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Article 4417 of alt.politics.clinton:
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Subject: CLINTON APPEARANCE: ARSENIO HALL
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Date: Monday, 17 Aug 1992 18:08:48 CDT
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Governor Bill Clinton
Hillary Clinton
The Arsenio Hall Show
Los Angeles, California
June 3, 1992


Announcer:  From Stage 29 at Paramount Studios on Melrose
Avenue in the heart of Hollywood, California in these United States!
It's the Arsenio Hall Show, starring Arsenio Hall!  Tonight Arsenio
welcomes presidential candidate Governor Bill Clinton!  ...And actress
Terri Garr!  And now...Rolling Hills, Honolulu, Booneville, and all the
rest of y'all-it's Arseniooooo Hall!

Musical break-Clinton on Saxophone playing "Heartbreak Hotel"


Arsenio:  Did you ever think of playing professionally?

Gov. Clinton:  Yeah, and I liked it tonight.  I liked being on the
other side of the posse.  You know what you're drummer said?  He
said, "If this music thing doesn't work out, you can always run for
President."

Arsenio:  Cute twist, Chuck.  You carry a lot of people with you.  You
have more people than Hammer.  There are like a lot of guys in your
posse today.  But I'm glad you're here.  Let's get right down to things.
What do you like?  The old Elvis or the, ummm...  Which stamp?  I
know you're an Elvis fan.

Clinton:  I led a national crusade for the young Elvis.

Arsenio: Really?

Clinton: Yeah.  You know when you get old, he got fat like me.  I
think it has to be the young Elvis.  That's when he had all his energy
and real raw, new, fresh power.  It would have been a shame to do
the old stamp.  Had to be the new one.

Arsenio:  You were here recently.  I didn't get to meet you.  You
went to my church.

Clinton:  I sure did.  I met your pastor.  He's a wonderful man.

Arsenio:  He is.  He has guided me well.  When I talk to kids at
church, when I talk to kids in their classrooms, there are a lot of
young people who don't think they should vote at all any more.
They feel that you're all the same.  Why are you not the same?

Clinton:  I'm not the same because I'm talking about things in this
election that I've been working on for years-that I really care about.
I was in South Central L.A. three years before the riot occurred.  I
came out here and all the politicians always go to Hollywood to meet
the movie stars and the entertainers to raise money.  And I gave a
speech here three years ago and I asked to go to South Central L.A.
and meet with people from UNO and S.C.O.C.-those community
organizations.  I could see how terrible it was and how things could
get out of hand.  And I met with a dozen sixth graders about my
daughter's age who told me their biggest fear was being shot going to
and from school.  And the reason those kids should vote is, this
country's been around for more than two hundred years because
more than half the time the people have been right.  And have
elected the kind of leadership we needed to move our country
through crisis periods.  And we're in trouble now.  We've got a lot of
problems.  And the only way the people can have a say is when
they're in the driver's seat.  You're in the driver's seat at election
time.  If you don't get in the car you can't drive.

Arsenio:  Yeah...  In South Central L.A., we've had our riots.
Everybody knows about it.  I've always said that that was just the
spark, this Rodney King situation...that was the spark that lit the
flame.  But there's a problem there.   Do you understand what's going
on?  Do you understand why that happened?

Clinton:  I think I understand some of why it happened.  A teacher
told me after it occurred, when I was here with your
congresswoman, Maxine Waters, in her home.  This teacher said to
me, "Now, after we've cleaned up this mess that the riots caused, let's
clean up the mess that caused the riots."  And I thought that was the
best one liner to describe where we ought to be going.
        You've got millions of people in this country today who just
don't feel connected to the life the rest of us wanted to live.  You tell
them to register and vote, get an education and go to work and they
say, "May not have a job, but if I deal drugs, I can make money."
You tell them that they ought to register and vote and they say,
"Why, I'll still be unsafe on my streets."
        You tell them to register and vote and they look at most people
in south central L.A., they obeyed the law.  They didn't loot, they
didn't burn, they didn't riot, they didn't steal.  But a lot of them are
still living below the poverty line even though they're working forty
hours a week.
        So, there are real problems there that have divorced a whole
lot of Americans from the rest of us.  And I think what this election
is about, in a way, is reconnecting more folks to the American dream.
Making them feel like they're a part of our community.  Making
them feel that tomorrow can be better than today.  There are too
many people who don't feel a part of the community and are
convinced that tomorrow won't be better than today.  I hardly ever
meet an American who's not worried about something about the
future.

