"First, We Have to Roll Up Our Sleeves" Bill Clinton Explains How He Will Make the Hard Choices That Lie Ahead.

By HENRY MULLER and JOHN F. STACKS LITTLE ROCK Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton

Q. It's tempting to compare this moment in history to F.D.R. in 1932 or J.F.K. in 1960 or even Ronald Reagan in 1980 -- all watershed years. In terms of the task you face, which of these comparisons seems most appropriate?

A. Probably somewhere between Roosevelt and Kennedy. The economy is not as devastated as it was under Roosevelt, and the changes we need to make don't involve as much Big Government or Keynesian economics, but they are quite profound. There's a sense that we need to get the country moving again. That's what Kennedy brought to the White House. But structurally the things we have to do here at home are more profound than what we had to face in 1961.

Q. You've also been admiring of Reagan.

A. Substantively, the best thing he did early was to restore the country's sense of confidence and optimism and possibility.

Q. Do you feel you have as much of a mandate to make changes as any of those three Presidents did when they were elected?

A. I guess it depends on how you read the results of the election. If it had been a two-person race, the popular margin would have been greater, but the electoral margin might have been slightly tighter. It's hard to calculate because some states were so close. I think what I have a mandate to do from the people who voted for Clinton and Perot, and some of the people even who voted for Bush, is to try to make the government work again, to strengthen the economy to solve problems, to represent the people at large rather than just the people who are organized and have great wealth.

Q. Did Perot make your task easier by getting people to focus on the fact that some of the solutions will be painful?

A. Maybe. But another thing that was very helpful coming out of his campaign was this whole emphasis on political reform. When I became the nominee of the Democratic Party, in a country that hadn't voted for a Democrat in a long time, there were all these people who wanted political reform but weren't sure any Democrat could deliver it. So when Perot got the vote he got, that really gave me the impetus to stick with the political reform. I think this will open the system to making tougher decisions.

On the deficit thing, what was said helps people to think about making tough decisions. What they want is for ((the solutions)) to be fair and commonsensical. People understand more and more that at least over the long run, you've got to do something about it.

Q. Are there some things that Perot proposed, like the gasoline tax, that you think might now be more palatable to the public?

A. What came out of the economic summit here made me think that there might be more receptivity to it, and it might be something we can look at in the context of an overall program that seemed fair to people. But you've got to understand what most voters brought to this election, at least most people who voted for me. They brought a keen awareness that while most of them were worse off than they were 10 years ago, there had been a big divergence in income in America. Inequality had got worse, and all the tax breaks had gone to the people who were doing better anyway. This is a much more unequal country than it was 10 years ago. I just don't want to see us raise the gas tax through the roof on top of what has already been done to middle-class people and small- business people without some effort to put fairness back in the system.

Q. Do you think that in the short run you'll ask, say, the veterans and the older people and whoever is going to have to take a hit to accept a bit of pain that they might not like?

A. I expect to lead with a program that will maximize jobs and income growth as we try to come out of this recession in the short run and, secondly, will fundamentally change the patterns of spending not only of government money but, to whatever extent we can influence it, private expenditures toward more investment over the long run. And thirdly, we will offer a multiyear deficit- reduction plan. I might even go, in terms of the framework, beyond four years in what I recommend. Because if you look at the numbers we're looking at now, two things have basically changed dramatically since we got the numbers on which we put out Putting People First ((the Clinton-Gore campaign book)).

One is that because the recession went on longer than was anticipated, the short-term deficit is considerably bigger than anyone thought it was six or seven months ago. (Mrs. Clinton enters the room and sits in an armchair next to the President-elect.) The second thing that happened on this deficit is that in the out years -- that is 1997, 1998 and beyond -- it also looks bigger than they originally thought, given the assumptions on health care. Now I think we can fix a lot of that. People know it took 12 years to get into this trough we're in. And I think they'll tolerate taking maybe eight years to get out of it. But I need to put together a framework that goes beyond the typical discussion of long run.

Q. So you're basically looking at a tougher situation than you thought?

A. On the deficit stuff yes, but the short-run economic situation may not be quite as bad. The underlying reality has not changed. The difference between my view of this economy and ((the views of)) most people who talk to me about it is that I do not see the short-term recession, the built-in structural deficit and the other issues as isolated. I see them as all of a piece. I'm not trying to avoid what you might call the hard choices. I'm just trying to say, What we've got to do is to put all these things together. It's got to be a short-term economic plan in which everything you do is consistent with the long-term objectives, which is why you have to be careful about how big a stimulus you put into this thing.

