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

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Dec 11, 2000

Mr. Wenner. Did you see--was it a conscience thought to you that this could be the turning of the tide, and if you focused it correctly, if you said, "You know, you can't love your country if you hate your Government," that this would crystallize that feeling?

The President. I think I felt that after I had some time to think about it. In the beginning I was just horrified about all those people dying, all those little kids killed and hurt.

Mr. Wenner. What I'm trying to get at is, once beyond that obvious first reaction---

The President. Yes. I mean, it occurred to me that, you know, the American people are fundamentally decent, and they've got a lot of sense. And I thought that this might break a fever that had been gripping us for too long. And I think it did.

Mr. Wenner. And you thought, if I can take advantage of this opportunity--I mean, to have this tragedy--in every tragedy comes an opportunity, so is this an opportunity where I can make people rethink that idea.

The President. I think in a way, at least at some--maybe not even at a conscious level, the American people were rethinking it. And I think maybe that's why what I said at the memorial service struck a responsive chord in the country.

Mr. Wenner. What I'm trying to get at is, was that a deliberate thought on your part? That I have an opportunity as President to---

The President. Well, I thought that--yes, I was conscious of what I was saying.

Mr. Wenner. Did you connect it in some way to a kind of metaphorical bomb-throwing of Newt Gingrich, of the real anti-Government stance that he was taking at the time?

The President. I was careful not to do that. I wanted it to change the American peoples' attitude toward public servants and their Government. But to do it, you had to focus on what happened.

One of the things that I didn't like about Newt--and he certainly wasn't responsible in any way for the Oklahoma City bombing--because one of the things I didn't like about him is, he was always blaming the 1960's or liberals for everything that went wrong. When that woman, Susan Smith, drove her kids into the lake in South Carolina, he blamed the 1960's, and it turned out that the poor woman had been sexually abused by her father, her stepfather, who was on the local board of the Christian Coalition or something.

And when that woman dropped her kid out of the window in Chicago, he blamed the welfare culture. He was always blaming. So I didn't want to get into where I was doing reverse blame. I just wanted to try to make it clear to the American people that we shouldn't have a presumption against Government in general or public servants in particular.

Mr. Wenner. What about Columbine? Where did you first hear the news about that? And again, what was your reaction to that?

The President. I believe I was in the White House when I heard that, but I'm not sure. But I know that I called the local officials and the school officials from the Oval Office. You know, that was only the most recent and the most grotesque of a whole series of highly visible school shootings that we've had--a number of them in the South, one of them in Jonesboro, Arkansas. That was in my home State, and I knew some of the people who were involved, who run the school and in the county and in the city.