Bill Clinton: “Well, I already answered that question once, or I tried to, but I will answer it again. Until you had your last election…”

“Well, I already answered that question once, or I tried to, but I will answer it again. Until you had your last election and you adopted a new constitution and you elected a new Parliament from people with--lots of people from different parties, President Yeltsin was the only person who had actually been elected by all the people of Russia in a full and free election. Now, you have three sources of democratic legitimacy, if you will. You have the Parliament, the President, and the constitution. We have no interest in picking favorites or defining Russian democracy in terms of anyone. So you have done that, and you must do that. The second thing I would say, however, is that no country can have more than one President at a time. Every nation needs someone who's the leader, who then works with the leaders of other nations. And I'm the President of the United States. If I want to work with you and help you, I should be open to meeting with and listening to all the democratic voices in Russia. But in the end, I still have to work with your President.”