Bill Clinton: “Well, they just didn't have the--you know, Roosevelt could have off-the-record press conferences. Roosevelt could debate…”

“Well, they just didn't have the--you know, Roosevelt could have off-the-record press conferences. Roosevelt could debate matters and take months deciding issues without having 100 commentarians talk about how indecisive he was. I got tickled the other day--I read an analysis of decisionmaking and record that was done in ``The American Prospect,'' which said that I was--in which the author argued that I was much more decisive in difficult situations than President Roosevelt had been early on in his term and that I had paid a bigger political price for it, in other words, arguing that Roosevelt was viewed as being sly and canny. But that's just--part of it is just the times, you know, the times change. And the nature of coverage of politics today and the sort of instantaneous commentary about every issue and the obsession with process over product and with politics over policy, I think these things just give a President less space. They require you to affect an almost arbitrary way of decisionmaking because of the heavy tilt in the way your decisions are characterized to the American people. Mr. Lamb. There have been a half dozen books already written about your Presidency.”