Bill Clinton: “Well, I think it was--we had, we in the Justice Department and the White House, did not think it was the right case for…”

“Well, I think it was--we had, we in the Justice Department and the White House, did not think it was the right case for the Supreme Court to come to grips with the larger issues of affirmative action. The facts were not good. And so I think, on balance, it was a good thing that the Court will not be called upon to make sweeping generalizations about affirmative action on constitutional grounds on a set of facts which are, to put it mildly, atypical. Because, I mean, that was--I would not have favored some attempt just to keep the Supreme Court from deciding on the case. They've already decided on affirmative action in the context of Government contracts in Adarand. But the facts were not--it was an atypical set of facts. And the Supreme Court--it's hard enough for the Supreme Court to make momentous decisions that elicit from, in a general area, the larger principles of the Constitution and how they'll be applied if the facts are unquestionably representative of the class of cases involved--it's hard enough--or if there's just a few variations. Here's a case where the facts were quite different from the normal class of cases involved and therefore the risk of almost unintentional error, I think, was quite great. So I think on balance it was a good thing. Discrimination in Police Conduct Ms. Enda. One of the areas where a lot of people agree that there's huge amounts of discrimination remaining is in police--the way police treat people in terms of arrests and the way the courts treat them. Do you intend as part of your race initiative----”