    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [February 1, 1993]
    [Pages 29-32]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 29]]

    Remarks at the Democratic Governors' Association Dinner
    February 1, 1993

        Thank you very much, Governor Walters. And thank you, ladies and
    gentlemen, for that wonderful welcome.
        I am full of gratitude tonight as I remember that just a year ago
    when I was at this banquet, I came in from the cold of New Hampshire,
    cold in more ways than one--[laughter]--and received from the leadership
    of this organization a white scarf, which I wore for the remainder of
    the campaign in New Hampshire to stay warm, a cap which I still have,
    and a renewed sense that the battle in which I was engaged was worth the
    effort.
        I want to thank every one of you who had anything to do with that. I
    noticed in the audience tonight the Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown,
    who did such a brilliant job as the head of our party and keeping us
    going; representatives of many groups, teachers, working people, and
    others out here in this audience, that have worked so hard to give us a
    chance to put our children first in this country again; and many others
    who raised money, knocked on doors, and walked along roads.
        I want to pay a particular tribute tonight to my good friend the
    Governor of Hawaii, not only for his leadership as the chair of the
    Democratic Governors' Association but for being my friend and supporter
    and for giving us a model of what an aggressive, active Democratic
    leader ought to be. Under John's leadership, the Democratic Governors'
    Association had one of its busiest and most successful years. There are
    now two more Democratic Governors. The DGA worked closely with our
    campaign, and largely as a result of that teamwork we won 8 of the 12
    races in which we were engaged last year, the best showing by the
    Democratic Governors since 1982 when I, as the youngest ex-Governor in
    the history of America, made my comeback. [Laughter] Now we have
    Democratic Governors in 30 of the 50 States, our best margin since 1985.
        I've also been impressed by John's extraordinary political
    leadership in Hawaii. When he was supporting me in the primary campaign
    last year, I kept angling for an invitation to Hawaii. I kept saying,
    ``You know, I need to carry Hawaii. I haven't carried any western
    States. Don't you think I ought to show up out there?'' And he said,
    ``If I can't carry Hawaii for you without your presence, I shouldn't be
    the Governor out here.'' And sure enough, we did. I think it has
    something to do with his native Hawaiian heritage. We were playing golf
    once together in Hawaii, John and I, and we played on a course on which
    there were no sand traps; there were only lava flows--[laughter]--so
    that the ball simply disappeared, never to be seen again. And we both
    hit long drives that sliced slightly into the lava flows. Mine
    disappeared; his hit a rock and bounced into the middle of the fairway.
    He informed me that his ancestors, who included King Kamehameha, who
    united the Hawaiian Islands, believed in a form of ancestor worship. And
    now, surely I can see the ultimate truth of his faith. Anyway, I think
    John and Lynne are great, and I hope that they will have many more years
    in public service. This country would be a lot better off if that
    happens.
        I also want to salute the new chair of the DGA, my friend David
    Walters from Oklahoma. He and Rhonda were among those who were in the
    snows of New Hampshire with me. I told them the other day when I saw
    them that I just looked at a picture of us a year ago; here we are now
    in Washington celebrating a new inauguration. A year ago, I have a
    picture of us with Mike Sullivan; the former Governor of Vermont,
    Madeleine Kunin; and the former Governor of Michigan, Jim Blanchard,
    standing at the Super 8 Motel in Manchester. [Laughter] And it's a great
    commentary on how we get things done in this country. I think David
    Walters and Ann Richards will be a great team; that is, if Ann Richards
    is not too boastful about the Super Bowl victory last night. [Laughter]
        I remember last fall when the Democratic Governors joined me in a
    western fly-around and a campaign we called ``Winning the West.'' Most
    people thought the Democrats had no chance in the West. We traveled to
    seven States and won six, in no small measure because of the inordinate
    support that the western Democratic Governors gave the Clinton-Gore
    campaign.
        Democratic Governors from the South participated--[applause]--clap,
    Governor Roberts.

