Candidate The Clintons

"We interrupt the regular programme for an extraordinary moment

"in the history of the United States.

"A short while ago, President Clinton's staff

"came to tell us that he was going to come to the Rose Garden now

"and make some remarks.

"Peter, the President will make another attempt

"to say he's sorry about what he's caused."

Bill Clinton had come into office

with notions of an heroic Presidency...

Good afternoon.

..but on the afternoon of December 11th, 1998,

he came to the Rose Garden of the White House

to apologise to the American people.

I am profoundly sorry

for all I have done wrong

in words and deeds.

I never should have misled

the country, the Congress,

my friends or my family.

Quite simply, I gave in to my shame.

"It's almost as if all of this was just too easy for him."

It's almost as if he had to set up

these barriers that he could then

leap across, or stagger across,

but get across in any event, always.

I'm going to give you this election back and if you'll give it to me,

I won't be like George Bush, I'll never forget who gave me a second chance

and I'll be there for you till the last dog dies.

And I want you to remember that!

'How many second chances, right?

'How many second chances does any one person deserve?'

Clinton's view is - as many second chances as

a person is willing to try to take.

You know? I mean, as many times as you fail,

don't you deserve the chance to redeem yourself?

Isn't history loaded with people who have fallen and gotten up,

and fallen and gotten up and done great things?

We will together build a bridge to the 21st century wide enough

and strong enough to take us to America's best days.

Will you do that?

There's a stick-to-it-iveness about him that's just phenomenal.

An abiding belief that if he can just have enough time,

he can win over just about anybody.

The central repetitive theme

of Bill Clinton's life

is loss and recovery.

Never count him out because, always,

he will find his way back.

I end tonight where it all began for me.

I still believe in a place called Hope.

Where does it come from?

The unwillingness to quit on himself,

on the things he believed in, on the people he cared about.

He disappoints them every time on some level,

but he always gets up and tries to make it better.

You know, what else can you ask from a sinner?

Success, misjudgment,

in some cases catastrophe,

followed by comeback,

that resilience is central to

who he is as a politician.

I think it's central to who he is as a man.

He would emerge from the political backwaters of Arkansas,

"like a country tornado," one newspaper wrote.

-What's your name?

-Francis.

A political natural

unlike anyone had seen in a generation.

But in the winter of 1992,

as Bill Clinton began campaigning for President in New Hampshire,

he was still a relative unknown,

eager to win over voters and his young campaign staff.

'It was just so clear'

that he was an exceptionally talented politician

from the kind of get-go.

How do you get the ideas we develop in America

into manufacturing jobs here? There are literally...

'His ability to adapt, his ability to walk into a room,

'to size up an issue, to understand...'

I've never seen a candidate,

I've never seen a human being who,

with the most limited briefing, can understand the dimensions,

the parameters, the nuances of everything,

of any kind of a policy or political problem.

All right, Bill!

Throughout New Hampshire - in union halls, truck stops and diners -

Clinton heard stories of depressed wages and vanishing jobs,

as the state and the nation

struggled to emerge from a recession.

Ten years ago, we had the highest wages in the world,

now we're tenth, and dropping.

What else do you think we ought to do?

The mostly white working-class voters

Clinton met in New Hampshire, like those in his own state of Arkansas,

had been fleeing the Democratic Party for years.

'Bill Clinton knew that the Democrats were not going to regain

'the presidency until they re-established a connection with'

these middle class and lower-middle class voters

who had been attracted to Republican politicians

and to conservative ideas.

For nearly a decade, as he rose through the ranks of Democratic politics,

Clinton had been honing a message

to win back these so-called "Reagan Democrats".

The entire thrust of the traditional Democratic Party

was based on entitlements and endowments.

They would bestow money on people.

Bill Clinton's incredibly bold idea

was to change the grant to a transaction -

we'll give you something, but we demand something back.

The way he would phrase it is,

"We'll give you opportunity, but you have to take responsibility."

If you want the right to receive welfare benefits,

you have to assume the responsibility to get educated,

to have job training and to go to work if you can do it.

Preaching his "New Democrat" message in New Hampshire,

Clinton began to catch fire.

People say I'm not a real Democrat

and I say I'm against brain-dead politics in both parties.

By mid-January, he'd pulled ahead of his strongest competitors

and into the lead.

Then, with just weeks to go, it all seemed to fall apart.

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton

is again denying a report of an extra-marital affair.

The report is in the Star, the supermarket tabloid...

'The first time I heard of Gennifer Flowers was a rumour.'

I mean, the rumours of him messing around were out there,

and the stories were out there.

And it was something that his handlers talked about.

You know, "How are we going to deal with this if it actually happens?"

I would like to introduce my client to you - Gennifer Flowers.

'At first, nobody was really that worried about it.

'But then the woman appeared.

