    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [September 21, 1994]
    [Pages 1586-1589]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities
    September 21, 1994

        Thank you very much, the First Lady and my old friend John Brademas,
    and to all of you who have agreed to serve and your friends and
    supporters who are here. I thank you for coming.
        Before I make the remarks that I want to make to you, I believe, in
    view of the events of the last few days and particularly the events of
    the last 24 hours, I should make a short statement about the situation
    in Haiti.
        The deployment of our forces there is now going quite well. As a
    result of the agreement we have reached last weekend, we now have 8,500
    United States troops who have entered Haiti peacefully without any
    resistance. The multinational force, which was enhanced today by the
    decision of Australia to join, will soon be in a position to carry out
    its overriding mission, to ensure the transfer of power from the de
    facto military leaders to the democratically elected government of Haiti
    by October 15th.
        I must also tell you how strongly we condemned yesterday's police
    violence there. Such conduct cannot and will not be tolerated. General
    Shelton, our commander on the ground, has met with the Haitian military
    and police officials today and made clear our policy to them.
        During this transition period, the Haitian military will carry out
    basic police functions. Our Armed Forces cannot and will not become
    Haiti's police force. But we can work to see that

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    the Haitian military and police operate in a responsible and
    professional manner. Today we are deploying on schedule 1,000 United
    States military police who will monitor the Haitian police and by their
    own presence help to deter violence. In the days ahead we will
    reintroduce into Haiti human rights monitors who were expelled several
    weeks ago and bring in police monitors as part of the multinational
    force.
        Today is only the second day of this mission. The situation in Haiti
    will not change immediately. But today is better than yesterday, and
    yesterday was better than the day before. We will keep going. We will
    make steady progress. We will restore democracy.
        As we move toward the 15th of October, we will also work to moderate
    the conduct of Haitian security forces without assuming the
    responsibilities. Then after the democratic government returns to power,
    the coalition will help it to devise a long-term plan of police and
    military reform, including retraining people so that they can perform to
    their fullest capabilities in an appropriate manner for a democratic
    society.
        We went into Haiti to help stop the senseless, tragic terror that
    has plagued the nation since the democratically elected government was
    forced from power. The habits of violence will not be shed overnight.
    But during the coming weeks, we will work to help stop the violence and
    to begin the process of reconciliation.
        I thank the American people for their understanding and increasing
    support for this endeavor. And again, let me say my special word of
    appreciation to our troops there and to their families and all those who
    have supported them. [Applause] Thank you.
        Now let me thank you all again, all of you who've agreed to serve on
    the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, to underscore the
    vital partnership that must exist between your Government and the
    private citizens who do the work of the arts and humanities in our
    Nation. I want to thank the First Lady for agreeing to be the Honorary
    Chair, although this is a job she wanted, unlike some of those I've
    asked her to take on. [Laughter] You couldn't have a much more
    appreciative or informed friend.
        I am also very, very pleased that John Brademas has agreed to serve
    as the Chairman. I have known him for many years since his distinguished
    career in the United States Congress and through his brilliant
    presidency of New York University. I think he is one of our Nation's
    most outstanding citizens and will certainly be one of the most eloquent
    advocates imaginable for the cause you are here to further. He also
    happens to have been an original cosponsor of the bill that created the
    National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, and he wrote the bill
    that established the Institute of Museum Services. He also promised to
    give me free congressional lobbying advice on the side in return for
    this appointment. [Laughter]
        I have charged the President's Committee with advancing public
    understanding of the arts and humanities, which is so important to our
    democracy, and to establish new partnerships between the Federal
    agencies and the private sector. As a sign of our commitment to the arts
    and humanities today, we have here with us members of the Cabinet and
    the administration, including Secretary Riley, Sheldon Hackney, Jane
    Alexander, Joe Duffy, and a number of other Government officials.
        I appointed, as all of you can see, an extraordinary group of
    Americans to this Committee--artists, scholars, writers, thinkers,
    leaders in the corporate world and the philanthropic community,
    committed citizens, activists recognized in their communities--people
    who represent outstanding achievement and a commitment to the cultural
    life of our Nation, a commitment to keep it alive and to make it more
    accessible.
        By this time next year, I want you to deliver to me a report on the
    progress we're making in furthering America's cultural life. For 200
    years the arts and humanities have helped to bridge American
    differences, learned to appreciate differences--they helped Americans to
    learn to appreciate differences, one from another, and to build strong
    and vibrant institutions across our country. You must help us explore
    ways to do this better.
        The most disturbing thing to me about American life today is not the
    problems we have, although we have problems aplenty; it is the lack of
    unity among Americans and the lack of optimism we feel in dealing with
    those problems.
        Just a couple of weeks ago, a distinguished international panel of
    economists said that the United States was the most productive country
    in the world. They said that for the first time in almost a decade
    because of the remarkable resurgence of our economy, because of the
    number of jobs we're creating, because we ac-

