President Clinton's Tour of the Oval Office

it's nice day for doing such a beautiful day it's been wonderful you know we've already had one event outside I love it we had those outdoor events when it's not too heavy hot distance at all this is a new rug we we had this rug built or made if you will woven I'm buying a wonderful company on Long Island immigrant families from Italy came over a several decades ago now they did wonderful work it's beautiful when I came here I thought the office should have a darker rug you can see how light it is it's wonderful to work in there's a lot of lighting and a lot of natural light and I think it's just it's better so we finally got it in I like it a lot when was the first time you ever came to this office in your life uh when President Carter was here I was in the Oval Office a couple of times and so that would be in the late 70s and then in 1980 I was here right before he left office did it was it a special thing oh sure it's a terrific place and it carries so much of the history of the White House although a lot of people don't know that the Oval Office is actually the newest room in the White House it was not built until Franklin Roosevelt became president he loved these oval rooms and he kept an oval office and one of the rooms up here in the White House in the residence so he he built this in 1934 it's quite as a wonderful place do you use it as a working office yes not every president has but I do why'd you decide to do that cuz I like working here I like its open its Airy you can have a significant number of people in meetings you've always got a lot of natural light it's a comfortable place for me to work I work here alone one I have a little office back here in the back that is smaller that I go sometimes to read or are just to be alone for half an hour sometimes to take a brief nap but but by and large I work here and then I have an office up in the White House where at night and sometimes on the weekends but I really do like working here not every president has but I do I I can spend hours here on every good tired of the street let's take a little look at this back half of the office and starting over here what's his painting this is a very famous painting by childe Hassam he painted in the early part of this century about two dozen a little more than two dozen of these flag paintings and this is a painting of New York City in the rain on Flag Day during World War one in 1917 it's quite a wonderful picture it's been in the White House a good while but it had never been in the Oval Office until I became president so we put it here and I think it looks wonderful here it goes very well with the room and the curtains and it's a it's a great piece of art and a lot of people enjoyed then and a lot of people who know that it's been in the White House a long time find it surprising there's never been the Oval Office it was this your idea Dan yes this is obviously Rodin's the thinker a smaller version of it and it was loaned to us for the term of my presidency by Iris and Bernie Cantor of New York and they've been very good to us and sort of supporting arc in the and the public life so I have it there and occasionally I look at it what's the one of the best pictures it's been taking the Oval Office was taken a former prime minister Miyazawa of Japan who's not very tall you know he said he's and he was here almost looking directly into the eyes doing like this we have a picture it looks like these two thinkers looking at each other what is the thinker main D well to me you know its first of all it's a beautiful work of art but it's that shows the power of reflection and because of the the strength of the person doing it the obvious enormous physical strength I like it because there's nothing weakest oh she ated with pondering and thinking and trying to work through something how often do you do that every day always certain time in the day Nia mostly is it has been frequently said most of the easy decisions have been made before they get to this desk so I think a lot about but do you spend the time or in the morning late at night when's the time you think the most probably in the morning before I come over here and late at night and then I try to take every day I try to take a couple hours for phone calls and office time and if I can do it I'll sometimes take a little time out in the middle of the day when I'm still fairly refreshed to really kind of work through some of the big problems how much sleep you get now I try to get at least six hours a night and I want to get seven I never needed that much before I became president but I do need more sleep now than I used to now last night I didn't get it some nights I don't get quite six hours but but I try to get no less than six and shoot Torche so will you sleep right through the night now almost always I sleep well when I go to sleep it's probably because I'm tired of the time I get there this is a spot that people love to ponder is this all yours yeah these are all just my things they're my best if Franklin Roosevelt my bust of Abraham Lincoln my books a copy of the the first authorized biography of Abraham Lincoln going back to his campaign in 1860 yeah a book on Robert Kennedy that I wrote the introduction I've done the 25th anniversary of his death the book of I'm vaclav havel letters that he wrote to his wife when he was in prison the Bible given to me by a minister friend have you read all that I've read a lot of this I'm very course I've got my whole presidential library and there you know all in my little private office I've got rows and rows of books the biographies of presidents I've read most of their five books that I haven't read that I've got in here because I'm working on them this is a book on Roosevelt's first term which I begun - biographies of Jefferson this new one by Willard Stern Randall was given it just come out and it was given to me by the vice president for my birthday a copy of David Halberstam book on the 50s and Rick Smith's book on how Washington works so I've got them out here because of the I get into them and I start them as time from it sometimes I read four or five different books at once and sometimes I never quite finish them all but I get the gist of them and then go on to other things you've got the bust of FDR and the bust of Abraham Lincoln how come those two I'm I admired them both very much for different reasons what's the reason for admiring FDR well he gave the country confidence again when it was broken and he tried things until he found something that worked which is what I think you have to do in a time of change I mean he found a country that was in deep difficulty and he energized the country he gave it confidence and then began to try things and in a different time that's what I should be doing now Lincoln for obvious reasons he understood that the whole legacy and future of America were at stake and he gave his life for the Union he had he had the ability to make people see big things and profound ways ordinary people and to keep them with him it was a very great man I also you know I've got some other things here we can't see I've got my my