Bill Clinton: “I do. I plead guilty to that. I don't believe in unilateral disarmament. And I don't think--suppose I said to you…”

“I do. I plead guilty to that. I don't believe in unilateral disarmament. And I don't think--suppose I said to you, ``Advertising is bad, your newspaper should stop advertising while everybody else does it, and trust me to tell everybody what a good newspaper you have. Just stop it. Just say no.'' You live in a competitive world. We live in a competitive world. And notwithstanding what the image may be, constantly--and you see again in the press today--the Republicans raise more money, raise more big money, and raise more money from noncitizens than the Democrats do. But we have to raise enough to be competitive. I am doing my best to try to build things like our Women's Leadership Forum, which is the most exciting thing that the Democratic Party has going now in the way of fundraising, people who give modest contributions involving women, smaller businesses, new business people coming in. But I think it would be a grave mistake for us to abandon any attempt to compete. That would only ensure that the Republicans would never pass campaign finance reform. And I might say--I'm trying to stay in a good humor about this, because if I were sitting at home and I were a Republican Senator with a lot of influence in this, I'd say, ``Hot dog, this is the question I have been praying for. We will never be held accountable for this. We can kill it one more time. We've killed it 4 years. Let's go for 5.'' And I hope that won't be it. I mean, I think we ought to--I will live under any set of rules that are there. But the lesson that we have learned is there's too much money in this system, but it's because of the cost of communication. It's the cost of communication that's driving this up. And so we have got to get free air time or reduced air time, and we've got to get campaign finance reform. And I hope we can. Let me just say, look at what we have done just since the first of this year. We want the FCC to deal with the issue of free air time. I have appointed an advisory committee to explore that. I've asked former Vice President Mondale and former Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker to head a national group to get citizens involved in campaign finance reform. I have asked the FEC to reconsider the rules that it made which made soft money possible in the first place. And I'm supporting Kennedy-Kassebaum. I don't know what else I can do. But I will not, at the same time, bankrupt the Democratic Party and say that I want you to have no money, even though if we do our very best we're still going to be outraised and outspent two to one. I don't think that is a responsible thing to do. I think that would be wrong. This money was given to us by--the people that contributed money to us, by and large, were people that could have made a lot more money contributing to the Republicans, they thought, because they were the party for the capital gains tax, the estate tax relief, and all of that. They did it because they believed in what we were doing. And they gave us a chance to fight for things like this children's health program, this education program, and all the things we did. I just think we can't afford to just lay down our capacity to compete when what we really have to do is all agree to live under a new set of rules, which I will happily agree to live under. David. Medicare and Social Security”