President Bill Clinton

Imagine my surprise when I came back to work from lunch Tuesday. It was Super Tuesday Two and Senator Hillary Clinton was in the fight of her life to stay alive in the Democratic race for President. So, on my voice mail was a person from the Hillary Clinton Campaign asking if we’d be interested in interviewing President Clinton that afternoon?! I thought about it for a few seconds and called ‘em right back!

I was a bit nervous. We are a 501 (c)3 and are not allowed to endorse any candidates. I knew we couldn’t let him on live and just urge everyone to vote for his wife. I thought maybe his people might decline us the interview if I told them we would have to record the Former President’s comments and then do some editing.

I called and explained and they were still interested! We have stations in Amarillo, Lubbock, and Midland/Odessa so it made sense that they would like to reach segments of all three with one phone call. So. I started preparing questions and waited for the call.

FINALLY they called at 5:30 p.m. and gave me the number and code to join the conference call and wait my turn. I heard Clinton wrapping up his last answer to the guy before me and then he asked the President for a liner! So this guy is saying, “could you say, ‘you’re listening to so and so on Fox such and such.’” After two or three tries you could tell that President Clinton was getting frustrated with the guy and told him he was having trouble hearing him. He got through it sorta monotone with a half stumble and that was good enough. My turn.

Someone from the campaign got on the line. “Mike Shaw are you on the line?” “Yes I am.” Then Bill Clinton’s voice. I thanked him for his time and made the comment that his schedule must be grueling. He agreed with that but said he was enjoying traveling around Ohio and Texas and that he had been to all three cities, Amarillo, Lubbock and Odessa. Then he just kept on going. Urged everyone to caucus after they vote for Hillary. The Texas two-step. Only time you can vote twice and not get in trouble., etc.

I was then able to ask him three questions before we ran out of time. Actually, I sorta stole the time for the last one. I expected him to be personable and smart and I was actually surprised just how well he handled all three of my questions. Especially when I asked about his wife’s faith and how that might help shape her policy. As he was answering I was thinking that he sounded like he had actually read James a few times. Not sure why that surprised me. I guess you look at all of the controversy surrounding his time in office and I suppose I was thinking that maybe he hadn’t read a lot of Bible. Ever since the interview, I’ve been wondering, and hoping, that he has a relationship with God and that just maybe we can visit in Heaven about the interview and maybe some other stuff.

The time went by too fast. I ended up talking to him maybe five minutes. If I had to do it over again, I would have ditched my third question and instead followed up on his wife’s faith. I would have liked to ask him to reconcile the answer he gave about having a faith that works vs. her stance on abortion and stem cell research. Unfortunately I didn’t think on my feet fast enough and the moment passed.

All in all, it was a very interesting experience. I mentioned to him before we got off the phone that we have a lot of stations in Michigan. If they end up re-voting, I would like to talk to him again! We shall see.

Here’s a link to the three questions and answers on the stations web site.