Interview with Hillary Clinton

Brian Williams: Talk about the power of words, especially in a campaign where your chief opponent is an African American.  A lot of very smart people, a lot of columnists said, “Of course I understand what Senator Clinton was saying about MLK and LBJ.  There wouldn’t have been a Civil Rights Act of 1964 without the guidance and leadership of LBJ.  But, of course, there wouldn’t have been a civil rights movement without the towering moral authority of Dr. King, of the near death beating of people like John Lewis.”  And yet you know what happened to your comments in that issue in the days since.

Hillary Clinton: Well, and I really regretted that because it was very much, you know, off topic.  It was baseless.  And it was, personally hurtful, because obviously I know as well as anyone, I heard Dr. King speak. I mean, he began transforming my life, the night that I heard him as a young girl.

But this is a false choice.  It’s not either/or.  You have to have movements.  You have to have political—uprisings, if you will.  You’ve got to have people who put themselves on the line for change.  I am the beneficiary of the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, of the human rights movement.  So there’s not a contradiction.

And the real point is that we need to do it all in America. We need to have our nation engaged.  American people have to feel that they’re part of the change that is happening.  But we have to have leadership as Dr. King himself recognized so many times, that will respond and shape and deliver the results that the movement tees up for us to accomplishment.  So it’s like this false choice between change or experience. You’ve got to have both. You have to have, you know, the strength and experience to make the change. I obviously think I have the experience we need to make the change we want in America.

Brian Williams: Have you war gamed the possibility that if you lose this contest that it would have been because you were up against a movement or, as some have called Senator Obama, more of an ideal than a candidate—and that it wasn’t a fair fight perhaps? But that’s the way it went?

Hillary Clinton: Well, elections always come down to choices between people.  On the ballot you have individuals with our records and our qualifications.  I think I have a very strong case that if you wanna know what kind of change any of us will bring, look at the changes we’ve already brought. That’s usually the best indicator of future behavior.

And I was taken aback when Senator Obama said yesterday that he didn’t intend to try to—manage or run the government that he was going to have advisors to do that.  That is very reminiscent of what we’ve had for the last seven years. I intend to run the government.

I intend to manage the economy. I intend to take personal responsibility. And I intend to hold the government of the United States accountable to the taxpayers and the citizens of America.  I think I know what it will take to translate all of our vision and all of our ideals. I mean, I have huge goals for America that I have set forth to translate that into reality.

Now, right now I’ve got an economic stimulus package because we’ve got to take action.  We’re slipping if not already in a recession.  We’ve got to make it as shallow and short as possible.  We need a President who will step up and do what is necessary. I offer a lifetime of experience of making positive change, of setting big goals, and of knowing you’ve got to run the government and manage the economy that you’re actually gonna produce results for the American people.

Brian Williams: I guess what I’m getting at is originally when you were thinking about running you faced this race as the only historic candidate in the race.  You were up against what some people say is a more (laughter) historic candidate in this race.

Hillary Clinton: I’m thrilled by that, Brian.  You know, I was sitting there last night, you know, looking at Senator Obama and looking at Senator Edwards, and thinking about how remarkable it is that the three of us were there on that stage with you and Tim Russert.  You know, I have been involved in these struggles for so long that I am, you know, excited.

I am gratified that in my country we have this moment of opportunity.  Now, obviously I believe that I would be the better President. I wouldn’t be getting up at the crack of dawn and working past midnight.  But I recognize and I celebrate the historic moment that we have right now.

Brian Williams: Question about an issue currently on the front burner in our society. Steroids.  Performance-enhancing drugs.  Growth hormones.  I guess it was yesterday Commissioner Selig up on Capitol Hill, Senator George Mitchell says hundreds of thousands of our young people are—are using, injecting these drugs.  What about enforcement, responsibility, penalties?  Should, for example, Marion Jones be going to prison for what she did?

Hillary Clinton: I don’t think that is called for because I think that we’ve had a very blurry set of rules and standards in professional sports.  And that has, unfortunately, spilled over—to our young people.  You know, it’s a little ironic to have the baseball commissioner, you know, now talking about what should be done because it sure wasn’t done before.

The baseball owners and the unions were complicit in basically trying to cover up and deny what was going on.  So I think we’ve got to have a very clear set of rules and standards.  And we need people to speak out about, you know, the damaging effects that this has.  We know the physical effects and the mental effects and even the life-threatening effects that it can have.

