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Study: Secondhand Smoke Raises Dementia Risk

Secondhand smoke, once considered a mere nuisance, has proved to be far more harmful. It can lead to lung cancer and heart disease, exacerbate asthma and cause pneumonia and bronchitis in babies. Now, a new study links it to another serious condition: dementia in adults.

A study published Feb. 13 in the British Medical Journal found a significant increase in the risk of dementia and other forms of cognitive impairment in people over 50 who have been exposed to high levels of secondhand smoke.

Previous research has linked active smoking with cognitive impairment. But this is the first large-scale study to associate secondhand-smoke exposure to dementia and other neurological problems in older populations.

In the study, researchers at the University of Cambridge, Britain’s Peninsula Medical School and the University
of Michigan tested saliva samples from nearly 5,000 non-smoking adults over
the age of 50 for cotinine — a by-product of nicotine — high levels of which would signal exposure to secondhand smoke. Participants in the study also provided a detailed smoking history. The researchers then used established neuropsychological tests to assess brain function and cognitive impairment.

They found that patients with high levels of cotinine were 44% more likely to show signs of cognitive impairment than those with very low levels. There was also “an exposure-response gradient” between cotinine concentration and poor mental performance: the more cotinine in a subject’s saliva, the worse that subject performed on tests measuring mental agility, memory and clear thinking.

Alzheimer’s and dementia experts think that the mediating factors between secondhand smoke and cognitive impairment could be heart disease and stroke; secondhand-smoke exposure raises the risk of heart disease and stroke, which in turn raise the risk of dementia.

“One potential mechanism could be that smoke disrupts the way in which our blood vessels carry blood to the brain,” says Sarah Day, head of public health for Britain’s Alzheimer’s Society. “A type of dementia called vascular dementia is caused by minute hemorrhages in the brain. If smoke is having an effect on the cells in the blood vessel walls, that’s a pretty good explanation as to why secondhand smoke would have an effect.”

Responding to the research, Alzheimer’s campaigners joined the study’s authors in calling for public-smoking bans in cities, states and countries that have so far resisted them.

A wave of recent research has linked secondhand smoke to health problems; many of these studies were made possible by the implementation of smoking bans throughout the developed world. A recent study, for example, showed that the risk of heart problems dropped in both smokers and nonsmokers following Scotland’s smoking ban in 2006. Many U.S. states are still without smoking bans, however, as is almost all of the developing world. But opponents of such legislation are now fighting a losing battle, according to Dr. Iain Lang of Peninsula Medical School, a co-author of the study.

“I [think] this is a final nail in the coffin for those who try to suggest there is no harm involved in secondhand smoke,” he says.

In an editorial accompanying the study, Mark Eisner, an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, commended the study but pointed out that cotinine only remains in saliva for two to three days after exposure to smoke, which is problematic as cognitive impairment in the elderly develops over many years. He called for further study into the effects of cumulative lifetime exposure to secondhand smoke to confirm the link.

But in a strongly worded conclusion, Eisner pointed out that some of the most important breakthroughs for human health have come from altering environmental factors and that even in an era of “groundbreaking science aimed at decoding the human genome…millions of people worldwide continue to die from passive smoking.” Calling for further antismoking legislation, he argued that in the fight against illness and premature death, “we should not forget the ‘low-tech’ intervention of clearing the air we breathe.” See pictures of the world’s most polluted places. See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2008.

Japanese finance minister denies being drunk

Shoichi Nakagawa gives a press conference at the end of a meeting of G7 finance ministers on Saturday in Rome.
Japan’s main opposition party will introduce a motion Tuesday to censure that country’s finance minister after he appeared to be intoxicated at a weekend news conference at the G-7 meeting in Rome, the Kyodo News agency reported.

Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa apologized for his behavior during a legislative committee meeting, but denied that it was the result of “heavy drinking,” the agency said. Nakagawa said he had drinks on his flight to Rome and during the G-7 luncheon, but that the real culprit was too much medicine taken because he wasn’t feeling well, Kyodo reported. The Group of Seven meeting brought together finance ministers from the world’s leading industrialized nations. In video of the Saturday news conference posted on the BBC Web site, Nakagawa responds slowly to reporters questions, slurring his words. At one point, he closes his eyes. Members of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, however, weren’t buying Nakagawa’s story. “[Nakagawa’s] responsibility as a Cabinet member is being questioned,” DPJ leader Ichiro Ozawa said, according to Kyodo.

