Bill Clinton travels the world with purpose

CNT: If you could bring back something from your travels as a gift to your own country's culture, what would it be?

Clinton: That's hard to say. You know, I love to travel. I mean, I think one of the things that's made me halfway good at this is that I love to go places and see things. But I would—I wish I could have a basket made in Rwanda in the home of every American—made by Rwandans that are part of these reconciliation cooperatives, where the Hutus and Tutsis who've slaughtered each other are now living together, working together, and making their baskets together. I think it would be a great gift to America's culture—to our rancorous politics and our tough-talking talk shows and all this stuff—to just see that here are people who've been through things that no American will ever go through, and they have concluded after being humbled by their own rage and the pain of their losses that what we have in common is much more important than our differences. I think that would be the greatest gift you could ever give to America.

You know, this is a great country, and we are so blessed. Just here in this city, we have people from somewhere between 160 and 180 different national and different ethnic groups. I was in Detroit yesterday, and there are 150. In Los Angeles, 160. We are becoming a microcosm of the world everywhere, and if we can figure out how to make the most of our differences, our lives would be so much more interesting than they were just a few years ago. Our ability to live together would be greater, and our ability to get along with people throughout the world—to resolve things and get them to turn away from their own hatreds and blindness—would be greater.

So if I had to give one gift, that's one I'd do. I'd put that basket—with an explanation of what it is and who made it and why and what the history was—I'd put one in every home in America.

CNT: You know, the Greeks call you the "Planetarchis," the ruler of the planet.

Clinton: I didn't know that. I've got a piece of marble that broke out of a wall in Athens when there were riots there when I was there when I was president. They weren't rioting against me. I just happened to be there on the weekend they always riot about their political issues.

CNT: When you travel in a country like one of the countries we visited—say, India—what do you see? What, having been president of the United States, do you see that only you can perceive because of that unique perspective?

Clinton: I don't know if I see it because I was president, but I always think about—I can imagine, when I'm driving in a place, what their lives are like.

CNT: You can?

Clinton: I do. That's what I do. I used to love to go to Rajasthan. There's a beautiful place to stay called Rajvilas, which has a beautiful Hindu shrine. It's just a beautiful place, and it's like an oasis in the middle of a quite poor area. You drive up there, and there are people on the side of the road with camels and goats and cows, and I never didn't pay attention to them on the way to the place where I was going to stay. I always thought about what their lives are like. I've got a picture in my house of dancing with Indian women in a little place called Nila, and they were throwing thousands of colored flower petals at me. I always try to literally go into a state of mind where I am one of them, where I feel and see the world as they do, because I think it gives me a great sense of peace and reassurance. It gives me the sense that, you know, there are ways we can do this.

When I was in Senegal, I asked to go to the mosque. When I was in Indonesia, I went to the biggest mosque in the country and took my shoes off and went in and tried to grasp and feel exactly how the world was real to those people. That's what I try to do. I think it's maybe easier for me because I was president. just because I've been to more places and talked to more people and listened to more people than almost anybody else could.

Once after I left office, I was in Ghana, and outside of Akkra, there's this market for the kente cloth and other things. It looks like a barn, like an old barn. Everybody's got a little stall where they've got their wares. It looked like there were about a hundred people in there. All of a sudden there were a thousand or more people in this tiny little place. You couldn't move. The Secret Service was panicked. Doug was there that day. And I turned around and I said, "I'm safer here than I am at home in bed. These people are my friends. A million of them came to see me last time I was here. We're going to be fine. They just want to see. We're going to be fine. You know, everything's going to be fine."

I knew what was in their heads. That was a great gift, from having lived the life I have. That's why I never get tired of traveling: because I'm always learning something new. And I know that when I'm there, I'll be thinking about it.

I was walking on the street in Hanoi recently and all the Vietnamese people were coming up on their little scooters. They were all on their little scooters, saying, "Welcome back" and everything. And I was in—went and visited Ho Chi Minh's house. I was trying to imagine what it was like for him during the Vietnam War, sitting there. I looked at the books that he read and the things that he did. And I thought about how we were killing his people and he was killing ours.

I think that's the great gift that my life has given me, being able to see things from another person's point of view. Even when I disagree, just to know. We all have to develop that if we're going to make it through the next couple of decades.

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