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We interrupt your regular program

for quite an extraordinary moment

in the history of the United States.

A short while ago, President Clinton's staff came to tell us

that he was going to come to the Rose Garden now

and make some remarks.

Peter, the president will make another attempt

to say he's sorry about what he's caused.

Bill Clinton had come into office

with notions of an heroic presidency,

to inscribe his name in history alongside FDR and JFK.

Good afternoon.

But on the afternoon of December 11, 1998,

he came to the Rose Garden of the White House

to apologize to the American people.

I am profoundly sorry for all I have done wrong

in words and deeds.

I never should have misled the country, the Congress,

my friends, or my family.

Quite simply, I gave in to my shame.

It's almost as if all of this was just too easy for him.

It's almost as if he had to set up these barriers

that he could then leap across, or stagger across,

but get across in any event, always.

I'm going to give you this election back.

And if you'll give it to me, I won't be like George Bush.

I'll never forget who gave me a second chance

and I'll be there for you till the last dog dies.

And I want you to remember that.

How many second chances, right?

How many second chances does any one person deserve?

Clinton's view is as many second chances

as a person is willing to try to take.

You know, I mean, as many times as you fail,

don't you deserve the chance to redeem yourself?

Isn't history loaded with people who have fallen and gotten up,

and fallen and gotten up, and fallen and gotten up

and done great things?

We will together build a bridge to the 21st century

wide enough and strong enough to take us to America's best days.

Will you do that?

There's a stick-to-itiveness about him

that's just phenomenal.

An abiding belief that if he can just have enough time,

he can win over just about anybody.

The central repetitive theme of Bill Clinton's life

is loss and recovery.

Never count him out

because, always, he will find his way back.

I end tonight where it all began for me.

I still believe in a place called Hope.

Where does it come from?

The unwillingness to quit on himself,

on the things he believed in, on the people he cared about?

He disappoints them every time on some level,

but he always gets up and tries to make it better.

You know, what else can you ask from a sinner?

Success, misjudgment,

in some cases catastrophe, followed by comeback.

That resilience is central to who he is as a politician.

I think it's central to who he is as a man.

He would emerge

from the political backwaters of Arkansas...

"like a country tornado," one newspaper wrote...

A political natural unlike anyone had seen in a generation.

But in the winter of 1992,

as Bill Clinton began campaigning for president

in New Hampshire, he was still a relative unknown,

eager to win over voters and his young campaign staff.

It was just so clear

that he was exceptionally talented politician

from the kind of get-go.

How do you get the ideas we develop in America

in the manufacturing jobs here?

There are literally...

His ability to adapt, his ability to walk into a room,

to size up an issue, to understand...

I've never seen a candidate, I've never seen a human being

who, with the most limited briefing,

can understand the dimensions, the parameters,

the nuances of everything

of any kind of a policy or political problem.

In a primary field crowded with Democratic candidates,

Clinton's determination and skill

quickly distinguished him from his rivals.

Throughout New Hampshire...

In union halls, truck stops and diners...

Clinton heard stories of depressed wages

and vanishing jobs, as the state and the nation

struggled to emerge from a recession.

Ten years ago, we had the highest wages in the world.

Now we're tenth, and we're dropping.

What else do you think we ought to do?

He knew these people, knew what they were thinking,

knew their concerns, and felt that government in Washington,

in large measure, was just not addressing those concerns.

The mostly white, working-class voters

Clinton met in New Hampshire,

like those in his own state of Arkansas,

had been fleeing the Democratic Party for years.

Bill Clinton knew that Democrats

were not going to regain the presidency

until they re-established a connection

with these middle-class and lower-middle-class voters

who had been attracted for various reasons

to Republican politicians and to conservative ideas.

For nearly a decade,

as he rose through the ranks of Democratic politics,

Clinton had been honing a message

to win back these so-called "Reagan Democrats."

The entire thrust of the traditional Democratic Party

was based on entitlements and endowments.

They would bestow money on people.

Bill Clinton's incredibly bold idea

was to change the grant to a transaction...

"We'll give you something, but we demand something back."

The way he would phrase it is, "We'll give you opportunity

but you have to take responsibility."

If you want the right to receive welfare benefits,

you have to assume the responsibility to get educated,

to have job training, and to go to work if you can do it...

