Bill Clinton's Hidden Life

Private versus public character. I didn't have any problem exciting the voters at first. I was running ahead of George Bush in New Hampshire. Nobody thought there was anything wrong with me until I started to have the misfortunes I had in the primaries. And then some of my opponents tried to reinforce it. I'm not complaining about it; it just happened.

What I hope will happen now is that people will have a fuller picture, that they'll know I'm not a perfect person, but they'll see what drives me, what motivates me, understand what I fought for at home and what I care about and then make a good judgment about what's best for them. I want the voters to vote on what's best for them. My job is to make sure if they vote against me they know exactly what they're doing. And I don't think today most voters have anything like a clear and complete picture of who I am, where I came from, what I fought for and what I want to do as president.

I've proved that I'm tough enough to take on tough problems and to stay there and fight them through. And I don't think people know that, and that's probably the fault of our advertising or maybe something in my style, a manner that's too reassuring. I've always hated artificial macho behavior by politicians. Ross Perot has always been open about saying that in Texas they borrowed some good ideas from our education-reform program in Arkansas. But I didn't run off from the fight; I got re-elected and eventually brought the teachers, who were angry about some reforms, into our camp. After they put the program through in Texas, Perot wasn't a part of the fight in the next election, and the incumbent governor got beat, in no small measure because the people who'd fought for the changes didn't fight them through in the election.

Hillary and I said at the beginning of this campaign, which I thought was an example of good character and not bad character, that we'd worked hard on our marriage; we'd had difficulties, and we'd saved it. You know, I've been treated like I had a character problem because I acknowledged that. And maybe I shouldn't have. But I think that's not evidence of bad character. I think change is tough for anybody. And I think we ought to elect somebody president who can face facts and make change and make tough decisions. Other people may have better rhetoric about it, but I think I've got a better record of it. It could be that revealing so much makes me look weak, not tough. But if that's so, then it's not my maturity that's at issue. Then people want to be lied to, they want to be conned, they want to be manipulated. And I'm just not very good at that.

I think we made a number of errors in the campaign. We should have spent more time talking about my record as governor and the fights I fought. I still think that that's a better example of political maturity and the readiness to be president than any of this personal stuff. I got elected governor in a state that is very tough politically five times for 14 years total. Nobody else ever did that. And I did it fighting for things that were good, not bad, building up the best in people. I never won an election based on fear or darkness. I won them because I was the candidate of hope and change.

I think a lot of this personal stuff can be way overblown. I've been reclined on the national couch. In some ways this obsession with the personal, to a far greater extent than in any presidential campaign in history, is partly because people can't imagine what an effective presidency would be like anymore. They don't know how to believe government can make a difference in their lives, so let's just vote on all this personal stuff. If you do that, you may wind up voting for somebody who's either lucky or dishonest. What really ought to count is: What have you put yourself on the line for? I can answer that question. And I think my answer is better than my opponents' answers. I have put myself on the line for more than 10 years to give kids a better education, to open opportunities, to modernize an economy with no help from Washington.