The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, a 30- minute interview with President Clinton from the Oval Office about his varying legacies. Plus two medical research updates: Lee Hochberg looks at the dangers of sports-related concussions, and Ray Suarez and Susan Dentzer discuss the risks of hormone replacement therapy for women. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton said today Republican George W. Bush would return the country to failed policies of the past. He commented in an interview with the NewsHour. Mr. Clinton said Bush's tax cut plan would be a throwback to policies under President Reagan and Bush's father. He said those years were marked by high deficits and high unemployment. He said Americans ha to choose between that prospect and the economic progress of recent years. We'll have the entire interview right after this News Summary. Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan said today the growing federal surplus should go to pay off the national debt. He said that policy would continue the country's economic gains. He credited Congress and the Clinton administration with being fiscally responsible in recent years. And he told the Senate Banking committee he hopes that won't change.

ALAN GREENSPAN: I should like very much, I would fear very much that these huge surpluses will undermine that very hard-won achievement, and I trust that we will keep as much of the surplus, not only in this fiscal year but in subsequent fiscal years, we allow it to run the debt down as quickly as we can.

JIM LEHRER: The Congressional Budget Office formally announced today that the surplus could top $1.9 trillion over ten years. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch quit the presidential race today. He ended his bid for the Republican nomination after finishing last in the Iowa caucuses. Despite that showing, Hatch said he had no regrets. He spoke at a Washington news conference.

SEN. ORRIN HATCH: I knew that by getting in late, by raising money from small donors, by refusing public funds, that I was defying conventional wisdom and the odds were extremely long. I knew that I would be criticized. I knew it would be far more comfortable not to run. But the goal of public life is service. In a democracy, each of us has an obligation to step forward if we believe we can make a difference for the better. This is an obligation that I take seriously.

JIM LEHRER: Hatch said he's endorsing Governor Bush for the GOP nomination. The republican and democratic candidates have debates tonight, their final face-offs before the New Hampshire primary next Tuesday. The grandmothers of Elian Gonzalez arrived in Miami Beach today for a private visit with him today. They and the six-year-old Cuban boy traveled separately to the home of a Catholic university president. US Immigration officials ordered the meeting after the grandmothers and Miami relatives failed to agree on a site. The women hope to secure the six-year-old's return to his father in Cuba. The East Coast dug out today from a surprise blizzard. Federal workers in Washington got a second day off, and more than 150,000 people in the Southeast were still without power. The storm was blamed for several traffic deaths, and rescuers in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, searched for a five-year-old girl who fell into a river. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to President Clinton, and two medical research updates.

NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: I spoke to President Clinton this afternoon in the Oval Office. Here is the interview in its entirety.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. President, welcome.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Can we assume, sir, that tomorrow night in the State of the Union you're going to declare the state of the union to be in pretty good shape?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: It's in good shape and I'm very grateful. But I'm also going to challenge the Congress and the country to make it better.

JIM LEHRER: The things that are good about this country right now, how much of that do you believe you deserve credit for?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I think most of the credit, as always, goes to the American people. This is a country where citizenship is the most important job anybody can have. And I think we should start with that. And I think the members of Congress who have worked with us deserve a lot of credit. But if you look at where we are now, compared to where we were seven years ago, I think the fact that we got rid of the deficit and a running surplus, the fact that we changed the philosophy of the national government on welfare, on crime, the fact that we have formed unprecedented partnerships with people in the private sector to deal with all kinds of social problems, teen pregnancy, which is down, adoptions, which is up, the fact that we have protected more land than any administrations in the country's history, except those of the two Roosevelts, I think that those things are things that our government did. I also believe that people have a lot more confidence now that we can actually do things as a nation. In '92, we didn't just have economic distress and social decline. We had this political gridlock and discredited government. The national Republicans had bad-mouthed the government for 12 years, and they'd done a pretty good job of convincing America that it couldn't do anything. Now we have cut the size of government by over 350,000. It's the smallest expense since John Kennedy was here, and it really works to empower people and to create these partnerships. So I think that we have played a role in the recovery of the economy and in the improvement of the situation with crime, with welfare, with education. We've opened the doors of college to virtually all Americans. And I think all these things count for something. And, of course, our country has been a great force for peace and freedom around the world. And I'm very grateful for the chance we've had - all of us - to serve here.

JIM LEHRER: Do you believe that history is going to give you credit for all the things you've just enumerated?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I think that's up to the historians. I think that history will be very much more - the people that do serious history to this administration will be amazed at the amount of energy and effort that went into the wide variety of areas that we worked in. And I think that it will show that in virtually every area we had progress from helping to reduce poverty to improving the plight of our children to creating an environment with the reform of telecommunications, reform of banking, and getting rid of the deficit, and major investments in technology to this exploding new economy. I think it will show that we helped America to make this major transition into a new economy in an era of globalization.

