Clinton Says Sex Rumors Are Irrelevant : Politics: In TV interview, candidate says he will not deny having committed adultery. He and his wife again attack tabloid’s accusations.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, accompanied by his wife, Hillary, told a large nationwide television audience Sunday that rumors about sexual infidelity on his part should be irrelevant to his campaign for the presidency but that he would not deny ever having committed adultery.

“I’m not prepared tonight to say that any married couple should ever discuss that with anyone other than themselves,” he said when asked about extramarital affairs during an interview on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes” program after the Super Bowl.

“I have acknowledged wrongdoing. I have acknowledged causing pain in my marriage. I have said things to you tonight and to the American people that no American politician ever has.”

Clinton, one of the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, said the issue is whether “if people have problems in their marriage and there are things in their past which they don’t want to discuss which are painful to them,” that means “that they can’t run.”

His wife added: “I don’t think being any more specific about what’s happened in the privacy of our life together is relevant to anybody besides us.”

Clinton’s highly public discussion of his marriage was an extraordinary step without clear precedent in the history of presidential politics. Coming only three weeks from the critical New Hampshire primary, it was aimed at putting to rest questions about whether his faithfulness to his wife of 16 years should be a campaign issue.

He once again denied claims of an affair made by Gennifer Flowers, an Arkansas woman who sold her story to the Star, a supermarket tabloid, for an undisclosed sum.

“That allegation is false,” Clinton said. Flowers, he said, was “a friendly acquaintance.”

In subsequent appearances in Boston and in New Hampshire and in an interview with The Times, Clinton insisted that his comments marked his last words on the rumors of his past sexual conduct. But he and his top aides conceded that they could not be sure how voters would respond to his move.

Appearing relaxed and loose as he talked with reporters after the TV interview, Clinton said he expected more tabloid stories would appear about him as the campaign continued. The situation is “out of my hands,” Clinton told The Times.

He said he had warned his top campaign contributors in a meeting Saturday in Washington that “I fully expect there to be as many stories as they are willing to pay for.”

“The only thing I can control about this is my conduct and my convictions, and I think it’s up to the American people now,” he told The Times.

Clinton decided to accept the risk of a televised discussion of his private life after publication of Flowers’ story in the Star. Aides said he feared being trapped into responding to an endless series of tabloid stories and decided to go on the offensive with the “60 Minutes” interview.

Clinton strategists now hope to turn the New Hampshire primary, where recent polls have shown him in the lead, into a referendum on public reaction to his admissions. In addition to his basic campaign theme--that he can offer economic leadership to restore the fortunes of the middle class--Clinton will now cast himself as a champion of substance, opposed to the eruption of gossip and tabloid-driven rumor into the nation’s politics.

“I think what the press has to decide is: Are we going to engage in a game of ‘gotcha,’ ” Clinton said in the “60 Minutes” interview.

Campaign aides believe New Hampshire voters, who already have a highly favorable impression of Clinton and who are dealing with the state’s worst economic condition in decades, will respond well to that appeal. And if Clinton can win in New Hampshire, they will then argue that the voters have spoken on the issue.

Clinton and his advisers also believe Hillary Clinton’s stand will be a strong assist for the campaign, particularly with female voters who, according to some analysts, are more likely to hold sexual misconduct against a candidate than are male voters.

“I’m not sitting here--some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” Hillary Clinton said during the interview. “I’m sitting here because I love him and I honor what he’s been through and what we’ve been through together, and, you know, if that’s not enough for people, then, heck, don’t vote for him.”

But both Clinton advisers and outside analysts agreed that for the next several days, until voter reaction can be clearly measured, the campaign will move through uncharted waters.

Although many Presidents have engaged in extramarital affairs--biographers have, for example, documented affairs on the part of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson--no serious presidential candidate ever has openly discussed such matters before a vast television audience. In 1987, former Sen. Gary Hart admitted to having sex with women other than his wife, but he did so only after his conduct on the campaign trail had destroyed his candidacy.

