Clinton & The Clintons | Absolute History

this is the story of a man who made it to the White House from humble beginnings and of a wife who became a contender for the presidency it's also a story of political destruction and personal survival Bill Clinton's first term as US president began in 1993 after he beat the Republican George Bush Senior Bill won a second term in 1996 there were trophies and triumphs but there were attacks on the Clintons integrity by their right-wing enemies their financial dealings were questioned and friendships investigated bimbo eruptions scandalized Bill's presidency and led to his impeachment Jennifer flowers and Paula Jones preceded the devastating exposures surrounding Monica Lewinsky the affair that bill tried to deny I did not have sexual relations for that one miss Lewinsky his betrayals cost Hillary the presidency Barack Obama became president of the United States while Hillary settled for the lesser role of Secretary of State on Tuesday thank you and God bless you are [Music] at the age of seven Bill Clinton had a dream he wanted to make life better for the people of his home state Arkansas in 1992 after his nomination as Democratic candidate he visited his birth town Hope Arkansas he had left home years before but home had not left him members of his mother's family the Cassidy's were waiting to greet him bill received a warm welcome from the extended family he had left behind including his great uncle buddy one of the lights of his early life bill recalled his early years I was born in a little town called Hope Arkansas three months after my father died I remember living in that old two-story house where I live with my grandparents I remember going to my grandfather's grocery store and big jar of Jackson cookies that were there on the shelf it was a wonderful little small town where you know it seemed that everybody knew everybody else and it was a segregated like all southern towns were then and I remember my grandmother and grand father opposing the closing of Central High School to keep black students out they were far integrating the schools it was interesting my buddy my grandfather had a great school education and my grandmother had graduated from high school from a tiny little school out in bodka Arkansas bill was reunited with the uncles and cousins of his youth his own father William Blythe had died before his birth his mother Virginia recalled the difficulties of his childhood August the 18th 1946 I walked to the malko Theatre in downtown hope to see a picture call tomorrow is forever and it must have been prophetic because the next day bill was born and I kept looking at this child and didn't feel that I was going to be able to earn my she went back to New Orleans to finish her nursing education she became a nurse anesthetist and it was you know tough for her to leave me and during this time she was away one time my grandmother and I went out on a train to visit her remember we pulled out of the station and my mother kneeled at the side of the track and cried because she felt so bad that I was leaving it's one of my most vivid memories of childhoods Bill's visit to his aunt and other relatives was an emotional journey a time to revisit the past before facing election for the presidency during their reunion his great uncle Buddy presented him with a special gift the Bible he had used in his grandparents home it brought back memories for Bill he was basically raised by his grandparents his maternal grandparents for the first two years of his life and it was an atmosphere of of a lot of conflict his his grandmother was as his own mother described her a very vindictive and somewhat unbalanced person and so in that household even though his grandfather was quite kind to him his grandfather had a little store and little Billy used to go to the store and and spend time with his grandfather but the atmosphere in the household was very chaotic I you know sort of almost like bedlam and I lived in another house when I was five and six and when I was seven I bounced when he gave me a family Bible and my grandmother gave me when I was seven put pictures of my father the circumstances of his youth forged his enigmatic personality and Bill's widowed mother Virginia had a streak of wildness Bill's mother was an incredibly flamboyant pleasure-seeking party girl she loved the way she looked she were sort of outrageous outfits she would spend an hour every morning putting on what she called her paint she loved to gamble when they moved when when she later moved to Hot Springs which was a kind of a Wild West kind of atmosphere with all kinds of mafia characters coming to town and gambling and there was a racetrack there and his mother would go to the racetrack absolutely every day and at night she would go to nightclubs and she would often get on the stage and sing country songs and drink and carouse and so she was a real pleasure seeker she once said I don't have any rules there's only one rule to follow in Hot Springs Arkansas and that is enjoy yourself [Music] bill grew up in the deep south at a time of social tension hope the name of his boyhood town became a symbol for the future here bill was brought up by his grandparents in the frequent absence of his mother he developed a coping technique for the conflicts that arose later in his personal and public lives in fact he's even talked about having had to learn to live parallel lives the life that he presented to the world and the turmoil that he experienced at home which he disguised you know which he hid from his his friends and he was at his most insightful I think when he talked about how he became how became accustomed to keeping secrets and how he understood what it was like to live a secret life and at one point he talked about the sort of disgust that he would feel at having to live these two different lives