JIM LEHRER: Are you worried about what the historians are going to write about you?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: No. I can't control that. But I think time will tend to accelerate the positive and put what negative there is into proper perspective. And I feel quite comfortable about that. But the main thing is I don't think too much about it because I know that the only thing I could do to impact on it is to do the right thing today by the American people. And my philosophy has been ever since I got here that in the modern political world the most important thing you could do is get up and go to work and concentrate on your job and always keep thinking about tomorrow. And all the pressures that operate on you are designed to prevent you from doing that, to hobble you, to distract you, to divide you, to get you to obsess about what somebody said and wrote or is doing. And so my whole theory has been from the beginning that if we could start and give first four years and then eight years of unbridled, concentrated effort, no matter what else happened, the American people would be all right, and that's really all I hired on to do, is try to help them do better.

JIM LEHRER: Let me read what the New York Times said in its lead editorial on Monday. They're talking about you - your legacy and your presidency as you go into this last year. It said: "Historians are beginning to categorize Mr. Clinton as a politician of splendid natural talent and some significant accomplishments, who nonetheless missed the greatness that once seemed within his grasp." What's your reaction to that what might have been kind of thing?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think that -- well, first of all, I think it's not productive to talk about what might have been. But I think if you - the question is how do you keep score? What is this time like? How will you measure it? The time that this is most like is the turn of the last century. Did we manage the transition of America into a new economy, in an era of globalization, well or not? I think the answer is, we did. Did we make social progress? Did we actually change the way we approach social issues? If the issue is crime, welfare, national service, the answer is we did. Were we good towards the environment? We were. And then what were the forces you stood against and what did you stop? And if you look at the forces we stood against from 1994 forward, and what we stopped, I think the answer is what we did was (a) successful and (b) good for America. And then did we work with contending forces, when we could, to reach common agreement? I think the answer is we did. So, I believe that, first of all, there is no such thing as history, because this is still going on; we shouldn't worry about that. You know, in five years, ten years, twenty years - I got a book the other day on President Nixon's presidency, and then I got one a week afterward on President Kennedy's presidency that is still being written. I just read a new book - a great book on Theodore Roosevelt's presidency. And I think the further away you get from this, the more perspective you get and the more you're able to look at all the evidence. So all of us - and frankly my view is in a way not much better than the New York Times on this; neither one of us really can properly evaluate how this will be viewed in the light of history. I think that we have given what we could have accomplished within the framework of possibility was there, and the job that was there before us I think we've done pretty well. But all I can tell you is I worked every day, I did the best I could, and I'm going to let the historians make their judgment after I give it one more hard year.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Let's talk about the one more hard year. Is there one particular thing that you really want to do before you leave this office?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, there are many things that I really want to do before I really leave this office. Obviously, I'm still heavily engaged in the search for peace in the Middle East. But whether we can do that or not depends -

JIM LEHRER: What's the problem there, Mr. President, between Syria and Israel, what's the problem?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think the main problem is they haven't talked in a long time, and there's still a fair measure of distrust, and the decisions which have to be made will require of both parties actions which will cause difficulty for them with some constituencies in their country. But let me say I'm convinced that both the leaders of Syria and Israel want peace, and I'm convinced that substantively they're not that far apart. So we have a chance to do that. You asked me what I wanted to do. I would like to be involved in if they want to do it - I'm prepared to do whatever I can. I want to continue to do everything I can to protect the natural treasures of this country. I want to lay the foundation for America dealing with climate change, and I want to lay the foundation for America dealing with what I think will be the biggest security challenges in the 21st century. I believe - you know all the attention today is on whether we can develop the missile defense and, if so, whether we can deploy it without falling out with the Russians and our friends and other countries who question this. But the likeliest threat in my view is brought on by the intersection of technology and the likelihood that you will have terrorists and narco traffickers and organized criminals cooperating with each other with smaller and smaller and more difficult to detect weapons of mass destruction and powerful traditional weapons. So we tried to lay in a framework for dealing with cyber terrorism, bio terrorism, chemical terrorism. This is very important. Now, this is not in the headlines, but I think it's very, very important the next ten or twenty years. I think the enemies of the nation state in this interconnected world are likely to be the biggest security threat. And then of course you know the things that are really close to my heart. I'm going to try to get a lot done in education and health care and bringing opportunity to poor people and reducing poverty in this country.

JIM LEHRER: What about health care, what is it that you would like your legacy to be on health care?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I wish I could have given health insurance to all Americans, because I still think it's inexcusable that we are the only advanced country in the world that doesn't do that. But I feel good about many of the things we have done in medical research, in letting people keep their health insurance when they change jobs, in providing much more preventive screening for older people with illnesses or potential illnesses, and, of course, in the children's health insurance program. So I'm going to focus now on what I think I can get done this year. I want to try to increase the number of people with health insurance dramatically by letting the parents of children in the children's health insurance program buy into it, by letting people between the ages of fifty-five and sixty-five buy into Medicare, and I want to have another big investment in biomedical research.

JIM LEHRER: And what about education, what mark can you leave in this next year on education?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, first of all, if you look at what we have done, we have already helped almost all the states to develop higher standards, and we've got -- test scores in reading, math, and college entrance exams are up.

