Bill Clinton: “Oh, yes, always better. I think face-to-face is always better. But I also believe that once you get to know someone and…”

“Oh, yes, always better. I think face-to-face is always better. But I also believe that once you get to know someone and you feel comfortable with them--you know, President Jiang and I have a very friendly relationship, and it permits us to deal with all these issues so that the hotline then becomes very useful. If we were strangers, for example, the hotline would not be so helpful because it would be awkward. But when there's a problem, as there was with the nuclear tests--and I didn't want to wait until I got to China to talk to President Jiang about how we should respond to the India and Pakistani nuclear tests, so I called him on the hotline. And because we had already met several times and we felt--and he had had this very successful state visit to the United States, the hotline was very, very important, very helpful. So I think the telephone is important. The Internet is important. All communications can be good, but none of it can take the place of face-to-face communications.”