When he went out and said,

"We need opportunity for all,

but responsibility from all Americans,"

that was different from what Democrats had been saying.

Preaching his "New Democrat" message in New Hampshire,

Clinton began to catch fire.

People say I'm not a real Democrat

and I say I'm against brain-dead politics in both parties.

By mid-January, he'd pulled ahead

of his strongest competitors and into the lead.

Then, with just weeks to go, it all seemed to fall apart.

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton

is again denying a report of an extra-marital affair.

The report is in the Star, the supermarket tabloid.

The first time I heard of Gennifer Flowers was a rumor.

I mean, the rumors of him messing around were out there.

And the stories were out there.

And it was something that his handlers talked about.

You know, "How are we going to deal with this

if it actually happens?"

I would like to introduce my client to you, Gennifer Flowers.

At first, nobody was really that worried about it.

But then the woman appeared.

And not only did the woman appear,

but she was a lounge singer.

And everybody thought, "Oh yeah, absolutely."

And she had tapes.

I didn't think it would start this quickly.

But I think, Bill, you're being naïve

if you think that these other shows like A Current Affair...

I expect them to come looking into it

and interview you and everything, but I just think

that if everybody is on record denying it, you got no problem.

At first, Clinton's response to the scandal was evasive...

She did call me, I never initiated any calls to her,

and whenever she called me she basically wanted reassurance...

There was this growing sense and skepticism in the press

that this guy was just a big phony.

I mean, he was too slick.

He was too smooth, and he would lawyer answers to questions.

I said... that's not true.

Even if your name gets used, in the absence of proof,

nobody can prove you're guilty, don't worry about it.

The press called him "Slick Willie," and it stuck.

The general thinking was that he was dead.

Politicians didn't survive this thing.

As many began to abandon Clinton,

one person rose strongly to his defense.

Bill Clinton is a smart guy, a very smart guy.

But he will tell you

that Hillary is much smarter than he is.

She's much tougher than he is.

She is more of a pragmatist.

If Clinton is a dreamer, Hillary is Miss Reality.

She raised him up, and said,

"Look, get that pity out of your body

"and all that defeatism out of your back

"and let's deal with this issue,

and let's move on to the next issue."

At the height of the scandal,

millions tuned in to see Bill Clinton answer questions

on the CBS program 60 Minutes.

But it was Hillary who stole the show.

You know, I'm not sitting here, some little woman,

standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.

I'm sitting here because I love him and I respect 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!

By praising him, defending him, attacking the press,

she brought Clinton back from the dead.

How do you think it went, Governor?

You think you answered the questions?

We did our best and we feel good about it.

The American people are the judges now,

we're going to let them judge.

So you can see why he was so attached to her,

because she had the power to save him.

The partnership of Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham

began at Yale Law School in 1971.

Clinton was fresh from a Rhodes scholarship

at Oxford University in England

and already planning a career in politics.

Bill loved to discuss issues.

He loved to be at the center of discussions.

He, in a way, loved to perform.

He wasn't a great student.

He didn't care about being a student;

he was not there for being a student.

He was there to make connections.

Hillary was so much more obviously intellectual.

Her power was so much more disciplined than his.

She was a leader.

She was a doer.200 As many began to abandon Clinton,

one person rose strongly to his defense.

Bill Clinton is a smart guy, a very smart guy.

But he will tell you

that Hillary is much smarter than he is.

She's much tougher than he is.

She is more of a pragmatist.

If Clinton is a dreamer, Hillary is Miss Reality.

She raised him up, and said,

"Look, get that pity out of your body

"and all that defeatism out of your back

"and let's deal with this issue,

and let's move on to the next issue."

At the height of the scandal,

millions tuned in to see Bill Clinton answer questions

on the CBS program 60 Minutes.

But it was Hillary who stole the show.

You know, I'm not sitting here, some little woman,

standing by my man like Tammy Wynette.

I'm sitting here because I love him and I respect 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!

By praising him, defending him, attacking the press,

she brought Clinton back from the dead.

How do you think it went, Governor?

You think you answered the questions?

We did our best and we feel good about it.

The American people are the judges now,

we're going to let them judge.

So you can see why he was so attached to her,

because she had the power to save him.

The partnership of Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham

began at Yale Law School in 1971.

Clinton was fresh from a Rhodes scholarship

at Oxford University in England

and already planning a career in politics.

