He was just subdued, I would say. [He] didn't say very much, watched it. Doug Sosnik was in the room with me, and we just watched it and none of us said very much. We just watched the vote take place.

Later that day, the White House holds this rally with congressional Democrats on the lawn. Why did you do that?

It began really that morning. I was up early in the morning. I went with Mrs. Clinton to the Democratic Caucus. And I think the Democratic Members of Congress thought this really, really had gone awry and was the wrong thing to do for the country. They were very emotional, they were very angry, they were very upset. Probably to a person, they thought what the president had done was wrong, but what the Republican majority was doing was very wrong. So there was a lot of emotion in the room.

The first lady spoke to that group, and at the end Charlie Rangel said, "When this is all over, we all want to come down there and be with the president." ...On the spot they agreed to do that, and they all did come down.

Was there concern about whether that would be appropriate?

There was a sense that people wanted to make a statement. Part of it was a statement of support. Part of it was a statement suggesting that this had been a kind of partisan hijacking of solemn process. And it seemed like an appropriate thing to do, actually.

That was an incredible vote. Did that hit you like a hammer?

Well, we knew it was going to happen because just prior to that, the senators had all adjourned to the old Senate chamber and they had agreed on a resolution.

When the Chief Justice of the United States calls the Senate to order and they go on with this solemn march, what was going through your mind?

I'm a creature of the Senate. I worked there for nine years. And it was a solemn moment. At some point, I just took a deep breath and said we're going to have to work our way through this, and we're going to have the right outcome. However we're going to have to work on this day-by-day, in a serious way, and in a way that respects the Senate as an institution, and that they will do the right thing in the end.

In the end, the day of the acquittal, do you remember what he was like that day or what his mood was?

He had written out a statement, and I remember going over. He was up in the residence, and we sat together, and actually there was no real sense of relief or of happiness. It was just that this thing was over. There was one more thing to do, which was to talk to the American people, to reiterate the fact that he was sorry that he had made a personal mistake, but to say that we had to get back to the people's business. He had worked on a statement, and he was still working on it.

He writes almost all the important speeches he gives. Anything that he's handed by somebody else is all scratched out and he's handwritten in...On this occasion he actually wrote the first draft, and then it was worked on. He was still reworking it right 'til the end. We just talked a little bit, and he said, "Okay, I'm ready to go." We got up and walked back over to the Oval Office, and he came out and read the statement by himself, and then we went back to work.

No characterization of beyond "we're ready to go"? The substance of that?

On that vote occasion, we knew basically what the votes were. There wasn't any suspense in the outcome, if you will. But it was a somber moment. There wasn't a sense of relief, it was just...

I remember at the time the White House spokesman, Joe Lockhart, declared this is going to be a gloat-free zone. Was there a concern that there would be an appearance of gloating after the acquittal?

I think that we have a keen sense of how the press reacts to us. And I don't think that at all was the atmosphere amongst the senior staff and the people that had lived through that. There was a sense that it was good that this was over.

But, obviously, there's a big broad staff there, some of the people are young, and I think that we were concerned that anything that was viewed as gloating or high-fiving or whatever would be taken out of context, no matter if it was a junior person or whoever. So we kind of laid the law down.

By February of that year, we heard the first rumblings that the first lady might actually be interested in a Senate seat, how did that come about? And did the president encourage that from the very beginning?

The first cheerleaders on this were Charlie Rangel, and other New York Democrats. But Charlie, especially, was really nudging her and pushing her, and talking it up, and talking about it. At first, it was probably flattering, and I'm not sure she took it all that seriously. And then a number of New York Democrats were coming to see her and calling her and really trying to get something going.

I'm not sure whether the president took it completely seriously. I think he thought that if she ran, she'd be a great candidate, and if she won, she'd be a great senator. But it took a little while to get going. Finally she started saying, "Well, maybe I should take a serious look at this and began talking to people. How much time, how much money, what the scene was up there. " And I think the more she--

So it started almost as a lark and developing into something, is that what you're saying?