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“It’s not a simple matter of shame,” added DPJ Secretary General Yukio Hatoyama. “The damage to the national interest was immeasurable.” Some members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party also called for Nakagawa to step down or be fired. But Prime Minister Taro Aso, who met with Nakagawa Monday, supported his finance minister. “I thank him for having done a lot of work well,” Aso told reporters, adding that he had heard Nakagawa had taken sleeping pills prior to the news conference. The DPJ plans to introduce its censure motion, which is nonbinding, Tuesday in the House of Councillors, which it controls.

First ex-Khmer Rouge member faces genocide court

Kaing Guek Eav ran a prison where people were tortured and killed under the Khmer Rouge.
A former member of Cambodia’s genocidal Khmer Rouge regime became the first from the ultra-Maoist movement to stand trial before a U.N.-backed tribunal on Tuesday.

Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, faces charges that include crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva conventions during the regime’s 1975-1979 rule. He is standing trial just outside the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh before the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, which is made up of Cambodian and international judges. At least 1.7 million people — nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population — died under the Khmer Rouge from execution, disease, starvation and overwork, according to the Documentation Center of Cambodia. The news of the trial’s start made headlines in the country, and people were feeling “very numb,” said Youk Chhang, head of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, where about 20 members of the public had gathered to watch the televised proceedings. “It’s important for Cambodian history, but it’s not exciting the public because it’s not a senior leader,” he told CNN.com by telephone. Still, there was some relief that one of the regime’s former top leaders was facing justice — though Tuesday’s hearing was primarily procedural. “I think there is a feeling of, well you know finally — now it’s finally happening after all these years of waiting — hearing, fighting, negotiating,” he said. “People have that kind of sense of relief that it’s now moving. When I ask people around the center today people say, ‘Oh, it’s about time.'”

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“I think perhaps the expectation is not watching this, but watching later … what they want to see the most is the final judgment of the Khmer Rouge leaders,” he added. One man at the center watching the proceedings, 37-year-old Quen Ieng, said through a translator that the start of the trial was a good step for Cambodia. “It’s for those who have died,” said the carpenter who survived the regime. Four of the regime’s other former leaders are also awaiting trial before the tribunal for war crimes and crimes against humanity. A former teacher, Duch ran the Tuol Sleng prison, a high school converted into a center where people were tortured and killed, in Phnom Penh. He was head of the Santebal, which was in charge of internal security and operating prison camps, according to the Cambodia Tribunal Monitor, a group of academic and nonprofit organizations. Duch was indicted on August 12, 2008, the group said.

Founder of Islamic TV station accused of beheading wife

Muzzammil Hassan has been charged with murder in the death of his wife, Aasiya Hassan.
The founder of an Islamic television station in upstate New York aimed at countering Muslim stereotypes has confessed to beheading his wife, authorities said.

Muzzammil Hassan was charged with second-degree murder after police found the decapitated body of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, at the Bridges TV station in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, said Andrew Benz, Orchard Park’s police chief. Hassan was arrested Thursday. His wife filed for divorce January 6, and police had responded to several domestic violence calls at the couple’s home, Benz said. Hassan went directly to the police station after his wife’s death and confessed to killing her, Benz told CNN. Benz declined to give further details. Attempts to reach an attorney for Hassan were unsuccessful, and his family didn’t return calls from CNN. He had two children, 4 and 6, with his wife. He had two other children, 17 and 18, from his previous marriage.

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He launched Bridges TV, billed as the first English-language cable channel targeting Muslims inside the United States, in 2004. At the time, Hassan said he hoped the network would balance negative portrayals of Muslims following the attacks of September 11, 2001. The station’s staff is “deeply shocked and saddened by the murder of Aasiya Hassan and the subsequent arrest of Muzzammil Hassan,” a statement from Bridges TV said. “Our deepest condolences and prayers go out to the families of the victim,” the statement said.

Police shoot, kill chimp that attacked woman

One woman has been hospitalized with serious injuries to her face, neck and hands after a pet chimpanzee attacked her at a friend’s home in Stamford, Connecticut.