Bill loved to discuss issues.

He loved to be at the center of discussions.

He, in a way, loved to perform.

He wasn't a great student.

He didn't care about being a student;

he was not there for being a student.

He was there to make connections.

Hillary was so much more obviously intellectual.

Her power was so much more disciplined than his.

She was a leader.

She was a doer.

Bill eyed Hillary for weeks before the two finally met

during one of his rare visits to the library.

He was totally blown away

by how confident and challenging she was.

Here he is, this tall, gorgeously handsome hick

with Elvis sideburns and high-water pants.

She's the one who crosses the room,

holds out her hand and says,

"If you're going to keep staring at me

"and I'm going to keep looking back at you,

we better get to know each other."

Bill Clinton, who always had lots of girlfriends,

looked at Hillary and said,

"I've never had a girlfriend like that.

"I can't believe that somebody as smart

and as virtuous as Hillary, that she wants to be with me."

Hillary looked at Bill Clinton...

Outgoing, popular, successful... And thinks,

"I can't believe that somebody like that wants to be with me."

And I think they're both kind of mystified

that the other person is attracted to them.

Hillary graduated from Yale in 1973

and soon landed a coveted job in Washington

with the House committee investigating

the Watergate scandal.

One night, she said she wanted to introduce me to somebody

who's going to come up to visit her the next day, I think.

She says, "His name is Bill Clinton."

I said, "Oh, you know, what does he do?"

She said, "Well, he graduated Yale Law School

and he's from Arkansas, and he's going back to Arkansas."

I said, "Oh, well, that's fine.

What law firm is he going to?"

She said, "Oh, no, no, he's not going to go to a law firm.

He's thinking of running for office."

I said, "He just graduated Yale Law School.

What's he thinking of running for?"

"Running for Congress."

I said, "Well, it's kind of premature.

How old is he, 26, 27?"

She said, "Oh, no, no, he's going to run for Congress

"and he thinks he's going to win and I think he's going to win.

"In fact, Bernie, he's going to go past Congress.

"He's going to be a senator or a governor.

He's going to be president of the United States."

That Bill Clinton would make politics his life's work

had never been in doubt to anyone who knew him.

William Jefferson Clinton

was born in Hope, Arkansas, on August 19, 1946.

His mother, Virginia Cassidy, was a nurse,

outgoing and vivacious;

his father, Bill Blythe, a charming traveling salesman

whom he would never know.

When Virginia was six months pregnant,

her husband's car flipped over on a rain-slicked highway.

The accident killed him.

"My father left me with the feeling

that I had to live for two people," Clinton would write.

"If I did well enough,

somehow I could make up for the life he should have had."

Four years after her husband's death,

Virginia married a raffish Buick salesman named Roger Clinton.

The couple moved with six-year-old Billy

to Roger's hometown, Hot Springs, Arkansas.

If Hope was a sleepy Baptist town,

Hot Springs was the opposite...

A rollicking resort, attracting people from across the country

to its mineral pools and gambling parlors.

Outwardly, Clinton enjoyed

a happy small-town American childhood.

But inside his gabled house on Park Avenue,

he was leading a far more turbulent life.

His parents' relationship had deteriorated

into serial affairs

and screaming matches that reverberated

through the thin walls.

As Roger Clinton descended into alcoholism,

he grew more and more violent,

beating Virginia in front of Bill and young Roger, Jr.

My life was "full of uncertainty and anger,"

Clinton would recall,

"and a dread of ever-looming violence."

Most of his buddies had no clue.

They saw Bill Clinton as a happy-go-lucky guy.

They didn't see the turmoil that was raging within that family.

He decided to pretend it didn't exist.

To pretend that everything was all right.

To go to church, you know, with his Bible under his arm

and be sunny and energetic and positive

and simply not accept it.

With fierce enthusiasm,

Clinton threw himself into his life outside his home.

Hot Springs High had never seen anything like him.

National Merit Scholar semifinalist,

first chair in the Arkansas State Band,

student government leader.

By his senior year, he held so many honors

that the principal barred him

from running for class president.

Bill Clinton always found himself

trying to redeem and rescue his family.

Part of doing that is to sort of put yourself in the position

of rescuing not just your family, but everybody,

including yourself, by doing good.

By the early 1960s,

Bill Clinton's generation had a new hero.

