My Remarkable Journey (26 page)

What should Clinton have done? All he had to do was say it was a private matter between his wife and himself. The story would
have continued, but he could have deflated it. He got in trouble when he said, “I never had sex with that woman.” He got in
trouble when he said that oral sex isn’t sex. I guess it’s open to interpretation whether oral sex is sex. Maybe it’s sort
of like what Justice Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court said about pornography: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I
see it.”

Martin Luther King Jr. once told me that he’d preach about many things, but marital fidelity was not one of them. This was
so he could not be seen as a hypocrite. In Clinton’s case, the denials opened the door for all the Republicans who wanted
to get him. Bob Barr, the congressman from Georgia who led the drive to impeach Clinton, came on my show and said he didn’t
care about the improper relationship at all. What bothered him, he said, was obstruction of justice, tampering with witnesses,
subornation of perjury, and the possible destruction of evidence.

I tried to keep my show focused on how the scandal affected impeachment. I just did not see this as an impeachable offense.
There were a lot of people out to get Clinton, though, and the House voted to impeach. That meant it was up to the Senate
to decide if Clinton would finish his term. I phoned the president that day to wish him well, and let him know that he could
come on my show anytime to get his feelings across. I left a message with his secretary. The Washington Redskins were playing
Tampa Bay that day. I was watching when Clinton called back, and he heard it in the background.

“Is that the Redskins game?” he asked.

“It sure is.”

“Who’s winning?”

“Tampa Bay is ahead, 16–7, but the Skins are driving.”

“Yeah? Who won the Jets game? I’ve been distracted all day.”

Talk about a guy who can compartmentalize. We spoke a little about the impeachment. I remember him talking about the affection
he had for a Republican congressman named Peter King, who stood up to make a speech against the impeachment. “This is all
such a crock,” Clinton said. “But I ain’t going down.”

He didn’t go down. After his presidency ended, after he had written his autobiography, Clinton came on my show and said that
he might have been fortunate to have had tormentors. He believed that it was the people who tried to destroy him who ultimately
helped save him. Hillary got so mad at the people trying to take Bill down that they were the only people who could make him
look good to her again.

The day after Bill Clinton went in front of the nation to admit his relationship with Monica, he flew off to Martha’s Vineyard
with Hillary and Chelsea to try to bring the family back together. I couldn’t help but remember being in the White House watching
a movie with the president. The movie was
Rudy
—about the inspirational Notre Dame football player. Rudy Ruettiger was there for the showing. Chelsea brought in popcorn.
She sat next to her father. He put his arm around her. It was a wonderful time. It would be beyond sad for a father to lose
moments like that. Clinton later told me that he feared that he’d hurt Hillary and Chelsea irrevocably and that he might not
be able to make it all right again. I remember them walking toward Marine One on television. Chelsea was leaning toward her
mother and the president reached out to bring her closer to him. It was one of those private moments that I felt I shouldn’t
be in on. But I watched until the helicopter took off.

It’s hard enough to tell your wife. But what do you say to your daughter? Your wife is an adult. She can call you a son of
a bitch. She can divorce you. Your wife may not always be your wife. But your daughter is always going to be your daughter.

I felt so sad for what Bill Clinton and his family had to go through. A lot of people didn’t like him politically and said
he deserved what he got. I don’t think so. I may not be a Bible man, but I do appreciate that great line, “He who is without
sin, cast the first stone.” We all have weaknesses. Some you can’t help falling prey to. I relate weaknesses to smoking. I
couldn’t stop smoking. You could have pinned all the statistics on the wall for me, but I loved that cigarette. It owned me.
If it’s one thing I understand it’s weakness. That’s why I could empathize with the president as well as feel for his family.

It was very difficult to report the Clinton-Lewinsky story. But the reason why you see Bill Clinton coming on the show to
this day is that Larry never did anything that would have made Clinton feel like he was being treated unfairly.

Larry asked questions. The answers came out. And the viewer was left to draw his or her own conclusions. That’s a lot different
from other interviewers who are calculating, How can I get this guy?

It’s why, when an interview is over, someone watching will say, “That guy looked great.” And another viewer will say, “Are
you kidding? I didn’t think so.”

The viewers will judge you. But Larry is not going to judge you. That’s a big difference.

I really admire the Clintons for having the strength to bring their family back together. I don’t usually psychoanalyze my
own life. But when I look back now I can see that a lot of things started to play out around that time—things that made me
aware of the impact I have on my children. Larry Jr. came into my life around then. Then Shawn became pregnant. It was almost
simultaneous. It was one joy after the next. When I met Shawn, I was about sixty-three. I never thought I’d have children
again.

I got pregnant about ten months after the wedding party. I was trying to keep Larry calm in the delivery room the whole time
I was trying to give birth. He was furious that the baby hadn’t come by six o’clock because his show was on at six. He wanted
to announce that we had had that baby.

I’m always so in a rush for things. Would you get this done?
Come-mahhhhn
!

I was hard-pressed to get that baby out. Larry was making the doctor sweat like crazy. Our son was born at 6:31 p.m. and Greta
Van Susteren, who was with CNN back then, announced it at 6:36.

It was the first time I’d seen a birth. The father was kept outside the room back in the ’60s. He was not allowed to watch.
I cut the umbilical cord. We named our son Chance because Shawn and I met by chance.

Chance was four months old when we went to the White House to see Bill Clinton. We thought our appointment with Clinton would
be canceled because the war in Bosnia had ended that day—but it wasn’t.

Clinton took Chance in his arms in the Oval Office. He was standing there with the paper in his hand announcing the end of
the war. He posed with Chance for a picture. He looked down at him and said, “You don’t know what’s happening here. But someday,
little man, you’re going to be in history class. And the teacher is going to say, “Today, we’re going to talk about Bosnia,
and when she does,
raise your hand
! You were there. You bring this picture to class. You were there!”