The victim, in her 50s, had just arrived at her friend’s house when the chimp, named Travis, became irate and attacked, according to Stamford Police Capt. Rich Conklin. Travis’ caretaker tried to pull the primate off her friend but was unsuccessful. She then called 911 before grabbing a butcher knife and stabbing the chimp. Stamford police shot the chimp multiple times when he ripped off a side mirror and tried to enter a police cruiser, Conklin said. Travis returned to the house and died inside. Conklin estimated Travis to be in his 20s, weighing close to 200 pounds. The police captain also said this isn’t the first interaction his officers have had with Travis — the chimp escaped in 2003 and “wreaked havoc” on the streets of Stamford for a couple of hours.

NTSB: Identical aircraft landed 27 minutes behind fatal flight

Only a few pieces of the Continental Connection Dash 8 turboprop were recognizable after the crash.
Trailing what would become a fatal flight by some 27 minutes, the same kind of aircraft operated by the same airline traveled the same route last week and landed safely, the NTSB said Monday.

The pilot of the second Continental Connection flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Buffalo, New York, reported “moderate icing” during the trip and “made it to destination in Buffalo,” said Steve Chealander of the National Transportation Safety Board. The second plane was a Bombardier Dash 8 Q400, like the plane that crashed Thursday night near the Buffalo airport, killing 49 people on board and one person on the ground. Also like the fatal flight, the aircraft was operated on the Continental Connection route by Colgan Air, Chealander said. Possible icing — and how the aircraft and the flight crew performed if icing was an issue — has become a focus in the aftermath of the crash of Flight 3407. The pilot and first officer of the flight discussed “significant” ice buildup on the aircraft’s windshield and wings before the crash, the NTSB said after listening to the cockpit voice recorder. Chealander said Monday that he had been asked about possible icing on the aircraft’s tail. “If there’s icing on the wings, there’s icing on the tail,” he said. “The significance of that is yet to be determined.” The flight data recorder indicated the plane’s deicing system was activated 11 minutes after takeoff from Newark and remained on until the crash, according to the NTSB. Chealander said investigators have recovered most of the pieces of that system and will examine those materials to determine whether the system was operating properly.

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Chealander also said questionnaires were being sent to every pilot who flew in the Buffalo vicinity the night of the crash to find out what icing conditions they might have encountered. He said the only report to air traffic controllers of “severe” icing that night came from a pilot “well south of the Buffalo area.” On Sunday, Chealander gave details of the final violent seconds of the flight, saying the flight data recorder indicated that in the final seconds, the plane’s nose pitched drastically up, then down, and the plane then rolled left 46 degrees and then right 105 degrees, or past the 90-degree vertical point. Before impact in a residential neighborhood, the plane fell 800 feet in five seconds, Chealander said. On Monday, he said about half the aircraft wreckage had been removed from the crash site and taken for detailed examination. Giving an indication of the explosive nature of the impact and subsequent fire, Chealander said wreckage is being taken away “in bins and on trailers.”

He said investigators hope to have all wreckage removed from the crash site by Wednesday, when a snowstorm is forecast for the area. Authorities have not discussed the status of the removal of victims’ remains since Saturday night, when they said 15 bodies had been recovered.

Will Clinton’s Obama Attacks Backfire?

Will Clintons Obama Attacks Backfire?

Correction Appended: December 11, 2007

It started in earnest a couple of weeks ago when Hillary Clinton questioned how much Barack Obama’s time spent living in Indonesia as a child could actually help him make foreign policy decisions as a commander-in-chief. “Voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next President will face,” Clinton said November 20 in Shenandoah, Iowa. “I think we need a President with more experience than that.”

Then Clinton announced in an interview with CBS that she was sick of being a punching bag for Obama and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards and that she intended to fight back. “After you have been attacked as often as I have from several of my opponents, you cannot just absorb it. You have to respond,” she said.

Since that declaration Clinton has done just that, attacking Obama’s plans for health care, Social Security reform and diplomacy with Iran. She even went so far as to dig up a kindergarten essay of Obama’s entitled “I Want to Be President” to accuse him of lying about not having a lifelong lust for the Oval Office. “So you decide which makes more sense: Entrust our country to someone who is ready on day one … or to put America in the hands of someone with little national or international experience, who started running for president the day he arrived in the U.S. Senate,” Clinton said in Iowa Monday. But at a time when two new Iowa polls show Obama actually pulling into the lead and Clinton losing support among women, some political observers are wondering if Clinton will come to regret her newly assertive strategy. She already has the highest negative ratings in the race, and the shift in tactics comes only a month before the Iowa caucus — where voters are famous for their distaste of negative campaigning. Launching the attacks herself, rather than with via surrogates, only makes the move even riskier.