Q. What are you most anxious about as you approach the presidency? What can go wrong?

A. Three things, I guess. One is that this is a very troubled world we live in. We are seeing the flip side of the wonder of the end of the cold war. The bipolar world gave the U.S. and the Soviet Union a limited capacity to contain some of what we are now witnessing in Bosnia. I'm worried about what is happening in Russia. I think it's all eminently predictable that there would be some setbacks.

The second thing I worry about is just getting bogged down. The voters have so much hope now for us to do things. They want us to get out there and get things done and show some movement.

My third concern is purely personal. I want this to be a good move for our daughter. Hillary and I have talked about that a lot. ((Chelsea)) has had a good life here. It's exciting for her now. She's smart and pretty grownup for her age and interested in it. But I want her life to unfold without being destructively impacted by this.

Q. How much of that is within your control?

A. We're about to find out.

Q. Mrs. Clinton, do you share those concerns?

Mrs. Clinton: Yes, the only other thing I would add is whether, given the high expectations and the need for change, you can work out the right balance between moving forward and not getting caught up in politicizing everything you do, so that you have a chance substantively to try to make some things work before people get distracted and thrown into a frame of mind of skepticism or loss of will. I think that is an endemic problem now in our society, this whole short-term fixation that we've got and the incapacity to plan for the long run and to have a vision of where you're going and to try to stay the course to get there. I just hope there can be enough momentum and that people individually feel committed enough so that they take some responsibility.

Clinton: I think that was our enduring legacy here. People here kept voting for me because they knew there was a real long-term vision. There's a lot of difference between passing a law and galvanizing people's energies. We've got to seize the opportunities and really confront these problems. There is a sense that we have to do it together. Like Hillary, I don't know how long it will persist. We have to show ways to manifest this progress.

Q. One way to keep this feeling going is to stay in touch with the people. Can you do that the way you did in Arkansas, with the press and the Secret Service?

A. But there's a flip side to the press. Everything you do is magnified. So that if you have an encounter on Georgia Avenue ((in a working-class neighborhood of Washington)), it reverberates across the country in a way it never did when I was Governor. When I was Governor and went to Crittenden County, it was not on the front page of the Little Rock newspapers -- "Oh, Bill's up in the country. That's where he belongs."

You have to be very disciplined about it too. First of all, we have to establish the Administration as one that's rolling up its sleeves and going to work from the President on down, where there's a serious, passionate commitment to the interests of the American people. When the work is well in hand, then I can begin to go back out in the country and do a lot of these things. But I think that when we travel, both of us, it ought to be not just to be in touch with people but to be in touch with them over something that together we can do.

Mrs. Clinton: The model of the economic conference may be one that we try to build on. It was open to the public. It was carried on television. Individuals who were there represented many people like themselves in many respects. And there was a sense in which the viewer who watched it on television or read about it in the paper felt a part of it. If we can keep that especially around issues, I think people will feel they are in touch.

The most important part of all this is results. What are the outcomes of all this effort? What is it that is happening that is changing people's lives? We've talked a lot about how you create a culture within the government, along the lines of what many companies have tried to do as they restructured, trying not only to build teams but to create a shared vision and to have a sense of direction that it keyed to the outcome you are trying to achieve. It sounds corny, but we'd love it if the people in the government in the Clinton-Gore Administration go to work every day and say to themselves on the way to work, "What am I going to do today that will help Americans?" and at the end of the day, they'd say to themselves, "What have I done today to make anyone's life get better?" Those kinds of questions are markers that will help to create a culture within the government that we hope will communicate itself to people so that they will feel their interests are being represented, even if they don't personally get to see Bill out on the street doing something.

Clinton: That reminds me. You asked me earlier what else had surprised me. I'm a little chagrined to admit this because it shouldn't surprise me, having been a Governor for 12 years. But one of the things that has struck me since I won this election is that there are a huge number of people who work for the Federal Government and know about all these things I care about. Many of them have been out there for years, and nobody has ever asked them for their opinion. There are a lot of really gifted, devoted people who ought to be given a chance to hook into this future we are trying to build.

