The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [173]
What was your relationship with Newt Gingrich like?
It depended on which Newt showed up. The good Newt I found engaging and intelligent; we were surprisingly in agreement in the way we viewed the world. We actually had a very cordial relationship. He was very candid with me about his political objectives. And he, in turn, from time to time, would get in trouble with the right wing of his own caucus, because they said I could talk him into too much.
On the other hand, when he did things like blaming every bad thing that happened in America on Democrats, the 1960s and all that—I thought it was highly destructive.
How did it make you feel personally?
At some point, probably around 1996, I got to the point where I no longer had personal feelings about those things—like the White-water investigation and the travel-office investigation. Newt was smart. He knew there was nothing in any of that stuff. It was all politics to him; it was about power. But he really did believe that the object of politics was to destroy your opponent. And he had an enormous amount of success. He won the Congress basically by having a take-no-prisoners, be-against-everything approach. He thought he was leading a revolution, and I was in the way. I thought he was a worthy adversary. I made a lot of errors, and he ran through them.
In the history books, it will say, of course, that you were the second president ever to be impeached. How does that make you feel? Will it cloud your real accomplishments?
The history books will also record, I think, that both impeachments were wrong. And that’s why they failed. And I’m just grateful that, unlike Andrew Johnson, I was less embittered by it, and I had more support, from the public and in the Congress, and so I was able to resume my duties and actually get a lot done for the American people in the aftermath.
Did you ever get so angry during it that you think it clouded your judgment?
I got angry, but I always was alone with friends who would deflate me. I don’t think it ever clouded my judgment on any official thing. I realized that, when it was all over, I would have the responsibility to work with the Republicans as well as the Democrats.
One of the things I had to learn—it took me almost my whole first term to learn it—was that, at some point, presidents are not permitted to have personal feelings. When you manifest your anger in public, it should be on behalf of the American people and the values that they believe in. I had very strong personal feelings about it, but I tried never to talk about it.
Do you think it was in some way a referendum on the nature, morality or character of the American people?
Not really. People strongly disagreed with what I did. I did, too. I think that they just were able to discriminate between a bad personal mistake and the justification for a constitutional crisis.
As president, you have a relationship with the press that’s unique in the world: You are subject to more criticism, more attention—more everything. What’s your take on the press in America?
The important thing is to try to hear the criticism. Because it’s not always wrong, sometimes it’s right. They’re doing the best they can in a very new and different environment. I have a lot of sympathy for them. How can presidents hate the press? You can gripe all you want about all the negative coverage you get on the evening news or on the talk shows or being blasted in the newspaper or having them get on something when they’re dead wrong, like White-water—where they’re just dead wrong. But every day they’re writing about all the things that affect the American people