On a recent Clinton Foundation trip to Africa, former President Bill Clinton discussed a range of topics - from health care and the political climate in Washington to the shooting at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's future plans. Here are edited excerpts of those conversations, which took place in mid-July in South Africa, Rwanda, Uganda and Cyprus.
NYT: Do you think the political climate is worse in Washington than it was when you were in office?
Mr. Clinton: I don't know, nobody has accused the president of murder yet. Nobody has tried to bankrupt him with bogus investigations, so it's not quite as bad. But the political impasse has gone on longer. … In tha t sense, my time was extremely painful for the people involved but not so bad for the American public. … Nothing has broken the logjam yet. The election will break it. If the president wins, then anyone who wants to stay in business and wants to hang onto their majority will work together. Or, the logjam will break with Mr. Romney's election and they'd just implement their agenda, which I believe will be very bad for the economy. But the election will break the logjam.
NYT: We've seen a lot of the work in Africa of the C.H.A.I. [Clinton Health Access Initiative] program. Speaking of access to health care, what did you think about the Supreme Court's recent health care decision?
Mr. Clinton: The Supreme Court decision on health care was legally curious. I personally thought it was an easy decision.
NYT: About that mandate, during the 2008 primary Barack Obama sparred with your wife about her insistence on a mandate. And now it's the centerpiece of his heal th care plan. Was that just good politics?
Mr. Clinton: Yes. First of all, Obama was right, it was good politics. I remember when I was governor being visited by this delegation of motorcyclists who were mad at me because I didn't support the repeal of the helmet mandate. These bikers kind of liked me and thought I was sort of this rednecky guy and they said: “How can you do this? This is crazy. We want to ride without a helmet so we can feel the breeze in our hair and hear things.†And I said: “I know you do. But you do not have a right to have an accident in which you do not die but you are seriously injured and then the rest of us have to pay for you.â€
The debate between Obama and Hillary in the primary, first of all, he ran a very adroit primary and he was very smart politically and in fairness to him, he hadn't dealt with the dirty details and the complexities of health care. She knew from all the work we'd done bef ore that if you didn't have a mandate, it wouldn't work. And, in fairness, when we started out we didn't have an individual mandate because we had an employer mandate. … I thought the president deserved credit. Most people running for president try to do as close to what they say they're going to do as possible unless they were convinced they were wrong or circumstances had changed. We're glad Lincoln didn't keep his promise to not free the slaves. We're glad Roosevelt didn't keep his promise to balance the budget.
NYT: After the Columbine shooting in 1999, you spoke out in favor of stricter gun laws. Do you think Mr. Obama should do the same in light of the shooting in Colorado?
Mr. Clinton: He's from Chicago. I'm from Arkansas. I had a .22 and was shooting cans off fence posts when I was 10 or 11 years old. They tried hard to demonize me, but the reason I was able to prevail with the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban - but never did get the gun show loop hole passed once the Republicans got to Congress - is that I came from a culture where people could hear me talk about it and they couldn't imagine me shutting them out of deer season. … I had this brilliant great uncle. I bet his I.Q. was 185 with about a sixth-grade education. I said: “What in the hell is this? Nobody really thinks I'm going to take their guns away.†He said: “No, Bill, but you've got to remember guys like me. We never took a vacation in our lives. We don't have anything but hunting and fishing.†He was a very blunt guy. I said, “‘Do you actually think they believe I'd take their guns away from them?†He said, “Hell no, but they don't want to take a chance.†… It's very important if you want to take this on not to treat all these rural people like they're stupid or don't have legitimate concerns.
NYT: Your wife's approval rating is nearly 70 percent. What do you make of that?
Mr. Clinton: I know that in general, secretarie s of state and defense tend to become popular because they are by definition out of politics. … But I don't think it's very complicated. I think the country sees her the way those of us who know her see her. She just gets up every day, goes to work and pushes a rock up the hill. If it falls back down, she pushes it up the hill again.
You know, when we were going together in law school and I realized I loved her, I said, “You know, I want to marry you, but you shouldn't marry me.†I literally had this conversation with her. And she said, “Why?†I was 26 or 27 when I got out of law school. I'd worked on the McGovern campaign. I'd met all these guys who were against the Vietnam War. I'd seen people in our generation who are the most prominent and I said, “You're the most gifted of all of them.†And she just laughed at me and said, “What are you talking about?,†and I said: “You should be in public life. You should go home to Chicago or go to New York o r someplace and practice law and you should be in public office.†She said: “Look at how hard hitting I am. Nobody will ever vote for me for anything.†So she went to Arkansas with me.
NYT: Does she want to turn her current popularity into another run for the presidency?
Mr. Clinton: She believes she is leaving politics. She believes she's going to write a book or do her N.G.O. work and try to influence policy. But this whole rise of the Tea Party has made us both think we can't ignore politics. That's why I wrote that little book “Back to Work.†But that's what she believes. And she points out that we're not kids anymore and a lot of people want to be president. She doesn't think she'll ever run again. But I think we need to let her rest, and I'd be for whatever she wants to do.
NYT: Mr. Clinton discussed when he talks to his wife given their crazy travel schedules:
I just talked to her. She was pumped. She went to those 9 countries in 12 d ays. … Hillary started exercising like crazy. She does it at 6:30 in the morning. She has this trainer come by. I told Chelsea, I feel bad calling her so early, but I said, “O.K., I'm calling,†and she'd already been working out for 30 minutes in the swimming pool with this trainer.
NYT: What are you reading at the moment?
Mr. Clinton: I just finished “The Social Conquest of Earth,†a fabulous book, and I read a few weeks ago E. J. Dionne's book and I've been gorging on mysteries on this trip so I can read myself to sleep. … I have a Kindle and I have an iPad, but I don't have it hooked up for books. I've started to use the Kindle because I've outbuilt my house with all the books. I've been trying to give a lot of my books to my school to build out their library. I suppose I'll get into it [e-reading]. I like holding a book, but it's a pain in the rear when you're traveling all over Africa.
Amy Chozick is The Times's corpor ate media reporter. Follow @amychozick on Twitter.