    [[Page 30]]

    That's good. You can clap for yourself. Democratic Governors in the
    South participated in a fly-around and campaigned for me in a region in
    which we invested relatively small amounts of money. They went to six
    States, and for the first time in 12 years we carried three of them.
        As someone who answered to the term ``Governor'' until just 12 days
    ago, I'm proud to be here with the men and women who have been my
    friends and colleagues in the struggle to deal with the legacy of the
    1980's, people who deal with the real problems of real people, who can't
    make excuses or print money when there's no money there, who struggle
    with health care and welfare and jobs and education and the ways that
    national economic trends and international development actually touch
    people's lives for good or ill.
        As you and I learned from the elections last year, the American
    people want their political system and their Government to end gridlock,
    to face problems, and to make progress. They're tired of a process
    that's been too divided by partisanship or dominated by special
    interests or driven by short-term advantage of politicians instead of
    the long-term interests of people. They sent us to the statehouse and to
    the White House to change America. And they want action now. That is our
    mandate, and we must never forget it.
        We have a chance to create a new Democratic majority in this
    country, rooted in the experience of governing and living. But we must
    never forget some basic things. First of all, we have to do this
    together: the Congress and the President, the States and the communities
    and the National Government.
        I see in the audience a person who ran for President last year and
    turned out to be the best supporter I ever had in the Presidential
    campaign, Senator Tom Harkin from Iowa, and I want to thank him. After a
    tough primary campaign, when he began to work for me, even in the
    primary when it was still going, I realized that he had gotten into this
    race for the same reason I had: He believed that we had to change this
    country. And the changes were more important than him or me or anybody
    else. Well, I still believe that. And if we remember that, we can
    succeed.
        I think that you might be interested to know that there were some
    surveys conducted after the Inaugural week. After the television ratings
    turned out to be very high and there were huge crowds at all the events,
    the people had watched the gala all over America, and they'd watched
    that magnificent service at the Lincoln Memorial, and they'd watched our
    church service, and 800,000 people showed up at the Inaugural. But you
    know what people in America remembered most about the Inaugural week?
    That on the day after the Inauguration, we opened the White House to
    ordinary Americans. That is what registered out in the country.
        I say that because somehow we've all got to find a way to remember
    every day that the people who can't come to these dinners are the people
    we hold these dinners for. We also have to remember we got elected to
    try a new approach, to expand opportunity, not Government, to increase
    investment, and to show literally that we can reinvent Government.
        I was amazed, you know, the other crowd's had the White House for 12
    years, and they have presented themselves as businesslike and modern,
    you know, and tried to make the Democrats look like yesterday's crowd.
    Well, when I got to the White House, guess what I found? Same phone
    system Jimmy Carter had, with technology that was put in during
    Kennedy's time and changed only to put pushbuttons instead of dials. No
    E-mail, no conference calls, but anybody could pick up the button I was
    talking on anywhere in the White House and listen in on the
    conversation. [Laughter] So we could have the conference call we didn't
    want, but we couldn't have the one we did.
        People said last week, ``Well, you know, when you're going to do
    controversial things, you need to gin up your operation again and send
    the talking points out and communicate with people.'' There's not even
    any E-mail in the office. It's a yesterday place, and we need to make it
    a tomorrow place.
        I also want you to know that two of my Cabinet members have already
    met with every employee in their Departments, in their national
    headquarters, and were told, both of them, that they were the first
    Secretaries in 12 years to meet with all the employees in their
    Departments. The leadership of one of our Cabinet agencies abolished the
    executive dining room and saved $125,000 or $150,000 and brought the
    career employees up to the executive suite, and there were people who
    worked there for 25 years and had never seen where the bosses work. We
    are going to change the culture of