'And not only did the woman appear, but she was a lounge singer.'

And everybody thought, "Oh, yeah, absolutely." And she had tapes.

-RECORDING:

-I didn't think it would start this quickly,

but I think, Bill, you're being naive

-if you think that these other shows...

-I expect them

to come looking into it and interview you and everything,

but I think that if everybody is on record denying it,

you got no problem.

At first, Clinton's response to the scandal was evasive.

She did call me,

I never initiated any calls to her,

and whenever she called me,

she basically wanted reassurance...

'There was this growing sense of scepticism in the press'

that this guy was just a big phoney.

I mean, he was too slick.

He was too smooth. And he would lawyer answers to questions.

I said, "That's not true. Even if your name gets used,

"in the absence of proof,

"nobody can prove you're guilty, don't worry about it..."

The press called him Slick Willie, and it stuck.

'The general thinking was that he was dead.'

Politicians didn't survive this thing.

As many began to abandon Clinton,

one person rose strongly to his defence.

Bill Clinton is a smart guy, a very smart guy.

But he will tell you

that Hillary is much smarter than he is.

She's much tougher than he is.

She is more of a pragmatist.

If Clinton is a dreamer,

Hillary is Miss Reality.

She raised him up and said, "Look.

"Get that pity out of your body,

"and all that defeatism

"out of your back,

"let's deal with this issue,

"and let's move on to the next issue."

At the height of the scandal,

millions tuned in to see Bill Clinton answer questions

on the CBS show 60 Minutes.

But it was Hillary who stole the show.

You know, I'm not sitting here, some little woman,

standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.

I'm sitting here because I love him

and I respect him, and I honour what he's been through,

and what we've been through together,

and if that's not enough for people, then heck, don't vote for him!

'By praising him, defending him,

'attacking the press,'

she brought Clinton back from the dead.

How do you think it went, Governor? You think you answered the questions?

We did our best. We feel good about it.

The American people are the judges now, we'll let them judge.

'So you can see why he was so attached to her,'

because she had the power to save him.

The partnership of Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham

began at Yale Law School in 1971.

Clinton was fresh from a Rhodes scholarship

at Oxford University in England

and already planning a career in politics.

Bill loved to discuss issues.

He loved to be at the centre of discussions.

He, in a way, loved to perform.

He wasn't a great student.

He was there to make connections.

Hillary was so much more obviously intellectual.

Her power was so much more disciplined than his.

She was a leader. She was a doer.

Bill eyed Hillary for weeks,

before the two finally met

during one of his rare visits to the library.

He was totally blown away by

how confident and challenging she was.

Here he is - this tall, gorgeously handsome hick,

with Elvis sideburns

and high-water pants.

She's the one who crosses the room,

holds out her hand and says,

"If you're going to keep staring at me

"and I'm going to keep looking back at you,

"we'd better get to know each other."

Bill Clinton, who always had lots of girlfriends,

looked at Hillary and said, "I've never had a girlfriend like that.

"I can't believe that somebody as smart and as virtuous as Hillary,

"that she wants to be with me."

Hillary looked at Bill Clinton - outgoing, popular,

successful - and thinks,

"I can't believe that somebody like that wants to be with me."

And I think they're both

kind of mystified that the other person is attracted to them.

Hillary graduated from Yale in 1973,

and soon landed a coveted job in Washington

with the House Committee investigating the Watergate scandal.

One night, she said she wanted to introduce me to somebody

who's going to come up to visit her the next day, I think.

She says, "His name is Bill Clinton."

I said, "Oh, what does he do?"

She said, "Well, he graduated Yale Law School

"and he's from Arkansas,

"and he's going back to Arkansas."

I said, "Oh, well, that's fine.

"What law firm is he going to?" She said, "Oh, no, no.

"He's not going to go to a law firm.

"He's thinking of running for office."

I said, "He just graduated Yale Law School.

"What's he thinking of running for?"

"He's running for Congress."

I said, "Well, it's kind of premature. How old is he, 26, 27?"

She said, "Oh, no, he's going to run for Congress

"and he thinks he's going to win, and I think he's going to win.

"In fact, Bernie, he's going to go past Congress.

"He's going to be a senator or a governor.

"He's going to be President of the United States."

William Jefferson Clinton was born in Hope, Arkansas

on August 19th, 1946.

His mother, Virginia Cassidy, was a nurse,

outgoing and vivacious. His father, Bill Blythe,

a charming travelling salesman whom he would never know.

When Virginia was six months pregnant,

her husband's car flipped over on a rain-slicked highway.

The accident killed him.

"My father left me with the feeling that I had to live for two people,"

Clinton would write.

"If I did well enough, somehow, I could make up for the life he should have had."

Four years after her husband's death,

Virginia married a raffish Buick salesman named Roger Clinton.

