    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
    [September 26, 1993]
    [Pages 1608-1611]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Fundraiser for Mayor David Dinkins in New York City
    September 26, 1993

        The President. Mr. Mayor, Mrs. Dinkins, Senator Moynihan, Governor
    and Mrs. Cuomo, distinguished leaders of this magnificent city, other
    distinguished head table guests. You know, when I do a speech, because
    sometimes, as you will remember, I'm a little long-winded--[laughter]--
    my acute advisers always say, ``Now, Mr. President, imagine what you
    want the headline to be.'' What is the headline? I think I've already
    heard the headline. The headline is the Mayor would very much like to
    have his job for 4 more years, and we ought to give it to him.
        I always love to come to New York, but I certainly would have come
    here tonight just to listen to my Senate Finance Committee chair and
    your brilliant Governor and the Mayor give these speeches. And now I
    feel like I did the night I gave my first speech in public life, in
    January 1977, at the Pine Bluff Rotary banquet. It started at 6:30.
    There were 500 people there. Everybody in the whole place was introduced
    except three people; they went home mad, kind of like Dave did. And I
    got introduced at a quarter to 10, and the guy that was introducing me
    was the only person in the crowd more nervous than I was. And so
    everybody got awards and the whole deal had gone on, and the first words
    out of his mouth were, ``You know, we could stop here and have had a
    very nice evening.'' [Laughter] And that's kind of how I feel. It is
    wonderful to be back in New York, wonderful to be here with all of you,
    and wonderful to be here on behalf of Mayor Dinkins.
        I do want to thank publicly in this city, I think for the first time
    I've had a chance to do it, Mario Cuomo for giving the finest speech at
    the 1992 Democratic Convention nominating me for President. And I want
    to thank----

    [At this point, there was a disturbance in the audience.]

        The President. You know--let them go.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. Actually, I had something to say about that. It's too
    bad they're going to miss it.
        I do want to thank Senator Moynihan. I want all of you to remember
    what he said tonight because he has done a magnificent job as the
    chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. And if it weren't for him, I
    wouldn't be here tonight, because if he hadn't crafted a budget we could
    pass with that great landslide in the Congress--[laughter]--I'd be home
    worrying about something else, and David Dinkins wouldn't want me here.
    So I thank you, Pat Moynihan, for doing a great job for New York.
        There was a lot of talk here tonight about the Democrat Party, and I
    want to tell you that I'm a Democrat by heritage, by instinct, by
    conviction. But I also wanted to be a part of a party that could change
    this country and

    [[Page 1609]]