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    the way this Federal Government works. We are going to reinvent it, and
    we're going to make it work again.
        We are going to try to do what our adversaries always talked about,
    and that is to empower people, not entitle them. Whether it's welfare or
    trade or industrial policy or technology policy, what the American
    people want is a hand up, not a handout, and we're going to give it to
    them, if we can get the kind of support we need across the country to
    support these changes.
        And most importantly, we're going to try to recreate a sense of
    partnership and community in America again, an America in which we don't
    have a person to waste. I believe as strongly as I can say that if we
    could create in this country a feeling burning in the heart of every
    American, that it was simply unacceptable to let one life go that could
    be saved, we could solve virtually every problem we have. Because if you
    look at every place where the system has broken down, the manifestation
    of that breakdown is somebody's life that is less than it ought to be.
    These children being shot in the streets--we're in Somalia, debating how
    we can keep peace in Somalia when the mortality rate is greater in some
    neighborhoods in the United States of America.
        The immunization initiative that you've read about that we're going
    to be announcing in the next few days, you know, we were actually
    criticized in a story in the New York Times for the idea that the
    National Government might use its purchasing power to buy enough
    vaccines to immunize all the kids in the country. And people say, well,
    that would be bad if we did that. It would be better if we don't and we
    let these kids get sick?
        All the factory workers in this country that are losing their jobs
    because we have no real strategy to create jobs, let me just say in
    parentheses here: As Democrats, we ought not ever to forget that there
    is a big difference between economic measurements of progress and
    whether that progress is manifested in the real lives of people. In the
    1980's, the stock market tripled, but the Fortune 500 companies reduced
    employment. And the difference was made up by small business. So we can
    have a strong economy on the surface where the stock market is booming,
    but if small business people can't get bank loans at the local bank,
    jobs won't be created for all these people that are losing their big
    employee jobs. And we have to remember things like that. With all this
    so-called economic recovery of the last 6 months, we're not creating
    jobs yet. And we've got to find a way to put people back to work. That
    is the ultimate and first test of whether life is working in America.
        Finally, let me reiterate a line that I borrowed from President
    Roosevelt for the Inaugural speech. We learned in the 1980's that we had
    to be about bold, persistent experimentation. That is what I want to try
    to convince Congress and the country we ought to do. It means that we
    will try some things that will not work. And when we do, we have to have
    the courage to quit. One of the weaknesses of our Government is that
    when we start something that doesn't work, or whether we start something
    that does, we keep on doing it. We have to have the courage to
    experiment, to try, to stop, to start again. I am convinced that if we
    do that, we can deal with the health care crisis; we can deal with the
    deficit; we can deal with all these problems, but ultimately, we can
    change the shape of people's lives. And if I might say--I know that it
    defies the momentary conventional wisdom--I think we're off to a pretty
    good start.
        The United States Congress in the next few days--maybe both Houses
    after the recess--will pass the new budget for the National Institutes
    of Health. And now we'll be able to go back to doing research, including
    fetal tissue, that offers great progress in dealing with children with
    diabetes and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's problems and other problems. I
    think that is progress.
        The United States Senate was good enough to confirm every one of my
    Cabinet members, save one, on the day after I became President, the
    first time in longer than a generation that that had happened. And I did
    get into a controversy. But you know something? If you just want me to
    do things that are easy, you should have elected somebody else
    President.
        When we deal with things that are hard, there ought to be debate.
    There ought to be discussion. People ought to say they disagree. They
    ought to call the White House and jam the phone lines. And by the way,
    there's a 1964 switchboard in the White House. That's one reason that
    the phone lines are jammed. But I'm just telling you, I think this is
    exciting. We need to shake things up. We need to have a debate in this
    country again. We need to do things and talk about things, get them out
    and let

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    people argue.
        I think together we can do what we were hired to do. But remember: I
    think we are about the business of creating a new Democratic majority
    if, but only if, we go to where the people are, lift them up, bring them
    with us, and change their lives. That requires a decent attention to the
    opinions of Republicans who want to help in change, too, and most
    importantly, a passionate determination never to forget that there is a
    real reason that most Americans remembered--2,000 of their number who
    won a lottery to come to the White House. They haven't felt like it was
    their house in a long time. You help me give it back to them, and we'll
    have a bright future.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:21 p.m. at the National Building Museum.
    In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Michael J. Sullivan of Wyoming and
    Gov. Ann Richards of Texas.