The couple moved with six-year-old Billy to Roger's hometown -

Hot Springs, Arkansas.

If Hope was a sleepy Baptist town,

Hot Springs was the opposite.

A rollicking resort, attracting people from across the country

to its mineral pools and gambling parlours.

Outwardly, Clinton enjoyed a happy small-town American childhood.

But inside his gabled house on Park Avenue,

he was leading a far more turbulent life.

His parents' relationship had deteriorated into serial affairs

and screaming matches that reverberated through the thin walls.

As Roger Clinton descended into alcoholism,

he grew more and more violent,

beating Virginia in front of Bill

and young Roger Jr.

"My life was full of uncertainty and anger," Clinton would recall,

"and a dread of ever-looming violence."

Most of his buddies had no clue.

They saw Bill Clinton as a happy-go-lucky guy.

They didn't see the turmoil that was raging within that family.

He decided to pretend it didn't exist.

To pretend that everything was all right.

To go to church, you know, with his Bible under his arm,

and be sunny and energetic,

and positive,

and simply not accept it.

With fierce enthusiasm,

Clinton threw himself into his life outside his home.

Hot Springs High

had never seen anything like him.

National merit scholar semi-finalist.

First chair in the Arkansas State Band.

Student government leader.

By his senior year, he held so many honours that the Principal

barred him from running for Class President.

Bill Clinton always found himself

trying to redeem and rescue his family.

Part of doing that is to sort of...

put yourself in the position of rescuing not just your family,

but everybody, including yourself, by doing good.

By the early 1960s, Bill Clinton's generation had a new hero.

President John F Kennedy's youth and charisma

reached all the way to Arkansas

and sparked the teenager's idealism with a call to public service.

Ask not what your country can do for you,

ask what you can do for your country!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

We loved living in a time when JFK was President.

He was so young, he made public service seem accessible,

so if we had ever entertained thoughts of a life in public service,

he made it seem all the more possible.

In 1963, Bill Clinton travelled to Washington

as a delegate to Boys Nation,

a programme for aspiring future leaders.

During a visit to the White House,

he rushed to the front of the line to shake his idol's hand.

It's a moment that is just

emblazoned in your mind.

To have a President of the United States look you in the eye,

take your hand, speak to you...

the world stops.

Bill said to me, "We will never forget that, will we?

"We will never forget that."

A decade later,

after leaving Arkansas to study at Georgetown, Oxford, and Yale,

Clinton returned home to begin his own long march to the White House.

Bill Clinton went back to Arkansas for politics, pure and simple.

He knew the people there and he was of that place.

He could see his political future,

and that he was destined for something

much larger than Hot Springs or Arkansas.

In his first political race at age 28,

Clinton took on a conservative Republican Congressman

named John Paul Hammerschmidt.

I know that I can make a big difference

for our district and for our people,

if I can have the opportunity to serve them in Congress.

Few gave Clinton a chance to compete.

It wasn't just his inexperience,

many worried that in his time away,

Clinton had lost touch with Arkansas and its values.

There always has been, with him,

a suspicion that, this guy is not to be trusted.

This guy's too liberal for us. And he encountered that.

But, initially in Arkansas, he just totally overpowered it

with his charm, with his political skill,

with his ability to connect and relate.

In this small state, politics is art and it's entertainment,

and he was the best we had seen.

# There's a fellow here been talking some

# About being our next Congressman He's a new man

# Bill Clinton is his name... #

For weeks on end, Clinton drove

the back roads of north-west Arkansas, sleeping on couches,

waking up at dawn to catch the shift change at nearby factories.

# ..Bill Clinton's ready He's fed up too

# He's a lot like me

# He's a lot like you Bill Clinton wants... #

'He's got an extra battery. After about four or five days with him,

'I was ready to go home. I had all the fun I could stand,

'and he would just keep going.

'We might stop in a service station, or a restaurant, or whatever,

'he would want to meet the cooks.

'He would go back in the kitchen and meet everybody back there.'

He would not leave a place, I think, where he had not met everyone.

As Bill Clinton campaigned for Congress,

Hillary decided to follow him to Arkansas.

She could have had lots of jobs in Washington.

Instead, she elects to go...

not even to Little Rock, but Fayetteville, Arkansas?!

You know, her friends thought she was absolutely mad.

"He's just a country lawyer, what do you see in him?"

When Hillary arrived in Arkansas,

a Chicago-born feminist in the Deep South,

she felt unwelcomed by Bill's campaign staff.

I said, "Look, you know, we got enough problems here as it is."

She comes in here and I say,

"I don't mind her being on the inside, doing everything she does,

"cos she's sharp as a tack, but taking her out on the road,"

I said, "that's going to create a little bit of a question."

And he said, "Why?" I said, "Well, she's got outcroppings of

"where she grew up in Chicago and her parents all came from Pennsylvania."