JIM LEHRER: You've done that? You feel your administration has done that?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think our administration has contributed to it. Now, the people that did it were the kids, the parents, and the teachers. But I think - consistent with our philosophy - which is to be a catalyst for new ideas and to be a partner to help people achieve it, there's no question, we've had an impact. And one thing we've had a really direct impact on is we've done more than any administration ever has to open the doors of college to everyone. We - with big increases in Pell grants, direct student loan program, which lets people borrow money at less cost and pay it off at a percentage of their income, we've got a million work/study grants; we've got AmeriCorps, 150,000 young people there, and the Hope Scholarship tax credit and the lifetime tax credit really means people have no excuse for not going to school. Now, I've also proposed this time for the first time in history that we make college tuition tax deductible up to $10,000 a year, which will mean that we have guaranteed access to four years of college for all Americans. I mean, that is a huge achievement. Since I became President, the number of - the percentage of high school graduates going to college has gone up to 67 percent; that's an increase of 10 percent. But we need for everybody to be able to go. And so I think that this will be a major achievement. Now, let's go back to the beginning. The next big challenge, besides making - this is the last piece of making college universally available. The next big challenge is to make sure that everybody's diploma means something. And we've been working on this all along, starting in the early childhood, the increases we've made in Head Start. We now have a thousand colleges sending mentors into grade schools to make sure kids learn to read by the third grade. And there's - and I think we've increased the emphasis on that. I know you probably noticed that Jim Barksdale gave $100 billion to the University of Mississippi to do nothing but focus on how we can teach grade school kids to read. This is a huge deal; it's great. But what else do we need to do? I think we need a national strategy to turn around failing schools or shut them down. I think we need to institutionalize reform with more charter schools, and I think we ought to make preschool available to everybody, and everybody that needs it ought to have access to after school. I think if you get those things done and we continue to train the teachers, especially in how to use the computers as you hook up all the schools to the Internet, I think you're going to see really big continuing improvements in education.

JIM LEHRER: But you can't do all that this next year, can you?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Sure, we can. We can - but we can take steps toward it. If you look at the whole history of our country, I read something President Johnson said the other day, and he got through - you know - Medicare and the - Medicaid and the first steps of major federal aid to education. He talked about how most of our big progress comes in deliberate, discreet steps, and if you tall enough steps in the right direction, you turn back around, you see you've come quite a long way. So what I'm going to try to do in my speech tomorrow night is to outline what I think the long-term goals for the nation in the 21st century should be, and then what steps I think we can realistically hope to achieve in this year and urge the Congress to join me in it.

JIM LEHRER: Now, you're doing this, of course, at a presidential election year. In whose interest is it to help you do this in terms of simple politics of getting it done, to help you improve your legacy, or get thingsdone before you leave office?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, first of all, it is in none of their interest to help me improve my legacy. That's not why they should do it. It is in their interest to do the job they were hired to do, which is to help the people they represent. And I think the people that they represent, whether Republicans or Democrats, would find it amazing that someone could suggest they ought to take a year off. Anybody who wants to take a year off ought to give up their paycheck and say, I'm sorry, I'm not going to work this year, but I'm not going to take your money. Secondly, in a more mundane way, it is clearly in the interest of all the people in Congress to do things that are good for America, because the American people will appreciate it. Now, I think it helps the Democrats, but I don't think it hurts the Republicans. I mean, they - a bunch of them have to run next time too. And people are going to know - want to know what you did last year. If you look, it's quite interesting. We had a very good year in '96 - I had to veto the welfare reform bill twice because the Republicans wouldn't agree with me to guarantee child care and health care or nutrition and medical care and transportation for the welfare families, and then they did it at the end, and we got this big welfare reform, and now we've got 7 million fewer people on welfare. In '98 we passed a lot of very important legislation at the end, because it was election year. So what you might see, in terms of Congress now, is not an enormous amount of activity at the beginning - although I do believe that there's a good chance we can fairly early pass my proposal to help Columbia, fight off narco trafficking, preserve its democracy and work with its neighbors along the border, and I think there's a good chance they'll pass the China trade - normal trade relations bill; I hope that's true. But I think at the end of the year, when people will be held accountable by the voters, I think there's a chance we'll get quite a lot done. We did in '96, we did in '98. I think we will this year again.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. President, what do you make of Governor Bush's comment the other night after he had won the caucuses in Iowa? He said, "This is the beginning of the end of the Clinton era," and everybody in the room cheered.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, they would. (laughing) I think if he were - I think if he said that he would reverse what we were doing, I think he would, and I think that's the choice before the American people. I mean, he's offered a $1.4 billion tax cut, and the only thing I'd ask the American people is to remember, you know, we've now had 20 years of experience; we tried it their way for 12 years and they quadrupled the national debt. And when I took office, we had high unemployment, a massive deficit, a huge debt, and totally neglected our domestic affairs. We had rising crime, rising welfare rolls, all the social indicators going the wrong way. Now we tried it our way for seven years, and we've got the biggest surpluses in history, the first back-to-back surpluses in 42 years. We can get this country out of debt now in 13 years, out of debt for the first time since Andy Jackson was President in 1835, and all the social indicators going in the right direction. So what - it seems to me that he was being honest with the people, that he said that he will reverse this course. And I do think the American people ought to vote for change in this election because things are changing so fast around us in this globalized world we have to keep changing. The issue is: Are we going to build on what works or revert to what didn't? And that's what I think the issue is.