The TV appearance Sunday night was a high-stakes gamble for Clinton. National polls show at least half of the electorate has virtually no idea of who he is. For many among the tens of millions of potential voters who watched Clinton and his wife, his statements will be their first introduction to the Arkansas governor.

Neither pollsters nor political analysts profess to have much sense of how the public might respond to Clinton’s strategy. In 1987, a Times poll found that 22% of the public said they would switch away from a candidate they had previously supported if they knew that candidate had been unfaithful to his wife. But some political analysts believe many more voters feel that way and do not say so, while other analysts believe a candidate who is candid about past problems, as Clinton argues he has been, can overcome voter antipathy.

The Clintons’ taped the interview in a third-floor room at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston for about an hour and a half, with a twenty minute break. CBS then edited the program for broadcast. The network released a partial transcript before airing the program.

A CBS spokesman said that at one point during the taping, an overhead lighting support fell and nearly hit Hillary Clinton, but she was uninjured.

Discussion of the Clintons’ marriage took up about half the interview, after which “60 Minutes” executive producer Don Hewitt walked into the room to tell correspondent Steve Kroft to move on to other issues, a source present at the taping said.

Friends of the Clintons reported both of them to be in an upbeat mood after the interview. “The feeling was they hit a home run,” one close friend said.

Clinton seemed calm as he left the interview. “We did our best, and we feel good about it. The American people are the judges now. We’re going to let them judge,” he told reporters.

Asked who he was backing in the Super Bowl, Clinton joked: “That’s one of those private questions.”

Later, at a rally in Portsmouth, N.H., Clinton seemed almost visibly relieved to get onto the stage, much the way athletes talk of pressure dissolving once they step onto the field.

“A lot of you have told me to hang in here the last couple of days, how rough all this is,” Clinton told the responsive crowd. “Yeah, it’s rough, but it’s nothing compared to somebody going home at night and sitting down over a table and looking at their children and wondering if they’re going to have another job again and feeling like they have failed their kids.

“You talk about rough, that’s rough. And if I’ve taken a couple of tough days in the campaign to get a chance to resume the campaign fighting for those kinds of people, I gladly accept that burden.”

When one woman--identified by Clinton campaign aides as a reporter--asked Clinton about the reports of his relationship with Gennifer Flowers, several people in the audience booed and shouted: “No one cares.”

Clinton, though, gave an answer that may become very familiar in the days to come: “Watch ’60 Minutes.’ I said all I have to say, and I’m not going to say any more.”

For many in his audience that appeared to be enough. “It seems to me even if there’s truth to it, it’s a matter between him and his wife,” said Northampton, N.H., attorney Peter Doyle. Added Jeannette Congdon of Durham, N.H.: “It’s silly and it’s irrelevant and I hope we start to treat it like that. . . . If Hillary thinks it’s all right, it’s between the two of them and it’s none of my business.”

Others in the audience, though generally supportive, were somewhat more equivocal. “It matters if the governor is lying; that’s what it comes down to,” said Mark Kuhn of Portsmouth, N.H. “It comes down to a matter of truthfulness, not one’s personal behavior, especially if it had taken place in the past, not concurrent with the campaign.”

Similarly, Martha Hoelscher of Portsmouth said: “If he’s lying, then I would feel almost betrayed because that’s part of the problem with politics today. But beyond that, it doesn’t matter to me.”

After his appearance in New Hampshire, Clinton returned home to Little Rock, Ark., to watch the show with his wife and their daughter, Chelsea.

Though some Clinton aides talked optimistically of putting the controversy behind them, others implicitly acknowledged that more allegations may surface. But they insisted that Clinton would now attempt to refocus the campaign on his economic message and no longer respond to each new allegation of sexual indiscretion.

“I think he said what he has to say,” said one senior official. “I don’t think he’s going to respond every time somebody pays somebody to say something.”

Lauter reported from Washington and Brownstein from New Hampshire.