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The Nation: An Interview with the President: The Jury Is Out

TIME's Man of the Year was interviewed by Editor in Chief Hedley Donovan and Managing Editor Henry Grunwald last week at the White House. With them were Washington Bureau Chief Hugh Sidey and White House Correspondent Jerrold Schecter. Excerpts:

MR. PRESIDENT, OF THE MANY DECISIONS THAT YOU HAD TO MAKE IN THIS PAST YEAR, COULD YOU TELL US WHICH WAS THE TOUGHEST? GIVE US AN EVALUATION.

The most important decision that I made this year was the decision to open communications with China. I could do it where others could not....

Quotes of the Day »

RAY KELLY, New York City Police Commissioner, on the arrest of a New Jersey man in one of the nation's most baffling missing-children cases, the disappearance more than three decades ago of 6-year-old Etan Patz.
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