But I must ask, to start things off, Mr. President, your thoughts on the Senator Craig matter. He is going to resign. He may resign. What do you -- what are your thoughts on the whole picture?
CLINTON: Well, first of all, I think we ought to recognize that this is a very traumatic time for him and his family. And whatever happens or doesn't, most of his political career was behind him. So whatever your party, we should be hoping that he and his family can work through this in a way that leaves them as whole as possible.
I think that that is more important than the politics of this. The politics of this will have to be resolved by him and the Republicans in the Senate. All I know about this is what I read in the papers. The morning papers say that his lawyer has advised him not to resign because he thought he would lose leverage.
Now he was simply given, I think, one year of probation or something, or a fine. So I don't know if they are trying to renegotiate the plea or something. It sounded like he wasn't really seriously thinking of staying throughout his term that he was trying to follow his lawyer's advice. But it looked awkward after he had said he was going to quit.
KING: Did you get any sense of satisfaction, since he was such a critic of yours during the impeachment thing, and using terms very demeaning about you?
CLINTON: No.
KING: No?
CLINTON: No. Because when it was going on, I knew that, you know, a lot of them were outed for hypocrisy long before this. And everybody knew that -- every serious student of the Constitution knew that the whole thing was bogus and that they were just jumping on a terrible personal mistake I made.
But I -- one of the things I did to try to get though that period was to think long and hard about times in my past when I had judged people too harshly because they had a problem I didn't have.
We all find it easy to judge somebody. You can always say, well, I may not be the best person in the world, but at least I never did that, you know, or the other thing, whatever it is.
And I promised myself that I would never do that again. And I'm trying to keep that promise. And so I honestly didn't feel any great joy. I don't like to see a person suffering from a self-inflicted wound that comes the inability to resolve some conflict in his or her life.
I mean, that is something everybody has to deal with. And to see it played out in public is painful to me. I didn't enjoy it at all.
CNN.com - Transcripts
I am, indeed, impressed. I saw the interview, and it was completely genuine. He certainly wasnt treated as kindly.
Clinton speaks of Craig on CNN
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