President John F. Kennedy's youth and charisma

reached all the way to Arkansas

and sparked the teenager's idealism

with a call to public service.

Ask not what your country can do for you,

ask what you can do for your country.

We loved living in a time when JFK was president.

He was so young, he made public service seem accessible,

so if we had ever entertained thoughts

of a life in public service,

he made it seem all the more possible.

In 1963, Bill Clinton traveled to Washington

as a delegate to Boys Nation,

a program for aspiring future leaders.

During a visit to the White House,

he rushed to the front of the line to shake his idol's hand.

It's a moment that is just emblazoned in your mind.

To have a president of the United States

look you in the eye, take your hand, speak to you...

the world stops.

Bill said to me, "We will never forget that, will we?

We will never forget that."

A decade later, after leaving Arkansas

to study at Georgetown, Oxford and Yale,

Clinton returned home

to begin his own long march to the White House.

Bill Clinton went back to Arkansas for politics,

pure and simple.

He knew the people there, and he was of that place.

He could see his political future

and that he was destined for something much larger

than Hot Springs or Arkansas.

In his first political race at age 28,

Clinton took on a conservative Republican congressman

named John Paul Hammerschmidt.

I know that I can make a big difference

for our district and for our people

if I can have the opportunity to serve them in Congress.

Few gave Clinton a chance to compete.

People are saying, "Hey, he's smart,

"but why does this guy want to be a congressman?

"He's too young, he hasn't been elected to anything,

he doesn't know what he's really doing."

It wasn't just his inexperience;

many worried that in his time away,

Clinton had lost touch with Arkansas and its values.

There always has been with him a suspicion

that this guy is not to be trusted.

"This guy's too liberal for us."

And he encountered that.

But, initially in Arkansas,

he just totally overpowered it with his charm,

with his political skill,

with his ability to connect and relate.

In this small state, politics is art and it's entertainment.

And he was the best we had seen.

♪ There's a fellow here been talking some ♪

♪ About being our next congressman ♪

♪ He's a new man, Bill Clinton is his name... ♪

For weeks on end,

Clinton drove the back roads of northwest Arkansas

sleeping on couches, waking up at dawn

to catch the shift-change at nearby factories.

♪ Bill Clinton's ready, he's fed up, too ♪

♪ He's a lot like me, he's a lot like you... ♪

He's got an extra battery.

After about four or five days with him,

I was ready to go home.

I had all the fun I could stand, and he would just keep going.

We might stop at a service station

or a restaurant or whatever.

He would want to meet the cooks.

He would go back in the kitchen and meet everybody back there.

He would not leave a place, I think,

where he had not met everyone.

As Bill Clinton campaigned for Congress,

Hillary Rodham left her high-powered job in Washington

and decided to follow him to Arkansas.

She could have had lots of jobs in Washington.

Instead she elects to go, not even to Little Rock,

but Fayetteville, Arkansas?

You know, her friends thought she was absolutely mad.

"He's just a country lawyer.

What do you see in him?"

When Hillary arrived in Arkansas...

A Chicago-born feminist in the Deep South...

She felt unwelcomed by Bill's campaign staff.

I said, "Look, you know, we got enough problems here as it is."

She comes in here and I say,

"I don't mind her being on the inside doing everything she does

because she's sharp as a tack."

But I said, "Taking her out on the road,"

I said, "that's going to create a little bit of a question."

And he said, "Why?"

And I said, "Well, she's got outcroppings

"of where she grew up in Chicago

and her parents all came from Pennsylvania."

I said, "You know, she's never really overcome all of that

to get involved in what we're doing here in Arkansas."

To make matters worse,

Hillary had to deal with Bill's constant womanizing.

I mean you got to understand, at one time,

there was at least 25 women per day coming through there

trying to find him.

And I'd tell them he's out on the road, you know,

and they'd get out the door.

But Lord, it was bad.

Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad.

He draws women in

and they are literally mesmerized by this man.

It was absolutely like fly to honey.

And he needed that.

He needed that kind of adoration.

I don't think there's any question that Hillary was hurt,

whether it was me or anyone else.

Despite Bill's infidelities,

Hillary decided

to stay in Arkansas

and dedicate herself

to their mutual goals.

A common sense of commitment to social justice,

of working on improving the lives of families,

of being concerned about the disenfranchised.

But ultimately all along, thinking about going to the top.

