CLINTON SAYS HE'D HAVE RUN AGAIN, WON AGAIN

WASHINGTON -- President Bill Clinton says he would have been tempted to run
for president again if the Constitution would have let him. And, he says,
he would have won.

"Oh, I probably would have run again," Clinton said in Rolling Stone
magazine's Dec. 28 issue, to be published today.

Does he think he would have been a three-time winner?

"Yes. I do. But it's hard to say, because it's entirely academic," Clinton
said.

He also said in the interview that the Republicans outmaneuvered him into a
failed policy on gays in the military, he called some current antidrug
policies unfair and confessed 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, Clinton said, and 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 dumbass
'Don't ask, don't tell' thing," Clinton said.

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

The interview, conducted by Jann S. Wenner, Rolling Stone's editor and
publisher, also included a reference to the main controversy that marked
Clinton's tenure, his extramarital affair with a White House intern.

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

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

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

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

Clinton predicted in the interview, conducted before the election, that
Vice President Al Gore would win Florida and the presidency.