Posted on 12/06/2001 12:47:02 AM PST by HAL9000
Though the mission of the Clinton Presidential Center will focus on building a better future, Bill Clinton said Wednesday that the library won't avoid the controversies that riddled his presidency when examining the past."Impeachment? Absolutely," Clinton said during an hour-long discussion with reporters. "One day we'll have some presidential historians who know something about what went on, who don't have such a vested interest in appearing on television.
"What I did was a matter of record, but what I want is the whole record out."
After Clinton broke ground on his $104 million presidential complex east of the River Market District, he went to the Old State House, where he first spoke with the History Channel's Roger Mudd and then met with local reporters.
He touched on several subjects, including the challenge of writing his memoirs, and expressed regret that U.S. soldiers died Wednesday in Afghanistan. Most questions focused on the future of the Clinton Presidential Center.
In past months Clinton received high-dollar offers to build his library elsewhere. The former president's graduating class from Georgetown University offered $30 million to move the planned facility to Anacostia, a part of Washington notorious for crime and urban blight.
"I was offered maybe even more to take it to New York," Clinton said.
But in the end, the big money and the delays over acquiring the Little Rock site didn't matter.
"I always wanted it to be here," Clinton said. "If it hadn't been for the people here, I never would have become president. I think that it's better to have these national assets dispersed throughout the country."
Far removed from the Oval Office, Clinton said he is having a good time writing his memoirs, but structuring the outlines and recalling events is more difficult than he expected. And his memory isn't as sharp as it once was, he noted.
"The project is under way," Clinton said of his writing, for which he is reported to be paid more than $10 million. "I've got all my records together. I've got an elaborate outline. I've got a system so that every time I remember something when I go somewhere, I write it down."
When he's finishing writing about his eight years as president, will he ever run for public office again? Perhaps for governor of Arkansas?
"I can't imagine that," Clinton replied.
And what about President Bush's recent executive order to deny public access to thousands of presidential papers despite a law that mandates they be open 12 years after a president leaves office?
"I'm comfortable with the current law and I intend to follow it," Clinton said. "I'm not criticizing. ... I'm just saying what I think the law ought to be, and people can do what they want."
Clinton said he wouldn't comment much on Bush's plans to try Osama bin Laden and other suspected terrorists in military tribunals rather than in open court. Some fear that such a system, intended to protect national security, eventually will erode freedoms.
"I just think that while this thing is going on, you should all comment about that and say whatever you believe about that. But I don't think I should," Clinton told reporters. "It's not the right thing for me to be doing right now. Maybe after some time passes, I'll have something to say about this."
Through his presidential library, scheduled to open in 2004, Clinton said he wants to pursue several initiatives from his administration, such as racial and religious reconciliation, the fight against the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and economic empowerment.
He's working on many of these goals now, he said, noting he's already focusing on New York City's economic recovery as well as India's.
"I have done a lot of work in India through a foundation I set up with the Indian-American community ... to help rebuild western India after the earthquake," Clinton said. "I hope [it] will change the future for all of the parts of India."
Meanwhile, from his work with former South African President Nelson Mandela to start an AmeriCorps program in that country to his efforts to promote racial tolerance, Clinton said he keeps busy.
"In January the [Clinton library] foundation may have its first religious reconciliation conference," Clinton said. He didn't say where the conference would be held, but it would focus on Islam and the modern world in light of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Former presidents are among an elite group that has unique opportunities and resources to reach out and help people, Clinton said.
"So I'm not going to wait until this library opens."
Copyright © , Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved.
I'm rememorizing this word. Thanks!
It is, indeed, a great word!
PRESIDENT CLINTON has presented his survival of impeachment as a personal triumph in which the American people stood at his side in a patriotic fight against enemies of the Constitution.
President Clinton: believes historians of the future will salute his defence of the Constitution Evoking an almost heroic view of his ordeal at the hands of the Republican-controlled Congress, Bill Clinton said historians of the future would salute his defence of the Constitution. His words seemed part of an effort to shape his own political legacy. This process includes reaching out to a population which has always warmed to his personal touch, not least by his first question and answer session on an internet site.
Mr Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in December for lying to a grand jury when he denied having a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky. But Republicans in the Senate could not raise the two-thirds majority to remove him.
In an interview with ABC television, Mr Clinton said: "I think that history will view this much differently. They will say I made a bad personal mistake, I paid a serious price for it, but that I was right to stand and fight for my country and my constitution and its principles, and that the American people were very good to stand with me." He put the Lewinsky scandal in the context of other investigations into his conduct, like the Whitewater development deal in Arkansas.
He said: "I made a personal mistake and they spent $50 million trying to ferret it out because they had nothing else to do, because all the other charges were totally false, bogus, made up, and people were persecuted because they wouldn't commit perjury against me. I think that over the long run, the fact that we accomplished as much as we did in the face of the most severe, bitter partisan onslaught . . . will, in a way, make many of the things we achieve seem all the more impressive."
When he appeared on the Web via George Washington University, Mr Clinton likened his internet debut to the "fireside chats" that Franklin Roosevelt held with the American people on the radio, or John F Kennedy's first televised press conferences. Asked by "Mark of England" if he wished he could serve a third term, something prohibited in the constitution, he said: "I love this job and I would continue to do it if I could."
With an online audience of 50,000, he told another questioner that he thought his legacy would be "a time of transformation, hope, of genuine opportunity, a time when we deepened the bonds of freedom".
Does that include the footnotes Grifter? How about Alamo Girl's downside legacies? Thought so...
Who hired Craig Livingstone?
---Steven Wright
Then I'm your girl.....!
15. Future historians will be able to study at the Jimmy Carter Library, the Gerald Ford Library, the Ronald Reagan Library, and the Bill Clinton Adult Bookstore.
From this e-mail I received today:
Some things to think about
1. Never raise your hands to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.
2. I'm not into working out. My philosophy is no pain, no pain.
3. I'm in shape. Round is a shape.
4. I'm desperately trying to figure out why Kamikaze pilots wore helmets.
5. Do you think illiterate people get the full affect of alphabet soup?
6. I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.
7. Ever notice when you blow in a dog's face he gets mad at you, but when you take him in a car he sticks his head out the window?
8. Ever notice that anyone going slower than you is an idiot, but anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
9. You have to stay in shape. My mother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 now and we have no idea where she is.
10. I have six locks on my door, all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three of them.
11. One out of every three Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of two of your best friends. If they are OK, then it must be you.
12. They show you how detergent takes out bloodstains. I think if you've got a tee shirt with bloodstains all over it, maybe your laundry isn't your biggest problem.
13. Ask people why they have deer heads on their walls and they tell you it's because they're such beautiful animals. I think my wife is beautiful, but I only have photographs of her on the walls.
14. A lady came up to me on the street, pointed at my suede jacket and said, "Don't you know a cow was murdered for that jacket?" I said, "I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too."
15. Future historians will be able to study at the Jimmy Carter Library, the Gerald Ford Library, the Ronald Reagan Library, and the Bill Clinton Adult Bookstore.
So do we, let's see it all, including the Ford Building evidence now locked up for the next, what, 300 years? And the veiled threats, midnight phone calls, hints of blackmail and such niceties too.
I'll drink to that.
Are they going to limit access to the photos and diagrams to those over 21?
I'm rememorizing this word. Thanks!
It is, indeed, a great word!
I'll suggest another word that I created and applied to the National DNC tactics that they used in Houston's local, non-partisan office of mayor, scampaigning...
I cannot believe that the taxpayers of Arkansas (barf, barf, barf) will be paying the tab for this so called library.
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