前美国总统比尔·克林顿访谈

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Your wife famously talked about the vast right wing conspiracy targeting you. As you look at this opposition on the right to President Obama, is it still there?

Oh, you bet. Sure it is. It's not as strong as it was, because America's changed demographically, but it's as virulent as it was. I mean, they're saying things about him -- you know, it's like when they accused me of murder and all that stuff they did. He -- but it's not really good for the Republicans and the country, what's going on now. I mean, they may be hurting President Obama. They can take his numbers down, they can run his opposition up. But fundamentally, he and his team have a positive agenda for America. Their agenda seems to be wanting him to fail, and that's not a prescription for a good America. We actually need a credible debate about what's the right balance between continuing to expand the economy through stimulus and beginning to move back to fiscal balance. We need a credible debate about what's the best way to get to universal coverage.

Now, the one Republican who's come up with a good idea is Senator Snowe. She deserves a lot of credit for saying when we did this Medicare prescription drug bill, instead of giving the government the power to negotiate for lower prices we gave the drug companies a chance to offer them, but we held the power in reserve. And if there was any state in America where there was

no competition, you could do it. So let's do that for health care. That's a good idea. That's, that's the kind of debate the country needs, and I hope that the Republicans will come forward with it. These...

But do you worry about a repeat of '94 politically?

It, it -- there's no way they can make it that bad, for several reasons. Number one, the country is more diverse and more interested in positive action. Number two, they've seen this movie before, because they had eight years under President Bush when the Republicans finally had the whole government, and they know the results were bad. And number three, the Democrats haven't taken on the gun lobby like I did, and they took 15 out of our members out. So I don't think it'll be -- whatever happens, it'll be manageable for the president.