Bill Clinton: “Well, obviously--no, I haven't talked to anybody about my trip to Russia--any of our people. So I don't know what I'm…”

“Well, obviously--no, I haven't talked to anybody about my trip to Russia--any of our people. So I don't know what I'm going to do there. I think that it is--I'll say just what I said yesterday--I think it was probably largely a protest vote. I think that when people are having a tough time and they have a tough time over a long period of years, they often look for simple answers. It's not unique to Russia. You can see that in many other democracies throughout the world and throughout history. It's not all that unusual. I don't think any of us expect to be giving up Alaska any time soon. But I think, there must be a lot of people in Russia who are extremely frustrated and have a high level of anger because they've been through a lot of tough times. And the people running the multinational institutions that are trying to help these countries convert from old-line Communist, top- down, command-and-control economies to market economies need to be very sensitive to that. I think we need to ask ourselves not so much about him right now, but about what this means for democracy in Russia, in Poland, and in other republics of the former Soviet Union and the other countries of Eastern Europe. And I'll have more to say about that as we go along.”