Interview With Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone Magazine - part 2 - President Bill Clinton - Interview

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Dec 11, 2000

Now, there are other problems that may develop---

Mr. Wenner. Another reason to vote for Gore.

The President. Another huge reason to vote for Gore, because, you know, Governor Bush has said that he doesn't think that's the business of the American military. We're only supposed to fight and win wars and let everybody else do this. He kept talking about Kosovo, I noticed, in a way as if we were the only forces in Kosovo. We were only 15 percent of the soldiers in Kosovo.

Presidential Politics

Mr. Wenner. Let me change the subject, back to Washington. Why do you think you were such a lightning rod for partisanship and bitterness and so much hatred during your term now?

The President. I think there were a lot of reasons. I think mostly it's just because I won. The Republicans really didn't--they believe the only reason they lost in '76 to Jimmy Carter was because of Watergate. They believe that, from the time Mr. Nixon won in '68, they had found a fool-proof formula to hold the White House forever, until some third party came on. That's what they believe.

Mr. Wenner. Did you ever hear anybody articulate that, the Republicans-

The President. Well, in so many words. I had a very candid relationship with a lot of those guys. They would tell me what was going on. I think they really believed that America saw Republicans as the guarantor of the country's security and values and prudence in financial matters, and that they could always turn Democrats into cardboard cutouts of what they really were; they could sort of caricature them as almost un-American; and that basically the Congress might be Democratic most of the time because the Congress would give things to the American people. But the Republicans embodied the values, the strength, the heritage of the country, and they could always sort of do, as I said about Dukakis, reverse plastic surgery any Democrat.

So I came along, and I had ideas on crime and welfare and economic management and foreign policy that were difficult for them to characterize in that way. And we won. And they were really mad. I think I was the first President in a long time that never got a day's honeymoon. I mean, they started on me the next day. I think that was one thing.

I think, secondly, I was the first baby boomer President, not a perfect person, never planned to be--I mean, never claimed to be--and had opposed the Vietnam war. So I think that mane them doubly angry because they thought I was a cultural alien, and I made it anyway.

Mr. Wenner. Do you think that the cultural-

The President.--Southern Baptist, because the dominant culture of the Republican Party--President Reagan put a nicer image on it. But the dominant culture were basically white southern Protestant men who led the surge of the new Republican Party, first under President Nixon and the silent majority and, you know, blue-collar people, and then it came to an apotheosis under President Reagan.

So I think that, you know, they didn't like losing the White House, and they didn't like me, and they didn't like what they thought I represented. And that all happened at the time you had this huge growth in conservative talk shows and these-you know, sort of associated think tanks and groups and networks that grew up in Washington from the time of Nixon through the time of Bush.