[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George H. W. Bush (1992-1993, Book II)]
[August 19, 1992]
[Pages 1373-1376]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the Republican National Committee Gala Luncheon in Houston
August 19, 1992

    The President. Lod Cook, thank you, sir. Thank you all for that warm 
welcome. Thank you so very much. Thank you, Lod. Please be seated. Let 
me just single out at the beginning of these remarks Lod Cook, who does 
so much, not just for the party and for candidates but who's certainly 
done so much for Barbara and for me. Everything he touches works out, 
and I couldn't be more pleased to be at his side through this luncheon. 
This gives me an opportunity to thank him and all of you who made this 
luncheon quite clearly a tremendous success. I think this bodes well for 
what lies ahead.
    I want to single out a couple of people. I

[[Page 1374]]

thought that Boy Scout color guard was great, and so was the Boys Choir 
and the Houston Chorus; take great pride in them. Reverend Claude Payne 
is, as Lod said, Barbara and my home parish minister at St. Martin's 
Church here, and we're just delighted to be with him.
    I want to single out, of course, a man that did a great job firing 
up the troops last night, getting our message of hope and opportunity 
across the country, our distinguished keynoter, Phil Gramm. He did a 
superb job last night. We've got a lot, but let me just also add Rich 
Bond, who came in in this national committee, grabbed ahold of it, 
taking our message out there. He is a feisty devil, and he's doing a 
first-class job, too. And so, really, this then, with this dramatic 
entrance, is the first of our whistlestop tour. I think the train sure 
beats the hell out of the bus, frankly.
    I want to just salute the Vice President and Marilyn. Dan Quayle has 
served with great distinction. He's taken on a lot of substantive tasks 
and done them well. He's done his job with dignity and honor, and he's 
taken the best shots the other side can fire. If you ask me, he's given 
better than he's got. His head is up; he's ready to charge. And I am 
proud and honored to have him at my side in the convention and the days 
that lie ahead.
    Now, I know the excitement's building. Each hour we get closer to 
the moment everyone's waiting for, packed house at the Astrodome, 
nationwide TV audience. I'd be less than honest if I didn't tell you 
I've got a few butterflies. But I'll tell you, you're going to love 
Barbara's speech. [Laughter] But after she's through, then I get my turn 
tomorrow. I want to spell out where I'm going to take this country with 
your help over the next 4 years. But first, just a little bit about why 
we're here in Houston.
    Some of you may have read an interview by my opponent, the one he 
gave to the USA Today last week. It was absolutely incredible. He talked 
about how he's already planning the transition, figuring out who should 
be Deputy Assistant Under Secretary in every Washington agency, even 
where he will go to get away from the White House. Heck, I've expected 
to come forward Friday morning and find somebody measuring the drapes in 
the Oval Office.
    This guy got a problem up here? Are they with the press corps?
    I can't hear you. Please speak up. This is a crazy year, when they 
have credentials for the----
    Audience members. What about AIDS? What about AIDS? What about AIDS?
    Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
    The President. As I was saying--that guy--hey, listen, for those of 
you who haven't been around my line of work lately, this is normal. 
Don't get worried. [Laughter] Don't get worried.
    But let me just say this. I saw a demonstration out there on the 
television the other day, and let me be clear where I stand: Everybody 
has a right to protest, but I have a right to stand with our law 
enforcement people who have to put these protests in the proper 
perspective. Thank you, to those from the sheriff's office.
    Audience members. What about AIDS? What about AIDS? What about AIDS?
    The President. May I address myself to the gentleman's question? Our 
administration last year spent $4.3 billion on AIDS. That is 10 times as 
much for a person sick with AIDS as we spend on cancer. This year, we've 
asked for $4.9 billion, the highest research and prevention program in 
the world. We have the best scientists working on the problem. My heart 
is full of compassion, and we are doing what we can to get to the bottom 
of that.
    Now, does anybody else have something they would like to say while 
we're all standing?
    Audience members. What about AIDS? What about AIDS? What about AIDS?
    Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
    The President. Thank you very much.
    Anybody else like to be heard up here, because I 
have one or two things only that I want to say. I was telling you how my 
opponent gave an interview to the USA Today, and he talked about 
planning his transition and picking out who's going to be the Deputy 
Assistant Under Secretary in each Washington agency, where he'll go to 
get away from the White House. I expected to