JIM LEHRER: You've given kind of your definition of the Clinton era, and he has his. now, what he is - the interpretation of what he's talking about is that it's a continuation of what all the presidential candidates have mentioned to some degree. The Republicans like Governor Bush more than the Democrats, but even Vice President Gore and Senator Bradley have said about returning the presidency back to a nobler office - to -- words like promising to restore dignity, respectability, decency, and trust to the President, to the presidency. They're talking about you, aren't they, Mr. President?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, first of all, I made one mistake; I apologized for it; I paid a high price for it; and I've done my best to atone for it by being a good President. But I believe we also endured what history will clearly record was a bogus investigation where there was nothing to Whitewater, nothing to these other charges, and they were propagated and tens of millions of dollars were spent, and we got a clean bill of health. And in terms of trust, let me just tell you a story. I went back to New Hampshire for the seventh anniversary of the New Hampshire primary -- 1991 - or the eighth anniversary - excuse me - last year - 1992 -- so it was the seventh anniversary - I went back there last year. And it was raining and there were children standing in the rain and people standing in the rain, and the thing that meant the most to me - not the Democratic Party events - just going around - because they heard the campaign in the most detail - was people saying, you know, we're so much better off now, but the thing that really matters is, you did exactly what you said you would do. And it seems to me that all of us in life, we can spend all of our time pointing our finger to other people and saying we're better than they are, or we can work as hard as we can on our own character, on our own lives, and if we're in public life, we need to tell people what we're going to do and then we need to do it. And if we don't do it, it ought to be because we tried and couldn't. I think that's what people know about me and this administration. We laid out the most detailed set of commitments anybody ever had in '92; we've accomplished virtually everything we set out to do. What we haven't accomplished we tried and failed to accomplish. And even there in the health care area we've made a lot of progress. And people know that. So I'm satisfied that - that the American people will make a judgment in this election based on what's best for them and their families, on whatever factors they choose. They're in control again. We're back into the biggest job interview in the whole world. And whatever they decide and however they decide it I think they'll get it right; they nearly always do.

JIM LEHRER: Do you get angry, though, when somebody like Alan Keyes says - recently - "We are coming to the end of the most disgraceful, the most immoral presidency in the history of this country?"

PRESIDENT CLINTON: No. Because he's a far right winger who probably though Iran-Contra was a good thing for America. And, you know, there's just no evidence to support it. I mean, you know - no, that doesn't make me mad at all. How can you take that seriously? One of the things that I had to learn when I moved to Washington is before I ever got angry at anybody - at anything anybody said - was to ask myself whether it was about the subject they were discussing or whether it was really about power, and I remember once I had a conversation with a Republican Senator in the middle of the D'Amato hearings, when he was trying to convince people or - these Republican Senators were - that my wife had done something wrong in this Whitewater thing, which is totally absurd. And so I asked the Senator - I said, do you think either one of us did anything wrong - not illegal - just wrong - even wrong - and he started laughing. He said, you've got to be kidding. He said, of course, you didn't do anything wrong; that's not the purpose of this. The purpose is to convince the American people you didn't. It's all about power. Now, I made a mistake. I acknowledged it. I've done my best to atone for it. But all this broad brush stuff, you know, people see that for what it is. And when I'm criticized now, I try to remember Benjamin Franklin's admonition that our critics are our friends, that they show us our faults. So, you know, I'm just trying to be a better person and a better President every day. I don't know what else to do. And I'm trying not to let this stuff get in the way. Again, let me say, the job of a President is to have a vision and a strategy and pursue it, to show up every day and insofar as possible to think about the American people and their welfare and did not think about himself. The environment in which a President operates is designed to prevent him from doing that - as much as possible - to make him torn up and upset, full of recriminations and anger, and have his attention divided. So what I tried to do is to create a frame of mind and a climate around here with our people so we could do our job. I hope I've succeeded. I think the results speak for themselves.

JIM LEHRER: A difficult question, a matter of history, that I feel compelled to ask you, Mr. President. We sat - you and I - two years ago - almost to the day - and I - it was the day that the Monica Lewinsky story broke in the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times - and you denied that you had had an improper sexual relationship with Ms. Lewinsky. In retrospect, if you had answered that differently right at the beginning - not only just my question - but all those questions at the beginning - do you think there would have been a different result and that, in fact, you might not even have been impeached?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I don't know. I don't know. I just don't know. I wish I knew the answer to that, but I don't. But the thing I regret most - except for doing the wrong thing - is misleading the American people about it. I do not regret the fact that I fought the Independent Counsel. And what they did was in that case and generally was completely overboard and now rational retrospectives are beginning to come out -- with people who have no connection to me - talking about what an abuse of power it was and what a threat to the American system it was. And I'm glad that our people stuck with me and that the American people stuck with me, and I was able to resist what it was they attempted to do. But I do regret the fact that I wasn't straight with the American people about it. It was something I was ashamed of and pained about, and I regret that.

