    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [May 12, 1993]
    [Pages 644-648]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Democratic National Committee Presidential Gala in New
    York City
    May 12, 1993

        Thank you very much. To Bruce and to Lew, and to all of you, I've
    had a wonderful time tonight. These lights are so bright. I only know
    half the people I've shaken hands with. It has been a wonderful time. I
    want to thank all the people who made this dinner possible, and I want
    to thank the wonderful entertainment. The choir was terrific. The group
    doing all the wonderful old songs from Dionne Warwick in the sixties
    were magnificent.
        I was delighted to see Barry Manilow again in such wonderful voice,
    and grateful for his many contributions to our common efforts. I
    appreciated Phil Hartman saying he voted for me, but it's not quite
    enough for all the abuse I've put up with in advance. [Laughter] And I
    want to say to my friend, Whoopi Goldberg: Mayor Dinkins has a telephone
    call for you over here if you will go over and get it. [Laughter]
        Ladies and gentlemen, all of you who made this night possible--Lew
    and Bruce, Bob Rose and the other committee members, Bob Barrie, Bill
    Boardman, Paul Montrone, George Norcross, Felix Rohatyn, Ann Sheffer,
    John Sweeney, and Steve Swid, thank you all. Thank you, Roy Furman.
    Thank you, David Wilhelm.
        A lot of you were here with me a long time ago. I remember once,
    more than a year ago, when I came to New York and there were hundreds of
    people here in a hotel for a fundraiser for me. I was dropping like a
    rock in New Hampshire. All those experts said I was dead. I hear their
    call again. [Laughter] People who couldn't see the long road and didn't
    want to think of the fight as something that was bigger than any person
    were all preoccupied. And I just couldn't believe all these folks were
    even showing up for a dinner in New York. It was so dark in the
    campaign, I thought, well, people will go ahead and send their checks
    and then stay home. I imagined going into this vast ballroom and making
    a speech to eight people.
        And I was feeling pretty sorry for myself, frankly. And I told this
    story many times, but a man stopped me in the hall who was working at
    the hotel and said that he was a Greek immi-

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    grant and he was going to vote for me because his son asked him to--was
    only 10 years old--that if I got elected, he wanted me to do something
    for his son. He said, ``Where I come from, we were poor but we were
    free. Here, I make more money, but my boy's not free. He can't go across
    the street and play in the park without accompaniment from me. He can't
    even go to his school safely without my going with him. And I want you
    to work to help make my boy free.'' And it made me remember what
    politics was all about. I don't even remember what I said that night,
    but I know all of a sudden I had forgotten about me and started thinking
    about the rest of America. And I think that is what we ought to think
    about tonight.
        When we talk about a program, it only counts if there are people
    behind it. New York City, for all of the problems you may think you
    have, has registered the first decline in the crime rate in 36 years,
    because you did something about community policing. So we know now that
    there is a strategy which can make people freer. That's what personal
    safety is. And there is no excuse for not doing something about it. And
    that's what politics is about: focusing on the dreams and hopes and
    fears and needs of people. Sometimes I think that when we have these
    wonderful dinners, which are delightful to me, I've gotten to see some
    of you that I haven't even seen since the election, just to say a simple
    thank you to you. Remember, we all did it so that we can make a
    difference in people's lives.
        I want to say a special word of tribute here with all the people
    from New York and New Jersey and Connecticut, and my friend Mayor
    Rendell and others here from Pennsylvania, and there's even a handful of
    folks here from my home State. They were the ones who were clapping when
    Lew Katz gave his Arkansas pander, which I appreciate. I want to say a
    special word about one person who is here. I want to congratulate my
    friend Jim Florio on winning the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage
    Award, for facing the financial problems of his State, for facing the
    educational problems of his State and, yes, for being willing to stand
    up for the police officers and the people of his cities and State who
    wanted to be safe from crime, standing up to the gun lobby, and being
    for safe streets. That's why he got the award, doing real things, even
    if they weren't so hot in the polls at the time.
        Now our country is being called upon together to try to do the
    things that we just talked about in the campaign. Governor Mario Cuomo
    said again today when he introduced me at the Cooper Union that we
    campaign in poetry, but we must govern in prose. It's another way of
    saying, and a more eloquent way of saying, it's a lot easier to talk
    about change than it is to do it. I was overwhelmed today to have the
    opportunity to speak on the same spot where Abraham Lincoln spoke at the
    Cooper Union in 1860. And I went back and read large portions of Mr.
    Lincoln's speech. He came to the Cooper Union and catapulted himself
    into the nomination of the Republican Party, into the Presidency, and
    into the history and hearts of America. He did it by saying this is a
    difficult time, we have to ask hard questions and give strong answers.
    He said that we could not allow slavery to continue to expand; and that
    if we did, it would destroy the United States. He said in many other
    places that if the house is divided against itself, it could not stand.
        Lincoln went on to become President, and he expanded his vision, and
    he eventually signed the Emancipation Proclamation abolishing slavery.
    In the White House we have a painting called ``Waiting for the Hour,''
    of black slaves watching a clock at 5 minutes to 12, waiting for the
    stroke of midnight, January 1st, 1863, for the Emancipation Proclamation
    to become effective. Several times a week, often late at night, I go
    alone into the room where Lincoln signed that proclamation, and I
    remembered what the Presidency is really for: to help the American
    people move forward.
        It is for us now to put this house in order. And the beginning is to
    stop denying our problems and to accept some common responsibility for
    solving them. The first thing we have to do is to prove that the
    Government can be trusted with your money by passing a budget that will
    bring the deficit down. Look what has happened. Look what has happened
    just since the election, because finally the country has an
    administration trying to do that: long-term interest rates going down
    very low, 20-year low; billions of dollars, tens of billions being
    recycled into this economy, giving people the opportunity to make new
    starts. We have got to do that.
        We also have to deal with this health care crisis. You know, so many
    of you said nice things about Hillary tonight, and I want to say I
    appreciate it, because about every third day she stops speaking to me
    because I asked her to run the

