Guest: Pres. Bill Clinton

President Bill Clinton ventured into the No Spin Zone for the very first time. The entire, unedited interview can be seen at FoxNews.com; here are a few highlights:

O'Reilly: What's this class warfare business the Democrats are foisting on the country? We didn't see that during your administration.
Clinton: I don't look at it as class warfare. I think if you look at what's happened over the past 30 years the middle class has lost ground. Even before the financial collapse, the median income was $2,000 a year lower than it was, after inflation, when I left office ... We have to change the whole job structure, we've got to basically reorient our economy toward the future. That's the real answer.
O'Reilly: But that's not being discussed. What's being discussed by the Occupy Wall Street people and some elements on the far left are the 'one-percenters,' me and you, that we're not paying our fair share. I think I am paying my fair share. I don't mind paying 40%, which was the high under you, but I don't want $500 million going to Solyndra and it's bankrupt. Am I crazy?
Clinton: No, but I think the idea of moving to a cleaner energy future and doing more energy efficiency makes sense. And what happened to Solyndra was a unique case ... the price of photovoltaic cells dropped so much that it became uneconomical. I personally prefer tax credits.

O'Reilly: 28 out of 50 state attorneys-general don't want 'Obamacare' and are suing the federal government. Is the Supreme Court going to overturn it?
Clinton: I doubt it, I hope not. The people who are defending the status quo are defending a system that is the only system in the world that spends 17.5% of our national income to insure 84% of the people. And we don't get better health outcomes.
O'Reilly: You know the solution to that - let the insurance companies compete nationwide, let everybody get in the game. Your party doesn't want that.
Clinton: That's one place where I agree with the Republicans. I'm for the individual mandate, but I do believe that insurance companies should be able to compete.

O'Reilly: I've got to give you a hard time on the border. When you took office in 1993, about 4-and-a-half million people were coming across the border. When you left office there were 7-million people a year coming across. Why couldn't you secure it?
Clinton: Because the economy got better. And it's a long border. We had a fence in San Diego and it worked pretty well.
O'Reilly: Why didn't you extend it all the way through?
Clinton: Because back then even the Texas Republicans didn't want it.
O'Reilly: You could have done it by executive order.
Clinton: I don't know if I could have or not, but nobody was upset about it then. People were moving back and forth across the Rio Grande ... If you really think we should build a fence, that's the only way to secure it.
O'Reilly: I do, and I think the federal government has let us down since 1984 in the sense that they have not secured the southern border.

When President Clinton returned for a second segment, the conversation shifted to domestic politics.

O'Reilly: I'd say President Obama's chances to be reelected are 50-50 at this point. Would that be fair?
Clinton: I think they're a little better than that. His approval is up in the past few weeks.
O'Reilly: You worked with Newt Gingrich. Do you respect him?
Clinton: I respect his ability to think and do, and I eventually hammered out a productive relationship with him.
O'Reilly: Do you respect him as a man?
Clinton: I don't disrespect anybody who works with me in good faith. He was way more political than I would have been. He defended what he calls 'scorched-earth politics' and I certainly was the beneficiary of that.
O'Reilly: Was he an enemy of yours while you were in the White House?
Clinton: Until he got to be Speaker and until the government shutdown changed the public mood ... When we were working together I enjoyed it and I think he has a lot of knowledge and he comes up with some quite creative ideas.
O'Reilly: What about Mitt Romney? Do you know him?
Clinton: A little bit. Unlike you, I like the Massachusetts health care bill. The Massachusetts system is more expensive than the rest of America, but it was before the health care bill passed. Inflation in health care costs in Massachusetts has been less than in the country as a whole since it passed.
O'Reilly: If you had to vote between Romney and Gingrich, you'd go for?
Clinton: I am not going to get into that Republican primary.

Guests: Monica Crowley & Alan Colmes

The Factor invited Alan Colmes and Monica Crowley to assess the conversation with Bill Clinton. "I thought it was quite substantial," Colmes said, "and I'd urge people to go to BillOReilly.com and watch the whole thing. The interview has a lot of wonkish stuff but you and he sparred very well about things." Crowley praised Clinton's political acumen. "He could have talked about the fact that he produced a balanced budget and the fact that Obama refused to even entertain any of the paths laid forward by a bipartisan commission. Bill Clinton is a brilliant political strategist - he did what he could with a Republican Congress, he did welfare reform and a balanced budget. Barack Obama is the exact opposite, he's a pure leftist ideologue." The Factor concluded that right now "Bill Clinton is the face of the Democratic Party."

Guest: Newt Gingrich

The Factor welcomed presidential contender Newt Gingrich, who defended his tough talk about renegade federal judges. "People have blown this way out of proportion," he stated. "There are cases where you have to rebalance the powers between the branches of government, and in those cases Congress and the President have the authority to respond to the courts. All I'm suggesting is that we don't have to tolerate judges running over our liberties in ways that are very dangerous." The Factor told Gingrich that he had used intemperate language: "With all due respect, you came off as imperious in this, and people have that perception of you anyway."

Newt Gingrich returned for a second segment in which he addressed his recent decline in the polls. "There are millions of dollars in negative advertising saying all sorts of things that are untrue," he stated. "People here in Iowa are being bombarded with negative robo-calls and direct mail and they are sick of it. I've been asking people a simple question - would you like a positive campaign or politics as usual with these negative ads? Overwhelmingly people are telling me they're sick of these ads and I think that by some time next week the ads will be counter-productive. I've challenged Mitt Romney to compete on a positive basis rather than try to tear down my candidacy."

Guests: Kimberly Guilfoyle & Lis Wiehl

Legal analysts Lis Wiehl and Kimberly Guilfoyle evaluated Newt Gingrich's stance on federal judges. "Newt Gingrich said the judicial branch is the weakest of the three branches of government," Wiehl stated, "but that's not how our Founding Fathers saw it. They saw three co-equal branches with checks and balances." Guilfoyle endorsed Gingrich's criticism of the judiciary, but not his suggestion that judges be subpoenaed. "I do believe there's a problem with some of the federal judges who appear to engage in political activism that is not rooted in law or our Constitution. One solution is what the Speaker has offered, but there's a legal question as to whether or not it violates the separation of powers." The legal analysts also examined the town of Saugus, Massachusetts, where the school superintendent tried to ban Santa from showing up at an elementary school. "This doesn't make any sense," Wiehl declared, "but he backtracked within 24 hours and admitted that he made a mistake. Santa is secular and Santa is back."

Kristy Holmes, Flowery Branch, GA: "Bill, Romney did well but I still feel like I'm being talked to and not with."

Patty Yaunt, Pacific Grove, CA: "Really excellent interview. I now know why President Obama would like to run against Romney. He's weak."

Bob Baker, Dennis, MA: "After that interview, I now understand that Newt is the smartest man in the room, but Mitt has the most common sense."

Graham Butler, Newfoundland, Canada: "I wasn't bothered by the SNL skit on Tim Tebow. But I'm looking forward to them mocking Muslim and Jewish deities. Right."

Tuesday's Patriot: Actress Maria Conchita Alonso, who denounced tyrant-loving actor and perpetual pinhead Sean Penn as a "communist a**hole" after he called her a "pig" when the two crossed paths at Los Angeles International airport.