The American dream of US President
Bill Clinton has turned sour in the wake of personal scandal and unpopular policies.
The mid-term elections were a complete disasterforthe former
Arkansas Governor as Republicans swept into power in both the Senate and Congress on a wave of public disaffection with Clinton's Democrat administration. Havingentered the White House on a promise to bringa new openness to the Presidency, the beleaguered Clinton agreed to an exclusive interview with the doyen of American political correspondents, the veteran Walter Cronkite.
Clinton discusses his failures and his future in the light of apparent public rejection of his liberal agenda. Asking if the lesson of the mid-term voters' rebellion is that Americans cannot as a nation truly accept leftist politics, Cronkite wonders whether liberal reforms are doomed when both legislative houses are Republican strongholds. The pair also debate the influence of Capitol Hill's political upheavals on foreign policy, so often used by Presidents in difficulty as a vote-winning route to a "great escape"