What have been your greatest accomplishments and failures?<br /><br /> <br />Question: What have been your greatest accomplishments and failures? <br /> <br />George Mitchell: Well, most times when I'm asked that question, it deals specifically with legislation- what's the biggest thing you ever did in that respect? And there are quite a few, and I try not to select any. Perhaps illustrative was the major Clean Air bill that I was a principal supporter and author of in 1990. That was a very contentious bill-- took years and years of effort, and a very long legislative process, and I devoted a lot of my life to it. That, probably in legislative terms, was- I don't know if it was the most important, but it was the most comprehensive and a major bill. Outside of that, I tend to talk about two things: first, my work in Northern Ireland. I spent a total of about five years, chaired three separate sets of proceedings. I wasn't there for five years non-stop-- coming and going-- but for the most part I was there for long periods of time during that stretch, and we just in the past month have celebrated the tenth anniversary of the so-called Good Friday Agreement, the peace agreement, which resulted from one of the negotiations which I chaired. That was very significant. I like Northern Ireland. I like the people, I like the place. I still go there quite a bit. I serve as the Chancellor of the Queens University in Northern Ireland, which is a large institution of higher learning there. And so that takes me back and in other capacities, I go back probably three or four times a year, and I like to take my children there, to give my young children, to give them some sense of what was important in my life. The other thing that I spent a lot of my time on and that I'm most proud of is when I left the Senate, I created a scholarship program for needy students from Maine. Started small-- I got started in a funny way, I had raised money in preparation for re-election, then I decided not to run, and so I wrote to every contributor and I said, "You can have your money back <br />if you want it, but if you leave it with me, I'm gonna use it for scholarships." And about half took the money back and about half left it with me-- that got us started and I've since spent-- that was thirteen years ago and I've spent a great time in the intervening thirteen years raising money, and we now provide a scholarship to a graduate from each public high school in Maine, 130 of them, each year. So, we have a lot of kids have gone through the process and I spent a lot of time at it, and it's very heartening to see it, because I myself, as I mentioned earlier in the interview, I wasn't certain I was gonna go to college. My parents had absolutely no money. My father wasn't working at the time, and I got a lot of help from a lot of people, some scholarship assistance, a lot of work effort, Bowdoin College, which I went to- a great institution, to which I owe much of what I've been able to do in life. They helped me out with a lot of jobs, so I kinda worked two, three, four jobs all the time while I was in school, and it not only helped me get through school, but it taught me, I think, a good work ethic. So, the scholarship fund means a lot to me. I meet with these students each year and I see in a lot of them where I was at the time-- uncertain, insecure, don't really know what you're gonna do with life, but there's a potential.