But it also undermines our heroes.  I mean, it takes away that sense that, “Oh, my gosh, look at what this man is doing.  Look at what this woman can achieve with hard work and God-given ability that has just made her such a star.”  It undermines what we believe about the—about human possibility and potential.  And it’s very damaging.  It’s damaging, not only to our sports figures, it’s damaging to us as a nation.  So I am absolutely in favor of moving rapidly to do as much as we can to end this scourge of using these performance-enhancing drugs, these dangerous drugs, and making it very clear there will be penalties and strong penalties going forward.

Because we’ve got to penalize those who are selling it, who are prescribing it. We have to penalize those who stand silently by while it goes on. And, yes, we will have to move towards penalizing those who use it because this is just not acceptable.

Brian Williams: So one more point on Marion Jones.  She’s given up everything she once earned. Five medals, a huge monetary penalty, and her reputation.

Hillary Clinton: Right.
               
Brian Williams: She’s the mother of two young boys. The New York Times says it’s believed she’s still breast feeding her youngest child.  And apparently because she’s not admitted to knowingly taking these substances, six months in prison.  That’s too harsh?

Hillary Clinton: You know, I’m not going to talk about the kind of criminal penalties.  I think that she went through a tremendous ordeal and gave up her life’s work and her accomplishments.  I don’t know the facts.  And I do know this, Brian, that there are a lot of people who stood to gain.

They gained monetarily.  They gained reputations.  They gained access to world-class athletes.  I don’t know what doctors told her.  I don’t know what trainers told her.  I think that—you know, we ought to start now and say, “Look, whatever happened before, this has to end.”

And we can’t just go after the athletes. We need to go after the enablers. And that, frankly, goes way up the scale to the people who run professional sports, often to the people who are involved in the Olympics.  This is, there’s enough blame to go around here.

Brian Williams: Another topic from the news.  This, corporate foreign ownership.  We talked about it in the debate last night.  Two huge names.  Citigroup and Merrill Lynch—looking for $20 billion cash from overseas to stay afloat from the following nations:  Japan, a nation once vanquished and rebuilt by the United States; Korea, where American soldiers fought; Kuwait, where American soldiers expelled Saddam.

We are taking money from Prince Alwaleed, whose money was turned away by Rudolph Giuliani, now propping up Citigroup.  Could you blame a member of, say, the greatest generation, who felt they fought to save the world for the United States, for being upset at looking at the present state of things, where these icons of the money business in the United States are going overseas looking for money to start afloat?

Hillary Clinton: Well, Brian, I’m upset. And we brought this on ourselves both by government policies and by decisions made in boardrooms across America.  And one of the reasons I’m running for President is so we don’t break face with the greatest generation and generations before who gave us these extraordinary opportunities.

We are on the brink of squandering so many of them.  When you move from a projected $5.6 trillion surplus when George Bush became President to a $9 trillion debt and that debt is held by governments around the world, when we now have the sovereign wealth funds that are not disciplined by the market in many instances but are government controlled, when we continue our dependence on foreign oil and our President goes hat in hand to the Middle East begging the OPEC countries to lower the price, this is our fault.

And there’s enough blame to go around.  We have been spending recklessly.  We have not been investing smartly.  We have tilted the tax codes to the wealthiest of Americans.  And we now see the effects with a declining economy and unemployment and so many problems in the lives of the people that talk to me.

We’ve got to move.  And we’ve got to move quickly.  Now, I think we should do more to reign in the sovereign wealth funds, to make them more transparent.  I’ve called Citi International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and central banks including our Fed to begin to set up some rules, some ground rules.

Obviously a lot of the institutions that I’m proud to represent in New York are now in a very tight place and they have to take this action.  But they need to constrain the influence because it’s not just a global investment fund.  It is a sovereign wealth fund.  We often have differences in our security and our national goals with some of these countries.  Therefore, we’ve got to have some ground rules before we just take this money that is not disciplined by the market the way that private investment would be.

But this raises a much bigger issue. I think this election is so important because we’re really at a turning point.  We have beggared ourselves. We have failed to meet the energy demands in a responsible, clean, renewable energy way.  We have denied global warming.  We have an increase in people without insurance.

We have this home foreclosure crisis which is undermining the housing making and so much else.  We’ve got to take action now.  I’ve outlined a plan.  I hope that the President will begin working with the Congress.  But that’s just the beginning.  We need short-term, medium-term, and long-term changes in how we address the position we’re in right now as a country.

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