Remarks in a Discussion at the Ministers' Leadership Conference in South Barrington, Illinois - Interview

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, August 14, 2000

I mean, if you wanted to make a living doing that, you had to get your days and nights mixed up. You had to go to some club, stay up all night playing jazz; you'd sleep all day. How was I going to have a family? How was I going to have a life? And it certainly wouldn't be worth it unless you literally were the greatest person doing it.

And I knew I was real good but not great. I thought to myself, I can do this really well, what I'm doing now, and I love it. And it's like the only thing I could ever think of where every day you're getting up and peeling another slice off the onion of human existence. There's like an endless layer of exposure to different people and different problems and different dreams.

So I decided when I was about 16 that if I could do it, I would. And I would do it because I could do it better than I could do anything else. And I must say it was a great advantage to me in life. It's like there are all these great stories coming out now on Tiger Woods and how he's done things younger than anybody else has ever done and how he used to keep Jack Niklaus' golf records taped on his bedstead, you know. He decided younger than I did what he was going to do. It's a huge advantage.

You pay a little price for it, too. None of these decisions are free in life, but I think it is a big advantage. And I've always been grateful that I just knew when I was young.

Reverend Hybels. There's always that picture of you shaking hands with John Kennedy. Was that as momentous in your mind at the time as people have made it out to be since?

The President. Yes, but not in the way they make it out to be. I mean, that is I think if I had never gone in and shaken his hand, I still would have tried to go into politics because it's what I wanted to do. But I admired him, and I supported him when I was 14. He was running for President--we used to have these great debates in my ninth-grade class. And my very best friend as a child, who is still one of my closest friends--we stay in touch all the time and he sends me an E-mail once a week. He's in the computer business in Arkansas and comes to see me and tells me when he thinks I'm all wet. But he was there. He came from a Republican family, and I came from a Republican county. So he was for President Nixon, and I was for President Kennedy. And we'd have our little debates in the ninth grade.

And for me, it was basically about civil rights, which I felt very strongly about. So when I got to go to Boys Nation, the American Legion did a great thing for me. It was a huge deal for me--I was a 16-year-old kid from Arkansas--to get on an airplane, go to Washington, go to the White House, stand in the Rose Garden. And we all were standing there in alphabetical order by State, so Arkansas was near the front. And President Kennedy gave this little speech and complimented us on what we'd done in civil rights legislation, because it was a mock Senate program, this Boys Nation program. He said we were doing better than the real Senate, which is probably still true. [Laughter]