is to listen

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

The frailty of Hillary

was it was too cloistered,
too walled off,

and she really thought what she
perceived as the public opinion

in favor of health care

would override the resistance
in Congress

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

This was covered
under our old plan.

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

By the summer, Hillary's plan

was being pilloried by the
health insurance industry

as a big government take-over
of health care.

We spent more than a year

trying to legislate something
the country didn't want.

Having choices we don't like

is no choice at all.

They choose.

We lose.

We scared people by saying,

"The health care system
isn't working,

and here comes the government
to fix it."

And Ronald Reagan had been
schooling this public

for many years now that
the government is the problem.

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

Reagan had won that argument.

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

or avert the looming
political catastrophe.

In the president's mind,

this was something
that he had given to Hillary

and he was very, very reluctant
to override her.

And I think that because
of the husband-wife relationship

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

It inhibited Bill Clinton

from following his own
independent judgment,

his own best instincts
of when to compromise.

He found it difficult to defy
her very powerful wishes,

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

Socialized medicine
makes me sick!

Socialized medicine
makes me sick!

Throughout the summer of 1994,

as lawmakers heard from
their frightened constituents,

Hillary's health care bill
lost support.

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

the Clinton health care bill
was dead.

The defeat of health care
was a huge defeat.

It was the number-one objective,

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

or at least felt like
a repudiation

of the Clinton administration.

By the fall of 1994,

the Clinton presidency
was at its lowest ebb.

Weakened by scandal
and the defeat of health care,

Clinton was about
to be challenged

by a new and formidable rival.

I am a genuine revolutionary.

They are the genuine
reactionaries.

We are going to change
their world.

They will do anything
to stop us.

Brimming with self-confidence,

Georgia congressman
Newt Gingrich

had spent more than a decade

planning his assault
on the Democratic Party.

He was a giant personality.

He was one of
the best policy wonks

and thinkers
of new ideas around,

but his style was
very different from mine.

His personality
and approach was...

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

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

Newt thought
the reverse was true,

that politics was war
by other means.

Gingrich's ultimate goal was
nothing less than a dismantling

of what he called
the "liberal welfare state."

He would begin
by trying to break

the Democrats'
40-year stranglehold

on the House of Representatives

in the upcoming
midterm elections.

We had some people
that were not satisfied

to just passively go along

with being in an abused,
mistreated minority.

And there were
a lot of Republicans

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

"This is where we belong
and this is okay,

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

Newt started rockin' the boat.

Gingrich decided that
the best way to achieve

a Republican victory
in the midterms

was to run against Clinton.

Republican candidates
across the country

morphed their Democratic
opponents into the president.

Look at congressman
Tim Johnson's voting record.

It looks just like
Bill Clinton's liberal agenda.

The plan was to nationalize
the election.

Newt saw fundamental flaws

in the Democratic Party's
relationship

with the American electorate.

And he wanted to develop
and exploit those

and run a campaign
based on that.

As the elections approached,
Clinton hit the campaign trail,

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

Part of Bill Clinton's persona
is an abiding belief

that if he can
just have enough time,

he can win over
just about anybody.

Clinton was sure his record

could yet win over
the American people.

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

In September, he added
a new ban on assault weapons

to his list of accomplishments.

But scandals,
the failure of health care,

and foreign policy missteps

weighed heavily
on public opinion.

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

"Harold, if I can just
communicate to enough Americans

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

we'll win this."

I now declare the polls open.

One of the big questions
of the day is

whether the Republicans
have been successful

in turning this election into
a referendum on Bill Clinton

as they had wanted.

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

for President Clinton
and his party.

I had called a friend at NBC

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

and she told me,

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

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

"Apparently you guys
are doing so well

that there must be something
wrong with the polling,"

and that was the beginning
of a hopeful evening

that turned into a glorious one.

This is truly
a wildly historic night.

I mean, this is just...

The Republican Revolution
of election '94

shook Capitol Hill
like an earthquake today.

Its reverberations
went into statehouses

and moved the whole political
landscape sharply to the right.

By the end of the night,

Republicans had picked up
54 seats in the House

and eight in the Senate,

winning control of both chambers
of Congress.

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

I was still in the basement
in the West Wing,

over to the second floor
of the residence

to tell him
what he already knew,

that we had lost
the House and the Senate.

That Christmas was another
dismal one.

Clinton wandered the corridors
of the White House

obsessing about his defeat.

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

In politics,
you want to be loved.

Politics is about
wanting to be loved,

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

And how do you deal with that?

He really went through
a lot of, you know,

of kind of internal conflicts.

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

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

But at the same time,
he was asking himself,

"How do I fix it?"

There was no doubt in my mind

that Bill Clinton could come
back or would come back.

He always came back.

Bill Clinton was
constitutionally incapable

of not coming back.

The real question was how.

In what form?