Bill Clinton's Hidden Life

The bad side was that it was also a time when people maybe put too much emphasis on public things and too little on private things, when there was too much belief that it was OK to try anything—drugs or sex or whatever. I think for a lot of people in my generation, a lot of our adulthood has been about trying to keep what was great about the '60s alive and to grow out of what was wrong.

I've never become a cynic. In some ways, I'm just as idealistic today as I was when I was 22. I believe in the possibilities of this country and of this system. I hear people say it doesn't make any difference, and all that strikes me as crazy. The history of America is replete with examples that elections matter.

I still care profoundly about the things I cared about then. And yet I think I'm much firmer than 20 years ago on the role personal, family and community responsibility has to play in dealing with the problems of this country. There are some things the government can't solve. Nobody can substitute a program for personal character and conduct. My problem with this whole Bush-Quayle family-values strategy is not that I disagree with everything Quayle said but that I see it as a cop-out for their having no vision and assuming no responsibility.

His brother's drug addiction. It had, I guess, as big an impact on me as anything, maybe even more than the birth of my child. In 1984, state police caught him dealing cocaine and came to me and asked, "What do you want us to do? We can arrest him now, or we can treat him like we treat anybody else—do this five more times and make damn sure he's on his knees so he'll have to tell us who his supplier is. We think your brother is not a serious drug dealer. He's an addict. He's selling drugs to support his habit." So I said, "Do it." And I had to sit there on a secret for six weeks, while the undercover people kept setting him up over and over again. It was a nightmare. But I think it was the right thing to do, and I think it probably saved his life.

I never knew whether my brother or my mother would forgive me. But I had to be governor, not brother, not son. When it came out, he denied he was an addict. "You don't understand," I said. "If you're not an addict, I want you to go to prison for 10 years. You've been putting cocaine into the bodies of others for money. You're my brother, and I love you, but I want you to go away for a long, long time."

That's another thing that made me less obsessed, by the way. One of the things you learn with the counseling [which the Clinton family entered to help his brother] is that other people get so much into their own lives they shut out what's happening to family members in trouble. I should have probably known he was in deep trouble. In counseling, I learned that he and I were archetypes of children of alcoholics and that I basically was required to grow up before my time and had to be very careful, as I grew older, not to overuse the peacemaking skills that I developed as a child.

On Hillary and Chelsea. Hillary has just gotten better, like old wine. I mean, she always had great character, great passion for doing what was right. Her ability to deal with and to bring out the best in people as well as to pursue an incredible personal journey in her own mind and spirit is just extraordinary. I never cease to be amazed by her ability to grow. A lot of her growth has had to do with the time we've had to be parents, which made us different and better people. But when I see her now, she looks just like the person that I met over 20 years ago except better in every way. Her life turned out the way life ought to. She just got bigger and deeper and better. And I think she will for as long as she lives just because she has an incredible character and spirit and a great mind. It's amazing to me to watch.

I have a child who is much more tough-minded and savvy than I ever dreamed. I asked if she thought I ought to run and said, "It's going to be tough. They'll say terrible things about me." She said, "Dad, they always say terrible things about you. You ought to go to my school. You can't imagine the things they say. You just got to blow it off and go on."