Arsenio:  Yeah.  You know, when I think about racism, I always-as
a black man-I always think about the racism I experience.  During
the riots, I realized that there are a lot of kinds of racism that we're
suffering from.  Racism against a lot of different peoples.  We all hate
each other for something.  We noticed the Korean situation.  We
noticed the anger at just white faces, no matter who they were.
We've always seen the hostility towards black faces, no matter who
they are.  How do we deal with racism in America, because it's
getting out of hand?

Clinton:  I think we've got to do two things.  First of all, we've got to
find ways for people to talk to each other again.  On a regular,
consistent basis, not just across racial lines but across income lines.
That is you and I can live in an integrated society but it would be a
fairly narrow strata.  But if you go to South Central L.A., or most
places in America, most working people and low income people, they
don't have the kind of inter-racial contacts that people who are in a
stronger income group have.  So you've got to have basic contacts.
        Second thing we've got to realize is a lot of the racism that was
raging in Los Angeles dealt with what people don't do, rather than
what they do.  People who feel like they don't even exist to people of
other races until they walk into a department store and people
follow them around to make sure they don't steal anything.
        But day in and day out, they get up and trudge through their
lives.  They live in substandard housing on unsafe streets.  They
work their guts out, they fall further behind.  Nobody even knows
they're there until there's a riot.
        I think that in the 90's this whole business of economic
empowerment has got to be at the center of the civil rights
movement.  You've gotta have it.  A lot of the problems just relate
to..., like the tensions between the African-American and the Korean
community?

Arsenio:  Umm-huh.

Clinton:  I've talked to a lot of black folks who are convinced that
the Korean people get preferential treatment at banks.

Arsenio:  For loans?

Clinton:  For loans.  But what they don't know is, those folks have an
entrepreneurial culture.  They work together.  They loan each other
money.  They come out of a culture that favors small businesses.
        Most of the black families that moved to Los Angeles, when
they did, came out of the south and came here for manufacturing
jobs.  When the manufacturing jobs went away, there was only small
business and nobody stepped in and said, "Here's how you get a loan.
We're gonna make sure that the loans are made in this community.
We're gonna make sure you learn to how manage these businesses
and create markets."  None of that was ever done, so I think a lot of
the problem is these folks are just invisible to each other until they
raise hell.  And you can't run a country that way.  We've gotta know
we're around all the time.

Arsenio:  Yeah.  Let's take a quick commercial and come right back
with Governor Bill Clinton.

Commercial break.

Arsenio:   I'm sure you're familiar with Ross Perot's quote about
unfaithful men, unfaithful people and homosexuals.  He's been
backpedaling a little bit.  What do you think about the initial quote
or any element of it?

Clinton:  I thought it was wrong.
        You know, he has a right to hold high standards of personal
behavior and to think what he will about right and wrong.  But, my
whole idea is we don't have a person to waste in this country.  And
that we should make maximum use of everybody's talents.  And we
don't even know how he proposes to know about the private lives of
the people that he would hire in the federal government.  Is he
gonna hire investigators and figure out what's going on in their lives?
I just thought it was something better left unsaid.
        I also believe that this is a fundamentally tolerant but not a
permissive society.  We gotta be tolerant, we're a different group of
people.  This is the most diverse country on Earth, and we need
everybody.  We need everybody.  We're all in this together.
        Let me just give you an example.  I think it was terrible that
that woman who won a bronze star in the Tet Offensive in Vietnam
was kicked out of the National Guard, because she said she was a
lesbian.  She gave a lot to this country, and I think she should have
been allowed to serve.
        Now I know my view may be unpopular, but that's the way I
feel.  I think there ought to be presumption in this country that we
need everybody we can get to perform to the maximum of their God-
given capacities.  And that's why I've worked so hard on a good
economic program.  That's why I believe so strongly in education.
And so,  I come at this from a different way.  I want to include
people.  I don't want to exclude people.

Arsenio:  OK.
        You know when I look at you on paper, I mean, it's like the
perfect guy: Rhodes Scholar,youngest governor.  Tell me about your
flaws.  What are you're shortcomings?

Clinton:  We don't have enough time.  We'd have to have a bunking
party if you want to listen to my flaws.  I have a lot of shortcomings.
I think one of them is, even at this age,  I was first elected governor
at your age...

Arsenio:  See, that's embarrassing.  He was governor and I'm like,
"Let's get busy!"