“The attack will backfire in two ways: it will reinforce the negative stereotype of Mrs. Clinton as a cold and calculating person who will do whatever it takes to win,” said Stephen J. Wayne, a government professor at Georgetown University and author of The Road to the White House. “And two, it will make Mr. Obama seem to be the less shrill and more emotionally mature candidate.”

John Norris, who ran Senator John Kerry’s Iowa campaign in 2004 and now serves as an adviser to Obama’s campaign, said that’s what they were banking on. “Barack positioned himself as drawing distinctions with Hillary,” Norris said in an interview. “You don’t want to get too negative — he’s come close to the line but I don’t think he’s gone over it with Iowa voters.” Clinton is “the one who made it personal by calling him naïve — that was the first personal attack in the campaign,” Norris said. “It’s not a good position to be in — being forced to go negative in the last month.”

The Obama campaign has started a website which almost gleefully tracks all of Clinton’s attacks. And in an e-mail sent to supporters Monday asking for donations, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe cited the Des Moines Register poll that also showed Clinton with the highest negatives of any candidate. “And sure enough, less than 12 hours after the poll results were released, the Clinton campaign launched multiple frantic, baseless attacks against Barack Obama,” Plouffe wrote, calling for 10,000 people to donate over the next 48 hours in response. “The emerging pattern is disturbing: as Senator Clinton’s poll numbers slide, the campaign of ‘inevitability’ becomes more desperate and negative by the day. Barack will always respond swiftly and forcefully with the truth when attacked.”

Negative campaigning has not had a history of success in Iowa. In 2004 Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean committed what some described as “murder-suicide” with their attacks on each other, opening the door for Kerry. In 1984 John Glenn’s attacks on Walter Mondale helped to land Gary Hart a surprisingly strong second place showing, which helped lead to his upset of Mondale in New Hampshire. The person who could stand to gain the most this time from the negative attacks is John Edwards. His campaign, which hasn’t been shy about attacking Clinton in recent months, has remained remarkably silent in recent days. “Edwards has been a pretty harsh critic of the Clinton campaign himself, so one could argue that when everybody goes negative no one gains from it,” said Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist who is remaining neutral this cycle.

Clinton has insisted that her attacks against Obama are substantive, not personal. “There’s a big difference between our courage and our convictions, what we believe and what we’re willing to fight for,” Clinton told reporters traveling this past weekend with her in Iowa aboard the first press plane of Clinton’s campaign. That difference, she said, is “between someone who talks the talk, and somebody who’s walked the walk.” Asked directly whether she intended to raise questions about Obama’s character, she replied: “It’s beginning to look a lot like that. You know, it really is.”

Clinton’s harsh new rhetoric has not won much support, either from pundits or other Democrats. “I could see the desire to raise the salience of personal traits — because her strengths are experience and strength of character,” said Stephen Ansolabehere, a political science professor at MIT and author of the book Going Negative. “But her choice surprised me — she might be emphasizing the wrong thing. Given how close this is in the polls, especially a month out, this might be a very risky strategy for her.”

“This series of slurs doesn’t serve HRC well,” said Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton, in a blog post. “It will turn off voters in Iowa, as in the rest of the country. If she’s worried her polls are dropping, this is not the way to build them back up.”

Perhaps the biggest downside to Clinton’s negative attacks is that the press seems to be focusing on nothing else, at least for the moment. “What’s tough about the stories from this weekend is that they’re telegraphing — they’re more about going negative than the substance of the attacks,” Simmons said. “It underlines the case that Edwards and Obama have been making that she’s practicing politics as usual.” And for Clinton, that kind of an association could be the costliest negative of all.

The original version of this story incorrectly stated that Gary Hart beat
Walter Mondale in the 1988 Iowa Caucuses. In fact, the two ran against each
other in 1984, and Hart came in second to Mondale in Iowa.

Not enough evidence to charge Phelps, sheriff says

Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps will not face criminal charges in connection with a November party at which he was photographed using a bong, a South Carolina sheriff said Monday.