I said, "You know, she's never really overcome all of that

"to get involved in what we're doing here in Arkansas."

To make matters worse,

Hillary had to deal with Bill's constant womanising.

I mean, you got to understand,

at one time, there was at least 25 women per day

coming through there trying to find him, and I'd tell them,

he's out on the road, you know, and they'd get out the door...

Lord, it was bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

He draws women in

and they are literally mesmerised by this man.

It was absolutely like fly to honey.

Despite Bill's infidelities,

Hillary decided to stay in Arkansas

and dedicate herself

to their mutual goals.

On October 11th, 1975,

the couple wed in a simple ceremony in their living room.

Most of the people I know

who have been around the Clintons for a long time

come to the conclusion that I've come to -

the two of them are in love.

Walter Lippmann, the great columnist, said,

"Love endures when the lovers love not just each other, but love many things together."

That, I think, is the essence of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

They had a common love, which is for politics,

for the game. They love it. It's their life.

With Hillary firmly behind him,

there was no stopping Bill Clinton.

Though he narrowly lost his Congressional bid,

he had positioned himself as a rising star.

The morning after he lost that Congressional race in 1974,

he was out in the town square, shaking hands again.

Every Democratic figure in the state

knew that he was the next big figure in Arkansas politics.

Two years later, he was easily elected Attorney General.

Two years after that, he ran for Governor,

brimming with youthful confidence and ambition.

I'm Bill Clinton, and one of the reasons I want to be Governor

is to make sure that every child in this state

has a chance to go to kindergarten.

Clinton won, with more than 60% of the vote.

I believe that if you and I together

can practise what we preach about government,

I know that you and I together

want to do what is right for our people.

In the late 1970s, most of Arkansas was poor and undeveloped.

Bill Clinton was determined to turn that around.

Not much had been done for 150 years in Arkansas.

Spending on education, per capita income,

our highway system was one of the worst in the country.

So Bill Clinton comes in and he has all these ideas.

He's going to transform the state at once.

Feeling, as he recalled, "an urgent sense to do everything,"

Clinton and his staff took on entrenched interests in Arkansas.

He created new regulations, revamped rural health care,

reorganised school districts, and took on utilities.

Most ambitious of all was a project to fix Arkansas roads.

It was paid for by a steep hike in taxes on car licences,

and was a political disaster.

Every month, one twelfth of the people of Arkansas

went down to the courthouse to renew their licence plates

for the following year, and instead of being 19, it was 36.

That became extremely unpopular,

and he realised that late in the election of 1980.

He'd go early in the morning to a factory gate

and all these guys refused to shake his hand and they said,

"You raised my truck tag and I'm not going to vote for you."

After one term, Clinton ran for re-election

against an obscure Republican businessman named Frank White,

who pounded away at Clinton's youth and arrogance.

He tells you he can create jobs, he's never had a job!

To Clinton's dismay, White's tactic worked.

I regret that I will not have two more years to serve as Governor,

because I have loved it. I have probably loved it

as much as any person who ever had this office.

-APPLAUSE

-Since he was a teenager,

Bill Clinton had prepared himself to be President.

Now, just 34, with his new baby Chelsea to support,

he feared his political career might already be over.

Hillary was as devastated by that defeat as Bill was,

and as determined to make amends and figure out a way back.

I mean, she had devoted her life

and given up a lot to go out to Arkansas for their rise together,

and at this very early age, it seemed like it was all vulnerable.

So she was not going to allow that to happen.

Hillary traded in her thick glasses for contact lenses

and her unkempt hair for a fashionable blonde bob.

To quiet some of her critics, she took her husband's last name.

Frustrated by what she regarded as poor advice,

she took over her husband's re-election campaign.

Hillary was the mastermind in that comeback.

Most of his people advised him at the time -

don't run again, wait two years.

Hillary says, "You can come back and you can do it again."

He didn't trust himself as much as he trusted her.

Determined never to lose again,

Clinton studied the results of his defeat precinct by precinct.

He resolved to win back every single one.

'The crowd has waited, they're ready to celebrate.

'It's been a long two years.'

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

If victory is ours tonight,

I have been given something that few people get in life -

a second chance to serve the people of Arkansas.

APPLAUSE

Clinton had learned from his mistakes.

Rather than take on every problem in Arkansas with his second term,

he narrowed his focus to a single issue

that he knew would serve the people

and his political future - education.

I still believe that until we have a system which guarantees competence

in basic learning skills, we will never be able to prepare our people

for a higher level of achievements, I don't care what else we do...

It's a winning issue. The people are willing to go that way.

And it's something we can get done if we focus on that.

He has settled on the strategy.

Now, who's the right person?

Who's my point person? Hillary.

We know it's a huge task,

but we're very optimistic

that we're going to be able to make a substantial improvement

in what our students receive.