JIM LEHRER: There was another interview that we did before that in which I asked you if you agreed with Susan McDougal that Kenneth Starr was out to get you, and your answer was interpreted by Mr. Starr and others that, well, the facts speak for themselves, is what you said. There have been many facts since then; that interview was even before two years ago. Do you think the facts have spoken on that?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's not even close anymore; everybody knows what the deal was. And more and more there will be people who didn't have a vested interest in trying to promote some view they had previously taken who will evaluate this and come to the same conclusion. And, as I said, even though I'm sorry about what I did and sorry about the developments there, I really felt once the last chapter of this played out that I was defending the Constitution and the presidency. And I feel a lot more strongly today. I think, you know, they knew for a long time there was nothing to Whitewater. They knew it was a bunch of bull; they had no evidence. In fact, if either the law we had or the one we had before the Independent Counsel Law had been in place, then there would have been a special counsel, because it didn't meet the standards. The only reason I agreed to ask Janet Reno to appoint one in the first place was I really believed that the people that were talking about it wanted to know the truth. And I knew that they'd just look at Whitewater and find out it was a big bunch of bull and, you know, go on. And what I found out was that a lot of the people who wanted it didn't want to know the truth, and they wanted somebody that could hang on until they could find something that they could - you know - find about me or Hillary; that they knew for a long time. You know, they knew before 1996 that there was nothing to it, which is why they had to get rid of Mr. Fiske and get Mr. Starr in there, so it went right past the '96 election. And I think the evidence of history will show that too, so I'm relaxed about that, and I don't spend much time thinking about it. Again, to me, I had to make amends to the American people and to my family and to my friends and to my administration. I've done my best to do that. Now, the only way I can do that is just keep looking toward the future to stay excited, to stay upbeat, and to stay focused, and that's what I'm trying to do.

JIM LEHRER: Do you have moments, private moments, of pleasure and satisfaction, knowing that if, in fact, there was a conspiracy to run you out of office, it didn't work, you're still sitting in the Oval Office?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I don't spend much time thinking about it like that. You know, maybe when I'm gone, I will. I'm grateful that -- for whatever reason - you know - my friends and my family stayed with me, the American people stayed with me. I believe I defended the Constitution against a serious threat. I'm sorry I did something wrong, which gave them an excuse to really go overboard; I'm very sorry about that. But mostly what I try to do is to focus on trying to be a better President, trying to be a better person, trying to be a better husband and father, just trying to do the things that I can do. You can't - none of us ever gets ahead in life, I don't think, by taking big satisfaction in victories or looking down on other people, or keeping our anger pent up. You know, one of the things I learned in this whole deal is, you know, you've got to let all that go. The op/eds - life will always humble you if you give into your anger or take some satisfaction that you defeated somebody or some satisfaction that, well, no matter how bad I am at least I didn't do this or the other thing. Life will always humble you. And I have just tried to be grateful and to keep serving, and to just worry about myself and not think about other people. I mean, in terms of what are you doing right or wrong - and that's all I can do. What - I'm actually - the way I feel every day is I'm just happy. You know, my family was all here for Christmas. We had this fabulous Christmas. My administration - I've been fortunate by having all these people stay with me. The ones that leave are going off to do exciting things, and we've got - I feel that when I took office, the country had so many problems it's like we turned it around now. We're going in the right direction. And now we've got a chance to really dream big dreams for our children. And that's a great thing to be doing your last year in office; it's great - and not only to dream those things but to actually take some big steps toward achieving them. So I'm just happy. I can't be mad or - it's hard for me to think about all that stuff. It just happened. I've come to terms with it, and I'm just trying to go on.

JIM LEHRER: When this next year is over, you'll leave office and you'll be the youngest former President since Teddy Roosevelt. You'll be in your 50's; you'll have a lot of time and energy. Are you worried about that at all - staying connected?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: No. No. I'm so excited about it. You know, I have - I mean, I'm worried I'll have to go back to - you know - learning basic things - you know - but I'm excited about that too - driving a car, shopping for food, paying the bills when the house - you know - the tax frees - you know - all that kind of stuff - you've got to go back to living your life like an ordinary person. I think that's good. But Theodore Roosevelt had an interesting life when he left office. And I - of course, I've said this many times - I think President Carter has basically set the standard for what Presidents should do in terms of his public service at home and around the world. And that shows you that there's just worlds of possibilities out there. I'm very excited about it. There are all kinds of things that I will have to do because I'll have to make a living. I hope I'll have to make a living to support a wife who's continuing our family's tradition of public service but -

JIM LEHRER: Do you think she's going to win?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I do, yeah. I do.