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    health care project. [Laughter] It is the most complex, the most
    daunting task in our domestic life. But it is also perhaps the most
    urgent.
        If we cannot give working families the security of knowing they're
    not going to lose their health care, if we can't give businesses the
    security of knowing that health care doesn't have to go up at 2 or 3
    times the rate of inflation, if we can't provide coverage to the 35
    million Americans which don't have it, if we can't face the crises of
    AIDS and the lack of health care in rural areas and big cities, and if
    we can't invest in research in those things that we have not come to
    grips with in health care, what can we do as a country? Every other
    nation has done a better job of many of these things than we do, and so
    we must.
        They say, well, you should only do one thing at a time. ``You can't
    walk and chew gum at the same time in Washington,'' that's what they
    say. But I say we will do one thing at a time, but we have to honestly
    put it all out there. If you want to bring the deficit down, you have to
    do health care. The only purpose of bringing the deficit down is to make
    the economy healthy. You have to invest in new technologies and give
    people incentives to create opportunity for others. It is not so simple
    as to say, well, just think about this and let another idea cross your
    mind a year or two from now. We have got to be about the business of
    rebuilding America. And we can do that if we keep our eyes on the whole
    picture: bring the debt down, invest in our future, deal with the health
    care crisis, deal with the special problems of special people in special
    areas that have been left out and left behind. I believe we can do these
    things.
        I also have to tell you here at this magnificent fundraiser tonight
    that I am so humbled that so many of you have helped me for so long and
    asked for nothing in return, and others have done it in spite of the
    fact that many of the changes that I have advocated are not in your
    personal, immediate, short-term interest. You ought to be proud of that,
    because I'm proud of you.
        One of the problems that has just killed this country is that all of
    us have had our blinders on and we've been able to see about 6 inches in
    front of our eyes. And all of Washington for too long has been dominated
    by that: 80,000 lobbyists, because of the absence of a compelling
    national public vision, each picking apart the public interest. Now I
    think we have to follow through also on our commitment to political
    reform, to campaign finance reform, to lower the cost of campaigns,
    reduce the influence of PAC's, and open the airwaves to challengers.
    It'll also be nicer for you if you could only go to one dinner a year
    instead of four or five. It's a good thing. We should do it.
        I also believe that we have to continue on this whole reform track.
    We passed a modified line-item veto in the House of Representatives. The
    Senate ought to pass it and let the President take the heat for
    controlling unnecessary spending. We ought to continue to work to open
    up the political process. Hallelujah, the gridlock was broken yesterday,
    and the United States Congress passed the motor voter bill to open up
    the political process to young people all across the country.
        These are things that can make a difference. We have to begin to
    think about America in terms of what's in it for all of us together so
    that we can move forward together. Let me just mention one or two things
    tonight. A couple of days ago I was in Cleveland, and on the way out of
    town, I went by a little pierogi place started by a wonderful young
    woman who wanted to start her own restaurant, couldn't get a bank loan.
    She came from a big Polish family, so she just took the Cleveland phone
    book and called hundreds of people with Polish surnames and asked them
    to invest in her business until she got 80 folks who'd give her $3,000
    apiece, and she's doing real well now. They're the kind of people that
    we ought to be fighting for.
        When I got to another one of my meetings, I saw a woman who had six
    children and was supporting these children all by herself, making a
    handsome salary that she had to give up because one of her children was
    so desperately ill the only way she could afford the child's health care
    was to become eligible for Government assistance, because we don't have
    a health care system. And she was there in my speech with her beloved
    child and their $100,000-a-month medical bills. They're the people who
    are worth fighting for.
        I received a letter yesterday from a wonderful young man and his
    wife who became friends of mine in New Hampshire and had a desperately
    ill child who had troubles at birth. And he lost his health insurance
    and he had to choose between working and not working to get on public
    assistance, and he struggled on. And

