(3 of 9)
We always look at reality backward, but we live it forward. And I say over and over in the book, once people reach the age of accountability, no matter what people do to them, that is not an excuse for any mistakes they make. On the other hand, only a fool does not seek to understand why he or she makes the mistakes they make.
I think a lot of it was I had been for a period of years back to living my parallel lives with a vengeance, dealing with the Ken Starr thing. Then I lost the Congress in '94 because I tried to jam too much change down the system at one time, and Gingrich was a better politician than I was in '94. His major contribution to American political history was the proof that you could consistently nationalize midterm elections. And it's a lesson that any Democrat or Republican now ignores at their peril.
But I got beat. So we'd fixed the economy, we'd done NAFTA, we'd done the crime bill, and instead of me paying for it, all of these brave members of Congress that voted to do something about the deficit and to take on the N.R.A. and who tried to do something about health care, they paid. I just felt terrible about that. And here we were at the beginning of this government shutdown. It worked out just fine in the end politically for me and for America because I stopped it, but no one knew in the beginning how the fight would come out.
So I was involved in two great struggles at the same time: a great public struggle over the future of America with the Republican Congress and a private struggle with my old demons. I won the public one and lost the private one. I don't think it's much more complicated than that. That's not an excuse. But it is an explanation, and that's the best I can do.
On telling Dan Rather on 60 Minutes that he had an affair with Lewinsky "just because I could"
What I meant by that is a lot of times you're angry, and you don't do these things because the opportunity is not there. Being a moral person [means] the one thing you don't do is do things just because you can. But if you think about most of the mistakes that we all make in our lives--all kinds of mistakes--well, there was temptation and opportunity.
On family counseling
First thing you learn is that any relationship that was once good, that is grounded in love but is in trouble, then one big reason is because you let it get on automatic. People begin to take each other for granted, their relationship begins to fall into routines. And if you're like us, you're workaholics, and if you know each other as well as we know each other, you get to where you don't even have to talk anymore half the time. You've been married a certain amount of time, your partner doesn't even have to open her mouth. So you have to fix that.