She went from town to town all over Arkansas,

met with civic groups and PTAs and school groups,

and talked about what they wanted to do about

improving schools in Arkansas.

By the time it was over,

I think she was one of the most popular people in the state.

One legislator popped up at a hearing one day and said,

"We elected the wrong Clinton."

It just resurrected him.

He needed a success and it made him the Education Governor

at a time when education was a vital issue in the country,

and he was able to use that to open all kinds of doors for him.

Over the next few years,

Clinton began to catch the attention of the media

and national Democratic leaders,

desperate to find a candidate

who could loosen the Republicans' grip on the Presidency.

He would spend a huge amount of time

meeting with, impressing and charming his fellow Governors

and other elected officials.

And after a day and a night with him

talking about philosophy and politics,

you came away with the impression

this was the smartest guy in the class,

and that if you were going to have a President,

it probably should be this guy.

In 1987, during his fourth term as Arkansas Governor,

Bill Clinton was finally ready

to leap onto the national stage,

with a long-shot run for the presidency.

APPLAUSE

In July, he summoned the national media to Little Rock

for the big announcement.

Then, abruptly, he sent them home with hardly an explanation.

I need some family time.

I need some personal time.

Behind the scenes, an old weakness had come back to haunt him.

'Just the day before the press conference

'when he was going to announce that he was going to run, Betsey Wright,'

his ferociously protective campaign manager,

sat him down with a list of names of women

and went through one after the other -

how many times, where did you meet her,

how likely is she to talk?

For each name, he said, "Oh, she'll never say anything."

And Betsey Wright said, "But you don't know that.

"You don't understand,

"on a national scale,

"people will investigate it.

"Your opponents will investigate it.

"The media will investigate it.

"The problem is, we're not just talking about you.

"We're talking about your wife, Hillary.

"We're talking about your child, Chelsea."

She said, "I don't think you can run."

I mean, it just became clear that night

it was not the time for him to do it. It just was not the time. No.

He felt for quite a while that...

that probably was the last real chance he would ever have

to run for President. That was it, it was over.

You know, where would he go now that he wasn't going to run for President?

What could he do in the future?

I think that over the next few months,

that became a tough time for them.

It did put into question their whole marriage.

And it was very unnerving to Hillary

because she had put everything on the line

for him to pursue the presidency,

and if he had too much of a record of reckless behaviour to do that,

then what had she been doing for the last 15 years?

It is now time to place the name

in nomination for President of the United States, Michael Dukakis.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Just when it seemed things couldn't get worse,

Clinton was asked to give the speech

nominating Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic convention.

I'm honoured to be here tonight to nominate my friend,

Michael Dukakis, for President of the United States...

'That piece was supposed to be the set piece

'to launch him on the national stage'

and it turned out to be something

that almost killed his career

before it got started.

..I'd like to talk a little about Mike Dukakis, the man...

The speech was going on, and on, and on.

..Mike's old fashioned, all right.

He's the kind of man who plays it straight and keeps his word...

CROWD: We want Mike!

'The crowd was just getting restless, and we said,'

"Oh, man, we dead." Right?

He is going by the script that the Dukakis folks has approved,

and he has to carry it out.

Now, I want you all to calm down,

so I can tell the rest of the country

why THEY should want Mike.

'Of course, the famous thing was

when he said "in conclusion," he got a round of applause, finally.

In closing... CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

'Linda, my wife, and I are at our house'

and we're looking on in disbelief.

Sometime in the wee hours, Linda wakes me up, and she says,

"Look, he's got to go on the Carson show to make this right."

My first question is,

-how are you?

-LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

-Fine.

-Fine!

I watched the speech, um,

and as a performer,

I kind of felt for you, in a way. What happened?

It just didn't work. I mean, I don't know, what can I tell you?

I really... My sole goal was achieved, however.

I wanted so badly to make Michael Dukakis look great,

and I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations!

'In an instant, he had turned it around,'

because the next day,

papers were full of good things

and had kind things to say about him,

and so it erased almost all of it in one day

and made him more visible than he had ever been.

It's tenor sax you play, right?

We're going to play a short song. LAUGHTER

'He recovers better than anybody'

I have ever known. It's extraordinary.

'I mean, he can have horrible things crash down upon his head,

'but he crawls out from under it and keeps on going.'

Four years later, in the snows of New Hampshire,

Clinton held a comfortable lead in the Democratic primary.

With the Gennifer Flowers scandal behind him,

he was campaigning with the confidence of a front-runner.

But just 12 days before the primary,

an old letter had surfaced,

written by Bill Clinton more than 20 years earlier

when facing the possibility of being drafted to fight in Vietnam.

In the letter, Clinton thanked

Colonel Eugene Holmes "for saving me from the draft."

Clinton's letter sounded to many

like the confession of a draft dodger,

and sparked a second round of attacks against his character.