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    the letter says that he just had to file for bankruptcy, but he hasn't
    given up on himself or his family or his country, and he wants me to
    keep fighting to make the economy better. That's what this whole effort
    is all about. There are real people and lives and dramas worthy of the
    greatest admiration behind so many stories in this room, so many stories
    in this country.
        I ask you for your continued support. I ask you to support the
    suggestion I made today that we're going to put all this money we're
    trying to raise into a deficit-reduction trust and say to the American
    people, every dollar of the tax will go to reduce the debt, and none of
    the taxes will be raised without the spending cuts. Tell the Congress
    that we ought to do it, instead of just fooling around with it and
    talking about it.
        But I ask you, finally, to remember that the atmosphere in which we
    labor, you and I, is still heavily laden with cynicism and skepticism.
    People have been disappointed on and off for 20 years. I was looking the
    other night at a little bit of history, an account of the Kennedy
    administration, reminding me that when President Kennedy was elected,
    the same sort of time, the same sort of moment, except that over 70
    percent of the American people, when he went in, believed that leaders
    told the truth to the American people and believed they could trust
    their leaders to do the right thing. We don't have that today. One of
    the things that those of you who had some personal contact and personal
    involvement in this administration can do is to help to restore the
    sense of faith that the American people used to take for granted.
        We simply can never succeed, ever, if every step along the way is
    burdened with people who are denying their own responsibility, waiting
    for someone to deliver them while making no effort, waiting for someone
    else to blame, letting the spite that comes out of every conflict
    overcome the larger vision and purposes that we are about. I am telling
    you, if we could do one thing tonight that would guarantee the success
    of everything else we're going to do, it would be all of us in our own
    way to walk out of here and say, let's try to put aside all of our
    differences and think about how we can lift up the people of this
    country. Let us, for a few months, suspend all of our cynicism and
    instead put our faith in the process that took us to the polls last
    November. Let us try to bring out the best in one another even in the
    most heated debates in the Congress.
        I worry from time to time only about one thing, and that is that the
    people who have to make these decisions will not feel the energy of the
    American people desperately saying, ``Change, have the courage to
    change. Challenge me, bring out the best in me. Do not give in to the
    pressures and the temptations of the moment but go forward to a better
    life.''
        I ask all of you, too, to remember that I'm going to get up every
    day and go to work and work hard. Some days I work smarter than other
    days, but every day I'll work hard. I ask you to remember that one of
    the great challenges of being President is to try to devote enough time
    and attention to the job to get the job done and save enough time to
    stay among the people, selling what you've done and listening and making
    the proper adjustment when there is something more you need to learn.
        I asked so many of you back during the election not to take the
    election as the end but the beginning of this enterprise. And so I
    invite you again to be a part of this great enterprise, with your ideas
    as well as your spirit. We've got 4 years of work to do. We can move
    this country forward in great ways and in profound ways that will
    benefit millions, indeed all, of the people of this country. But it's
    going to take every last good idea, and every last ounce of will and
    vision, and every ounce of courage and faith.
        You have to be a part of that. I want you to leave here tonight
    knowing that I still want that just as badly as I did in the election. I
    did not run for this job to move into the White House, as great an honor
    as that is. I did not run for this job even to have the enormous
    privilege of standing on Harry Truman's balcony and looking at the
    statue of Thomas Jefferson every night. I ran for it to be faithful to
    the tradition they established by making your life better, and you have
    to help me do that.
        Thank you and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:35 p.m. at the Lincoln Center for the
    Performing Arts. In his remarks he referred to event chairmen Bruce
    Ratner, Lewis Katz, and Bob Rose; event cochairmen Bob Barrie, Bill
    Boardman, and Roy Furman, also Democratic National Committee finance
    chairman; event vice chairmen Paul Montrone, George Norcross, Felix
    Rohatyn, Ann Sheffer,

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    John Sweeney, and Steve Swid; Democratic National Committee chairman
    David Wilhelm; Edward Rendell, Mayor of Philadelphia and honorary
    chairman of the event; and Gov. Jim Florio of New Jersey.