little bust of Teddy Roosevelt whom I admired very much in my bust of Thomas Jefferson over there along with a copy of the only book he ever wrote the notes on the state of Virginia I was given an original printing in 1818 one printing before I became president I treasure it a lot and these are just you know presidential medals I've taken over time my President Eisenhower President Truman President Kennedy you also have a copy of your my boss hears us what looking back on that what what was the importance of the bus trip oh it was I think it really connected us to America I think when we got on that bus right after the Democratic convention people knew that we were reaching out to them and that we wanted not only to change this country but to change it for the benefit of ordinary Americans and I keep this bus here every day to remind me of that that that bus really did carry us to the White House mother Theresa picture a young woman photographer from California was that taking pictures of of my group when we were out in Alameda at the naval base to talk about defense conversion and she sent copies of the pictures to our office and sent me this photograph she took of mother Teresa whom I admire very much and I was so moved by the photo I just kept it there that's my daughter's clay dad she put there she gave me that for Father's Day got a little Ben Franklin a little cup of Winston Churchill oh yeah I'm a great Churchill admirer I've read a lot of books about him and some of his writings and and I thought that was cute somebody gave it to me and I just kept it there along with this little porcelain of Ben Franklin am I also admire very much u.s. news time in Newsweek is that a regular mm-hmm they keep the news magazines and sometimes some of the business magazines too every week I get an updated version and then when I can I turn around and uh and just scan them see what's in them every week we just take your lab okay that's number just family pictures as you can see my mother must have father my family was here my 80 about to be 89 year old uncle from hope Arkansas who's one of the favorite people I ever knew back in the back is a picture of your wife and Chelsea and you what year was that that was probably about 1985 Chelsea was about five then that's 84 85 it's a family picture I really like that's one of my favorite family we did that for the former love that's the formal governor's mansion photo when we were living in Arkansas walk around the front of this desk here so that get you to talk a little bit about the desk how important was this choice oh it's very important to me at this desk has an enormous amount of historic significance most Americans remember it because of one very famous photo President Kennedy had this desk and me get out of the way here so if you look down here this is a door and his son when he was very young was crawling under the desk pushed that little door open and crawled out and a photographer caught that and the picture appeared all over the world it's sort of a symbol of Kennedy's youth and vigor and the fact that he had this neat young person a young son and it's interesting that John Kennedy jr. was in this room and saw this desk for the first time in a very long time not very long ago but this desk before that was used by Franklin Roosevelt over in the White House to give his fireside chats so the famous fireside chats were delivered from this desk the desk was given to the United States in 1880 by Queen Victoria and it's made from the Timbers of a ship called the resolute which ran aground and was rescued by an American ship returned to England so when Victoria was grateful and the ship actually sailed for more than 20 years after that when they took it down she had this desk made and given to the president it had never been in the Oval Office before President Kennedy and then President Kennedy and President Reagan and President Carter used it in the Oval Office and I brought it back President Bush used it upstairs in the White House so they'd only been four presidents even though it's been here for over a hundred years who've actually had it here but I think it belongs here it's a beautiful desk and it fits in this room and before we sit down what about the seal was that hard to do like this cost a lot of money I think it cost quite a bit but we were most of the work we've done in the White House we've been able to raise the funds for so it hasn't cost the taxpayers money but you can see all the difficult weaving that was required and again we wanted that the thing it had to be once the the dark blue background was picked in the the seal itself had to be in very vivid colors there's an interesting thing the Eagle here facing the olive branch and facing away from the arrows until after World War two the American Eagle had always faced toward the arrows toward war and Harry Truman actually had it turned around it's an interesting thing a lot of Americans don't know that when you look at this whole room and people come to visit you what's the first thing they want to look at I think the first thing they do is look around they want to see what it feels like a lot of people have never even been in an oval room before you know are they never really thought about it and it's such an uplifting thing you know and then normally they you know they we go around the room and the things you and I do we look at the Andy Jackson painting over there or the painting of Washington or the sculptors of Harry Truman abridgement Franklin I have here people ask me things about it but but I think the first thing people look at it's just the feel of the room and then they look at the rug and then they look at the desk and then we do the rest when did this office feel comfortable for you Oh almost immediately I I felt good here I liked working here from the beginning it's fun to be here in the morning when it's beautiful when I finished my morning run a lot of mornings I just come over here and drink some water and cool off you know read some of the things I'm supposed to read in the morning but even before I go back and get ready for the day I really I do like it a lot and it's a it's a wonderful place to receive foreign visitors or it's a wonderful place to have meetings in it's limited you know you can only have so many people in here but it's it's a great place it's very much a working office though we have a lot of staff meetings here and we do a lot of the work of the presidency right here you know when you have a teenage child it's a very struggle to avoid becoming completely irrelevant to them when my daughter asked me to help her with math I always try to do it well you get it man mm-hmm it's my best subject it's interesting because I took five years of math in high school I took a calculus course in high school which is like a college freshman course and then I went to college never took another math course so when Chelsea got interested in math and started taking algebra early and geometry and I just loved it because it got me back into it you know it's very exciting do you remember a teacher that made a real impact on you oh yes I had lots and lots of teachers