Governor, are you a draft dodger?

Did you burn your draft card?

No, I had a lock-cinch

four-year deferment.

I gave it up after less than two months

because I didn't think it was right.

I went back into the draft,

then this lottery came along.

I got a high number and I wasn't called...

Stan Greenberg, our pollster, came in and said,

"The bottom's fallen out."

We dropped 18 points in a weekend

and we didn't have that many points to start with!

Of course I've had some problems in the polls.

All I've been asked about by the press

are a woman I didn't sleep with and a draft I didn't dodge.

'I think a lot of us thought, you know, "This is over."

'But, I mean, Clinton, he never flinched.'

You know, he willed himself back into that race.

How you doing? I need your help!

For the next week, Clinton campaigned 20 hours a day,

pushing himself to the limits of his endurance.

We have to reject the political philosophy

that gripped this country in the 1980s...

With only days left, his voice ragged,

Clinton spoke at an Elks Lodge in Dover, New Hampshire.

..I'm going to give you this election back and if you'll give it to me,

I won't be like George Bush. I'll never forget

who gave me a second chance,

and I'll be there for you till the last dog dies.

And I want you to remember that...

"I'll be there for you till the last dog dies."

And we knew we'd seen one of those astonishing political performances.

..I don't promise you a miracle, I promise you a movement.

Let's take our country back, and see this country win again.

Thank you very much! God bless you!

'How many second chances, right? How many second chances

'does any one person deserve? Clinton's view is'

as many second chances as a person is willing to try to take.

As many times as you fail,

don't you deserve the chance to redeem yourself?

Isn't history loaded with people who have fallen and gotten up,

and fallen and gotten up, and fallen and gotten up and done great things?

You know, who's to say?

-You've definitely got my support.

-Thank you.

I need you tomorrow, thanks.

On February 18th, the voters of New Hampshire went to the polls.

Despite the one-two punch of Gennifer Flowers and the draft,

Clinton finished a strong second

behind former Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas.

Let me say that...

APPLAUSE

..while the evening is young... LAUGHTER

..and we don't know yet what the final tally will be,

I think we know enough to say with some certainty

that New Hampshire tonight has made Bill Clinton the Comeback Kid.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

In the weeks to come,

Clinton rolled up primary victory after primary victory.

In Florida, in Tennessee, in Mississippi...

In early June, he surpassed the number of delegates

needed for the Democratic nomination by winning the California primary.

The election for America's future begins tomorrow.

It is not about me, it's about all of you.

Even though he's winning voters over,

and winning these primaries with bigger and bigger margins,

the news coverage, you know, for the general electorate,

is one of a politician

you would never make President of the United States.

You could not possibly trust this guy.

A team of top campaign aides

planned a complete overhaul of Clinton's image,

culminating in a nostalgic film

shown during the Democratic National Convention in New York.

It was called A Man From Hope.

I was born in a little town called Hope, Arkansas,

three months after my father died.

I remember living in that old two-storey house

where I lived with my grandparents...

'The film, I think, brought people back, "OK, here's who this guy is.'

"Here is what we're really about and we really have a strong candidate."

CHEERING

My fellow Americans,

I end tonight where it all began for me.

I still believe

in a place called Hope.

God bless you, and God bless America!

CHEERING

MUSIC: "Don't Stop" by Fleetwood Mac

With a rock anthem from the 1970s as the campaign theme song,

Clinton staffers positioned their candidate as the young,

dynamic face of a new generation.

To complete the image, Clinton chose as his running mate

the youthful senator from Tennessee - Al Gore.

# Don't stop... #

'It turned the conventional wisdom on its head.

'He believed - you don't dilute your message,

'you put a big underline and exclamation point,

'and this is a new generation, new ideas, a new Democratic party.'

Totally energised the general election campaign.

# ..Don't stop thinking about tomorrow

# Don't stop, it'll soon be here

-# It'll be... #

-Heading into the fall,

Clinton had surged ahead of President George HW Bush

and third-party candidate Ross Perot.

With the economy still faltering,

Clinton had found his issue and his voice.

The crowd that's running Washington today

has had 12 years to test their economic theory and it's failed.

The decisive event

came in mid-October, at the second Presidential debate.

'A woman stood up and asked a question'

that was on a lot of people's minds.

How has the national debt personally affected each of your lives?

And if it hasn't, how can you honestly find

a cure for the economic problems of the common people,

if you have no experience in what's ailing them?

And President Bush said - I don't get it, I don't get the question.

Are you suggesting that if somebody has means,

that the national debt doesn't affect them?

-What I'm saying is...

-I'm not sure I get it. Help me with the question and I'll try to answer it.

'Clinton understood that she wasn't talking about the deficit or the debt.'

What she was talking about was the economy and the recession.

And the body language was absolutely crucial at that point.

He took two steps towards her.

