I think the president was always pretty realistic. He understands the constitution. I don't think that it ever really entered his mind or his heart that he ought to be the candidate out there. He obviously is an experienced political person and he had ideas about what should be said or how the campaign should take place. He usually expressed those to Mr. Daley through the course of the summer, but I don't think he ever thought he ought to be out there as a candidate.

But did he feel stabled in a certain sense? Some political people have called him the "Secretariat" of political thoroughbreds, and he was really restricted in this campaign. He didn't even campaign in his home state.

I think that his analysis was quite similar to the Gore campaign's analysis, which is that he could be helpful. But ...he really tried to do the work of the presidency, keep moving the country forward. He spent quite a bit of time over the course of the summer and the fall trying to raise funds for Democratic candidates. And he might have been able to be helpful in the last week, but I think he had a very keen sense that people wanted to hear from Al Gore; they wanted to hear from the House and Senate candidates in New York; they wanted to hear from Hillary Clinton they didn't wanted to hear from the president ... I think he was actually quite comfortable with that.

The Middle East. The president had spent eight years [on it], especially at the last set of Camp David talks. To what extent was Bill Clinton personally upset about what happened in terms of the violence that broke out in late fall of 2000?

Well obviously he was extremely disappointed. We had spent so much time and so much effort not just during the summer at Camp David, but over the course of the entire presidency trying to move the parties forward, trying to work on the Oslo process, trying to find an agreement that would provide final status. So he was disappointed, but I think the disappointment didn't lead him to stop trying. And in fact, through the course of the fall, and my suspicion is right up through his term in office, he will continue to try to be a voice to bring the party together to see if they can find a just and lasting solution there.

Hillary Clinton wins the New York Senate race. To what extent does Bill Clinton see that as part of his legacy? He helped her write speeches, he helped her with the announcement speech, he was more a part of her campaign than he was of Al Gore's.

I don't think he thinks that it was about him. I think he thinks that it was about her. I think he is very proud of the way she ran the race, and I think it was unusual from all of our perspectives that as public a figure as she had been, she had obviously not been a candidate. There was that time in the early part, where she was just getting going, when people were questioning her campaign skills. She turned out to be, I think, a brilliant candidate and presented her case well to the people of New York. I was confident she was going to win the race, but I was surprised she won it going away. She just did a great job and I think he was extremely proud of her, but again I think he was pretty clear that [it] was about her and he did what he could to support that effort.

Do you recall the president at the moment when New York was called for Mrs. Clinton?

Yeah, we were in the hotel and we had set up a kind of a war room, where the president had been making phone calls to radio stations around the country to get the vote out, rolling from the east to west coast. And at the time that the polls were closing in New York, he went back to the suite. There were quite a few people that had gathered in the suite: family, mostly friends, and a few staff. And Mrs. Clinton was there and the TV screens flashed her victory and a large whoop was let out by everybody in the room and everybody embraced. And then after that, there was this kind of separate room and the two of them went back there I think to get a little bit of a moment of together without the rest of us being around. It was a great and exciting moment.

Was it a particularly sweet moment for the president given all that Mrs Clinton had been through? She had been kind of a lightning rod early in the administration. She had been in some ways as controversial a figure as he was, and for her to win must have been a particular moment for Bill Clinton.

Well you know, I think that they love and support each other and they've done that for a long time. I think it was a moment of exhilaration and pride and I think for all of us it was an emotional time.

Well Mrs. Clinton won and then for the next 30 odd days we didn't have a winner. What was that period like for Bill Clinton?

Well, it started that night when obviously first the vice president was declared the winner in Florida and it reverted and they declared Governor Bush the winner. I remember the scene when they put up the Governor Bush's picture and it said, "43^rd president of the United States," and it was a somber moment, I think. We were watching the vote tally coming down in Florida and the back and forth with Bill Daley and his crew as they were driving over to the site of the speech. And finally [we realized] that in fact the vote total was coming down and that the vice president was not going to concede that evening. I think that he talked to the vice president at 4 o' clock in the morning and said, "keep fighting you're gonna win this thing."

The president wakes up, he's in Ireland at this point, what's his reaction to that 5-4 Supreme Court decision?

I think that obviously there was, for all of us, disappointment in the way the decision had come down. We were hoping for a different result. I think they got him a copy of the decision and through the course of the day he was reading the various opinions. But there was disappointment, and then I think relatively quickly [he] came to the realization, during the course of their day. We were moving into overnight, [and] I let the traveling party know that the vice president was going to make a statement that night. He was, I think, just trying to digest it. The realization hit him that this was finally coming to an end in a way that we'd hoped it wouldn't. He then called the vice president and they talked and [had a]private moment while he was getting ready for a speech in Belfast.

