Bill Clinton: “And--let me finish. You asked this question, I want to--and I believe--you know, we know 3,000 kids a day start smoking.…”

“And--let me finish. You asked this question, I want to--and I believe--you know, we know 3,000 kids a day start smoking. We know that--at least we know some of those tobacco interests have known for 30 years it was destructive and addictive. We know 1,000 of those kids are going to die early. If you want to do things, you've got to make people mad. And if the people you make mad have access to television programs, radio programs, access to channels of communication, they will go wacky, and they will generate animosity. Now, I will say this, my sense is that the level of personal animosity has gone down as people see who's really fighting for real family values and real interests of American families and real interests of small business and trying to give ordinary people a chance to make the most of their own lives. But you know, I did not take this job to try to maintain high levels of popularity. You go back and look; I had a very specific agenda I was going to try to implement. And I was well aware that people would be against it. Look at this--look at this budget debate on the student loans. They even went through an accounting gimmick to try to convince people that the direct student loan program was more expensive than the guaranteed student loan program, when everybody in America knows it's not true. Why? Because they want to take money away from students and give it back to bankers. Well, the people that lost their money weren't happy. The people that were going to benefit from the student loan program--there weren't enough of them to know that at election time. I think the main thing that we all have to do is to figure out what we believe and fight for it and be willing to work together with people who disagree with us, if we can find honest common ground. And we'll let the popularity take care of itself. I just tried to do what I said I would do when I ran.”