Tell me how it's affected you again.

-Um...

-You know people who've lost their jobs and lost their homes?

-Uh-huh.

Well, I'll tell you how it's affected me.

I see people in my state, middle-class people,

their taxes have gone up in Washington and their services have gone down,

while the wealthy have gotten tax cuts.

I have seen what's happened in these last four years when...

in my state, when people lose their jobs, there's a good chance I'll know them by their names...

'That was giving the American public

'precisely what they wanted at that point.

'They had this brilliant foreign policy President.'

What they needed was someone who cared about THEM

and who was as scared about the economy as they were.

And in that moment, he encapsulated that.

I think what we have to do is invest in American jobs, American education...

'He was on his way to winning,'

but that was the deal-closer. He closed the deal.

Like a marathon runner nearing the finish line,

Clinton spent the final 24 hours of the campaign in an all-out sprint,

touching down in nine states.

His voice gone, he could only wave at adoring crowds.

'Sometime during the next half hour,

'the man who likes to call himself the Comeback Kid,

'Bill Clinton of Hope, Arkansas,'

will be projected the winner of the presidential candidacy of 1992.

Ladies and gentleman, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton!

My fellow Americans, on this day,

with high hopes and brave hearts,

in massive numbers,

the American people have voted to make a new beginning.

'There was this joy and buoyancy

'and he had so much promise about him.

'Those of us who believed in Bill Clinton, and I did,'

had a sense of,

"Wow, this is going to be really, really good for the country."

On a crisp January morning in 1993,

Bill Clinton took the oath of office

as the 42nd President of the United States.

Promising a new start,

he sounded the themes of change and optimism

that had won him the White House.

Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world,

but the engine of our own renewal.

There is nothing wrong with America

that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

'He did have heroic visions of what he might do as President.

'He felt that the winds of change were blowing heavily at his back

'and that he could ride them to great, magnificent victories.'

The harder reality was that he only won with 43% of the vote

in a three-man race,

and that's not exactly a heady mandate for governing.

Clinton's victory had come despite a deep divide in the country.

Millions had responded to his campaign message of change,

but millions of others feared where the country was heading.

There's a sense of him being a used car salesman,

there's a sense of a guy being a charming hick.

He was loathed because, first of all,

I think we've all known somebody like Bill Clinton

and we don't want them to be President of our country.

And the wife was terrifying as well.

She was pushy, she was humourless,

she couldn't get her hair figured out.

There were just so many things about Hillary that we didn't like!

Despite all their education and experience,

the Clintons were unprepared for their reception in Washington.

Is there a teleprompter?

What are we going to do about the teleprompter? What...?

'He had no comprehension of the rules in Washington.

'No Governor ever elected to the presidency'

has ever understood what they were getting into,

and he looked more unprepared than most.

Wait a minute...

'His first address from the Oval Office,

'sitting behind the desk,

'it looked like a big mistake had happened

'and some little kid had been allowed in there,

'with his 12 digital watch.'

Everything about him suggested he was not up to this.

Clinton ran his White House as if it were an extension of the campaign,

filling his staff with 30-year-olds with little Washington experience.

He wanted to be part of the hurly burly,

to hear every opinion, weigh in on every decision.

The atmosphere in the White House

in that first year was chaos.

He wanted to do everything, to deal with every problem.

He was in the middle of every conflict.

They would have these college bull sessions

that would go on late into the night.

The meetings were endless, especially if Clinton was there.

It would go on and on and on.

He was often thinking out loud,

making decisions on the fly,

making a decision tentatively at midnight

and then waking up the next morning and saying, "Let's rethink this."

The West Wing was littered with pizza boxes and Coke cans,

as staffers wandered freely in and out of meetings.

It wasn't the kind of orderly process

that Republicans brought to the table.

It was all these discordant voices,

informal voices,

people who didn't even wear ties and jackets

when they went into the Oval Office, my God!

'You've got to be a little grand,

'because the American people want it,

'it's the biggest job in the world, and I think we underestimated that.'

People felt like, "What is it, a fraternity house over there?"

During the transition,

Clinton had promised to focus on the economy "like a laser beam."

But he quickly discovered how easily his focus could be deflected

by an unscripted comment to a reporter.

Do you intend to keep your commitment

-to lift the ban on gays in the military?

-Yes.

I want to... I have...

You know what, my issue on this is,

number one, we've got a study which says that

a lot of gays have performed with great distinction in the military.

I don't think status alone,

in the absence of some destructive behaviour, should disqualify people.

Now, Bill Clinton, with his wits about him, would have said,

"Oh, yes, I'm going to stick to my campaign pledge and,

"in furtherance of that,

"we're going to appoint a blue-ribbon commission that will

"report back to my successor 100 years from now," but he didn't.

He just said the first part.