There's no question that there's a sense

of the possibilities being unlimited.

The highest you can achieve, obviously,

is to be president and first lady.

On October 11, 1975, the couple wed in a simple ceremony

in their living room.

Most of the people I know

who have been around the Clintons for a long time

come to the conclusion that I've come to.

The two of them are in love.

Walter Lippmann, the great columnist, said,

"Love endures when the lovers love not just each other,

but love many things together."

That, I think, is the essence of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

They had a common love, which is for politics,

for the game.

They love it.

It's their life.

With Hillary firmly behind him,

there was no stopping Bill Clinton.

Though he narrowly lost his congressional bid,

he had positioned himself as a rising star.

The morning after he lost that congressional race in 1974,

he was out in the town square, shaking hands again.

Every Democratic figure in the state knew

that he was the next big figure in Arkansas politics.

Two years later, he was easily elected attorney general.

I think the governor of this state ought to be...

Two years after that, he ran for governor,

brimming with youthful confidence and ambition.

I'm Bill Clinton, and one of the reasons I want to be governor

is to make sure that every child in this state

has a chance to go to kindergarten.

Clinton won with more than 60% of the vote.

I believe that if you and I together

can practice what we preach about government,

I know that you and I together

want to do what is right for our people.

In the late 1970s,

most of Arkansas was poor and undeveloped.

Bill Clinton was determined to turn that around.

Not much had been done for 150 years in Arkansas.

Spending on education, per capita income,

our highway system was one of the worst in the country.

So Bill Clinton comes in and he has all these ideas.

He's going to transform the state at once.

Feeling, as he recalled, "an urgent sense to do everything,"

Clinton and his staff

took on entrenched interests in Arkansas.

He created new regulations, revamped rural health care,

reorganized school districts and took on utilities.

Most ambitious of all was a project to fix Arkansas roads.

It was paid for by a steep hike in taxes on car licenses

and was a political disaster.

Every month, 1/12 of the people of Arkansas

went down to the courthouse to get their...

renew their license plates for the following year,

and instead of being $19, it was $36.

That became extremely unpopular,

and he realized that late in the election of 1980.

He'd go early in the morning to a factory gate

and all these guys refused to shake his hand.

They said, "No, you raised my truck tag,

and I'm not going to vote for you."

After one term, Clinton ran for reelection

against an obscure Republican businessman named Frank White,

who pounded away at Clinton's youth and arrogance.

He tells you he can create jobs... he's never had a job!

To Clinton's dismay, White's tactic worked.

I regret that I will not have two more years

to serve as governor, because I have loved it.

I have probably loved it as much as any person

who ever had this office.

Since he was a teenager,

Bill Clinton had prepared himself to be president.

Now, just 34, with his new baby Chelsea to support,

he feared his political career might already be over.

He took it incredibly hard.

He knew those folks and he thought they loved him,

and it turned out they didn't.

He was totally out of sorts.

And when you see him, he wants to talk about one thing.

"What'd I do wrong?"

Hillary was as devastated by that defeat as Bill was

and as determined to make amends and figure out a way back.

I mean, here she had devoted her life and given up a lot

to go out to Arkansas for their rise together.

And at this very early age,

it seemed like it was all vulnerable.

So she was not going to allow that to happen.

Hillary traded in her thick glasses for contact lenses

and her unkempt hair for a fashionable blonde bob.

To quiet some of her critics,

she took her husband's last name.

Frustrated by what she regarded as poor advice,

she took over her husband's reelection campaign.

Hillary was the mastermind in that comeback.

Most of his people advised him at the time,

"Don't run again, wait two years."

Hillary says, "You can come back and you can do it again."

He didn't trust himself as much as he trusted her.

Determined never to lose again,

Clinton studied the results of his defeat precinct by precinct.

He resolved to win back every, single one.

The crowd has waited, they're ready to celebrate.

It's been a long two years.

If victory is ours tonight,

I have been given something that few people get in life:

a second chance to serve the people of Arkansas.

Clinton had learned from his mistakes.

Rather than take on every problem in Arkansas

with his second term,

he narrowed his focus to a single issue

that he knew would serve the people and his political future:

education.

I still believe that until we have a system

which guarantees competence in basic learning skills,

we will never be able to prepare our people

for higher level of achievements.

I don't care what else we do.

It's a winning issue.