JIM LEHRER: Why? Why do you think so?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I think they're both very strong, formidable people and strong, formidable candidates. You know, you get all these elections where you've got to bad mouth one candidate to like another and you know, you think I'd certainly be there in the race involving my wife, but the truth is, the mayor and Hillary are both strong, formidable people; they have impressive achievements in their lives that relate to public service. But I think that she's much better suited for the work as a Senator, and this whole legislative process, and I think that the passions of her life, 30 years of work and achievement in education and health care and the challenges that children and families face and the whole philosophy she has about community are more consistent with where New York is today and what they need in the future. And so that's why I think she'll win, not because I think he's a bad guy or something, because I think they're both very strong people. But I think New York will believe that in the end that what she represents and where she wants to go and what her skills are and what she knows and cares most about is a little closer to where they are than his whole approach. And I think she'll win. So I don't have to worry about that. But once I figure out how to support my wife - public service - she supported mine for many years - and - and fulfill my other family obligations, I want to find a way through the center I'm going to build in Arkansas with my library - and in other ways - to be a public servant. You don't have to be an elected official to be a public servant. You can be a servant in other ways. And I can help others and do things and that's what I want to do.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. President, thank you very much.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, new findings in two health areas: Sports concussions and hormone replacement therapy.

UPDATE - CONCUSSION

JIM LEHRER: On the field, a new football champion will be determined in this Sunday's Super Bowl. Off the field, new research is focusing on a major health issue in football and other sports.

Lee Hochberg, of Oregon Public Broadcasting, reports.

LEE HOCHBERG: It's hard to imagine Brandon Schultz was once a fine high school athlete in Washington state.

BRANDON SCHULTZ: (Laughs) That's actually the best I've done in a long time.

THERAPIST: Come on. Speed this time, Brandon, speed.

LEE HOCHBERG: Six years ago, Schultz, a high school sophomore with an a- minus grade average, suffered a concussion, a trauma-induced alternation in his mental status, while playing in a football game. He doesn't remember it, but his mother does.

LANE PHELAN, Brandon Schultz's Mother: He got on the bus, came home. We picked him up at school to bring him home, and he's complaining of a headache, you know. He said "I took a hit. Got a headache."

LEE HOCHBERG: The headache persisted the next day and the next. He skipped football practice, but nobody told his family to take him to a doctor.

LANE PHELAN: Pretty much, you know, "Take a Tylenol. We'll see how you're doing," you know? That's really all we knew.

LEE HOCHBERG: Her son wanted to play football. As days passed, he wrote his father that his head had ached for six days. But he needed only a few games to qualify for his varsity letter.

BRANDON SCHULTZ: Getting my varsity letter my sophomore year, that was my ultimate goal, you know. I just had to get it.

LEE HOCHBERG: Doctors say concussion victims with ongoing symptoms should avoid sports while symptoms are present, and for a week after. But Schultz pulled on his number, 61, and played his next junior varsity game. His brain, not yet healed, was vulnerable to this second impact, captured by his parents on videotape. The impact wasn't violent but something clearly was wrong.

LANE PHELAN: I looked back down in the end zone, and Brandon was laying flat on the field. He wasn't responding to anybody saying anything to him. He was just laying there.

LEE HOCHBERG: Schultz was a victim of rare, and often-fatal, second impact syndrome. His brain was hemorrhaging. He went into a coma for four days and underwent four brain surgeries. Doctors say he tried to return from concussion too soon.

BRANDON SCHULTZ: Dang it.

LEE HOCHBERG: Six years of rehabilitation leave him, today, partially blind, physically disabled, and unable to think quickly.

BRANDON SCHULTZ: I'm not Brandon Schultz anymore, you know. Now, I'm Brandon Schultz, the same guy, but different. And it's very, very difficult at times.

LEE HOCHBERG: It's a dramatic case of not treating a concussion seriously enough. But new research suggests there are other reasons concussions demands more attention than they've previously received.

DR. STAN HERRING: I think what used to happen in sports is people got their bell rung, or they got dinged, and that was part of the game.

LEE HOCHBERG: Dr. Stan herring was Schultz' physician and is team doctor for the National Football League's Seattle Seahawks.

DR. STAN HERRING: What we know now is that when you get your bell rung or get dinged, that there are consequences.

LEE HOCHBERG: Herring says there are more than 300,000 sports-related brain injuries a year, mostly concussions. And it now appears their impact can be lasting.

DR. STAN HERRING: It's clear that if you have a concussion, the chance of getting another one is higher -- two times, four times, maybe even as much as six times higher. That's clear. If you have a concussion, the chance of having other episodes is higher.

LEE HOCHBERG: That's important, because a new study in the "Journal of the American Medical Association" found college athletes, who sustained repeat concussions, performed poorly on tests of memory and concentration, information processing and coordination-- especially those who already had learning disabilities.

DR. STAN HERRING: They may find school a bit harder. They may find their memory's not quite as good.

SPORTSCASTER: Third down, and nine. Young throws, and that's incomplete at the feet of Phillips. And... Down.