Clinton:  Hey, "Let's get busy," ought to be the motto of this country
right now.
        But, even now, after all these years, I sometimes work hard
instead of smart.  That is, I'm a workaholic. I'm always churning and
doing things and sometimes I lose the forest for the trees.
Sometimes you can do so many things,  that you don't do enough.
        I think, at the end of this campaign, a lot of people may not
know what I want to do as president 'cause I've got so many ideas.
My mind is always churning, you know.  And I think I need to learn
to focus my comments better so can I communicate better with
people who don't know me very well.

Arsenio:  Yeah.

Clinton:  And I need to always learn that you have so little time.
There is so precious little time that you have to really be like a laser
beam, with your words and your actions.  You have to really focus.
You gotta have that kind of mental  discipline that sometimes, still,
my workaholic tendencies don't permit me to have.  I think that's
one problem.

Arsenio:  Yeah...

Clinton:  I sometimes. I always think that everything can be worked
out, too.  Sometimes you can't work everything out, you've just got to
cut it.  And you got to know when to cut it and when to work things
out.  And that's something I've done a lot of work on, trying to make
sure I overcome that weakness.

Arsenio:  Speaking of focusing and communicating.  I know you've
been through this a billion times but can we get into this smoking the
joint thing again?

Clinton:  That's why I play saxophone.  You see, you have to blow
into it, so you have to inhale with a saxophone.  Or you die.  That's
how I learned to inhale.  Playing my saxophone.  You blow out and
then you have to inhale.

Arsenio:  One for Bill.

Clinton:  I tried to do it, I just couldn't.  I wasn't trying to get off the
hook.  I was making a nervous remark.

Arsenio:  OK.  'Cause I've heard different people discuss it.  And I've
done my jokes.  OK, you got the joint in your hand.

Clinton:  I bet you burned me bad.

Arsenio:  OK.  Somebody says, you know that word, E-A-R.  You all
heard it in college, "Ear!"  Somebody says, "Ear!"  And then what do
you do at that point?

Clinton:  I took it, and I tried to smoke it.  Just like a cigarette.  But,
I'd never smoked a cigarette before.

Arsenio:  And you're not a drinker either, right?

Clinton:  Well, I never had a drink 'till I was 22.  I do now.  A little
bit, but not much.  But anyway so I did my best I... and I tried but I
just couldn't inhale it.  I mean, I wasn't trying to get a good conduct
medal for saying, "I didn't inhale."  I was just nervously pointing out
it was another one of those things I tried to do and failed at in life.  I
was 22 or 23 years old.  I gave it my very best shot.  I really tried, I
just blew it.

Arsenio:  I know how it is dealing with the press.  If you could
explain it over again the first time would you do it any differently?

Clinton:  Yeah,  I would've just said, "Yes." But, you know, when a
politician says something, when you're in politics, the cynicism about
politicians is so great-people just thought, "Well, this guy calculated
this whole answer. And he calculated so that he thought, "Well
maybe you won't burn me quite as bad if I say I didn't inhale."
        That's the dumbest thing I ever heard of.  They asked me a
question I didn't know they were gonna ask.  And I gave an honest
answer.  And that, "I didn't inhale," was a nervous afterthought.  I
was sort of laughing about it after 22 years.  That's all that was going
on.  I just was laughing in my mind about it.  But I got beat up about
it because everybody thought I'd calculated this answer.  Maybe I
should.  Maybe I should be more calculating than I am.
        But, you folks are never gonna get good politicians-really good
public officials-if all you want is somebody that calculates every
word they say, every deed they do.  And their whole life becomes
like a robot, an automaton.  I did something when I was younger.  I
told the truth about it.  And I made a mess of telling about it because
I guess I'm still kind of embarrassed about it after all these years.
        But it is not a big deal, and it was made into a federal case.  I
got more publicity on that than on my I idea about how to send
every kid in America to college who wants to go, which I think is
more important to the election and to the future of this country.

Arsenio:  I read that you are contemplating raising taxes, possibly,
for people who make two hundred thousand dollars or more.

Clinton:  Yeah, you'll have to pay more if I win.

Arsenio:  Yeah, and I'm mad about that.  Why don't you expound
more about that and talk a little bit about what you will do for the
economy.  That's part of the L.A. riots and some of the other
frustrations all over this country.

