CLINTON SAYS DOLE SPOILED 'HONEYMOON'

President Shows Empathy For Nixon In Wide-Ranging Interview

NEW YORK President Bill Clinton, in an interview published Thursday
in Rolling Stone, says the Republicans outmaneuvered him into a
failed policy on gays in the military, calls some current anti-drug
policies unfair and confesses a sneaking empathy for a disgraced
predecessor, Richard Nixon.

The Republicans "didn't want me to have a honeymoon" in his first
days in office, Mr. Clinton said, and so forced the issue of his
campaign promise to allow gays to serve openly, knowing they had the
votes in Congress to defeat it.

"And it was only then that I worked out with Colin Powell this
dumb-ass 'don't ask, don't tell' thing," Mr. Clinton said in the
interview, one of several he has granted recently looking back on his
eight years in office.

He said that policy resulted in "several years of problems where it
was not implemented in any way consistent with the speech I gave at
the War College - of which General Powell had agreed with every word."

Still, Mr. Clinton, the master tactician, conceded, "it was a
brilliant political move" on the part of the Republican leader,
Senator Bob Dole, whose "top priority was making this the controversy
that would consume the early days of my presidency."

The interview, conducted by Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone's editor and
publisher, and appearing in the Dec. 28-Jan. 4 issue, also included a
reference to the main controversy that marked Mr. Clinton's tenure,
his extramarital affair with a White House intern.

In a discussion of the impeachment attempt, Mr. Clinton was asked if
the outcome was a sort of "referendum on the nature, morality or
character" of America.

"Not really," the president replied. "People strongly disagreed with
what I did. I did, too."

On the subject of drugs, Mr. Clinton, who famously claimed not to
have inhaled, said that "most small amounts of marijuana have been
decriminalized and should be."

Going further, he said that mandatory sentences for drug use should
be re examined along with the distinction in sentencing between crack
and powdered cocaine.

"The disparities are unconscionable between crack and powdered
cocaine," Mr. Clinton said. "I tried to change that. The Republican
Congress was willing to narrow but not eliminate them, the theory
being that people who used crack were more violent than people who
used cocaine.

"What they really meant was: People that used crack were more likely
to be poor - and, coincidentally, black or brown. And therefore not
to have money. Those people that used cocaine were more likely to be
rich, pay for it and therefore be peaceful."

Mr. Clinton said that he had invited Mr. Nixon to come back to the
White House for a visit and that he treasured a "lucid, eloquent"
letter the former president had written him from Russia just a month
before his death in 1994.

During the visit, Mr. Clinton said, "He told me he identified with me
because he thought the press had been too hard on me in '92 and that
I had refused to die, and he liked that. He said a lot of life was
just hanging on. We had a good talk about that."

Mr. Nixon, driven from office by the Watergate scandal, could have
been, Mr. Clinton said, "a great president if he had been more
trusting of the American people."

Mr. Clinton attributed the bitter, partisan atmosphere in Washington
to what he said was a Republican belief that "they had found a
foolproof formula to hold on to the White House forever."

"Mostly, it's just because I won," he said, adding:

"I think, secondly, because I was the first baby-boomer president.
Not a perfect person - never claimed to be. And I opposed the Vietnam
War. I think that made them doubly angry, because they thought I was
a cultural alien and I made it anyway."