“We do not believe we have enough evidence to prosecute anyone” who was at the party in Columbia, South Carolina, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott told reporters, adding that authorities are ending their investigation into Phelps. “We had a photo, and we had him saying he was sorry for his inappropriate behavior,” Lott said. “That behavior could have been going to a party. … He never said, ‘I smoked marijuana.’ He never confessed to that. We didn’t have physical evidence. We didn’t have enough where we could go arrest him.” Phelps, 23, who won a record eight gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China, admitted “regrettable behavior” after a British newspaper published the photograph about two weeks ago. The tabloid News of the World showed Phelps using the bong during what it said was a November party at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Watch the sheriff say he won’t prosecute Phelps » A bong is a device commonly used to smoke marijuana. University police and Columbia police both said they would not pursue charges against Phelps. Lott said he has not spoken to Phelps, but hopes the swimming champion has learned from his mistakes and is willing to share an anti-drug message with children. Phelps said Monday he had learned some “important lessons” from the incident.

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“I’m glad this matter is put to rest,” he said in a written statement. “But there are also some important lessons that I’ve learned. For me, it’s all about recognizing that I used bad judgment and it’s a mistake I won’t make again. For young people especially — be careful about the decisions you make. One bad decision can really hurt you and the people you care about. “I really appreciate the support my family and fans have shown me, and now I will move forward and dive back into the pool, having put this whole thing behind me.” Watch Phelps acknowledge making ‘a mistake’ » Phelps told CNN affiliate WBAL in Baltimore, Maryland, “This is something that I need to learn from, will learn from and have learned from.” “I know that a lot of people make mistakes, and the best way to learn from them is changing things,” Phelps told WBAL. Lott said the photo that surfaced of Phelps put him and his department in a “no-win situation.” If he had ignored it, he said, he would have faced criticism, but he also was criticized for investigating.

However, he said, the photo did initiate an investigation into goings-on at the home where the party took place, and some people were arrested on suspicion of drug possession. The home has been the focus of previous drug-related investigations, he said. He defended his investigation, saying, “As a cop, my responsibility is to enforce the law, not to create it or ignore it. Marijuana in the state of South Carolina is illegal.”

Face transplant patient regains self-confidence

This illustration represents the transformation of a patient who underwent a near-total face transplant in December.
The woman who received the first-ever near-total face transplant in the United States told her doctor she has regained her self-confidence, said Dr. Maria Siemionow, head of plastic surgery research at the Cleveland Clinic and leader of the transplant team.

The patient, who prefers to be anonymous, is finally able to breathe through her nose, smell, eat solid foods and drink out of a cup, Siemionow told participants of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago over the weekend. The complex surgery, a 22-hour procedure, took place in December at the Cleveland Clinic. The patient received her new face in one graft from a donor cadaver. “I believe this procedure is justified because you need a face to face the world,” Siemionow said. Watch an animation of the face transplant » The patient had previously “suffered severe facial trauma,” the Cleveland Clinic said. She had no nose, right eye or upper jaw before the procedure, and could not smell or eat normally. People would call her names on the street, Siemionow said. The surgery gave the patient a nose with nasal lining, as well as a palate. This, combined with the olfactory receptors in the brain, gave the patient the ability to smell, Siemionow said. Social reincorporation is as important as the face transplant itself, Siemionow said. At this point, the patient doesn’t want to face the “common world,” but she is facing her family, the surgeon said.

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The patient said she is happy because when she puts her hands on her face, she feels a nose, Siemionow said. She can also taste a hamburger and pizza, and drink coffee from a cup, the “things we take for granted every day,” Siemionow said. The patient also received lower eyelids, upper lip, skin, muscles, bone, hard palate, arteries, veins and nerves. As for the aesthetics of the new face, Siemionow suggested that restoring function was more important. “At this point, no one is really looking at beautification,” she said. Siemionow, who has been working on face transplant research for 20 years, received approval from the Institutional Review Board in 2004 to conduct a full facial transplant. Only patients who had already exhausted all possible options for conventional repair were considered for the transplant, Siemionow said. Currently, cancer patients are not candidates for face transplants because transplant recipients must take immunosuppression drugs for life so that the body does not reject the donated tissue, Siemionow said. In the future, however, lifelong immunosuppression may not be required, she said. While burn damage is normally patched with pieces of excess skin from a person’s own body, this does not work if the whole face needs to be covered — the skin of the entire back is less than half of what would be needed to cover the full face and scalp, Siemionow said. Previously, three facial transplants had been completed — two in France and one in China. The Chinese recipient, Li Guoxing, died in July of unknown causes, Guo Shuzhong, a doctor involved in the case, confirmed to CNN. One of the French face transplant recipients was a man who had a genetic disorder that created large tumors on his face. The other French patient had been bitten by a dog. The Chinese patient had been attacked by a bear. European news media recently reported that a surgeon in Spain received approval for another face transplant, which would be the fifth in the world. Researchers are also making headway into treatments for disorders that give rise to facial abnormalities, experts say. They are identifying genes that become mutated and cause the skull and facial features to become distorted.