The people are willing to go that way.

And it's something we can get done if we focus on that.

He has settled on the strategy.

Now, who's the right person?

Who's my point person?

Hillary.

We know it's a huge task,

but we're very optimistic

that we're going to be able to make a substantial improvement

in what our students receive.

She went from town to town all over Arkansas

and met with civic groups and PTAs and school groups

and talked about what they wanted to do

about improving schools in Arkansas.

By the time it was over,

I think she was one of the most popular people in the state.

One legislator popped up at a hearing one day and said,

"We elected the wrong Clinton."

It just resurrected him.

He needed a success and it made him the education governor

at a time when education was a vital issue in the country.

And he was able to use that to open all kinds of doors for him.

Over the next few years, Clinton began to catch the attention

of the media and national Democratic leaders

desperate to find a candidate

who could loosen Republicans' grip on the presidency.

He would spend a huge amount of time

meeting with, impressing and charming his fellow governors

and other elected officials.

And after a day and a night with him,

talking about philosophy and politics,

you came away with the impression

this was the smartest guy in the class,

and that essentially if you were going to have a president,

it probably should be this guy.

In 1987, during his fourth term as Arkansas governor,

Bill Clinton was finally ready to leap onto the national stage

with a long-shot run for the presidency.

In July, he summoned the national media to Little Rock

for the big announcement.

Then, abruptly, he sent them home with hardly an explanation.

I need some family time, I need some personal time.

Behind the scenes,

an old weakness had come back to haunt him.

Just the day before the press conference,

when he was going to announce that he was going to run,

Betsey Wright, his ferociously protective campaign manager,

sat him down with a list of names of women

and went through one after the other:

how many times, where did you meet her,

how likely is she to talk?

For each name, he said, "Oh, she'll never say anything."

And Betsey Wright said, "But you don't know that.

"You don't understand, on a national scale,

"people will investigate... your opponents will investigate it.

The media will investigate it."

"The problem is, we're not just talking about you.

"We're talking about your wife, Hillary;

we're talking about your child, Chelsea."

She said, "I don't think you can run."

I mean, it just became clear that night

it was not the time for him to do it.

It just was not the time.

He felt for quite a while

that that probably was the last real chance he would ever have

to run for president.

That was it, it was over.

You know, where would he go

now that he wasn't going to run for president?

What could he do in the future?

I think that, over the next few months,

that became a tough time for them.

With Hillary and Bill's mutual dream in tatters,

thanks to his extramarital affairs,

their relationship hit rock bottom.

It did put into question their whole marriage.

And it was very unnerving to Hillary

because she had put everything on the line

for him to pursue the presidency.

And if he had too much of a record

of reckless behavior to do that,

then what had she been doing for the last 15 years?

It is now time to place the name in nomination

for president of the United States, Michael Dukakis.

Just when it seemed things couldn't get worse,

Clinton was asked to give the speech

nominating Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic convention.

I'm honored to be here tonight

to nominate my friend Michael Dukakis

for president of the United States.

That piece was supposed to be the set piece

to launch him on the national stage,

and it turned out to be something

that almost killed his career before it got started.

And I'd like to talk a little about Mike Dukakis, the man...

The speech was going on and on and on.

Mike's old-fashioned, all right.

He's the kind of man who plays it straight and keeps his word.

We want Mike!

The crowd was just getting restless.

And we said, "Oh, man, we dead," right?

He was going by the script that the Dukakis folks has approved.

And he has to carry it out.

Now, I want you all to calm down

so I can tell the rest of the country

why they should want Mike.

Of course, the famous thing was when he said,

"In conclusion," he got a round of applause, finally.

In closing...

Linda, my wife, and I are at our house

and we're looking on in disbelief.

Sometime in the wee hours, Linda wakes me up, and she says,

"Look, he's got to go on the Carson show to make this right."

My first question is, "How are you?"

I'm fine.

I watched the speech,

and as a performer, I kind of felt for you in a way.

What happened?

It just didn't work, I mean,

I don't know, what can I tell you?

I really... my sole goal was achieved, however.

I wanted so badly to make Michael Dukakis look great

and I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations.

In an instant, he had turned it around,

because the next day, papers were full of good things

and had kind things to say about him.

And so it erased almost all of it in one day

and made him more visible than he had ever been.

It's tenor sax you play, right?

That's right.

