Goodbye From Mr. Clinton

Bidding the nation an Oval Office goodbye, President Clinton urged the United States stick to fiscal discipline and an active international role.

In his farewell address on Thursday night, the president said "America has done well" during his eight years in the White House - a time of "dramatic transformation" in which Americans have "risen to every challenge," from record-breaking prosperity and balancing the federal budget to a cleaner environment.

During the seven-and-a-half minute speech, Mr. Clinton - whose two terms were marked by economic boom as well as by scandal and the second impeachment in U.S. history - said he was leaving office "more idealistic, more full of hope than the day I arrived and more confident than ever that America's best days lie ahead."

Making no mention of the Monica Lewinsky scandal that nearly drove him from office, Mr. Clinton said while there is no higher position than president, "there is no title I will wear more proudly than that of citizen."

Offering advice to the incoming administration, Mr. Clinton urged that the United States stay on the course of fiscal discipline and continue to pay down the national debt. It seemed to be a pointed alternative to President-elect Bush's proposal for sweeping tax cuts. Mr. Clinton turns over the presidency to Mr. Bush at noon Saturday.

Also in the speech, the president said that America must continue to lead in foreign affairs "and must not disentangle itself from the world."

Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush have disagreed over the use of U.S. forces in Europe. While the president has dispatched troops aggressively to Kosovo and the Balkans, the president-elect has promised to be more circumspect about sending American soldiers abroad.

At home, Mr. Clinton in his address said that the nation "must treat all our people with fairness and dignity, regardless of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation, and regardless of when they arrived in this country."

The speech capped the long, slow farewell Mr. Clinton began in December with speeches on foreign, domestic, and economic policy. Last week, he gave an exit address in New Hampshire, where he resuscitated his flagging 1992 campaign with his famous "last dog dies" speech, and this week paid final visits to Chicago, his wife Hillary's hometown, and Michigan.

On Wednesday, in his last official road trip, Mr. Clinton spent a few nostalgic hours in Arkansas, his home state. Tears welled in his eyes as he stood in the state House chamber - where he was sworn in as governor five times - and thanked lawmakers for a lifetime of political lessons that carried him to the White House and kept him there for eight years.

"I know perfectly well I wouldn't be president if it hadn't been for the people of Arkansas," he said later to a crowd gathered in a hangar at the Little Rock airport. "Through all the storms and all the sunshin," he said, serving as president was one of his greatest delights.

"There has never been a day ... that I have landed that helicopter on the back of the White House lawn and not felt a thrill, not felt like a 17-year-old boy looking at the White House for the first time," Mr. Clinton said.

Arm-in-arm with daughter Chelsea, Mr. Clinton stood on the corner of St. Vincent and the new President Clinton Avenue, pointing out businesses that sprang up since he left. He visited an ailing monsignor at a local hospital and mused about the small niceties of private life - driving his own car again, maybe even fixing up his long-stored Mustang.

"I've got a daughter about to graduate from college and a wife going into the Senate," Mr. Clinton said. "It seems to me one of the things I'll have to do is go to work, which won't do me any harm."

Before leaving town on Air Force One, he said he hopes his presidential library here will become "a real beacon" for public service, and urged fellow Arkansans to be proud that their small, rural state has left a credible, indelible impression on American politics.

"We proved that national politics ... is not the private province of some elite somewhere in some big, distant place," Mr. Clinton said. "People with common sense, with basic American roots ... can move this country forward."