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“We’re moving into the arena where we can do medical treatment,” Dr. Ethylin Jabs, professor of developmental and regenerative biology at Mount Sinai Medical School, said at the conference. One example is Treacher Collins syndrome, a condition found in one in every 50,000 births, which affects the development of bones and other tissues in the face. Scientists have determined that the gene TCOF1 is involved in the disorder, and research is ongoing into the precise function of this protein.

By looking at the genetic underpinnings of disorders that lead to facial deformities, scientists can also understand what accounts for the normal differences in face and skull types. “These are going to be some of the genes that cause some of that variation,” Jabs said.

Bill Clinton: I should have better regulated derivatives

Former President Bill Clinton was in Austin, Texas, over the weekend to host the Clinton Global Initiative University, which encourages college students and administrators to come up with creative ways to address global issues.

CNN’s John Roberts sat down with Clinton to ask him about how the Obama administration is performing, how his wife, Hillary Clinton, is doing as secretary of state, and what responsibility he may have for the current financial crisis. John Roberts: Mr. President, in terms of the overall economic downturn, Time magazine had an article out this week in which it named 25 of the people most responsible for the economic downturn, and you were there. They, they had a picture of you in what looked like a police lineup. They had a little button where you could vote who’s the most responsible They pointed to your signing of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. I wonder what you think about that. Former President Bill Clinton: I think that the only thing that our administration did or didn’t do that we should have done is to try to set in motion some more formal regulation of the derivatives market. They’re wrong in saying that the elimination of the Glass-Steagall division between banks and investment banks contributed to this. Investment banks were already…banks were already doing investment business and investment companies were already in the banking business. The bill I signed actually at least puts some standards there. And if you look at the evidence of the banks that have gotten in trouble, the ones that were most directly involved in there … in a diversified portfolio tended to do better. Some of the conservatives said that I was responsible because I enforced the Community Reinvestment Act, and they said that’s what made all these subprime mortgages be issued. That’s also false. The community banks, the people that loan their money in the community instead of buying these esoteric securities, they’re doing quite well. Watch Clinton defend his economic record » Roberts: So what’s your take on what Sen. [John] McCain said, that [President] Obama is off to a terrible start

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Clinton: I just disagree with him, but we have a different economic philosophy. For example, there’s 100 economic studies which show that you get a better return in terms of economic growth on extending unemployment benefits or investing money in energy conservation jobs to improve buildings than you do giving people in my income group a tax cut. But it doesn’t stop them. Those guys are on automatic. You punch a button and they give the answer they give you. There are a lot of tax cuts in that bill — for middle-class families, for lower-income families. There’s a $7,500 tax credit that will kick in when these plug-in electric vehicles go on the market, which could help us to become the world’s leader in that and secure us jobs for a decade or more. Roberts: Do you really think the president can change Washington Can he bring the type of change to Washington that he campaigned on He’s already up against a wall against the Republicans in Congress — not quite as big a wall as you found yourself up against in 1993, but he does seem to be having some difficulty. Do you think he really can bring change to Washington

Clinton on ‘King’

Bill Clinton weighs in on President Obama, his wife’s new role and much more.
Tomorrow/Tuesday, 9 p.m. ET on CNN

see full schedule »

