Bill Clinton: “Well, I certainly think we should. But to be fair, Senator Feinstein's had to raise a lot of money because Mr.…”

“Well, I certainly think we should. But to be fair, Senator Feinstein's had to raise a lot of money because Mr. Huffington said he'd spend however much of his personal fortune he had to to buy the seat. And the really terrifying thing is that since people are awash in information these negative ads have an incredibly disproportionate influence over what they should. And people have no way of knowing whether the information's even true or not. So it's a terrible, terrible thing. I tried to pass a campaign finance reform bill through Congress, and the Republican Senators killed it at the end of the last legislative session. We could have had campaign finance reform, but they had the power to filibuster it, delay it, and kill it. And they did. The Supreme Court has said that we cannot legally stop a wealthy person from spending all the money that he or she wants on a campaign. So the only way to discourage a wealthy person from doing that is to put limits on spending and then say if you go over these limits, we're going to set aside a fund, and your opponent gets a dollar for every dollar you spend over it. That would remove the incentive to do that and encourage people to be more efficient and to spend more time answering questions and being more positive. I mean, these campaigns have just turned into nothing more than multimillion dollar negative-ad slugfests, and they don't have--very often they don't have a lot to do with what is going to happen the day after the election. I mean, I think the best case for Feinstein, for example, is that as far as I know, she is the only Senator in my lifetime who in only 2 years in the Senate, her first 2 years in the Senate, has sponsored three major legislative initiatives, the assault weapons ban, the requirement that there be a zero tolerance for kids having guns in schools, and the California desert bill, the biggest wilderness preserve in the history of the country. I know of no Senator in my lifetime who's done that. Now that, it seems to me, ought to be an argument for giving her a 6-year term. She did something in 2 years nobody else has ever done, and she ought to get 6 to keep on helping California. So to me--I would like to see these races be more positive, talk about what ideas people have to build the future and help people and empower people to take responsibility for their lives. That seems to me to be what we ought to be talking about. Mr. Dunbar. Mr. President, unfortunately our time is up. We started our egg timer here 5 minutes ago, and it just went ``bing.'' And I agreed with your folks to let you go. You are welcome any time you've got a little time to devote to answering questions. You're welcome any time on KGO. Thanks so much.”