    in the process, if necessary, change itself.
        Franklin Roosevelt revolutionized this country by committing himself
    to bold, persistent experimentation in a time of change. And a lot of
    people up here can tell you that I'm going around all the time just
    asking people for new ideas. Reverend Jackson came to see me the other
    day, and I pulled him off in the corner and tried to pick his brain
    about some new things we could do to create jobs. I called Andrew Young
    in a distant land, which I--having a good time--and asked him to help me
    to convince America to have an expansionist view of trade and how it
    could be used to create jobs. I do that a lot, and I listen a lot, and I
    tell you, my friends, it is very important that tonight we be for David
    Dinkins, not for just all our yesterdays but most importantly for all
    our tomorrows. And just once in a while I forget what this business is
    all about and then something will happen in a flash of an eye and bring
    it all back home again.
        You know, we passed the family leave law in Congress, and I signed
    it instead of vetoing it a few months ago. And I read a column the other
    day that said, ``You know, the President is up there passing laws, the
    family leave law, the earned-income tax credit, what does that mean to
    ordinary people, people can't identify with it.'' Well, let me tell you
    what happened to me today. I got up this morning, and I went for my
    customary jog on Sunday morning, and when I came back to the White House
    I entered through the ground floor as I normally do, and I looked up and
    there was a family there touring the White House on Sunday morning, a
    very unusual occurrence. And the woman who was giving them the tour
    said, ``Mr. President, this is a family with three children. One of
    these children is desperately ill and was in the Make-a-Wish Foundation,
    and her wish was to come to the White House for a tour and to see you.''
    So I went over and I shook hands with the little girl, and I talked to
    her for quite a while and her sisters and her parents. And then I went
    up and I got ready to leave to come up here and went back to see them
    and was taking the picture, and as I walked off, that young girl's
    father grabbed me by the arm, and he said, ``You know, my daughter may
    not make it, but I've had some very important time with her because of
    that family leave law. And if it hadn't passed, I couldn't have taken
    off work. They would have taken my job away from me. And I want you to
    know what it has done.''
        And today the Mayor and I went to Queens with Claire Shulman and Tom
    Manton and Gary Ackerman and a number of the other Members of Congress
    who are here. And we listened to people talk about the changes that
    still need to come, talking about this is the United States; you know
    we're supposed to be the leader of the world. It's the end of the cold
    war. I'm going to go to the U.N. tomorrow and people will say there's
    America, the only superpower. America is not only the only superpower,
    it's got the third worst immunization rate in the Western Hemisphere and
    is the only major country that still can't figure out how to give
    affordable health care to all of its citizens. And I heard those stories
    today in Queens.
        That may sound like rhetoric here at a speech tonight, but in that
    diner in Queens today, which I visited running in the Democratic primary
    in New York, there were people talking about their lives, their jobs,
    their businesses going broke. Why were they paying 3 and 4 times the
    national average for health insurance? Why did they lose their health
    insurance because they got sick? That's what they bought the health
    insurance for. And on and on and on. And it reminded me again of why we
    are in this business. We are here because we hope that if we work
    together and we work hard and we are smart, that somehow we can enable
    people to live up to the fullest of their God-given potential and
    rebuild this fragile American community of ours. That's why I ran for
    President, and that's why I came here for David Dinkins tonight.
        Most of this has already been said, but I--you know, I left my
    speech over there. I'm just sort of talking from the heart tonight, and
    besides that, I'll be briefer if I do that. But I was thinking to myself
    on the way up here tonight--today--why do you really believe this man
    should be reelected? And there are basically three reasons I really
    believe it.
        Number one, you've already heard, under very difficult circumstances
    he's made you a good Mayor, he has been a good Mayor. I have heard all
    these stories about New York's financial problems for years. All I know
    is under difficult circumstances, with no help from Washington, you have
    produced four budgets and improved your bond rating. And that counts for
    something.
        I was so proud to hear you clap for something

    [[Page 1610]]

    that really to me is what government's all about, when the Mayor talked
    about leaving the libraries open 6 days a week. That's a big deal, and
    not very many cities do it.
        He started a health care program, which is consistent with what
    we're trying to do in Washington, not only to provide coverage for
    people but to guarantee access to people who need it through public
    health clinics that give primary and preventive services, not just
    expensive emergency care when it's too late and people are already sick.
        And anybody can talk tough about crime. And almost every American, I
    want to be clear about this, almost every American desperately now is
    worried about the insecurity of life, the fragility of life in all of
    our cities and our small towns and our rural areas. So I say this not
    against anybody else, but it is simply a fact that your Mayor, beginning
    with the man who is now my drug czar, who used to be your chief of
    police, started this community policing program to put more police on
    the street, in the neighborhood, knowing their friends and neighbors, to
    deploy them in a different and smarter way. And it is simply true that
    now for 2 years in a row, in the seven major categories the FBI keeps,
    New York is one of the few cities in America that has had a decline in
    the crime rate. That should be rewarded. Are you going to punish a
    person for producing the results you say you want?
        So I say to you, I was always worried that I never would quite fit
    in modern politics, which is so much television and 30 seconds and sound
    bite and look macho, whether you are or not, and all that sort of stuff.
    I hired out to do things. And here's a guy who has done things. And I
    came up here to say well done. I think you ought to be rewarded.
        The second thing I want to say to you is that the truth is that all
    of us who do a good job should not on that account alone be reelected,
    because that's what you paid us to do. So if you do a good job, it
    really only counts if it's an indication that you'll do another one if
    you get another term. And that's why I liked all the energy he put out
    tonight. He plainly wants to do it all over again in the worst way, and
    that's important.
        But secondly, I have reviewed the Mayor's ideas. He gave me a whole
    list of things today I could do to help New York fulfill its potential.
    This jobs program is a good program, and not only that, it is consistent
    with what we are doing in defense conversion, in technology policy, in
    developing community financing institutions, in working with Congressman
    Rangel for the empowerment zones to get capital, private capital, back
    into distressed areas. It will work. So you really want in the next 4
    years to have someone who will be doing things that fit with what's
    happening in Washington. Otherwise why did you vote for me in the first
    place if I can't help you?
        And the last thing I'd like to say is I think you ought to vote for
    him because he really does believe that we have to find strength and
    peace and harmony in our diversity, that we cannot become what we ought
    to be by being divided against one another. And I think that is maybe
    the most important thing of all.
        This has been 2 incredible weeks for me. I'm going to the U.N.
    tomorrow; you know, it's a bookend of that incredible day, Monday 2
    weeks ago, when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands and riveted
    the world. And I ask you, think of it: If after all the decades of
    fighting each other they finally came to the conclusion that peace in
    their land that they love and a normal, decent future for the children
    of their people required them to seek some harmony, some accommodation,
    some working together, and when they shook hands it was so electric that
    no one in the world thought that that was an act of weakness, it was
    instead an act of strength. Can we not learn this lesson in our
    multiethnic cities? Can we not see that across the lines of race and
    religion, those people who believe in family, those people who believe
    in work, those people who believe in putting their children first, those
    people who never violate the law and always pay their taxes and always
    show up for the basic things in life, have more in common than they do
    separating themselves, and they have to learn to vote across their
    racial lines, to vote across their religious lines, to reach out and
    make alliances that will enable us to live together. If you want to deal
    with the crime problems, and I do; if you want to pass a bill making
    illegal assault weapons so they don't get in the hands of teenagers, and
    I do; if you want to pass this health care reform bill and make it a
    right for all Americans, that can never be taken away and I do; don't we
    have to begin by getting the family of this country together, the people
    who have the same values and have the same hopes for their chil-