I'm not sure I'd say that. It started as something that was flattering from her perspective because so many people thought she'd be so good at it. And then the more she thought about it, I think she thought she could make a difference in that role and decided to get out there. She went through that phase in which she traveled around New York, still thinking it through and then she finally made a decision to go ahead and do it.

That summer, the president gives a speech at Georgetown where he talked about a renewed sense of vigor for his domestic agenda. Is there a sense that the president kind of began a new term after impeachment, in his own mind, and did he think that provided him with sort of a clear demarcation point?

I think that the ability to now go back and try to put together bipartisan majorities was something that he had hoped for and clearly was in his mind. [The president] wanted to kind of reset the table, set the agenda, and move forward with something that we were after; and that's why we decided to do that speech. He laid out the items that he wanted to really work on, some of which we've been successful on, some of which are still up in the air at the end of the Congress, and some of which it looks like we're not going to get done.

To what extent did impeachment spur him to have some sense of energy here, that he had this agenda that he desperately wanted to pass? Was this an attempt to burnish his legacy?

I don't see it that way, but a lot of people have suggested that. I think what gives the president energy, frankly, is when he goes out and meets real people. He kind of remembers what he's in office for...I remember traveling with him, even this year after the State of the Union address. We went out to Quincy, Illnois. It must have been about zero degrees, but I think people were pretending it was 10. People had been standing out there for hours in that cold weather, and they were just as pumped and enthusiastic as you could imagine. The president stood out there at that rope line and met people and greeted people. The people on those lines who tell him stories about how their lives have been changed--that's really what revs him up--more than putting points on the board at the end of his presidency, just so some historian a hundred years from now can take a look at it.

In March, the president has got to make a decision that is a difficult one, with first the air war and then deciding whether or not to even threaten the use of ground troops in Kosovo. What about the political calculation of something like this using armed forces for an area where we might have a limited national security interest?

One of the things we did from the get-go on this was that he brought a lot of members up. We held these meetings in the yellow Oval Office of the residence, the Speaker participated, with all the Republican leadership, as well as the Democratic leadership. [The president] really tried to work this through substantively with them, tell them where he was going, tried to build support, tried to keep a bipartisan level of support to turn back the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. And that was successful. The people on the Hill were probably more calculating the politics of it than the president was and more than the White House was.

We couldn't avoid it, Milosevic had expelled 900,000 people out of Kosovo. We were determined to reverse that. And he ordered the beginning of the bombing. There weren't too many people who were not in the administration who weren't second-guessing that decision.

In the first week of the bombing campaign, as people were being criticized-- I'm talking about our senior national security people... I remember the president coming in saying, look, I made the decision; if it goes wrong, it's in my lap. Just do what you think is right, do your job. That kind of calmed everybody down. And then through the course of that time, there was an equanimity--I think is probably the right word--that occurred in the Oval Office and in the West Wing. It was a time in which almost all of [the president's] attention was focused on it. I think whenever you're sending armed forces in to harm's way it completely diverts your attention from what else is going on...

Was there an enormous concern...

At some level --and I'd describe this through impeachment, through the trial, et cetera, from my period in the White House--this was the hardest time...to know that there were consequences to this, there was collateral damage, there were innocent people who were being put in harm's way, but that we were doing the right thing. We needed to persevere and press on. Very, very difficult to go through that, but I think he felt like we were doing the right thing, and he just stuck with it.

During this Kosovo period, given what had happened in Somalia, given the concern in the American public opinion about casualties, was the president worried all the time about what it might mean if the U.S. took significant casualties in the air war? And to what extent did that drive your policy?

I think that you're always worried about casualties, and that the plan that the Pentagon laid out to him was a sound one, and one that was worth proceeding on. There was the dramatic rescue in the early days of the action, but you wake up every morning, worried that given the bombing the night before that a plane might be shot down or somebody might be killed, even in that context; so you're always worried about it. However the president believed that the enormity of what Milosevic had done on the ethnic cleansing warranted the U.S.'s involvement and NATO's involvement.

Over that period of time, the president spent a great deal of time on consulting with the other leaders, the other NATO ally leaders, and making sure that we stuck together, we pursued the course. Ultimately, I think Milosevic understood that we were not going to back off; we were in this thing, we were going to reverse what he had done, and he finally reversed course, and we were able to get the refugees back in.