Did the president have some concern about the reasoning of the majority decision of the Supreme Court?

I think we all will be able to pick at that, and I'm sure that he'll have his own views, and he'll probably express those views as we go on. But I think both of them accept the result. It is the Supreme Court. We accept the result and we're going to move on from here and try to do what we can to make the transition smooth. I think that that's where his head is at this time.

To what extent does Bill Clinton see the ultimate defeat of Al Gore as a reflection of his own legacy?

I think he wanted Al Gore to win because he believed in him. He believed in his character to move the country forward and I think he believed in the program that he was putting forward to the American people. It's, of course, a disappointment, but I think he also looks back and he's proud of what the two of them accomplished together. I think in the end his legacy will be built around what they were able to do for this country on the economy, on welfare, on foreign policy. This is a piece of life and we'll take it and we'll move on.

This is a time of peace and prosperity and certainly historians and pundits and so on will ask this question: what does Bill Clinton's legacy have to do with the defeat of Al Gore, who didn't hang on to the White House in a time of peace and prosperity?

...I think people will mull over and pick that over for a long time to come but I think that we're very often sitting in the eye of the hurricane and not the best judge. I think history's judgement awaits. My guess is over time it will change many times. Twenty years from now might be different than 50 years from now.

Does Bill Clinton feel at all responsible for Al Gore's defeat?

I think that just as the president wouldn't take credit for his victory--and again, he got more than 50 million votes, he got a majority of the vote --I don't think he bears the burden or blame of his defeat. They did good things together, they moved the country forward together and I think they share the good times and we'll let others try to figure out what happened in this campaign that ultimately permitted Governor Bush to ultimately emerge as the person that's going to be inaugurated as the next president.

Did the president have regrets about the way in which Al Gore conducted the campaign?

No, I think he thought that he ran a good, solid campaign and I think that when he had ideas, he let the campaign know what they were. I think that the basic thrust of Al Gore's campaign was consistent with where Bill Clinton thinks this country ought to go -- a path of fiscal discipline, a path of what now has been described as a new democratic path, one that builds in the center and moves forward...

How do you see Bill Clinton's ex-presidency? Some people have mentioned the Jimmy Carter model, others see him doing something else entirely. What's your own thought?

I think Bill Clinton's one of a kind [chuckles], so I don't think that any particular model really fits the bill. I do think that, as he has said quite often, he wants to be a good citizen. I think he wants to stay engaged. I think he has plans to build a library in Little Rock, to build a public policy center to try to attract people to pubic service and to stay engaged in the world.

I'm sure he's going to write his memoirs and he'll be in demand around the world. We're getting requests from various individuals and leaders who are asking him to join them in trying to do interesting work and good work. I think other former presidents have a deep sense that you can't have two presidents of the United States at the same time. Whatever you do around the world has to be done with the knowledge that we only have one president and you can't interfere with that. I think he'll look for opportunities to serve. I think he'll try to concentrate on the things that he's been talking about here at the end of his presidency. He's just given a speech on the challenges of globalization, how we deal with development, how we try to deal with issues of poverty and health crises and the HIV crisis in Africa. I think he'll be involved with those issues as well as those things that he's talked about domestically: public service, the role of education and certainly how to build one America and bring all peoples and all races together in this country. I think he'll have a full plate of activity, but as I said, I think he'll chart his own course.

I don't know if this is true or not, but on the night of the election, the first time they pulled Florida from Gore, there was one story that the President actually left the stage after Mrs. Clinton's speech to go check on [it]...

I think that he was back and forth. He was getting five minute updates. He spent the time up until 11 o'clock still calling radio stations trying to get out the vote. I think he made his last call to Fresno, California about ten to eleven. I am not sure who was out in their cars listening in Fresno who might have actually diverted to the poll to get that last vote in. But I think he thought the stakes were big and he was working to do what he could right up until the end to motivate Democratic voters to get out and support the Vice-President. He was getting constant updates--we were sitting in the war room in the hotel and we had a couple of computers up and we were getting the stuff off of the internet. And he said, "boy they are calling that awful early. I can't see that based on the numbers that they're projecting that that they could call this race so early," which now everybody looks back on as being awfully prescient.

But he knows so much about politics and and the ways that votes are cast, etc. He would be able to look at a House race and know which counties come in earlier and be able to make just about as accurate predictions as these computers were about who was going to win a race. With regards to when they took the race from Gore--I think he was back and forth in that room constantly working on it, worrying about it. [He was] getting updates from the Gore campaign through Mr. Daley--[it] was an all night process.