Q. John Kennedy said that after he was elected, he began to think in terms of who it was he had to have in the room when he made the really big decisions. For him, that was Robert Kennedy. Who is it for you?

A. Hillary.

Q. How does that work? If you disagree, how do you work that out? Or don't you disagree?

Both: Oh, yes, we disagree.

Clinton: It depends. If we disagree and I think I'm right, I just go on and do what I think is right. And then she tells me, "I told you so." (Laughter.) We've always had a lot of back and forth. The only time we really couldn't do it was in Hillary's law practice, where it would have been inappropriate for her to discuss some case she had. Otherwise we have always just talked about our business, her business and mine, and given our opinions and helped each other to think through problems. I really respect her judgment. On a lot of these things, she has this mountain of knowledge and experience.

Q. How often is he wrong?

Mrs. Clinton: That's not the way we do it, actually. In the process of talking about things, which we do all the time, we change each other's mind a lot. There is just a different perspective about things that I bring, that he brings. And it's rare that I think he's wrong. I think that maybe it should have been done differently or the process might have been something other than what it was. But I can say that over all these years, I can't think of anything where I was really upset about what he did. We think so much alike, and our values are so much alike. It's more an exploration of all the sides and all the approaches and the way you should think about something. As he said, if he decides he's right, then he's right and then he goes on with it.

The other part of it is, you know, Bill seeks advice from everybody. It's not a closed circle by any means. One of the things that all the members of his Cabinet and Administration will have to learn is that he can spend an hour seeking their advice on something and then they'll be walking down the hallway with him and he'll stop and ask somebody else the very same thing because he wants to make sure he's getting all the information he needs to make a decision.

Clinton: I believe that if you look at the most successful organizations in this country, that's what they do. Hillary was on the Wal-Mart board, and I was always fascinated by the way those executives would sit around and have their meetings and take some issue and just talk it through to death and get every angle of it.

Mrs. Clinton: And not in a hierarchical way, in a team approach, where people were just as likely to say to Sam Walton, "I think that's the craziest idea I ever heard," as they were to say, "Gee, I agree with you, Sam." That had such an impact upon me personally. It gets back to my culture point. I think the best organizations encourage that kind of openness, that kind of cross- fertilization of people's abilities. Yes, there has to be a decision maker, and there isn't any doubt as to who the decision maker is on all these issues. There wasn't in Arkansas, and there won't be in the White House.

Q. Has anyone said, "That's the craziest idea I ever heard" since you've been elected?

Clinton: Most of the people who have any relationship with me feel free to disagree with me.

Q. And that hasn't changed?

Clinton: No, I think what will happen . . .

Mrs. Clinton: They bow down first, before they disagree. (Laughter.) They drop to their knees. . .

Clinton: If I read that in TIME, I'm going to play golf all during the Christmas season . . .

Mrs. Clinton: We haven't gone to the mat on the floor yet. . .

Clinton: No, I think a lot of the folks who are just getting to know me will just have to feel that out. But I really try to encourage that. You know, the trappings and all that stuff I think is bogus and gets in the way of honest communication. If they want me to be a successful President, they've got to tell me what they think. It doesn't offend me when people disagree with me.

Q. We can't stop wondering: the morning after the election, what were the first words you said when you both knew . . .

Clinton: . . . that I've been elected President? I looked at her and just started laughing.

Mrs. Clinton: That's exactly right.

Clinton: I woke up. She looked at me, and I looked at her, and we just started laughing, like, Can you believe that this happened to us?

Mrs. Clinton: A friend of ours said it's like the dog that keeps chasing the car and all of a sudden catches it.

Q. Do you think about it every minute?

Clinton: No.

Q. When do you not think about it?

Clinton: Oh, when I read my mystery books when I go to bed at night, and when I'm talking to Chelsea. I'm not obsessed about it. Look, the genius of democracy, the thing the Founding Fathers understood, was that by definition most people who could ever get elected to anything could do most of what they'd have to do. To be preoccupied with the institution of the presidency keeps you from thinking about the people who sent you there and the problems they have. I really do get up every day and just put one foot in front of the other and not think about "it" as if it were some disembodied thing. I'm just going to do the very best I can and try to have a wonderful time doing it.