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go to the Oval Office on Thursday to find him there in the Oval Office 
measuring the drapes. But I have a message: Put the drapes on hold, for 
pretty soon for you it is going to be curtains. We are going to take 
this to the American people.
    This week, right here in Houston, we began this conversation with 
the American people, talking about the issues that shape the world, 
about the values that are close to home. I'm talking about jobs and 
family and faith and about neighborhoods free from crime and about a 
world free from fear.
    If you listen to the other side tell it, you're for them if you're 
for change. But this election is not just about change, because change 
has a flip side, and that is called trust. When you get right down to 
it, the election is going to be like every other. When you pull that 
curtain closed and cast your vote on November 3d, trust matters. The 
American people are going to say, I trust President George Bush because 
he's made the tough decisions and he's conducted himself with honor and 
decency in that office.
    You know, I used this example the other day, that when a phone rings 
in the middle of the night at the White House, when a crisis comes half 
a world away, the American people do want to know that their leader has 
the experience, the background, and the guts to do the right thing. I am 
proud of the changes that we've made together. I am proud of our total 
victory in the cold war, proud that in the past 4 years more people have 
taken the first breath of freedom than at any time in human history. 
That is major change. That is significant in terms of world peace.
    But the job is not finished. There are plenty of wolves. The Soviet 
bear may be extinct, but there are plenty of wolves out there. As long 
as I am President, no madman will get his finger on the nuclear trigger. 
As long as I am Commander in Chief, America will remain safe and strong. 
I owe that to the American people.
    Electing our leader who will protect our Nation means trust in the 
traditional sense. But that's just part of the picture. Each election is 
a referendum on the future and what we want it to look like. I stake my 
claim on a very simple philosophy: To lead a great nation, you must 
first trust the people that you lead.
    And think about this fact: Nearly one out of every two delegates in 
Manhattan at that convention was on a government payroll. That's just 
not true in Houston. We are the party of real people: the preacher, the 
payroll meeter, the wage earner, the entrepreneur, the veteran, and yes, 
the volunteer, God bless them. And look at every big issue we face. 
You'll see a choice, a choice between we who put our faith in everyday 
Americans and they who put their faith in a big, unresponsive 
Government.
    If you haven't heard by now what that Government-first crowd has 
planned, let me just give you a couple of examples. First, they're 
calling for over $200 billion in new spending and another $150 billion 
in new taxes. Now, they're going to come back at me and say, ``Wait a 
minute, we're the new breed. We're no Walter Mondale, or we're no 
Michael Dukakis.'' And they may be right. I don't want to be unfair to 
Mr. Mondale or Dukakis--[laughter]--$150 billion in new taxes is more 
than the two of them ever dreamed of offering the United States of 
America.
    But I think we'd all agree that we trust the people, not the 
Government, to create the jobs and get this economy moving. You heard 
Phil Gramm talk about it. You saw that film showing what we've tried to 
do, blocked, blocked by that Congress.
    Let me just say another thing: We trust the parents, not the 
Government, to make the decisions that matter in life. We trust parents, 
not the Government, to choose their children's schools, public, private, 
or parochial. We fought for and we got a child care bill, where the 
parents choose the children's child care. And when the other side says 
Government knows best, I say parents know better. Parents know better 
than some bureaucrat in Washington, DC, or some subcommittee chairman 
out there that's been there for 38 years and is mandating everybody in 
this country how to behave.
    We trust the people, not a new Government bureaucracy, to fix our 
health care system. We've got a good proposal that provides health 
insurance to the poorest of the

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poor and still provides the quality of medical care that would be 
decimated if we turn to the Government to do it all.
    Well, you know that we've tried to get things through Congress. Now 
I'm going to take this fight to every corner of the Nation and make the 
case not just to reelect me, not just to reelect the Bush-Quayle ticket 
but to give Congress back to the people. You heard it here today: The 
House has remained under the same control since Khrushchev ruled the 
Kremlin and since Castro's coup in Cuba. And today, the status quo is 
under siege. The only way to break the deadlock in Washington is to 
clear out the deadwood on Capitol Hill. I'm going to do what Harry 
Truman did, take that case to the American people for a November 
decision.
    Now, let me close with just a few words to my friends here in 
Houston and others from across this country. We've been talking about 
it, and for Barbara and me this week is bound to have a very special 
meaning. This is our last big convention, last time, you might say, 
around the track. It is great to come back home to Texas, come home to 
where it really began for us in a political sense.
    I remember back in 1948 traveling out there when Bar and I were 
living in Odessa and then in Midland, traveling out across the plains to 
towns like Wink and Notrees and Andrews and Kermit and Crane, towns 
where parents worried and watched when the kid crossed the street; towns 
that sent their kids halfway around the world to fight for freedom, to 
the DMZ or to Da Nang or, yes, to Desert Storm. I remember the rhythms 
of that part of our country, the rhythms of west Texas: Friday night 
football, Saturday night picnics, the Sunday sermon. Barbara and I 
raised a family, built a business, and we made friends. We shared the 
small triumphs and the sorrows. As my good friend Dan Jenkins--you 
remember Dan the Hornfrog Man, the T.C.U. writer--he put it this way, 
``We lived life its own self.'' I remember, when the work was done, how 
we sat around the table late at night, and we talked: report cards, 
schoolyard fights, small things, big dreams.
    I was not born in Texas, but in Texas 48 years ago, whatever it was, 
44 years ago, I came of age. The lessons that Barbara and I learned here 
are the lessons that we have tried to live by. The friends that we made 
here and throughout our lives are the friends who are in this room, some 
from Texas, some elsewhere, every one of whom we owe a vote of gratitude 
to, the friends who have stood by us when times are great and when times 
are tough.
    Now we are about to embark on the fight of our life and the fight to 
keep the American dream alive but keeping faith in people. I look 
forward to this fight. I can feel it. I can feel it building in my 
blood. One thing that is the most comfort is that through good times and 
bad, I have had you at my side. And we want to thank you for this 
fantastic show of support.
    May God bless this great Nation of ours. Thank you for our many 
blessings, and may God bless the United States of America. Thank you 
very, very much. Thank you all. Thank you so very much.

                    Note: The President spoke at 2 p.m. at the George R. 
                        Brown Center. In his remarks, he referred to 
                        Lodwrick M. Cook, chairman of the luncheon, and 
                        Senator Phil Gramm of Texas.