Clinton: Here’s what I think will happen. I think that as we go along, if the American people stick with him and if he begins to have good results, then I think more and more Republicans will cooperate with him because they will see that he’s right or because he carried their states or for any number of reasons. Roberts: How long do you think he has Clinton: First, his next big challenge is to come forward with the details of how we’re going to rewrite as many home mortgages as we can. How we’re going to take some of these bad assets off the banks’ books so they can get cleaned up and they can loan money and what conditions will we give more money to banks for. In other words, they’re going to have to loan money from now on. That’s what [Treasury] Secretary [Timothy] Geithner is working on. Those three things make a lot of sense. That’s our long-term answer. Roberts: But how much time do you think he has A hundred days, six months, a year, two years Clinton: The public, I believe, will support him at least for a year in trying to work these things out. And he’s been very straight forward in saying it might take as much as two years for the economy to really get in gear again. My instinct is it will happen a little quicker than that. Roberts: What do you think of the job that President Obama did on steering the stimulus plan through Congress, and does he in fact have the experience necessary to be a good president, reach across party lines and craft a bipartisan bill Clinton: Well first of all, he has reached across, and it takes two to tango. I find it amazing that the Republicans who doubled the debt of the country in eight years and produced no new jobs doing it, gave us an economic record that was totally bereft of any productive result are now criticizing him for spending money. You know, I’m a fiscal conservative, I balanced the budget, I ran surpluses. If I were in his position today, I would be doing what he’s doing. Why Because the problem with the economy is the housing decline led to the general decline in values. Assets are going down. This stimulus is our bridge over troubled waters till the bank reforms kick in. He did the right thing, he did everything he could to get Republican support. He took some of their tax-cutting ideas. But if you look at this bill, it is designed do three things. And it does all three. It puts money in the hands of people who need money to survive — unemployment benefits, food stamp benefits, tax cuts. Second thing it does is to give money to state and local governments so they don’t have to lay a million people off or raise taxes. Either one would be bad for the economy. The third thing is it does is create new jobs. Given the Congress he had and the environment and the speed with which they had to move, I think he did a fine job with this. Roberts: Your wife is on a big trip over to the Far East, talking with the leaders of China. She’s going to be taking on the North Korea issue. There’s been some talk in the last week that with the appointment of all of these high profile envoys, from Richard Holbrooke to South Asia, George Mitchell to the Middle East, Dennis Ross in the same area, Vice President Joe Biden out there talking about foreign policy, that maybe she might get a little bit elbowed out here when she it comes to the big projects. Are you concerned about that Do you talk to her about that Clinton: No. I’m not concerned about it. And these envoys are her idea, both the idea of the envoys and the people who were selected. She thinks that Joe Biden has got one of the best foreign policy minds and certainly some of the most important foreign policy experience we’ve had. Let me remind you when I was president, Al Gore had special relationships with both Russia and South Africa. And it didn’t undermine the authority of either Warren Christopher or Madeleine Albright as secretary of state. The reason they’re doing this, and the reason the president agreed to support it — and he came to the State Department to support the announcements of Holbrooke and Mitchell — is that they all want to get off to a fast start and you’ve got to do a lot of things at once. It’s inconceivable that she could devote the time and detailed attention right now to having a diplomatic strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that exactly parallels the military strategy that [the head of U.S. General Command] Gen. [David] Petraeus has or figures out how to start the Middle East peace negotiations again and what the timetable is and do all this other stuff. So as long as they’re working on a team and nobody is playing sharp elbows and this is a team — these guys have got a team concept. The president has made it clear he wants everybody to be on the team, they all report in to her as well as to him. They’re all working together. I’m very impressed by that. I think that she made a judgment that we needed in the country’s interest to do everything at once. And I think she’s right. Clinton says U.S. envoys are part of a team » Roberts: Of course, bilateral relations between the United States and China, a big focus of your administration, did you talk to her at all about this trip Clinton: Sure I did. Just like she consulted with a lot of people, we talked about it. I told her what my take on the Chinese is and especially in light of the fact that I work there now in AIDS, I have a big AIDS project there. And I know how they think economically and I think she’ll do quite well there. I think she made a really good decision obviously, she had to go to Japan and south Korea, but going to Indonesia, the word’s biggest Muslim country, sends a loud signal because Indonesia has a part of it, Bali, which is predominantly Hindu, which has been the subject of terrorist attacks. It’s a good deal, I mean the whole thing, it’s the right place to start. Roberts: A couple of real quick questions, what president do you think you’re most like

Clinton: Well, personally, I’m not sure. One guy wrote a book saying I was most like Thomas Jefferson, but the times in which I governed were most like Theodore Roosevelt. And the results I received were similar. He had enormous success, the country was better off when he quit than when he started, but several of the things he recommended were not actually done until his cousin, Franklin Roosevelt, became president more than 20 years later. I think a lot of things that I recommended in terms of health care reform will come to fruition now that we have more modern Democratic Congress and a new Democratic Congress and the Obama administration there. I’ll be surprised if we don’t get health care reform and some of the things I recommended. I’m excited about it.