Clinton:  Absolutely, it is.  Absolutely.  A big part of California's
problems.  You've lost a half-a-million jobs in California in two years.
Your state government is broke,  11 billion dollars in debt.  You're
cutting back on education when you ought to be increasing
investment in education, to prepare all these kids for the future they
need to live.
        What my theory is, is that we've got to increase our investment
in this country.  After World War II, we rebuilt Europe and Japan.
After the Cold War, we've got this marvelous window of opportunity
where we can rebuild America.  And we better get after it.  And
we've got to do it.  The only way you ever rebuild a country is to
invest in your people-in their jobs, in their education, in their health
care.
        So, my idea is that first we ought to take every dollar we're
cutting the defense budget by-every dollar-and invest it in building
an economy for the twenty-first century.
        In California, what does that mean?  Build high-speed rail
networks.  Don't buy the trains from Europe or Japan.  Build them
here.  Build short hulled aircraft.  Build modern waste recycling
systems.  Build a modern fiber optics network.  Put millions of people
to work, building a rich country for tomorrow.  Do it with the defense
cuts.
        We need some more money to invest in education.  Every poor
child in South Central L.A. should be in a Head Start program.  The
poor school districts, they ought to have elementary counselors in the
schools to deal with those kids who bring problems to the front door.
And small classes in the early grades-there ought to be a computer
in every classroom in America.  The kids that don't go to college
ought to have two years of apprenticeship training, so they can get
good jobs, not dead end jobs.  That's what our competitors do.  And
we ought to loan everybody the money that wants to go to college
and let them pay it back later.
        Now, all of this, believe it or not, in the context of our trillion
dollar budget is not a great deal.  But since we have a deficit that's
enormous and it needs to be brought down, I think we have to raise
some more money.  You can't raise taxes on the middle class because
their taxes went up and their incomes went down in the 80's.  People
in upper income groups, their incomes went up and their taxes went
down.
        Relax, your taxes will still be lower than they were in 1980.
But you'll have to pay a little more so we can send all of these kids to
college.  It'll be the best money we ever spent.  We'll have a stronger
economy.
        All those people that you and your pastor tried to help, if you
tried to tell them, "Look, if you stay straight, you're not gonna make
as much money as you would dealing drugs, but you're gonna make
enough money.  You're gonna have a good decent life.  Your gonna
feel good about yourself and your country's gonna make sure that
you get the education and training that you need," it would be great.
        And if you could say to them, "If you go to college, we'll pay
your way to college. But we'll pay it back-you can-either as a
percentage of your income, or even better, let's have a Peace Corps
here at home.  Come back to L.A. and pay your college loan back by
giving two years of your life as a counselor to kids in trouble, as a
nurse in a public health clinic, as a police officer on the block.  You
think about it, a lot of these kids in trouble, they're never the most
important person in the world to anybody except the people they're
in the gangs with.
        We've got to give them a good gang to be a part of, you gotta
have some personal connection.
        Anyway, you have to pay a little more, but not a lot more-
enough to invest in our people again.  That's what we gotta do.

Arsenio:  If it helps our youth, I'm down with it.  I'll be right back
with Bill Clinton.

Commercial Break.

Arsenio:  Well, you all know this lady.  Yes, yes.  The wife beside
the man.  Not behind anymore, but beside.
        Through all this controversy, have you ever found yourselves
at home, fighting?  Honestly?

Hillary:  No.  No.  Not about anything important.  We fight about
what movie we want to see.

Clinton:  This is the only movie we're gonna see for a month and
you're gonna make me see this crazy cheap thrills movie?  You
wanna go see "Lethal Weapon III," when we've got all these other
movies out?  That's the kind of stuff we fight about.

Arsenio:  It's hard to think that at some point you didn't say, "Who
is Gennifer?  You know.  Who the hell is she?"

Hillary:  I know who she is.  I know who she is.

Arsenio:  And you know what her problem is?

Hillary:  She's got lots of problems.

Arsenio:  Yeah.  Through all the pressure and things you've been
through, have you ever thought about quitting?

Clinton:  No.

Arsenio:  Really?

Clinton: No.  I would have quit if I just wanted to live in the White
House or go to Camp David on the weekends.  But, if that were the
choice, I'd gladly stay home with the job I've got and the life I've got.
It's a lot better life in many ways-on a much more human scale.
        I got into this race because I thought this country was going
down the tubes and we ought to change it.  And I stayed in it
because I thought I could be a force for change.  And I wanted the
voters to make up their mind.  If the voters say, "Hey, we think some
other person will be a better president," I will go home a happy man
to the life that I've got.  It's a wonderful life.
        But I would have been a gutless wonder to quit over things I
thought were unfair and insubstantial in the face of the convictions I
have about what we ought to do to change the country.
        So, no.  I never thought about quitting.  This country doesn't
need a quitter.  And the licks that I've taken are nothing compared
to the licks most Americans take.  Look at what those people in South
Central L.A. are going through.  That's a lot tougher than a few days
of bad publicity.  If you can't take a few licks, you've got no business
being president.  It's a tough job, you've got to be a tough guy.