Chance was five months old when I got pregnant with Cannon. We went into the hospital early in the morning for Cannon. I think
he was born midday. He came out really fast. That’s Cannon.

We gave him the name Cannon because he was conceived on a street by that name. I don’t know what we would have done if he’d
been conceived on Elevado.

The thing I remember about Cannon’s birth was that I noticed him having problems breathing. Everyone was talking, and I pointed
it out to the doctors. It was a bronchial condition that lasted for a few days. But I was the one who heard it first.

Y
EARS AGO
, a university asked if I’d like to teach a course on interviewing.

“Can you give us a syllabus?”

I never went to college, so I’d never seen one.

“Well, just tell us what you’d teach the first week, what you’d teach the second week, and so on.”

As if, on the third week, I could teach the class how to interview presidents.

The thing is, I don’t think I’d have anything different to say on the third week than I would on the first. The lesson’s the
same: just be yourself. I look at the president with the same curiosity that I have for the plumber. I think that’s what has
separated me from everyone else. I don’t sit for hours thinking up six hundred questions because I’m going to interview the
president. It’s not my style, and it’s not what got me to where I am.

Sometimes when a major interview comes up, I’ll hear, “Hey, you’ve got to be at the top of your game tonight.” You know, put
a little something extra into the show. People say it because they’re juiced. But it always offends me. Does that mean I shouldn’t
put in a little something extra when I’m talking to the plumber? Of course, when I go to interview the president, I’m aware
that I’m with the president. But if I treated him differently from the way I treat anyone else, I’d lose being me.

I’ve become friendly with every president since Richard Nixon. The more time I’ve spent with them, the more human they appear—especially
after they leave office. Gerald Ford once started slurring while I was interviewing him. We had to cut the interview short,
and he had a stroke later in the day. George H. W. Bush became teary while opening up about the loss of his daughter. My son
Chance was imitating one of the Power Rangers at CNN headquarters in New York once when he was about four, and he karate-chopped
Bill Clinton in the groin. Bill pulled through it well.

So I wouldn’t rate each president the way a historian would. I’ve seen their strengths. I’ve seen their weaknesses. And I
know that nobody can control world events. Some events presidents screw up, just like we all screw up in life. Some events
presidents bring on, just like Lincoln brought on the Civil War. And some events are beyond a president’s control and simply
can’t be stopped. One thing George W. Bush said was very true. When he was asked, “What will history think of you?” he replied,
“I don’t know. I’ll be dead.”

I can only tell you what it’s like to know the presidents while they were alive.

I was out of work when Nixon resigned. I had fallen, through my own fault—just like Nixon. There was no reason for me to lose
my job, and there was no reason for Nixon to lose his. What possible reason could there be to break into the Democratic Party
headquarters at the Watergate before the ’72 election? Nixon went on to win forty-nine states. His victory over George McGovern
was one of the biggest landslides in presidential history. He could easily have won that election without the aid of a single
document in those headquarters.

I understand people who have taken a tumble. So I understood what Nixon went through. I think that helped when I interviewed
him years later. Nixon could sense my sympathetic tone. When I asked him about the Watergate, he said he’d never been in the
hotel and he wouldn’t even look at it when he drove by.

The most amazing thing about Nixon to me was how a politician could rise to the greatest heights without being likable. You
can’t make yourself likable. There were all kinds of stories about Nixon being brusque to people on planes during campaign
trips. Not only was he not likable, I really don’t think he liked other people, either. I think he liked situations.

If I owned a network, I would have hired Nixon to do analysis. Nobody could tell you how a situation got to be a situation
as well as Nixon. Whether he could solve the problems in those situations is a different subject. But he was a terrific historian
with a steel-trap mind.

He was fascinated with things foreign. Nixon was the type of guy who’d rather sit down with Premier Brezhnev than with the
governor of Pennsylvania. That’s one of the reasons why so many domestic liberal changes came about during his administration—he
didn’t care about them. Nixon cared about opening the door to China.

It was his insecurities that did him in. Once I had him on the radio in Miami. He was the lead guest. We had four men from
the men’s fashion guild scheduled for the following segment. They were in town for a convention, and they were watching Nixon
and me do the show as they waited to go on.

During a break, Nixon said to me, “See those guys?” He said it very suspiciously. “You know, they’re talking about me.”

I said, “How do you know?”

He said, “I know.”

They could have been talking about his tie. But Nixon thought everybody was out to get him. He was complicated. But nearly
everybody who excels in his field is complicated. Here you had this guy who wasn’t really likable. Yet Hubert Humphrey told
me a story about him that made me see a different side.

Humphrey and Nixon had fought out what was then the closest election in history in ’68. Years later, on Christmas Eve, Humphrey
was in Memorial Sloan-Kettering hospital. He had cancer, and he was about to start chemotherapy. His wife was spending the
holiday evening with the family, and he told the switchboard operator that he didn’t want any calls put through to his room.
The phone rang.
Damnit!
Humphrey was thinking,
I told the switchboard…

It was Nixon. One man was dying, the other was in disgrace. They talked through Christmas Eve. I always remember that story
because Nixon’s first trip to Washington after his resignation was for Humphrey’s funeral.

In the end, Nixon’s legacy is mixed. He opened the door to China. Humphrey couldn’t have done that. Republicans would have
jumped all over a Democratic president who visited Communist China. But Nixon will always be primarily associated with Watergate
and the resignation.

One of the lasting memories I have of Nixon concerns the Nixon Library. On display the last time I was there was his desk
pad. The last thing on his pad was “9 p.m. Tuesday, Larry King Live.” He had just agreed to do our show before he was taken
to the hospital with a stroke. A few days later, he died.