Bill Clinton's Hidden Life

I really believe in a lot of the old-fashioned things like the constancy of sin, the possibility of forgiveness, the reality of redemption. And I believe it in a Baptist way—that a lot of a person's spiritual journey should be intensely private and shared only with God. That's why I have real difficulty dealing with some of the apparent demands of modern politics—to discuss your personal life in excruciating detail. That's not a part of my religious faith where I come from. So I've been pretty open based on what I think people are entitled to know about my life. And in terms of what I've done that I shouldn't have done in my life, I believe God knows it all anyway, and I should confess it to God and deal with it that way. I'm not sure [without faith] that I would have endured what I went through in the primaries and had the inner strength to know that that wasn't me, that somehow I was being seriously misrepresented and that I couldn't just roll over and die in the face of it.

My faith has taught me to see this as a ministry. I think everybody has work to do, and you're supposed to do the best you can. Not a religious ministry. But every person has a calling in life, and you should try to make the most of your work. Each person can fulfill the intention of God for human life by giving dignity to whatever work they do.

On ambition. One reason I ran for president this year is I knew that I wasn't obsessed with winning it anymore. I didn't want to get into the race when the only thing in the world was winning. I think that's one of the things that's killing Bush. He says, "I'll do whatever it takes to win."

I've been a governor longer than most people serve. The longer I did this job, the more what turned me on was solving problems, not winning elections. If you look at how presidents have to live today, anybody that would turn down the life I've got for the life I'm going toward just to hold the job would be nuts. The only purpose of having the job is to change the country. When I got into this race, I realized, well, I'm going to do the very best I can. And if I get taken out, I'll find something else to do. You may only be fit to be president when you're not obsessed with it.

Political evolution. I supported George McGovern in 1972 based on his record and that he was against our involvement in Vietnam. That didn't mean that I had to be on the far left on every issue. I've always been for challenging the Democratic orthodoxy. I've always felt that unless we could become a party seen as pro-growth and pro-environment, pro-civil rights and tough on crime, pro-business as well as pro-labor, we were done as a national party.

When I was working for McGovern, I realized that a majority of Americans were just so alienated from what they thought of the Democratic Party. That had a big impact on me. It's why I was so hopeful about Jimmy Carter, who seemed to be a man committed to equal opportunity but who came out of a more mainstream political heritage. After Walter Mondale lost in 1984, I thought the only way we could win was not by bashing Reagan but by going beyond Reagan. I got involved in the Democratic Leadership Council not because I thought it was a collection of Southern white boys to pull the party to the right. I thought the party needed moderating, but I was driven more because I thought the DLC was a group of people who cared about ideas and were willing to think in new ways and not care whether they were politically correct. Too many debates in the party were about yesterday's issues in yesterday's language. What this country needs is dramatic change based on common-sense values, kind of a radical middle. I think this Perot boom, which I hope is a boomlet, reflects a desire for that.

The 1960s. I often joke with my friends that on balance I'm still glad I was a child of the '60s, but there sure was a price to pay, if nothing else in the way people look back at us, like the marijuana thing. The good was that people really caught up in the '60s cared about one another, cared about civil rights and poverty and making things better, and saw themselves as part of a larger whole, with responsibilities not only to themselves but to others. And even though there was a fair share of pain and disillusionment, there was a great sense of possibility, of hope—a sense that the system could be made to work. It's very different now, when the real problem is 70 percent of the people think there's no connection between what candidate Bill Clinton says and what President Clinton would do.