    [[Page 1611]]

    dren and say we can do this together?
        You know, let's be candid. All the way up here, I said to myself,
    why has Dinkins got a race? I'm going to get in a lot of trouble for
    saying this. I read the record, and then I actually read some of his
    position papers, something I bet you haven't done, some of you.
    [Laughter] And I thought about how it would fit. I know him personally
    inside, and I said, why has this guy got a hard race?
        Let's face it. There are two reasons, I think. One is he doesn't
    give enough speeches like the one he gave here tonight, because he is a
    humble man in an age that values self-promotion. Right? Because he is a
    quietly tough man in an age that values loud and piercing rhetoric, and
    to be fair, it is sometimes necessary because so many of us are caught
    in the blur of events and the frustration of our times. It is a style
    thing, folks. Don't get the style confused with the substance. He's got
    the substance.
        And the second reason is that too many of us are still too unwilling
    to vote for people who are different than we are. This is not as simple
    as overt racism. That is not anything I would charge to anybody who
    doesn't vote for David Dinkins or Bill Clinton or anybody else. It's not
    that simple. It is this deep-seated reluctance we have, against all our
    better judgment, to reach out across these lines. It is not as simple as
    overt racism. It's this inability to take that sort of leap of faith, to
    believe that people who look different than we are really are more like
    us than some people who look just like us but don't share our values or
    our interests or our conduct.
        This is a big deal to me. I would not be here tonight; I would never
    have been reelected Governor of Arkansas in 1982; I would not have been
    elected President of the United States through all those tough primaries
    if it hadn't been for African-American and Hispanic voters and Asians
    voters, people who were different from me, voting for me. I wouldn't be
    here.
        So I read in the paper about the demographics of the Dinkins vote.
    And there will be some differences just because people think differently
    ideologically. But I want to remind you that David Dinkins, as was
    reminded to me tonight, when the Scud missiles were falling on Israel,
    went to Israel. He wants to represent all the people of New York.
        Look who he had introduce him and be a part of this program tonight.
    This a big deal, folks. This is not just New York; this is L.A., and
    this is rural South. This is everyplace. We are being tested. We are
    going through a time of profound change. And we right now don't have the
    sense of personal security to make the changes we need to make. We need
    more confidence in ourselves and confidence that we can meet all these
    challenges that are out there and confidence that the 21st century will
    also be an American century. And in order to do it, we have to get our
    act together so we can feel good about the people we elect. We have to
    make our streets safer, our families stronger. We have to make all these
    economic changes, but we first must be more secure.
        I ask you, think about the handshake between Rabin and Arafat. Think
    about what it means for the future of the Middle East if we can keep it
    going. And then ask yourselves, this man who has a good record, who has
    a good plan, who has a good heart, has earned the right to your vote,
    and you ought to make sure he gets it and is returned to city hall.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:55 p.m. at the Sheraton New York Hotel.
    In his remarks, he referred to Claire Shulman, president of the Borough
    of Queens.