and that pattern I think certainly was evidence in later life when he became a persistent womanizer but I think the notion that he could lie and get away with things was was partly a product of the way his mother kind of gave him no limits neighboring little rock was the scene for civil unrest in the 1960s the young bill was profoundly moved by the last speech of black leader Martin Luther King it's the greatest political speech of my lifetime it was so powerful it was so true so moving it was such a wake-up call for the country I was heartbroken when Martin Luther King died Washington burned I was in school there then I drove supplies down into the burnt-out part of the cities it was a terrible time and it just broke the hearts and spirits millions of people it was only two months later Robert Kennedy was killed you know those two deaths they changed a lot of things for my generation for this country and if both of them had lived I think the last 20 years would have been a lot different for America and much better Arkansas was divided on racial lines but Bill's grandparents were unconventional in their attitudes his political awareness began early his grandmother and his grandfather ran this small shop in Little Rock and most of their clientele were local blacks and in Little Rock and I think that gave bill this ease and this easiness this fluency around around African Americans you know when they talk about him being the first african-american president he grew up with black kids the third very important woman influence was one of his early school teachers in his primary school who I think was the first to realize just how bright he was and how much he could be pushed and how much he could be him how much he enjoyed reading his mother had been married four times when she died of cancer in 1994 bill revisited her grave in Little Rock a few years later Virginia had seen her son become president from the most unlikely background people who were like the the bankers and the lawyers they thought of the Clintons as white trash and this was the amazing thing about Clinton that he came through that he overcame it the bright scholarship boy like so many of his generation who got a good education and went on and made something pretty amazing in himself Virginia was buried beside Bill's father as Virginia Cassidy she married William Jefferson blithe Bill's biological father who had previously been married twice he died in an accident three months before Bill was born in 1953 Virginia took her seven-year-old son from hope to live in nearby Hot Springs she had married Roger Clinton a heavy drinker with a tendency to domestic violence but he was the only father bill ever knew Roger Clinton was an alcoholic a good man and if he ever loved any thing in this world it was bill when I was in the ninth grade I think he was ain't kind of got he got violent with my mother one night and I just bought through the door and told him he wasn't gonna do that anymore I just said stand up I have something to say to you and obviously he couldn't stand up and so he got in his face and he said daddy if you're not able to stand up I'll help you you must stand to hear what I have to say and some way or other he stood and Bill told him then don't you ever ever lay your hand on my mother again I never stopped loving my stepfather I think he was a really good person and later on I wish I'd known more about human psychology as a child than then I did because I came to realize that he was a good person and that the problem was not that he didn't love my mother or me or my brother the problem was that he didn't think enough of himself in his teens bill formally changed his surname from Blythe to Clinton he now had a younger half-brother Roger who became an actor 10 years his senior bill protected little roger from his father's drunken abuse [Music] my brother took over the leadership role in our family when he was just a kid in old pictures it seems like he always had his arm around me when I was first starting school at the age of five or six he went down to the courthouse and had his last name changed the same as mine it was always interested in current events one morning he couldn't have been more than seven years old he read where Arkansas was on the bottom in education he remarked to me at the time did you know if Arkansas will let me one of these days I'm gonna get us off at the bottom well you know you don't pay a lot of attention to a child saying something like that in July of 1963 that I went to Washington and met President Kennedy at the boys nation program he and he came out you know made a few little comments we were all standing there in alphabetical order so Arkansas was nearly run a lot and how is the biggest kid there and so I made sure that I got to shake hands with and I remember just thinking what an incredible country this was that somebody like me who came from a little town in Arkansas you know I had no money no political position or anything would be given the opportunity to meet the president when he came home from boys nation with this picture of John Kennedy and himself shaking hands I've never seen such an expression on a man's face in my life he just had such pride and I knew then that government in some form would be his goal after graduating from Washington in 1967 bill won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford to study government from humble student lodgings the saxophone playing 21 year old launched himself into the pleasures of Oxford University life he always plunged into things the social life the girls the studying what he really loved about Oxford whatever he told me once that in his first year at Oxford he read 300 books and that Oxford gave him a sense of time a sense of being in an intellectual environment where he could just pursue his own interest Bill's time at Oxford coincided