Bill Clinton: “I'll tell you what went wrong. What went wrong was I was not able to keep the public focus on the issues that we're…”

“I'll tell you what went wrong. What went wrong was I was not able to keep the public focus on the issues that we're working on after I gave the State of the Union Address, even though that's what we kept doing. Now, look, we've been here 4 months, and look what's happened in 4 months--and they give you a 4-year term--look what's happened in 4 months: We had a major foreign policy challenge in Russia right after I got in office. If Yeltsin had gotten beat in Russia and a militant regime had returned, we would have had to turn around with the defense budget and a lot of bad things could have happened to America. The United States went to work, organized the rest of the world, supported Yeltsin. He won the election. We're back on track there making this world a safer place. That's my number one job. I think that's pretty impressive. The Congress passed a resolution committing to do a budget that reduced the deficit by $500 billion on time for the first time in 17 years. Congress passed the family leave bill they've been fooling around with for 8 years to guarantee people some time off without losing their jobs. They passed the motor voter bill they've been fooling around with for years. No one now asks are we going to reduce the deficit. The question is how much and how. No one now asks are we ever going to do anything about health care. The question is when and exactly what are we going to do. I think that's a pretty good record for 4 months. Now, if you do a lot of things and you try to change a lot of things overnight, you may break some eggs, and it's not an exact process. And controversy always is better news--you know that--than the lack of controversy. So one of the things that happened--we were laughing about this yesterday--is I'll bet you most people in this audience and most people in this country have no earthly idea that we're going to cut way over $200 billion in spending off of this budget over the next 5 years, because the people who normally fight spending cuts supported it this time, and we rolled through the spending cuts without controversy. So the only controversy is over whether we should raise any taxes and from whom. Now, I think we're doing pretty well, but I think we've done a lousy job of being able to cut through the fog that always surrounds this town and communicate that. I'll admit that. Media Coverage Ms. Zahn. Why? Why have you had a tough time doing that?”