We're going to play a short song.

He recovers better

than anybody I have ever known.

It's extraordinary.

I mean, he can have horrible things crash down upon his head,

but he crawls out from under it and keeps on going.

Bill and Hillary Clinton were back on the map.

Having faced a crossroads

in their personal and political lives,

they decided that whatever the costs, they would stay together

and continue to pursue the goal they'd shared for 20 years:

the presidency of the United States.

Four years later, in the snows of New Hampshire,

Clinton held a comfortable lead in the Democratic primary.

With the Gennifer Flowers scandal behind him,

he was campaigning with the confidence of a frontrunner.

"Unless a second shoe drops to indicate he's a liar,"

declared the New York Times,

"Clinton has emerged more clearly

as the Democrats' likely nominee."

But just 12 days before the primary,

the second shoe not only dropped,

it nearly shattered the campaign.

An old letter had surfaced,

written by Bill Clinton more than 20 years earlier

when facing the possibility of being drafted

to fight in Vietnam.

In the letter, Clinton thanked his local ROTC commander,

Colonel Eugene Holmes, for "saving me from the draft."

Though he never took the deferment,

Clinton's letter sounded to many

like the confession of a draft dodger

and sparked a second round of attacks against his character.

The Friday story in the Wall Street Journal appears

about the ROTC and Colonel Holmes

and the polling numbers just started collapsing.

Governor, are you a draft dodger?

Did you burn your draft card?

No, I had a lock-cinch four-year deferment.

I gave it up after less than two months

because I didn't think it was right.

I went back into the draft, then this lottery came along.

I got a high number and I wasn't called.

Stan Greenberg, our pollster, came in and said,

"The bottom's fallen out."

You know, we dropped 18 points in a weekend

and we didn't have that many points to start with.

Of course I've had some problems in the polls.

All I've been asked about by the press

are a woman I didn't sleep with and a draft I didn't dodge.

I think a lot of us thought, you know, "This is over."

But I mean, Clinton... Clinton, he never flinched.

You know, he willed himself back into that race.

How you doing? I need your help!

For the next week, Clinton campaigned 20 hours a day,

pushing himself to the limits of his endurance.

We have to reject the political philosophy

that gripped this country in the 1980s...

With only days left, his voice ragged,

Clinton spoke at an Elks Lodge in Dover, New Hampshire.

These were Yankees who had been really beaten down

by the loss of manufacturing jobs

in that part of the country,

and they didn't seem to have other opportunities.

I'll tell you something,

I'm going to give you this election back,

and if you'll give it to me, I won't be like George Bush.

I'll never forget who gave me a second chance

and I'll be there for you till the last dog dies.

And I want you to remember that.

"I'll be there for you till the last dog dies."

And we knew we'd seen

one of those astonishing political performances.

I don't promise you a miracle, I promise you a movement.

Let's take our country back, and see this country win again.

Thank you very much and God bless you!

How many second chances, right?

How many second chances does any one person deserve?

Clinton's view is as many second chances

as a person is willing to try to take.

You know, I mean, as many times as you fail,

don't you deserve the chance to redeem yourself?

Isn't history loaded with people

who have fallen and gotten up, and fallen and gotten up,

and fallen and gotten up, and done great things?

You know, who's to say?

Bill Clinton.

You've definitely got my support.

Thank you.

I need you tomorrow, thanks.

On Feb. 18,

the voters of New Hampshire went to the polls.

Despite the one-two punch of Gennifer Flowers and the draft,

Clinton finished a strong second

behind former Massachusetts senator Paul Tsongas.

Let me say that while the evening is young...

and we don't know yet what the final tally will be,

I think we know enough to say with some certainty

that New Hampshire tonight

has made Bill Clinton the "Comeback Kid."

In the weeks to come,

Clinton rolled up primary victory after primary victory.

In Florida, in Tennessee, in Mississippi...

In early June, he surpassed the number of delegates needed

for the Democratic nomination by winning the California primary.

The election for America's future begins tomorrow.

It is not about me, it's about all of you.

Even though he's winning voters over

and winning these primaries with bigger and bigger margins,

the news coverage, you know, for the general electorate,

is one of a politician

you would never make president of the United States.

You could not possibly trust this guy.

The polls would ask the question whether he has the honesty

and character to be president.

The numbers got worse and worse and worse.