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    counted for almost all the job growth and three-quarters of the economic
    growth in the seven great industrial nations of the world in the last
    year and a half, and because we are taking on a lot of our biggest
    challenges--bringing our Government deficit down 3 years in a row for
    the first time since Mr. Truman was President, the only country of all
    the advanced economies to do that. And yet, so many Americans still feel
    that we're kind of adrift and falling apart from one another.
        Maybe even more important as you look toward the 21st century, isn't
    it interesting that in the last year and a half the South Africans
    wanted us to spend $35 million and send our best people to South Africa
    to work on making that election a success? The Irish and the English
    have been fighting for eight centuries now; they wanted the United
    States to be involved in the process of reconciliation that is now
    taking hold in Northern Ireland. After decades of brutal struggle, the
    Israelis and the Arabs working together to make peace in the Middle East
    want the Americans to be centrally involved. Even in the moment of our
    greatest tension a few days ago in Haiti, one of the military leaders
    said, ``Well, if the President is determined to do this and the world
    community is absolutely determined to go ahead, we want the Americans
    here.''
        Why is that? We have Haitian-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Arab-
    Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans. You think of it: This
    diversity we have which cuts across racial and religious and
    philosophical and regional and income lines, it is the source of our
    great strength today in a world that is ever more interdependent.
        And people look at us and say, ``You know, with all their problems--
    yes, their crime rate's too high; and yes, they're too violent; yes, too
    many of their kids drop out of school; and yes, there's too much income
    inequality, especially for working people. But you know, they pretty
    well get along. And people from all different kinds of backgrounds wind
    up pursuing their chosen path in life and living up to their God-given
    potential. And they're adaptable; they work their way through the
    changes that time and circumstance are imposing on them.'' That's what
    others think about us.
        We somehow have to begin to think that about ourselves again. And I
    cannot help but believe that the arts and humanities must play a central
    role in that task. How we imagine our own lives and our own future and
    how we imagine ourselves as a country will have as big an impact on what
    it is we ultimately become as anything in the world.
        I said the other day, I will just say again, a lot of you have been
    involved in various enterprises, great business enterprises, great art
    enterprises, great entertainment enterprises. Just imagine how you would
    function if every day in all the important years of your life you showed
    up for work and two-thirds of the people you were working with thought
    that your outfit was going in the wrong direction and nothing good could
    happen. [Laughter] Imagine what would happen if the National Gallery of
    Art were given the most priceless collection of Impressionist paintings
    uncovered after having been thought destroyed for 50 years, and two-
    thirds of the people said, ``I don't believe they're Impressionist
    paintings. I know Monet; he was a friend of mine. That's not him. Don't
    bother me with the facts.'' [Laughter] You're laughing because you know
    that it's true, don't you? There is a grain of truth in this.
        Somehow we have to not sweep our problems under the rug and not
    sweep our differences under the rug, for that is also what makes America
    great. But we only find energy for dealing with our problems and the
    heart and the hearing to deal with our differences when at least we have
    a realistic appreciation of where we are, what we're doing, and where
    we're going. And I feel so good about the work we've done to move
    America forward in the last 20 months, but we'd all have to admit we've
    still got a lot of work to do in bringing America together, in giving
    our people a realistic feeling about where we are in the world and where
    we're going. You can do that. You can make a huge difference. The arts
    and humanities have always helped to do that work.
        So I urge you to continue in this work. I urge you to make your
    progress report to me. I urge you to remember what we are trying to do
    in our schools in helping to improve our children's education with the
    arts and humanities. I urge you to work to expand private philanthropy.
    We all know that the Government in this country provides a crucial
    measure but only a tiny measure of the support that the arts and
    humanities need.
        I urge you to promote international cultural exchange and
    understanding, not only because

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    we need desperately to know more about others throughout the world but
    because I believe that we'll learn a lot more about ourselves if we just
    come in contact with people from other walks of life and other paths of
    the world.
        Thanks to phones, faxes, Internet, E-mail, CNN, we can see the power
    of our cultural traditions as they are exported around the world. And
    sometimes they come back to us. We're the first White House to
    communicate with huge numbers of people from all over by E-mail. And I'm
    trying to do a sociological analysis now of whether there's a difference
    between the E-mail communication and the mail communication--or the
    female communication. [Laughter]
        I am very hopeful that you will make a remarkable contribution to
    this country. I went over this list of people with great care. I tried
    to get a very different group of people. I tried to imagine all the
    different things that I hope that this Committee could deal with and all
    the different challenges I hope you could assume. If I haven't done a
    good job, it's not your fault. It's mine in picking you, but I think
    you're pretty special.
        Let me say in closing that I hope that in addition to the schools,
    you can think about how we can increase access to the arts and
    humanities all across America to people who might otherwise be isolated
    from them, people who are homebound, people who live in very isolated
    areas, people who now don't even know how to speak the language that
    would be necessary to ask for something that might change their lives
    forever. I ask you also to think of that.
        We've faced a lot of challenges as a country, but I'm actually
    pretty optimistic about it, based on the objective evidence. What
    remains is whether we can develop a vision that will sustain us as a
    people as we move through a period of change, without a known big enemy,
    into an uncertain future. It requires courage, but courage comes from
    having something inside that you can connect with what you see outside.
        You can help us as we work our way through this in this remarkable
    time in our country's history. I hope you enjoy it. I thank you for
    serving. And I thank you for being here today.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at approximately 5 p.m. in the East Room at
    the White House.