LEE HOCHBERG: The ramifications of the new study are profound for professional athletes like quarterback Steve Young of the San Francisco 49ers.

SPORTSCASTER: It looks almost as if he's out cold.

LEE HOCHBERG: Young has been slammed to the turf dozens of times in his pro career and is currently recovering from a concussion. His agent is Leigh Steinberg.

LEIGH STEINBERG: Steve Young told me once that he'd had seven official concussions. And I said, "well, what's an official concussion?" He said "well, that's where they cart you off the field." But they have dozens of mini- concussions where the mental state is not quite there and there's a lot of haziness.

LEE HOCHBERG: Steinberg says he's advised Young to retire, but Young hasn't. He says he's also told another client, Dallas cowboy quarterback Troy Aikman, whose incurred nine concussions, to be smart and preserve his long-term health. Aikman, though, has returned to play.

TROY AIKMAN: I'm not considering walking away from the game. I still feel like I've got years left in me.

LEE HOCHBERG: Steinberg worries about the influence his clients have on young athletes.

LEIGH STEINBERG: There are millions of young kids out there watching this and taking as their model the athlete who plays with nine concussions, who goes back into a game after he's had a concussion. And I'm scared that we're going to have a group of high school athletes, collegian athletes, and professional athletes, who end up having real impairment.

SPORTSCASTER: ...Team was eliminated. Great job. Ho, look at that!

SPORTSCASTER: Two down.

SPORTSCASTER: Emmett got... Look who's down, too. Oh, boy.

LEE HOCHBERG: Indeed, the culture of downplaying or glorifying concussion is widespread throughout sports.

SPORTSCASTER: He's out.

SPORTSCASTER: He is out, Billy. He is out cold.

SPORTSCASTER: That was chin-to-chin. You're going to see a crash. Oh!

SPORTSCASTER: And I tell you what...

LEE HOCHBERG: University of Oklahoma basketball star, Eduardo Najera, suffered a concussion in this violent, on-court collision in last year's NCAA basketball tournament. He lay motionless for 90 seconds, eyes closed, before being helped off the court six minutes later.

SPORTSCASTER: Look who's jogging back out.

SPORTSCASTER: No.

SPORTSCASTER: But 14 minutes after the collision, he returned to the gym.

SPORTSCASTER: He's going right to check in.

SPORTSCASTER: How tough are these two kids?

LEE HOCHBERG: Najera reentered the game seconds later. Even as the CBS announcers questioned the decision, they applauded his courage.

SPORTSCASTERS: I don't think Najera should be back in the game. I really don't. He's running with... What looks like... Whoa, he's setting a solid screen! Unbelievable! Wow, you talk about some guts, now. You know, you just... This is unbelievable.

LEE HOCHBERG: The moment makes doctors like Herring shudder.

DR. STAN HERRING: It is not heroic to return to play before concussion has cleared. It's foolish. We need to educate people so they understand that.

LEE HOCHBERG: The reeducation may also reach the game of soccer. Another new study in the "Journal of the AMA" found amateur soccer players-- especially those who frequently direct the ball with their head- - performed poorly on attention and memory tests. Top players bounce the ball off their heads at speeds up to 60 miles per hour. Study co-author, Dr. Muriel Lezak.

DR. MURIEL LEZAK: The brain can be knocked back and forth and/or spin around. This pulls, tugs, and can snap connections. You pay the price if you do many, many headers. And the more headers you do, the higher is the price that you pay.

LEE HOCHBERG: Lezak, a clinical neuropsychologist at Oregon Health Sciences University, cautions that she studied adults who'd played soccer 17 years. Brain deficits likely would be less pronounced in American children, who've only been at the game for a short while. Still, she says soccer, from a neuropsychological point of view, is a flawed game.

DR. MURIEL LEZAK: I would like to see a similar kind of game using shoulders, buttocks, elbows, knees, whatever-- anything except the head.

LEE HOCHBERG: Entrepreneurs are marketing protective devices, like this headband for soccer players. This one's advertised to reduce stress on the head by 50%. But doctors say concussions might be resulting from on-field collisions, not headers. Herring, the Seattle Seahawks team physician, says rules changes or helmets might be premature.

DR. STAN HERRING: Putting a helmet or protective gear on the player's head may make it worse. In the National Football League, rigid plastic helmets were designed because players were getting depressed skull fractures. They don't get depressed skull fractures anymore. But now they have a weapon to use. And guess what? They get concussions now.

THERAPIST: Can you twist your... Bring your wrist that way? There you go.

LEE HOCHBERG: What all agree on is a need for more awareness of concussion's seriousness. As part of a legal settlement, Brandon Schultz' school district set up a trust to pay the $12 million his care will cost for the rest of his life, and to send his mother on a speaking tour to publicize the risk of second impact syndrome. She's urging schools to send coaches to seminars about concussion and to issue handouts on concussion to parents, including a warning to take young athletes to the doctor if they incur one.

UPDATE - WEIGHING THE RISKS

JIM LEHRER: Now, medical research, part two, and to Ray Suarez.

