Bill Clinton: “Well, let me see how I should answer that. I don't want to talk in great detail about our conversation, because I think…”

“Well, let me see how I should answer that. I don't want to talk in great detail about our conversation, because I think he should be able to answer that. I don't want to read his mind for you. I think that he believes that the more the voters know about some of the positions taken by the ultranationalists, including Zhirinovsky, the more likely they will be to pull away from them. And he believes that the promises which were made by the ultranationalists could not reasonably be expected to be kept. So I think that his view is that what he needs to do is try to do the best he can with his job, turn things around, show some successes, and that that's the best way to dampen them down. One thing I did say to him was that just following the campaign from afar, as we all did, that the ultranationalists seemed in some ways--in some ways the Communists did, too--to lay too much of an uncontested claim to the feelings of national pride. That is, the reformers, we all know, didn't run in a coherent bloc and didn't present a coherent message. And as the Democrats know in the United States--I kicked him on purpose because he's talked about this--it's sort of like the problems that the Democrats had for the last 20 years winning the Presidency. You could say, here's a problem and here's my four-point solution to the problem, but if all you get is the good government vote, that's never going to be a majority, especially when people are hurting. So the only counsel I gave him was that--Yeltsin cut through all the traditional barriers when he stood up on that tank, or even earlier when he became Gorbachev's successor. He embodied the change and the pride of Russia. You didn't have to choose. You saw the pride of Russia and the change in a person. And by his actions he did that. And what I suggested to him was that his group, they needed to find spokespersons, and they needed to find ways of saying what they were about that also says, ``We're pro-worker, we're pro-family, we're anticrime, and we're for bringing the pride of this nation back. And our plan will make the--[inaudible].'' Because I think to be fair to them, their task has been so daunting that they would naturally become absorbed in the overwhelming burdens of just doing the details of it. These other guys were never in government, you know; they had the freedom of just going out and making speeches. And the only thing I cautioned to Yeltsin, I said, ``Look, I saw the Democrats in America get killed for years because they go out there and they talk about problem X, Y, and Z and have a four-point program for every one. And they might be right, but if it didn't resonate with a larger concern to the voters, it could never be translated into a national mandate.'' And I think we had a great conversation about it, and I think he was interested in it, because he understands that that's how he got to be President in the first place, change and pride.”