with student unrest and protests there were riots in London's Grosvenor Square over the Vietnam War which builds strongly opposed as a student he avoided the military draft and he began to explore politics on a wider scale it was at Oxford that he pursued this other great interest that he had which was in Eastern Europe and and in the Soviet Union we just had the Prague Spring the attempt in Czechoslovakia to build a more humane kind of kind of socialism and the place was still alive with this kind of this kind of sense of potential of peaceful revolution and so on a bill after Oxford and Yale bill went back to Arkansas to fulfill his childhood dreams in Little Rock the 30 year old rising Democrat politician was elected Attorney General in 1976 hardest on trying to prepare for the a P&L right here in case it comes before the Public Service Commission starting Monday at Yale he met Hillary Rodham from a middle-class Republican family she was a feminist with a strong sense of her own identity encouraged by her mother a closeted Democrat among other things her mother perhaps because of the kind of environment that she grew up in really emphasized the need to be strong and she encouraged Hillary to be a very scrappy little girl and and and kind of emphasized that and emphasizing trying to grow stronger when you're when you're faced with adversaries which is certainly a characteristic we've seen carry through later in life I had a wonderful upbringing by my parents and my schooling and my church life that opened my eyes to a much broader world than the one just within my own suburb of Chicago so although my father had very strong beliefs they were of a Republican Party that unfortunately seems to be vanishing in many parts of our country bill the future Democrat president met Hillary the Republican daughter in the library at Yale University he was standing in the hallway outside the law library at Yale which is this wonderful gothic structure and he was surrounded by all of these fellow classmates who were trying to convince him to be on the Yale Law Journal I said look I'm going home to Arkansas and I don't I'm not gonna get a big Wall Street job I'm not gonna go clerk on the Supreme Court I'm going home via country lawyer I don't know if I want to be on the launcher and he was listening politely but he was watching me because I was watching him because I was in the law library this long table studying and I finally thought this is you know kind of silly and finally she just put down the book she was reading and walked the entire length of the law library walked up to me and she said if you're gonna keep looking at me and I'm gonna keep looking back we at least out of know each other and I'm Hillary Rodham what's your night I mean I thought that he was great-looking and it was fun and he was just somebody who challenged and made you happy all the time yeah I've just never met anybody like Bill she came to Arkansas and we were driving around one day together and we we go past this beautiful old house and she talked about what a pretty house of was there was a for sale sign of her and I remember she went away somewhere and I picked her up at the airport and I drove her back and I said you know I bought that house you liked she said what I said that house you liked I bought it so you better marry me but I can't live in this big house by myself and that's when she finally said yes Hillary bought her wedding dress the night before in 1980 their only child Chelsea was born their love for their daughter would hold their troubled marriage together bills becoming a father and having Chelsea was one of the you know really great experiences of his life because it was something his own father never got to do you know never got to see his own child I was there when Chelsea was born and it was still I guess the most incredible thing I would be through you know I just I still remember how scrunched up she was when she came in I still remember how profoundly grateful I was that you know Hillary was okay and that I had lived to see it I mean I was very aware at that moment that that's something that my father hadn't done you would just sit for hours and look at his daughter you know trying to take in this miracle but then he would do things that just would knock me out I mean I remember one day when Chelsea's like three months old she was learning to roll over and I was in another room and he was watching her on the bed in our bedroom and he yells at me tells me to come in quick and he says look at this and I thought he was going to tell me she was rolling over which of course I knew which I thought was sweet of him but no he was gonna tell me look she look at this she rolls over the edge of the bed and then she rolls back she must understand gravity 20 minutes later I hear this plunk as my daughter unlearned gravity right the family made their home in Little Rock the state capital of Arkansas where Bill had been elected governor in all he held the role for 11 years Hilary became a working mother a skilled lawyer she was the first woman to be made a full partner of the rose law firm until they entered the white house she had a higher salary than her husband age 32 bill was the youngest governor in the United States he was nicknamed the boy governor bill and Hilary had become a power couple driven by a political agenda which often challenged tradition made some big mistakes in his first two-year tenure he pushed through a very liberal program that did not go down well with with the Arkansas voters and Hillary was part of that big initial mistake because she kept her maiden name and she sort of kept this persona that she had which was of a you know a an ardent feminist she didn't wear makeup you wore thick glasses and and this did not sit well with the citizens of Arkansas who were accustomed to different kinds of women