RAY SUAREZ: A new study in today's "Journal of the American Medical Association" raises questions about hormone replacement therapies used by millions of women. Here to explain is Health Correspondent Susan Dentzer. Our health unit is a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

Now, Susan, 20 million or more American women take one or both of the main hormone-replacement therapies. So this is certainly going to get a lot of attention. Why is this a popular drug therapy?

SUSAN DENTZER: Well, Ray, hormone-replacement therapy is something that women engage in,in order to replace the normal hormones that disappear with menopause, which is, of course, the cessation of menstruation. So many bodily changes are a function of menopause and the decline of these hormones, estrogen primarily and progesterone, and many women experience some short-term symptoms which can be quite severe, for example, hot flashes, moodiness, some depression, some dryness of the skin, vaginal dryness. Those are very unpleasant symptoms that women obviously want relief from, so they tend to take... many women will tend to take either estrogen replacement only, which was very common in the past, or now more commonly the combined therapy of estrogen, as well as progesterone, which is given because it was detected that there was an increased risk in cancer of the lining of the uterus from taking estrogen only. So now, for women who have not had a hysterectomy, who still have their uteruses, the common form of therapy is this combined therapy. And indeed, as you say, it's very common.

RAY SUAREZ: The women who were being observed were part of a very large study involving breast cancer. What was reported about the hormone-replacement therapy?

SUSAN DENTZER: This study weighted into a very controversial issue. Most researchers would agree that short-term use for the symptoms I described earlier -- two to three years to get through menopause -- is reasonably safe and effective for many women. The controversy has been what are the long-term risks of this use, and do they offset some of the benefits? It has been thought that there are...if you took hormone-replacement therapy over a long period of time, you could reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, heart disease, heart attack; you could also reduce your risk of osteoporosis, bone fracture and other disabling things. The question has been: Do you increase your risk of breast cancer such that you offset your risk of these other things? And that's been the issue. What this study did was look back at a study that's been under way for a number of years -- that was under way for a number of years -- of 46,000 women who were being studied in the whole area of breast cancer detection. And it asked these women, in effect, had they been taking hormone-replacement therapy and then tried to make some judgments over what the risks were. In fact, what the study found was that for women who had used the estrogen-only therapy, there was indeed an increased risk of breast cancer on the order of about 1 percent increased risk per year of use. And for women who had been using the combined form, the estrogen and progesterone form, which is now most common, there was an even greater increased risk of a percent a year.

RAY SUAREZ: But was the sub-sample so small that we can't say definitively this is a bad idea?

SUSAN DENTZER: Indeed, it was in the view of many researchers. It's a controversial area. But if we look... this study, again, applied to 46,000 women. But if you look at the number of women who had had... were treated for this combination therapy for six years or more, it was really only 21 women, and of those 21, six went on to develop breast cancer. So, in fact, this calculation of the increased risk is based on a very small number of women who actually developed breast cancer. It's the reason why many people who look at the study stand back and say, "yes, it squares with some results we were seeing in earlier studies, but we really won't understand the risks of all of this until we see some longer term studies and more scientifically-controlled studies that will be comingout over the next decade."

RAY SUAREZ: Well, often in research projects of this kind, we don't get the definitive answer, but we start asking the right questions, and it points us toward research projects that do ask more narrowly defined questions and maybe get better answers. What does this point us to?

SUSAN DENTZER: This points us to the need to complete the studies that are underway and what's known as the Women's Health Initiative, which is a large study, federally funded study, which is currently comparing for 27,000 women, what the benefits and risks are of using hormone-replacement therapy, versus a placebo, a dummy drug. When those results start to be in after 2005, 2008, we'll know a lot more. The important thing in the meantime, and doctors that I spoke to today were stressing this, is what do you tell women? What we tell women now on the basis of this perhaps is not much more than we would have told them before the study, it's that, whether or not you should use hormone-replacement therapy over the long term; that is, beyond the two to three years immediately around menopause, depends on lots of things. It depends on your risk for breast cancer in your family, it depends on your weight because a very important aspect of this study also was a finding that these increased risks mainly affected women of normal weight. When it got to women who were already overweight, they already had a higher risk of breast cancer, and taking hormone-replacement therapy for them didn't increase their risk any more, it appeared, than they had already had. So an important factor is: What's your weight? What's your family history of these cancers? And also, finally, what goals do you want to accomplish by use of long-term hormone replacement therapy? If you're worried about cardiovascular disease, you can quit smoking, adopt a healthy diet, lose weight. If you're worried about osteoporosis, you can also make dietary changes, you can exercise, and also there are drugs available now to treat osteoporosis, which are very effective. So clinicians want to point to women the variations dependent on their own risks, as well as the many other options that are available to them.

RAY SUAREZ: Susan Dentzer, thanks for coming by.

SUSAN DENTZER: Thanks, Ray.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday: President Clinton warned in a NewsHour interview that Republican George w. Bush could return the country to days of high deficits and high unemployment. And six-year-old Elian Gonzalez met with his grandmothers in Miami Beach. We'll see you on-line, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.