What was the reaction in the White House to, if not criticism, strong arguments from people like General Clark, who felt that preparations for a land war should have begun much earlier and that Milosevic needed a much tougher threat than even the NATO air campaign, as successful as it was?

The president was obviously in touch with General Clark, and the Pentagon, and the national security adviser were talking to him on a daily basis.

You have to remember at the beginning of this, this was a NATO action that needed the consensus of the parties, and we moved this at a pace that was consistent with a pace that kept the allies together. People began to question tactical decisions or timing decisions, et cetera. We did this with a deliberate pace which kept the allies together, and it proved to be the right pace. We never took any of those options off the table, but we had to do them in consultation with our NATO allies, and we did it at a pace that made sense.

A lot of people in Washington last year wrote that they noticed a change in the president's mood, that he seemed much more relaxed, he was extremely funny at a couple of these Washington dinners. Did you notice a change in the president yourself?

Yes...I think he's still in a pretty good mood, and he's developed a great comedic timing, especially at the press dinners. And I think he is proud of what he's been able to accomplish. He's determined to get as much as he can for the American people out of each and every day. And, generally, I think he loves his job and he loves doing a good job for the American people.

Was he able to relax a lot more during that year? Or what was it that led to this sort of change in mood? At least as the public saw it.

Yeah, I think that even in private he's in a better mood. Obviously with the the impeachment off the table... It was something that hung over us. And then, as you noted, we went right into the Kosovo action, within probably a month of the Senate acquittal.

Finally, he was back to doing what he likes to do, which is to work on public policy. He was able to relax a little bit more. He's working hard now, but he's still in a pretty good mood. You know, he's still throw the cards down if he loses. But in general, he's able to relax a little bit, and again concentrate on the things that he thinks are important and important for the American public.

In 2000, what above all is his domestic priority? What does he want to accomplish?

When we look back on this--I think holding on to the fiscal discipline that enables this country to use the surplus in ways that are important to the American people, to invest in Social Security and Medicare and education, and to provide some tax relief that's more at the middle class than what's been proposed by the Republicans--I think that's number one, staying on the path of fiscal discipline in the domestic area.

We'd like to pass a patient's bill of rights. We still have a chance to do that. Clearly, we want to raise the minimum wage again, and that's the right thing to do. And I think we'll get that done.

If there's one thing that, more than any that we would like to do--that is a stretch, given the stranglehold that special interests have on this Congress-- it would be to pass a real Medicare prescription drug benefit that doesn't just benefit a few, but benefits every beneficiary in Medicare. I think that would probably be on our list of top priorities.

We're struggling to get that done. We want to continue our investments in education. I think we'll be successful there. We want to make substantial investments in preserving our great spaces in this country. We're doing well there.

We've got a lot of things to do that don't have anything to do with Congress. We're going to implement a strong set of medical privacy rules in the weeks and months to come, and that's a very important issue for the American public. And we're moving forward using all the power and authority that the president has to try to make this a better country.

This past summer, the president personally tried to broker a Middle East peace agreement again, went so far as brinkmanship up until the time he left for his trip, and then he came back and it fell apart. How personally frustrating was that for Clinton?

Clearly, it's the hardest problem to solve right now from a foreign policy perspective, it's the most important problem to solve. But these are tough...

Did he genuinely believe he could have brokered a deal there?

I think that he was always realistic about it. He always knew how tough it was. We're dealing with issues of identity, we're dealing with issues that are not just 50 years old but hundreds and thousands of years old. We're dealing with things that really have never been talked about face to face by Chairman Arafat and the Prime Minister of Israel.

So he knew that this was tough, tough going. I mean, he had been through and successfully concluded Wye negotiations with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Arafat.

Was he personally pretty disappointed that it didn't work out?

Obviously he was...The answer to that is yes. He was disappointed that it didn't work out, but I don't think that made his commitment to keep working on it flag. We're still engaged in it. We're still pushing for it. He was very realistic about how hard this was, and I think that he'll continue to work at it, and if we can make progress, we'll make progress.