within the governor's mansion hilary assumed an unusually strong role she planned strategies with bill developing her own pet projects which she later continued as the president's wife hillary was very much his partner in arkansas it is where they first acquired the nickname billary which to some people was a term of admiration and to other people it was a term of derision but what it meant was that she was really very involved in helping him with his campaigns helping him strategize making sure he stayed on schedule because he was quite undisciplined she helped him with some policies she was involved in getting early child care program started rural health care and then she later worked with him on some education programs it was a long way to the White House but the journey for the Arkansas governor was made easier by his magnetic qualities which won over the Democratic policy bill as a man of extraordinary charm for both men and for women he forged his very very strong friendships and loyalties with his male friends but of course also with women I mean he's big he's good-looking he's got this endless charm this easy smile and as my wife says he's got a twinkle yes he's hugely affected women and always has been and of course he's attracted to them as well but I I think it did help him with a number of people particularly fundraising whereas an awful lot of very wealthy widows in the Democratic Party in 1991 with Hillary's prompting bill decided that the time was right to make a bid for the presidency it was a brave move he would be taking on the incumbent Republican President George Bush Senior [Music] [Applause] however during the New Hampshire primaries in 1992 the first sign of trouble began it was almost an omen for the future the Clinton campaign was nearly derailed when a woman named Jennifer flowers claimed to have been his mistress for 12 years Hillary's reaction to his betrayal was crucial to the continuation of the campaign for the first time it put Hilary onto the national stage because Hillary then asked her suggestion Hillary decided that they had to knock this story on the head and they they went jointly onto one of the big TV programs you know I'm not sitting here or some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette I'm sitting here because I love him and I respect him and I honor what he's been through and what we've been through together and you know if that's not enough for people then heck don't vote for Hillary strategy saved the campaign she believed in his ability to become the president and she became his driving force cannot stand by for one more year and watch this is a woman whose instincts he really really believed in it was Hillary don't forget in 1991 who woke up one morning in the governor's mansion at a time when George Bush had about a 70% approval rating and said this is the time you're going to run because we can win this one and I tell you it is time for us to take a new direction Bills style was in the tradition of his hero President Kennedy the common touch added to his personal charisma would sweep him to victory in November 1992 with his running-mate al gore bill was now the 42nd president of the United States the boy from the poor state of Arkansas had become the most powerful person his election to the White House was a watershed for America and for the world he had promised change and now there were heavy expectations on his shoulders and his enemies would watch for every chance to bring him down the White House was also a museum with the echoes of past presidents and first ladies all around them Kennedy's elegant wife Jackie cast her spell over the historic building in 1963 she presented on television the White House she had restored to its former glory Hillary could not compete with Jackie's elite style and felt out of place in Washington Society Jackie was much more sophisticated and perhaps less paranoid than Hillary was coming from the background she did and surrounded by the Klan from Arkansas I think they tended to feel very much Outsiders in Washington and I think they saw a sort of hostile Washington cleek around them whether that existed or not it probably did a bit because the Clintons were not very good at the Washington insiders whereas Jackie you know she was fine with that she had a very nice life in Georgetown when she was a senator's wife she knew everybody socially she had no problems about thinking they were Outsiders trying to get her the Clintons failed to recreate the Kennedys Camelot that all-too-brief Golden Age in the White House instead they set a very casual style out going first lady barbara Bush welcomed Hillary there would be big changes to the Bush White House I sort of compared the Clinton White House to after this this sort of very sort of regimented disciplined place that they were like a couple of dorm parents who were overseeing a bunch of unruly kids and he was the one who was letting them all stay up past curfew and she was the one who was trying to impose in a sort of haphazard way rules but it was a place where boombox is played in the corridors where there were pizza boxes strewn about in various offices people didn't wear jackets there were guys running around in ponytails and earrings and it was just a completely different atmosphere from what it what had preceded it bill ran a chaotic schedule which frustrated his staff he lacked organization as his friend and a former Secretary of State Mickey Kantor explains people like myself are too obsessive we want to have an agenda we want to get the questions answered and move on so meetings tended to be too long too much off point and the White House was somewhat stuck he would think nothing of having meetings that would last seven hours that would go they would it would blow the scheduled apartment every day they called it Clinton Standard Time he was always