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 Support The DrudgeReport; Visit Our Advertisers  FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON CONSIDERS HIS IMPEACHMENT BATTLE A 'BADGE OF HONOR' AND HIS INFIDELITY A 'TERRIBLE MORAL ERROR': 60 MINUTES Wed Jun 16 2004 21:00:11 ET In an Exclusive and Wide-Ranging Interview With Dan Rather That Touches on His Presidency, Family and Childhood, Bill Clinton Discusses His Personal Failings and How He and Hillary Clinton Helped Their Marriage Through Counseling Former President Bill Clinton calls his fight against his impeachment a "badge of honor" in an exclusive and wide-ranging 60 MINUTES interview with Dan Rather to be broadcast Sunday June 20 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. In the candid, sometimes emotional interview, the 42nd president of the United States talks about his public and private life - soon to be revealed in his upcoming memoir, My Life - discussing his Arkansas childhood and family, his times as Arkansas governor and the triumphs and failures of his presidency. Clinton tells Rather he is proud that he fought the impeachment battle that failed to drive him from office. "I didn't quit, I never thought of resigning and I stood up to it and beat it back," he tells Rather. "The whole battle was a badge of honor. I don't see it as a stain, because it was illegitimate," says Clinton of the impeachment process that he calls "an abuse of power." Clinton views his economic plan as the greatest accomplishment of his presidency. "I kept score, how many people's lives were better off," he tells Rather. "I think the fact that we were able to have 22 million jobs and record home ownership and lower interest rates...people actually had the ability to do more things than ever before," says Clinton. He had many days as president that he counts among his best, including his efforts to help the residents of Kosovo and rid the world of a dictator. "The day that Kosovar war ended and I knew Milosevic's days were numbered was a great day. I had a lot of great days," he says. The failure high on his list of regrets is the affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky that he terms "a terrible moral error." The affair's disclosure put him, he says, "in the doghouse" with his wife and also threatened to alienate his daughter, Chelsea. The family was able to overcome its terrible effect through counseling, however. Hillary, says Clinton, needed time with him to decide whether she would stay married to him. "We'd take a day a week, and we did - a whole day a week every week for a year, maybe a little more - and did counseling," says Clinton. "We did it together. We did it individually. We did family work." Why did Clinton commit adultery? He tells Rather there is no rational explanation. "I did something for the worst possible reason. Just because I could," says Clinton. "I think that's just about the most morally indefensible reason anybody could have for doing anything," he says. Rather interviewed Clinton in his home in Chappaqua, N.Y., yesterday (15) and last weekend in Arkansas, where Clinton took 60 MINUTES cameras to his childhood home in Hope, the capitol in Little Rock and to Hot Springs, where he grew up. The interview addresses all the important aspects of Clinton's life. He speaks about the issues of his presidency, including the war on terror and Osama bin Laden and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, regretting his failure to convince Yaser Arafat to accept a proposal he thought could finally bring peace. The interview will be shown for the full hour on Sunday's 60 MINUTES. Clinton's book, My Life (published by Knopf), hits bookstores June 22. Developing... |
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