Even post-impeachment, scandals keep coming up in one form or another. The judge in Arkansas, Susan Webber Wright, imposed a fine, the disbarment move in Arkansas, the independent counsel Ray convening a new grand jury. The president is said to be angry that this is still going on.

By the New York Times, he's said to be angry. Mostly I think the president has left this to his lawyers, and that's where it belongs.

Now, the truth is that, unless something is breaking or happening, et cetera, Mr. Ray issuing a report or something, he doesn't think about it very much. He's left it to David Kendall and his legal team, if he had to pay attention to it, because they're filing something, he'll pay attention to it. But I think until he gets out of office, it is his view is that he ought to be paying attention to his work, that it's a gift that the American people have given him to be able to serve, and a profound honor to be able to serve. And I think that he wants to make the most out of that.

Does he feel hounded?

I think that he thinks that this independent counsel investigation's gone on way too long. At some level, the fact that the independent counsel's around and that he has partisan critics, and that people are going to use the legal mechanism for kind of partisan political reasons, has become almost a fact of life. You just deal with it.

He met with some ministers outside Chicago a couple of months ago and made more remarks that were interpreted by some in Washington sort of as a search for redemption. Do you see that in him? Is he still seeking some kind of redemption?

Personally, obviously, he's tried to put it back together and deal with the pain that he's caused his family, and I think he's worked on that and been successful at that. However the redemption in that sense is very personal and...you know, he's a religious person. He continues to seek guidance and counseling from some ministers who are friends of his. And in that sense it's very personal and it's deeply rooted in where he is as a religious person. He's always seeking to do what he can in that spirit. So I think it's always a search and a quest, but that's something that's personal that he and I don't really talk about, that he deals with more in a religious context.

At the Democratic convention, the president speaks on the opening night, and there's this incredible entrance where he's down--down below and all the cameras, and there the crowd's going crazy. What was going through your mind at that moment when you sort of saw the president there in the bowels of the Staples Center and making the most out of his entrance?

It reminded me a little bit of the movie "Spinal Tap," when the band comes on the stage. But it was actually kind of a grand entrance in the hall. On the big-screen TVs, they were putting up the accomplishment of the administration, the 22 million jobs, the surplus, the welfare cut in half, et cetera. And people were really, really pumped up. You had to be proud that you were with this guy for the journey because so much has been done, so much good has happened in this country over the course of his term in office. And that he's had such--such a substantial role in making that happen.

I think everybody felt a good deal of pride and I had worked with him on the speech. He had worked on it over the course of the weekend. He had some things he wanted to say, and he had gotten them down to where he almost physically delivered the speech, if you watched it. He really had internalized it and he wanted to give it. He got a powerful reception, in the hall, and for the people who were watching it at home--about what he had talked about in 1992--, and the people he had met along the way in 1992, what he had tried to do for them, what he had meant to their lives during the course of this seven and a half years.

He was very pumped up. The crowd was very pumped up, and all of us who had had the privilege and honor of working with him were pretty pumped up.

You went out to Michigan for that ritual passing of the torch, and then at the end of the day, the president went into McDonald's. What was that supposed to mean?

I'm not sure it was supposed to mean much of anything other than he saw that there was a crowd out in front of McDonald's on the way into town, and he and the first lady decided they wanted to stop and get something to eat. It was quite a riot in McDonald's, even though it was the middle of the afternoon, there was still quite a crowd in there. And people were stunned that he was in there, it actually turned out to be a lot of fun. We all had a good time. Things got a little slow, so I got behind the counter and started punching the buttons, serving the fries. It was a time to kind of let your hair down. We did that and got out, and then got a few days to relax.

The president's going to go to Vietnam after the election. Why is this important to him personally, going to Vietnam? It's a trip he's wanted to make for a long time.

I think it's important to the country. I think it's important to him. Obviously, his generation and my generation, were kind of forged in that period of time, and it was an important opportunity, both to reflect on that, and to try to continue to make progress on issues like finding out anything, we can on MIAs, et cetera. But it's also a time to rebind our two countries... To help Vietnam open up, bring, you know, more openness to that country, and try to get on a better path with a country that has obviously affected the course of our history and the course of, especially, our generation's history. So I think it's important to him.