late his aides could never predict when he was going to come down in the morning because he often stayed up till all hours of the night bill welcomed many guests to the White House he was a cordial host at hundreds of events during his eight years as president Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton loved to be around people and where most presidents would go up to bed after a long long day and it's 10:30 at night and people are still in the White House for most people that single event in the White House at a dinner for many people it's the only time they will be there and so therefore they're reluctant to leave and so you would think a president would want to go upstairs you know say a goodnight politely but leave he wouldn't he just loved it there were white house evenings unlike any in the time of George and Barbara Bush the Clintons had a fancy-dress ball where Hillary joined in the fun for once casting off her feminist side Hillary dressed up as one of his fantasies that is as Dolly Parton with the big blonde wig and the and this very low-cut bodice and red and red and white gingham checked blouse kind of skirt and so on and bill could hardly keep his eyes off of her could barely keep his hands off her and sort of towards the end of the part when to the end of the evening she took him by the hand and began to haul him upstairs and they stopped and that was sort of landing where there's the famous portrait of John Kennedy in the White House and she looked down at that they assembled flog and said well the dress is going back in the morning then she went like this but I think I'm gonna keep the wig and off they went as president and first lady the Clintons had to behave more formally when receiving heads of state in October 1994 the president of South Africa Nelson Mandela was received by Bill and Hillary on the steps of the White House by then Hillary was almost a co-president she had her own staff and office nicknamed Hillary land now she was different she's probably different than any other spouse who ever served in the White House any first lady because of her background her education her experience her her training the fact is that Hillary Clinton had been involved in major issues in the United States for years on her in her own right and so therefore you were sort of had a built-in senior advisor these senior advisor to the president among this couple look he used all he used to kid about buy one get one free but the fact is that's exactly what what happened as bill settled into the presidency problems from the past reappeared in July 1993 the suicide of Vince Foster White House Counsel and Bill's boyhood friend shocked the nation at the rose law firm in Little Rock he had been Hillary's colleague and he knew the secrets of a land deal the Clintons had struck on the Whitewater development in Arkansas he was dealing with all sorts of things that that a White House Counsel typically would not be dealing with plus this personal pressure of having his former colleague be his boss and a very tough and exacting boss at that she would say fix it Vince and he was a sensitive person as it turns out from talking to people who knew him back in college back in Arkansas he had a tendency toward depression and it was exacerbated by his White House experience Foster's death placed the Clintons under scrutiny [Music] even as they attended his funeral with their daughter Chelsea suspicions were growing about Foster's involvement in their business and tax affairs and in the aftermath of his suicide they were involved in taking papers out of his office and the whole question of why they were doing it what they were taking became one of the biggest problems going forward that the Clinton White House had to deal with because there were suspicions of cover-up all the questions surrounding the Clintons losses from the Whitewater property Hilary's role in working with this savings-and-loan that went bankrupt and costs tens of millions of dollars to American taxpayers began to bubble up in the first year of the Clinton White House world leaders fell for Clinton's irresistible charm in 1993 he brought Israel and the PLO together when their leaders rabbin and Arafat signed a peace agreement in 1998 he won over Russian president Boris Yeltsin when he visited the Kremlin Yeltsin put up with an awful lot from Clinton II particularly the enlargement of NATO I don't think any other president could have got the Russians to agree even reluctantly to bringing in Poland the Czech Republic Slovakia Hungary all of these four members of the Warsaw Pact bringing them into NATO which Clinton did in 99 at the 50th anniversary NATO summit in 1998 eager to maintain America's historic special relationship with Britain Clinton put on a glitzy White House dinner for Prime Minister Tony Blair throughout his presidency Clinton used his diplomatic skills in helping British leaders and years of sectarian violence in divided Northern Ireland just seem to me the right thing to do I decided to change America's policy and the hope that in the end not only the Irish but the British too would be better off what a rare find he is as a politician and that's a good word you can't you can't move a democracy unless you're a good politician and he certainly is while bill is credited with advancing the cause of peace Hillary - played her part he was deeply involved with women in Northern Ireland as you may or may not know trying to organize them in terms of trying to create a sense of possibility for the peace in Dublin - bill was hailed as a peacemaker he had argued his case with the then British Prime Minister John Major for talks with all Irish political parties really pushing it so personally and making it clear that the American presidency was committed and was committed despite the pleas of John Major and the closest ally to go