Clinton Sums Up Presidency

Reflecting on nearly eight years in office, President Clinton said his tenure began with grand ideas, such as health care reform, that fell victim to political naivete. It will end with a graceful step to the sidelines in January, he said.

“I don’t think the new president, whoever it is, will have problems with me acting like I wished I were still president,” Clinton said in a New Yorker magazine article released Sunday.

The lesson he has learned after almost two terms in office: There’s a learning curve to running the country.

If given a second chance, the president told political writer Joe Klein, he would do some things differently, from health-care reform and U.S. involvement in Somalia to his personal life and Whitewater.

Of the health care effort led by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in 1993, Clinton’s first year in office, the president said his administration’s agenda was too crowded with other priorities such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and a domestic economic package.

“I was obsessed. . . . I was trying to get as much done as quickly as I could and also trying to learn the job, learn how to get the White House functioning,” he said.

Another early challenge was Somalia. Clinton said his decision to try to capture warlord Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid was based on the advice of Gen. Colin L. Powell, who retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff soon after the operation began. Hundreds of Somalis and 18 U.S. soldiers were killed.

“I’m not blaming him. I’m just saying he was gone,” Clinton said. He added: “I don’t know if I could have saved those lives or not. I would have handled it in a different way if I’d had more experience.”

Clinton said he regretted his 1994 decision to ask Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to appoint an independent counsel to investigate his Whitewater real estate dealings.

“I did it because I was exhausted, because I had just buried my mother and because I had people in the White House who couldn’t stand the heat, and they suggested that I do it, that I had to do it. I knew there was nothing to it,” Clinton said.

He said his greatest achievements were dealing with his impeachment in the House and the 1995 and 1996 government shutdowns.

Clinton described 1998, the year of his impeachment and the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, as painful and pleasant.

“I had made a terrible personal mistake, which I didn’t try to correct until almost a year later, and I had to live with it, and it caused an enormous amount of pain to my family, to my administration, to the country,” he said.

But the year also offered healthy economic indicators that Clinton said convinced him his policies of deficit reduction, welfare reform and support for free trade were going well.

“I felt . . . ‘Gosh, it’s all working. It’s all coming together.’ . . . I was really happy.”

Clinton’s comments were made during two summer interviews with Klein, the once anonymous author of “Primary Colors,” a novel about the 1992 presidential campaign of a womanizing governor widely believed to be based on Clinton.