Now we reached a point where we said, "We can't just allow that

"to be the narrative through to the convention.

Let's restore the sense of trust."

A team of top campaign aides

planned a complete overhaul of Clinton's image,

culminating in a nostalgic film

shown during the Democratic National Convention in New York.

It was called "A Man From Hope."

I was born in a little town called Hope, Arkansas,

three months after my father died.

I remember living in that old two-story house

where I lived with my grandparents...

The film, I think, brought people back,

"Okay, here's who this guy is.

"Here's what we're really about,

and we really have a strong candidate."

My fellow Americans,

I end tonight where it all began for me.

I still believe in a place called hope.

God bless you, and God bless America.

With a rock anthem from the 1970s

as the campaign theme song,

Clinton staffers positioned their candidate

as the young, dynamic face of a new generation.

To complete the image,

Clinton chose as his running mate

the youthful senator from Tennessee, Al Gore.

It turned the conventional wisdom on its head.

He believed you don't dilute your message,

you put a big underline and exclamation point

and this is a new generation, new ideas,

a new Democratic party.

Totally energized the general election campaign.

♪ Don't stop thinking about tomorrow ♪

♪ Don't stop, it will soon be here... ♪

Heading into the fall,

Clinton had surged ahead of President George H.W. Bush

and third-party candidate Ross Perot.

With the economy still faltering,

Clinton had found his issue and his voice.

The crowd that's running Washington today

has had 12 years to test their economic theory,

and it's failed.

The decisive event came in mid-October,

at the second presidential debate in Richmond, Virginia,

when Clinton turned a question from the audience

into a defining political moment.

A woman stood up and asked a question

that was on a lot of people's minds.

How has the national debt

personally affected each of your lives?

And if it hasn't, how can you honestly find

a cure for the economic problems of the common people

if you have no experience in what's ailing them?

And President Bush said,

"I don't get it, I don't get the question."

Are you suggesting that if somebody has means

that the national debt doesn't affect them?

I'm not sure I get it.

Help me with the question and I'll try to answer it.

Clinton understood that she wasn't talking

about the deficit or the debt.

What she was talking about was the economy.

And the recession.

And the body language

was absolutely crucial at that point.

He took two steps toward her.

Tell me how it's affected you again?

You know people who've lost their jobs and lost their homes.

Uh-huh.

Well, I'll tell you how it's affected me.

I see people in my state, middle-class people,

their taxes have gone up in Washington

and their services have gone down

while the wealthy have gotten tax cuts.

I have seen what's happened in this last four years

when, in my state, when people lose their jobs,

there's a good chance I'll know them by their names.

That was giving the American public

precisely what they wanted at that point.

They had this brilliant foreign policy president.

What they needed was someone who cared about them

and who was as scared about the economy as they were.

And in that moment, he encapsulated that.

I think what we have to do is invest in American jobs,

American education.

He was on his way to winning.

But that was the deal closer.

He closed the deal.

Like a marathon runner nearing the finish line,

Clinton spent the final 24 hours of the campaign

in an all-out sprint, touching down in nine states.

His voice gone, he could only wave at adoring crowds.

Sometime during the course of this half hour,

the man who liked to call himself the "Comeback Kid,"

Bill Clinton of a town called Hope in Arkansas,

will be projected the winner

of the presidential candidacy of 1992.

Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton

and Chelsea Clinton.

My fellow Americans,

on this day,

with high hopes and brave hearts, in massive numbers,

the American people have voted to make a new beginning.

There was this joy and buoyancy

and he had so much promise about him.

Those of us who believed in Bill Clinton, and I did,

had a sense of, "Wow, this is going to be

really, really good for the country."

After 20 years of thrilling highs and gut-wrenching falls,

Bill and Hillary had at last achieved their highest goal.

But if they had won the presidency,

the Clintons had yet to win over the country.

And in this moment of triumph,

few could imagine the turmoil that lay ahead.

He got 43% of the vote, but none of us thought about that.

To us, it felt like a landslide.

Clinton believed in a strong government;

he wanted to be a big president.

He revered Kennedy, he revered Roosevelt,

he thought about the heroic presidents

and he wanted to use the presidency that way.

But the country was turning away from government,

it was skeptical that government could work,

and there were these roiling undercurrents of anger

that we knew were there,

but we didn't realize how they could quickly consume even us.