ahead and do this because bill believed that there was a political opening at this time that if you did give shin Fane a chance to cut the umbilical cord with the men of violence with the IRA if you force them to be as good as their word in saying we're going to go for the ballot box then that was a kind of an opening into which you could he could put his own personal crowbar of charm and pressure and dripping their elbows and it worked Clinton tried to end war in the Balkans by sending peacekeeping troops to preserve the terms of the date and accord signed in 1995 today's agreement moves us closer to the ultimate goal of a genuine peace but in Rwanda Clinton failed to end genocide when death squads murdered hundreds of thousands he decided against intervention in Rwanda it as I say over and over again it's one of my greatest regrets but we look at it backwards and say well I had to know that seven or eight hundred thousand people could be killed with machetes in 90 days and as far as I know there's no precedent for that in the history of the world he kicks himself around internally - even today over Rwanda he believes he should have done something there and he is a despondent over the fact that he didn't he thinks it's one of the biggest mistakes he ever made pursuing his policy of free trade Clinton strengthened economic and political ties with China in 1998 he made a nine-day trip to China he took time out from his successful meetings with Chinese leaders to join Hillary and Chelsea on the Great Wall Chelsea and Hillary visited Africa on Safari only 12 when her father became president Chelsea had grown into a confident young woman [Music] we have a big problem with drugs and we have a big problem with people not thinking they have a future the president celebrated his 50th birthday in August 1996 he honored Hillary's father and his own mother who had not lived to see the occasion I wish my wonderful father-in-law we're still living I miss him and Lord I miss my mother she liked a good party you know and she would have liked this on his first day as president he had taken her to see the White House Rose Garden where he first met Kennedy Virginia died in 1994 part of that anger had to do with his ambivalent feelings about his mother on the one hand she showered him with praise on the other hand she was absent a lot and I think that that that caused some conflict within him and also probably led to some of his attitudes towards women well he later wrote about the deep anger that he had inside that he was always trying to keep under control people enabled it basically people allowed him to become angry they were very attentive to him and in trying to keep it under control so he didn't show it in public they would actually have what they called pre briefs where they would they would ask him really hostile questions and he would blow off steam and then he could go out in the public and be you know sort of calm in dealing with some of these hostile questions in 1996 bill was reelected he was the first to term Democrat president since Franklin Roosevelt let's go at the inauguration gala Hillary danced with bills brother Roger and Chelsea with her father [Music] soon Monica Lewinski only a few years older than Chelsea would threaten not just the Clinton marriage but also the Clinton presidency she had an intimate relationship with Clinton in the heart of the White House where she started work as an intern interns are these ambitious bright politically motivated kids from well-to-do families who go to the White House go to the West Wing to get some experience Monica proved a temptation to many for Clinton who had a history of misconduct with women I rather feel sorry for the guy in a way that he calls for a pizza one of the young interns brings it and she goes in turns and flashes her thong at him and for a middle-aged man of Clinton's appetites and of the kind of restraint under which he was operating this must have been like a red rag to a bull he took extraordinary risks when he was having his ass Ignatians with Monica Lewinsky not least of which was the fact that this was all taking place in the secret you know or not the private office behind the Oval Office and that little cluster of rooms back there and he had his secretary bring her in by circuitous routes and this went on for 18 months at least one other president with potent sex appeal had liaisons in the White House Clinton's Idol John Kennedy there certainly is a thrill about having a sexual affairs in the White House there you are getting away with it the really top level and I think that always has an appeal unlike Kennedy Clinton was caught out with his marriage and position under threat he denied the affair and denied asking Monica to lie but I want to say one thing to the American people I want you to listen to me I'm going to say this again I did not have sexual relations with that woman miss Lewinsky I never told anybody to lie not a single time never these allegations are false Kenneth Starr the Independent Counsel investigating whitewater was given secret tapes of Monica discussing her relationship with the president but in a deposition Clinton had denied their affair still supported in public by Hillary he was forced to testify to a grand jury ever the optimist he seemed confident of the outcome I'm looking forward to the opportunity in the next few days of testifying I will do so completely and truthfully I'm anxious to do it the grand jury grilled Clinton for four hours over the embarrassing details of his liaisons with Monica this is the president of the free world and we are demeaning not just his dignity but our dignity collectively by doing this and I think there came a point where the kind of you know the baiting of the President had to the pepitas felt it was all gone gone too far and it wasn't being done for any motives other