Arsenio:  Yes. Wow.
        Have you-and this is something that I heard a political analyst
talking about recently-he said that you were, I'll use the word
"chilling out."  He said you were pulling back a little bit.  You've been
instructed not to say as much or not to be as out spoken.  No?

Hillary:  I've heard that but I never know who says it.  I think it's
wishful thinking on the part of some people.  I want to tell you
something.  I thought what you did the night after the L.A. riots was
the way television ought to be.  I was so impressed.  Yeah.

Clinton:  It was a wonderful show.

Hillary:  It was not only a great show.  It was honest and it gave
people a chance to connect with each other-what you and Bill were
talking about earlier.  And it used television in a positive way-not
just reporting from a distance, not just pointing fingers, but involving
people and letting those of us at home watching feel we had some
role, some say, too.  I was real pleased.

Arsenio:  See we gotta stay involved everyday. After the fires burn
out, we can't allow our involvement to burn out.  A few weeks before
the riots, I had been on the hill-invited by Louis Stokes-to talk
about gangs and violence.  I'm heavily involved in a lot of those
issues.  What do we do about the gangs and the violence in our
inner-cities.  The black on black crime.  How do we stop it?

Clinton:  Well, if there was a simple answer it would be done
already.
        I think you've got to start with a safe streets strategy.  The
cities that are safer are those that have neighborhood policing, where
the people that live in neighborhoods look at police as their friends.
They see them every day.  The police know the kids that are in
trouble, or about to be.  They work together to keep harmony and
peace.  We need to help those policemen by giving those kids
something else to do-more one on one relations with successful
adults.
        And when they do get in trouble, instead of sending them off to
jail the first time, they ought to be put in community boot camps
where they can do community service work, have drug treatment
and education.
        And I think we ought to pass the Brady Bill and do something
to get some of these guns off the street.  You need a safe streets
strategy.
        Then you need something for the kids to say, "yes" to.
Everybody wants to be in a gang.  If you go to your church, it's a
gang.  It's just a good a gang.  Makes you feel good to be there on
Sunday.  We are social animals.  We have to be part of something
bigger than ourselves.
        You've gotta take those gangs and give them some way to be
winners as gangs, or give people good gangs to be a part of.  We've
got to give these kids something to say yes to.
        The L.A. Conservation Corps, ought to be a national model.  And
it ought to be dramatically expanded for ways for young people to
work.
        Those are the things we've got to do.  We've got to change lives
from the outside in and from the inside out.  And there's no simple
strategy.  The government can do some things, but people on the
street have to do others.

Arsenio:  The reason I ask you questions like this-these are not
just black questions.  "Mr. Crime", "Mr. Frustration," own cars now.
They'll be coming to the suburbs real soon.  That's why we have to
solve these inner-city problems.

Clinton:  I was in Macomb County, Michigan-which is virtually all
white-outside Detroit.  That's the home of the "Reagan Democrats."
You know, "The Democratic Party left me. I'm tough.  I'm
conservative."  I was there a couple of days after a fifteen year-old
white kid shot another one in the schools.  This is not just race.  It's
about ethics and education, and economics.  And it's about kids being
divorced from the life we want them to live.  There's all these
disconnections.  It's like people's circuits have shorted out.
        People like you-at least you're reaching out and trying to touch
them again.  And what you've got to do is to empower people like all
of the rest of us-people that aren't famous or rich but still have
incredible power to touch other people's lives.

Arsenio:  Yeah.  It's all of ours problem.  Now Hillary, why should
we vote for this man?

Hillary:  Because he's got the right combination of a great heart, and
a great mind, and he understands what's at stake in this country.  If
he were not convinced that we could do better, and that he could
inspire people-particularly young people-to feel good about
themselves and to be committed again to this country, he wouldn't
be in this race.  But he is, and he can.   And that's what we need
more than anything to get America back on the right track.

Arsenio:  I'm not here to tell you who to vote for, but vote for
somebody.  This is Bill-the Clinton family.

End of Transcript