Bill Clinton: “Well, all I can say is you just have to watch and see. Insofar as the Congress has worked with me, we've been able to do…”

“Well, all I can say is you just have to watch and see. Insofar as the Congress has worked with me, we've been able to do a large number of the things that I said I'd do when I ran for President. I came on MTV, and we talked about the motor voter bill; we signed it after years of not signing it. It took--for 7 years the Brady bill was hung up in Congress. When I became President, we passed it; we signed it. The national service bill was something I ran on, trying to get young people like you interested in community service and then allowing you, in return for that community service, to earn money against a college education. It was passed and signed. So we're able--we are making progress on the commitments I made to the American people in general and to the young people of this country. We redid the student loan program, so now you can pay a loan back-- college loan back as a percentage of your income. So I'm trying to do what I say I'll do. All I can tell you is--this is a general rule-- cynicism is a cop-out because once you become cynical and you say somebody else is not going to do something, that lets you off the hook. And in the end, we can only go forward if we believe in each other, until we understand we can't believe in each other anymore. So I would plead with you--it's a very fair question. You've got a lot of reasons to be disappointed. But we can make a difference if we work at it together. And neither you nor I will be able to do everything we want to do, but we can do a lot of the things we should do if we'll get to work on it. Whitewater and Vietnam Draft Ms. Soren. Mr. President, you speak so passionately and directly about issues like violence and education. But why is it, when the issues pertain to you personally, like the draft or Whitewater, that people seem to get the idea that you're giving them less than a straight answer, even when you have nothing to hide? The President: Well, first of all, I think it's hard to know what the rules are; they keep raising the bar. Let me just give you a real answer to that. I was asked by the press and the Republicans to agree to a special counsel on Whitewater, right, even though there were--no one had accused me of doing anything wrong, and therefore there was no ground, traditionally, to have a Special Counsel. Everybody said, ``Prove your innocence.'' In a country where people are presumed innocent, the President isn't. You've got to go prove your innocence, even though no one's accused you of anything wrong. So I agreed. I said okay, we'll have a Special Counsel. Then, in past Special Counsels, Presidents have resisted subpoenas, applied things like executive privilege. I cooperated entirely. And the Watergate Special Counsel said we were a big departure from the past; this administration has totally cooperated. The press keeps saying, ``Well, we said `Special Counsel,' but now we want to ask questions anyway. And you've got to have all the answers right now, and if you don't, you're not being forthcoming.'' Well, I couldn't remember everything I was asked. It's been a long time since you had somebody who's given you 17 years worth of tax returns, for example. But I don't think it's fair to say we haven't been candid. Now, maybe in the beginning I didn't want to just shut the Government down and just do Whitewater. And I still don't. But I have tried to be as honest as I could. I also, frankly, have questions. I don't think just because you become President that everything all of a sudden should be subject to answering. I disagree on the draft; I did my best to be candid. And that's another interesting thing, the person that made the draft charge against me was the person who changed his story. Not me, I didn't change mine; somebody else changed theirs. Ms. Soren. I think what angers young people about Whitewater is the fact that it seems like it's slowing down all of the other important issues that they want to get through.”