Bill Clinton: “Let me tell you, I regret those opinion polls. I think they have something to do, frankly, with the way you folks…”

“Let me tell you, I regret those opinion polls. I think they have something to do, frankly, with the way you folks discuss these issues. Now, let me just run through this. I am the first President in a decade who has had his budget considered seriously by Congress. After Ronald Reagan's first budget, every budget that he and George Bush presented was laughed off as a political document. Seventy- five percent of the Republicans in the House of Representatives--the Republicans in the House of Representatives--voted against the last Bush budget. This one is being taken seriously. I am the first President in a decade that was complimented, not criticized, at the recent meeting of the world's great industrial countries, because we're doing something serious about our economy. I immediately organized the G-7 nations to support Boris Yeltsin when he was in the ropes last spring. That's not a sign of weakness. And we had a major role in the preservation of democracy in Russia. We passed the family leave bill, the motor voter bill through Congress quickly. We have three major pieces of political reform moving through Congress, already passed one House: campaign finance reform, lobby reform, and the line-item veto. I don't think that is a sign of weakness. When you live in a democratic society and you're elected President, you are not a dictator. The resolution we had on the gays in the military, which was worked out by Les Aspin from Wisconsin, was a slight compromise from my position in this way: If it were up to me alone, I would say that a person could acknowledge being gay openly, clearly, but say that he or she was completely conforming to the Military Code of Conduct and be able to serve. In this policy, if a person does that, that raises the presumption that the person intends to do something that the Code of Conduct forbids. But then the service man or woman is given the opportunity to demonstrate that he or she will abide by the code. That's the rule. The second thing this policy does, which goes well beyond anything I discussed in the campaign, is to provide very explicit, explicit, protections for privacy and associational rights by service members without regard to their sexual orientation, going well beyond anything I ever discussed in the election. I am the first President who ever took on this issue. Is that a sign of weakness? It may be a sign of madness, sir, but it is not a sign of weakness. And I think that we need to get our heads on straight about what is strong and what is weak. When a President takes on tough issues, takes tough stands, tries to get things done in a democracy, you may not get 100 percent. Was I wrong to take 85? What would have happened if I had just put my campaign pledge into play? What would have happened? You know and I know and Les Aspin will tell you, the United States Congress would immediately have reversed it. So I would have the great good fortune of being able to say I'm ``Simon Pure,'' and the people in the military who are serving well and honorably who happen to be homosexual would not be one step further ahead than they were when I got elected. They're much better off today because we took an honorable compromise. That's what democracy is about. Read the United States Constitution. It's about honorable compromise. And that is not weakness if you're making progress.”