Clinton cites successes, failures

WASHINGTON -- Although his presidency may be indelibly marked by his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, former president Bill Clinton said his biggest failure as president dealt with policies not achieved.

''I'm sorry on the home front that we didn't get health care and that we didn't reform Social Security," Clinton told CBS's ''60 Minutes" in an interview that aired last night. ''And international affairs I'm -- I regret that I didn't succeed in getting Osama bin Laden. And, equally I'm sorry that I wasn't able enough to convince the Israelis and the Palestinians to make peace."

Clinton said his economic plan was his greatest accomplishment.

''I kept score, how many people's lives were better off," he told Dan Rather. ''I think the fact that we were able to have 22 million jobs and record home ownership and lower interest rates -- people actually had the ability to do more things than ever before."

Among the low points were telling voters that he had smoked marijuana but not inhaled, and the nadir was finally telling his wife, Hillary, about the affair.

''I had a sleepless night and woke her up and sat down on the side of the bed and just told her," Clinton said. ''And it was awful. But I had to do it, because the grand jury testimony was coming up and I was going to tell the truth to the grand jury, and I wanted her to know before it happened."

He spoke candidly about his affair on ''60 Minutes" and with Time, but never mentioned Lewinsky by name in the television news program.

Clinton cited ''old demons" and ''unresolved anger" at independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr as part of the explanation for his affair.

''It's not good for a person to be as mad underneath as I was," Clinton said in an interview with Time in which he spoke of his anger at Starr's relentless search for financial and personal wrongdoing in Clinton's White House. ''I think if people have unresolved anger it makes them do nonrational, destructive things. People ask me all the time, they say, 'What you did during the government shutdown with Monica Lewinsky didn't make any sense, so explain. How could you do this? You knew Ken Starr was looking over your shoulder.' "

When Rather asked Clinton why he had the affair, Clinton answered: ''Just because I could. I think that's the most-- just about the most morally indefensible reason that anybody could have for doing anything."

Clinton flatly denied launching cruise missiles at Osama bin Laden to divert attention from the scandal with Lewinsky.

The two interviews kick off a whirlwind promotional week for Clinton's long-awaited memoir, ''My Life," which will be sold in bookstores tomorrow. The 957-page tome -- which Clinton reportedly wrote himself in longhand -- has put the former president back in the international spotlight, earning him jabs from comedian Jay Leno, an anticipated spot on ''Oprah," and a front-page review in the Sunday New York Times, which called the book ''eye-crossingly dull."

But the interviews and excerpts from the book also offer a psychological profile of a complicated man who has had years to reflect on the mistakes and successes of his presidency.

In the interview with Rather, Clinton called surviving the Republican-led impeachment proceedings a ''badge of honor" and suggests that common outrage at the Republican moves helped reunite him with his wife.

''I didn't quit. I never thought of resigning and I stood up to it and beat it back," he said. ''And I -- I'll still believe that it was a bogus, phony deal."

Clinton also said of his wife, now a senator from New York, ''I don't think there is a way in the wide world I would have ever become president without her."

In the interviews, and in the book excerpts, Clinton talks candidly and sometimes with great emotion of how he healed his marriage by devoting a day a week to couples counseling and how he endured a difficult childhood, growing up in Arkansas with an abusive and alcoholic stepfather.

Clinton told Time that growing up with abuse caused him to have to become ''a secret-keeper" who had ''a whole part of your life you can't talk about."

''By the way, the flip side of having lived parallel lives is that I was good at it," he said. ''People have a hard time believing that I could go to work and concentrate on my job, but I'd been doing it ever since I was a little boy."

In the CBS interview, Clinton said he tried to say more about his life than ''any public figure ever has. And probably more than anyone ever should."

Clinton sat for four hours of questions, which were not given to him in advance, and did not try to avoid answering or talking about ''what he called the darker aspects of his personality," Rather told CNN yesterday.

''Was he uncomfortable? Yes, I think he was uncomfortable," Rather said, also acknowledging, ''I was uncomfortable asking these questions."

Clinton also reiterated his support for war in Iraq, although he disagreed about the timing.

''You know, I have repeatedly defended President Bush against the left on Iraq, even though I think he should have waited until the UN inspections were over."