than political Hilary dismissed the hounding of Bill as a right-wing conspiracy but he had to admit to the American people that he had misled them indeed I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate in fact it was wrong it constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible Kenneth Starr's report was sent to Congress in September 1998 and then released over the Internet the public were informed of every intimate detail the president had confessed under oath during the grand jury's interrogation with the support of his loyal Vice President Al Gore Clinton apologized for his behavior at a breakfast prayer meeting in the White House I don't think there is a fancy way to say that I have sinned church leaders were impressed by his humility but would his wife forgive him Hillary later said I hadn't decided whether to fight for my husband and my marriage but I was resolved to fight for my president after he had appeared before the grand jury made his statement to the American public the next day they went up to Martha's Vineyard for a vacation and by all public indications they were totally estranged people around them said that the atmosphere what you you know you was just Arctic it was so cold yet when they got to Martha's Vineyard and moved into the house where they were staying Bill Clinton was having to deal with an attack on al Qaeda which had just bombed two American embassies in Africa so he was in the middle of coming up with his response Hillary Clinton kind of put her anger aside and sat down with him and helped him write his speech I thought that was so revealing of how even in the middle of a huge crisis like this the two of them in the end work together but there was more trouble another woman Paula Jones accused Clinton of sexual harassment he paid her eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars in an out-of-court settlement however he had lied in a deposition and this obstruction of justice led to his impeachment Clinton faced the cameras but I hope it will be embraced by the Senate I hope there will be a constitutional and fair means of resolving this matter in a prompt manner I do not regard the the impeachment vote is some great badge of shame I do not because I do not believe it was warranted and I don't think it was right I just don't have bad feelings about that but neither do I have feelings of anger and bitterness against those who did what they did whether they believe it or whether it was political or whatever I just think it I do think he has suffered from a persecution complex that also goes back to his mother it came out later on in his view toward people who were against him it became a highly developed theory in the White House when Hillary expressed it as the vast right-wing conspiracy obviously there were people on the right who were arrayed against them but they had a tendency to see a lot of enemies in a lot of places that may not indeed have been enemies now that the Senate has fulfilled its constitutional responsibility bringing this process to a conclusion it is therefore ordered in a judge that that said William Jefferson after his acquittal by the Senate bill tried to explain his lapses it happened under circumstances in which people who have lived parallel lives become quite vulnerable it happened at a time when I was angry I was under stress I was afraid I was going to lose my fight with the Republican Congress as I said I was in this Titanic fight for the future of the country and an inevitable fight with my old demons so I won the public fight and lost the private one and then star turned the private one into a legal constitutional and public won Hillary became a New York senator she wanted to be the first female president bill had balanced the US budget but his scandals would still be against her it's a legacy that was so damaged by a lot of the Clintons sort of self-inflicted problems the many investigations obviously the Monica Lewinsky story is going to be kind of right up there in the first or second paragraph of of any assessment written about the Clinton White House there was one entire year lost as a result of that scandal and the subsequent impeachment proceedings in the house in the Senate bill had balanced the economy and achieved much in foreign policy but it was not enough when faced with a charismatic young newcomer Hillary lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama who was elected president in a landslide victory I think Hillary Clinton would have had a better shot at making it to the White House if she hadn't been married to Bill Clinton because I think Bill Clinton has been baggage for her in the course of this campaign whereas an awful lot of what Hillary is about which is the first woman to make it to this kind of level of American politics the first woman who really I think is is credible in American political terms as a presidential candidate I think that I think she's been weakened by all of the right-wing animosities that the the Clinton presidency has stirred up my Obama did not choose Hillary as his vice president she became Secretary of State an important role but one outside the White House for Bill there is always a place called home [Music] [Music]

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 102,448

Keywords: history history documentary funny history fun history school, timeline, bill clinton, hillary clinton, bill clinton (us president), clinton, hilary clinton, hillary rodham clinton (u.s. congressperson), bill clinton speech, hillary and bill clinton, chelsea clinton, hillary, hillary bill clinton, bill clinton meets hillary, bill clinton dnc, hillary clinton go high, hillary clinton debate, hillary clinton health, hillary clinton high road, bill clinton dnc speech

Id: l3bzlD72n_4

Length: 51min 10sec (3070 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 02 2020