What kind of an ex-president is Bill Clinton going to be? What's he going to do?

I think that his description is the best one I could give, which is that he's going to be a good citizen. I don't think he'll ever run for anything again, although he hasn't completely ruled out running for the school board. But I don't think he'll ever run for anything again. I think he'll dedicate himself to the things that his presidency's been about: building a more undivided country, more one America, dealing with the problems of race, dealing with problems of peace and ethnic tension around the world, dealing with the big challenges.

It seems to me that he's changed in one orientation, in that he's become extremely interested in both the power and promise, as well as the social issues, that are involved in these breakthroughs in science and technology, both the good and the bad. From the good on the ability to find new cures for diseases and to power our economy, to things like invasions of our privacy.

So he's actually become interested in a set of issues as president that he probably hadn't spent any real time on as governor, or before that. And you'll see him continue to think about public policy , to be a leader in terms of this movement that is loosely described as the new democratic movement or the third way movement in Europe--to engage people in trying to marry a more progressive social policy with one that powers our economy.

I think you'll see him out there doing good things, working primarily out of the public policy center and library that he's establishing in Little Rock, but he'll have plenty of time to think about that. He's a very young man.

If you have just one thought, if you were going to write two lines about how history is going to remember Bill Clinton, what do you think?

I think that he was a person who understood the transition to a new age, this age of our information economy, and globalization. He was able to manage that both here and abroad, both in terms of domestic policy and foreign policy, and bring everyone along with it. Fundamentally both his intellect and his ability to manage in that context will be seen as outstanding.

And then I think he'll be known as a guy who could take a punch, who never got completely down on the mat, who always came back, who fought for what he believed in, fought for what he thought was right and kept going and just wouldn't stay down...because he always remembers the people who are out there, who sent him to the White House and he gets energy from that and he fights for them.

Did the historical asterisk--that he is the second president to be impeached--in your view, did that get in the way of something that could have been better?

Oh, I don't know. I think history will have to judge that. And obviously it would have been better if that hadn't happened. But history will judge. Ultimately, things have kind of strange ways of bouncing around and what what that meant--vis-a-vis the position of the Republican Party, and what the Democrats were, and the long-term history--will be something that I think people will chew on a hundred years from now.

First of all, the new independent counsel Robert Ray did release a report in September of 2000 which could not find any prosecutable crime. What was the president's reaction to that?

He said it was kind of a long time in coming. He thought that there was an independent review by Jay Stephens and Republican lawyer in the law firm that the RTC did, and that concluded in 1996 and found the same thing. Starr has kind of concluded the same thing. He thought that it put it to rest, but it was a long time in coming. I guess he was happy that it occurred, but he had never thought any different outcome would happen.

The president has been very active late in his second term in foreign policy, his trips to India and Africa again. You said that he changed in some way in--focusing a lot more time on the transitional economy and questions of science. Did he also change in terms of his perspective on world affairs? I mean, he came into office saying he was going to focus like a laser beam on the economy. He goes out as sort of an elder statesman in the world.

I think that he's obviously learned and grown, as anyone would in the presidency. But the one thing that maybe sets him apart a little bit is that I think he's understood how the world's getting smaller. This phenomena of globalization is happening, and yet the challenges, which include national security challenges, are different than the traditional challenges of at least the post-World War II and the Cold War period.

That's why he's attempted to go to places like India and reestablish our relationship with India and make a better relationship than we've had in many years, to go from an era of suspicion to an era of partnership. That's why he's gone to Africa twice to deal with the threats there from poverty, from the high indebtedness, and from things like infectious diseases, especially HIV/AIDS. And he has tried to focus America's attention on the fact that we live in this kind of increasingly small planet. We have to worry about those things and find ways to promote democracy, to promote growth, to deal with those challenges; because they will affect the way we live as nearly as much as the way that they affect the way people live over there. And there's an enormous amount to learn from those people or cultures, et cetera.

That's been a good part of his presidency, a good part of his experience, and he's enjoyed it very much. I think you'll see him staying in touch with those issues and those countries and those people.