Bill Clinton: “There have been an awful lot of attempts--I think there have been a lot of press stories refuting some of the specific…”

“There have been an awful lot of attempts--I think there have been a lot of press stories refuting some of the specific allegations. But I would just say again, in the world we're living in-- I'll say what I said at the prayer breakfast today--there is an inordinate premium put on the use of words to destroy or to distract people. And it takes away from my ability to be President, to do the job with a clear head and a clear heart and to focus on the American people, if I have to spend all my time trying to answer charges about what people say that I did years ago. And I just can't do it; I just can't do it. I do the very best I can. Sometimes you can actually disprove something someone says about you. A lot of times, some people could lie about you in ways that you can't disprove. You can't always disprove every assertion. So insofar as whatever happened, I can't change yesterday, I can only change today and tomorrow. So I've just got to keep going. I think it is--I think I have--if I'd done anything, even though I've tried not to deal with it at all, I think whatever time I've spent kind of trying to absorb those blows since I've been President has been time and effort and energy, emotional as well as intellectual energy, has taken away from the American people. And I'm not going to cheat them anymore; I'm just not going to do it. I'm tired of letting other people say things that require me to deprive the American people of the best effort I can make. They'll have to make whatever evaluation of this they want to. There is a difference between reputation and character, and I have increasingly less control over my reputation but still full control over my character. That's between me and God, and I've just got to try to be purified by this. I also noticed, Winston Churchill said--I ran across this the other day--that just because someone strays from the truth in criticizing you doesn't mean you can't learn something from their criticism. So I've decided that I'll try--need to learn a little something from my critics, even if what they say is not so. None of us are perfect, and I'm certainly not. But I just can't--I really think I made the right decision to try to just tune it out and go forward.”