"I'm going to keep my campaign pledge." And all of a sudden,

the laser-like focus on the economy was derailed to a, you know...

a lurid issue in the minds of many people.

Mr President, would you consider

backing down on your view on the ban on gays in the Military?

We're not here to discuss that. We're here to discuss the economy,

which is all I discussed yesterday with the congressional leadership, contrary to the press reports.

-But would you consider...

-We're here to discuss the economy.

Trapped by his own promise, Clinton attempted to lift the ban,

but ran into heavy resistance from two allies,

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell

and Democratic Senator Sam Nunn.

So, you have the military leadership bucking him,

the Democratic Congressional leaders, led by, you know,

Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, saying no,

and the President is powerless to do anything about it.

And so he's now put into a position where

he has to try to negotiate

some kind of a resolution to this that will save face.

Therefore, the practice now six months old...

After weeks of fruitless wrangling, Clinton announced a compromise -

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" - that few could even understand.

..An open statement by a service member that he or she is a homosexual

will create a rebuttable presumption

that he or she intends to engage in prohibited conduct,

but the service member

will be given an opportunity to refute that presumption.

'Nobody was particularly happy with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell",'

but it was the best you could do,

to get it off the table, so you could move on.

Other capitulations quickly followed.

He dropped a stimulus bill

and campaign finance reform, in the face of Congressional opposition.

It became very apparent very soon that Bill Clinton as President

was not going to be an LBJ.

He was not going to assert his authority, make deals,

crack heads, push his weight around,

say to any members of Congress in the leadership that -

if you don't follow me, you're going to pay for this,

because I'm going to remember it. You're not going to get this,

you're not going to get that. You know, LBJ knew how to use power.

Bill Clinton knew much of that,

but he also wanted to be liked.

The media, which had embraced Clinton during the campaign,

now began to turn on him.

When his nomination of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg

to the Supreme Court took a tortuous course, reporters pounced.

Your turn - late, it seems - to Judge Ginsburg

may have created an impression, perhaps unfair,

of a certain zig-zag quality in the decision-making process here.

I wonder, sir, if you could walk us through it

and perhaps disabuse us of any notions we may have along those lines? Thank you.

I have long since given up the thought that

I could disabuse some of you of turning any substantive decision

into anything but political process.

How you can ask a question like that after the statement she just made

is beyond me. APPLAUSE

'What he wanted people to do is - just look at the result.

'Did I make a good decision or not?'

But as President, every decision that Bill Clinton makes,

and not just the decisions, but how he makes these decisions,

is receiving merciless scrutiny.

The messiness of the process became part of the story

and Bill Clinton found it maddening.

The Clintons arrived in Washington in the midst of a media revolution.

The advent of cable television and the 24-hour news cycle

created an insatiable appetite for colourful coverage of Washington.

Cable television was beginning to become a force.

And the competition among cable news

became a vicious fact of Bill Clinton's life.

Sex sold.

Corruption sold.

Throughout the spring of 1993,

a series of scandals -

including "Travelgate" and "Hairgate" - flared in the press.

Hillary found it hard to shrug off the negative press.

Stories like the one alleging that

she broke a lamp during a heated argument with the President

embarrassed and humiliated her.

"I've always believed in a zone of privacy," she said,

"but I guess I've been re-zoned."

She had an agenda,

changes in the country, in the world, that she wanted to see done.

She couldn't understand why the media

was focusing constantly on their private life,

but the more she fought it, the more she drew attention to it.

The lawyer chosen to lead the Clintons' defence

was their close friend and deputy White House Counsel - Vince Foster.

Vince, he got very upset with the attacks.

He felt we couldn't stop these attacks,

and yes, no, we couldn't stop these attacks.

You know, this is the nature of the game down here.

This is the partisan game down here.

And I kept trying to calm him down,

but I did see him getting sadder and sadder.

And then...

Then that day came when he took his own life.

On the afternoon of July 20th,

Vince Foster told an assistant that he was going out for a few minutes.

That evening, his body was found in a secluded park

ten miles from the White House, a bullet hole through his head.

A torn-up note was found a few days later

at the bottom of Foster's briefcase.

"I was not meant for the job, or the spotlight, of public life in Washington," it read.

"Here, ruining people is considered sport."

'I was very concerned that...

'knowing how close Vince Foster was to both Bill and Hillary,

'that it would be sort of the final straw for Bill Clinton

'and Hillary Clinton in Washington.'

They would just think, "This town's impossible.

"We've lost one of our best friends,

"he's taken his life in the midst of this melee,"

and that something very intangible would be lost.

Bill Clinton's one of the most resilient people I've ever met.

The pain goes deeper with Hillary, and it can stay there longer.

She's strong, but she's also vulnerable.

Far from destroying the Clintons,

Foster's death steeled them against their adversaries.

For Hillary, there could be no more illusions.

This would be a war with only one winner.