who made a real impact told me I had I love my schooling from the beginning and I had a math teacher my math teacher was just terrific and I was in his class when President Kennedy was assassinated I don't know I had a wonderful English teacher who was from lived in Chicago before she came to teach me English and we thought she was so sophisticated I had a terrific Latin teacher who was educated in the East and taught me a Latin for three years I had two great teachers in high school any political scientist or government teacher oh yes got you interested and I had well my world history teacher when I was fifteen I was really fretted my appetite and ironically he wound up coming to work for me he became one of my education advisors what's his name Paul root he's now the Dean of a college of education at one of our universities at home and in college I had some wonderful wonderful teachers history and political science I quoted one of my college professors who's now dad Carroll Quigley in my address accepting the nomination of the Democratic Party in New York and another one of my professors dr. Jack Giles who taught me constitutional law was a terrific teacher wrote me a letter and said he thought it was the first time any candidate for president had ever called a teacher by name who had influenced him so I'm very much embedded so my teachers all the way along they made a big difference in my life have you given any thought to the historical archives of your administration have you got any system in place that your track yeah we do but I'm trying to improve it actually I'm not sure our record-keeping is as good on some of the things is it ought to be so I'm trying to make it a little better but we have we keep an we keep everything here and what's organized by date and subject I mean we really have worked hard to keep a good historic record but I'm trying to do a even better job of it was then your hometown of hope a couple of months ago and saw your old one of your old houses on 13th Street on the market in the corner laughs in the corner I checked the price on it they won $100,000 but they haven't moved in it's now down to $80,000 I can't believe I get $1,000 it's just time little house wait someone told me down there that it really was worth about 35 if you weren't the president noted state yeah but I figured the question I want to ask you about is why haven't you found someone in the process to buy that house and to make it a historical landmark have you thought about that stuff I think that at home I believe they're trying to make a historic landmark out of the house where I lived before I moved there when I was four or five and six I thought excuse me but between the time I was before I was four between the time I was born in time I was four that house yeah but I lived there for the first four years of my life and that barn that house burned they had some problems with it but now it's been bought by somebody I think they are restoring that I just you know I haven't had time to think about such things that but I love that little house actually we lived there for a couple of years I really like it the reason I ask is that you're surrounded by history your favorite presence have you taken from your favorite presidents specifics that you've put into practice since you've been president and if so what is it I don't know that I can say that but I can I can say that I have the people the presidents that I'm most admired I've read a lot about and tried to learn from their habits of decisiveness and vision and strength and you see the ones I have here at Lincoln and FDR and and Jefferson and Truman and Andrew Jackson and Teddy Roosevelt and Kennedy and all of them in different ways were activists they believed in doing things they many of them were very intellectual to including Truman who didn't have a lot of formal education but was very smart and very well-read but they had the ability to harness their their ideas and their emotions and their penchant for action to meet the needs of the people of their time and to keep the American experiment going and I really think it's quite wonderful of course and when of those Lincoln had the hardest job even harder than Washington and it cost him his life but he did it and he did it in ways that that lifted people you know he was a very deep profound guy but he was also a shrewd canny politician with a terrific sense of humor so I've tried to learn a lot from them he talked about earlier that FDR showed the nation confidence and President Lincoln was for change ready he do consciously to give the nation confidence at this point well first of all I think in the beginning I had to I had to worry about just putting in motion a process that would would let us tackle all our problems because I don't think you can build confidence in this time when there is a much greater level of day-to-day scrutiny over politics than there was febrile years ago way back to the family of the Republic unless you actually doing things will make a difference so and I see that now see people beginning to recognize that these last eight months even through some of the rough times that I put in place a team with some ideas and some commitments to just taking these tough problems one by one and and and trying to knock them down whether it's changing the bringing the deficit down or changing the rules for working families or improving the education and training system are now dealing with healthcare or expanding trade that my whole goal is to try to create a dynamic society in America where we we have people who win in the face of all these changes that are sweeping the world and who feels secure enough to embrace the changes instead of running away from them so I see the work I'm doing in health care to provide affordable health care for all Americans in in fighting and trying to change our approach to crime to take some of these guns out of the hands of teenagers on the streets as providing a net of security personal security for families the Family Leave law all these things so that then we'll be able to have the courage to change to be for expanded trade through NAFTA and other things to be for change in our unemployment and training system to be for changing our economic program my job now in this time in our history is to create a dynamic society where people are comfortable with change and the American people move into the 21st century still leading the world and that requires an awful lot of change it requires a lot of discipline and a lot of courage and a lot of confidence and a lot of work and and there's going to be a lot of controversy associated with it but I wouldn't I'm very grateful that I've been given the opportunity not just a service president but to do it at this moment because I think I do understand where we are in history and where we need to go and I think that's the president's job thank you for your time Thanks

Channel: clintonlibrary42

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Keywords: president, william, bill, jefferson, clinton

Id: heh-OyhF4YY

Length: 23min 36sec (1416 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 20 2018