    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [December 8, 1994]
    [Pages 2162-2163]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to Summit of the Americas Volunteers in Miami, Florida
    December 8, 1994

        The President. Thank you. Thank you. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the
    first thing I want to say is a hearty thank-you for letting the ``he-
    coon'' stay in the tree in Tallahassee for 4 more years.
        I am delighted to be here and Hillary is delighted to be here with
    Lawton and Rhea, with Buddy and Anne, and with Bob and Adele Graham and
    so many of our friends here in Florida.
        You know, I was trying to remember just exactly how I got talked
    into having this summit in Miami, and it----
        Audience member. The weather!
        The President. Yeah--[laughter]--when I got out of the airplane
    tonight I remembered why I was smart enough to want to come here in
    December. Actually, I have very vivid memories of this sort of one-two
    punch that I got not all that long ago. We decided to have this summit
    after NAFTA was successfully concluded, and it wasn't long before I
    started hearing from all my friends from Florida. And it wasn't long
    before Lawton and Buddy said that they had to see me about a matter of
    dire importance--[laughter]--reminding me not once but 500 times of all
    the things they had done for me--[laughter]--and for Al Gore and for our
    administration. And then when they got through, I got a call from Bob
    Graham, who reminded me about how many years we sat together in the
    Governors Conference when he taught me how to be a Governor. [Laughter]
    And by the time they got through with me, I couldn't see anyplace else
    on the map. [Laughter]
        I want to thank you all for the magnificent job you have done. The
    leaders have all been recognized, and I thank all of them all over
    again. I thank our team who's worked so hard on this, the Secretary of
    the Treasury and our Trade Ambassador, Secretary Bentsen and Ambassador
    Kantor. I want to say a special word

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    of thanks to Mack McLarty who coordinated this for the White House; he
    did so much work.
        I appreciate the way you cheered for Janet Reno. I don't know if you
    all know this--I didn't know it myself, or I'd forgotten it until I
    picked up the Miami Herald this morning, but I now have three Cabinet
    members from Dade County. They say we've got to get away from any sort
    of quotas--that's what the Republicans are telling us--and so I just
    ``over-quota-ed'' Dade County. [Laughter] Janet Reno and Carol Browner,
    and there's a wonderful article in the Miami Herald today about the
    Secretary of Treasury-designate, Bob Rubin, who grew up here and went to
    high school. And so we are delighted to be here.
        Let me just say one serious word to all of you, those of you who
    have worked so hard for months and months and months, this is basically
    a celebration, a chance for us to say thank you. It was urged on me by
    some quarters that the appropriate thing to do, if we were going to have
    leaders from all over the hemisphere here, was to have this meeting in
    Washington. And I said, the last time I checked, most Americans were
    somewhere else--[laughter]--and that when deciding where we ought to
    have this, that Miami was the place that was most representative of our
    whole hemisphere in the United States.
        I hope that you can fully grasp the significance of what we are here
    doing. Every country in the world today, at the end of the cold war and
    the emergence of an exploding global economy with all sorts of
    opportunities but profound problems, every country is fighting a battle
    within itself between hope and fear, between reaching out and drawing
    back, between believing in the best of its potential and giving in to
    the worst, or at least walking away from the challenge.
        This morning at the magnificent headquarters of the Organization of
    American States, the Vice President and I went there to the auditorium,
    and I signed the legislation adopting the GATT world trade treaty. In
    the last 2 years, our administration has relentlessly pursued an
    economic strategy designed to make sure Americans could compete and win
    and be rewarded for their work in the 21st century, not by withdrawing
    from the world and hunkering down but by reaching out to the world and
    embracing it. We have reduced our deficit. We have increased our
    investment in education and training. We have focused on the needs of
    every region of our country. We worked hard here, for example, to try to
    help rebuild after the things that happened to Homestead and the rest of
    south Florida in the hurricane.
        But we know, we know no matter what else we do, unless we have
    people around the world who buy our products and services, people who
    will join with us in combating the problems of the world from
    environmental problems to terrorism to organized crime to the drug
    problems, unless we have people who will be our partners in democracy
    and freedom, we can never be fully what we ought to be. That is the
    significance of this summit.
        It builds on what happened with NAFTA. It builds on this GATT
    agreement. It builds on our efforts to reach out to the world. This is
    the largest summit of world leaders ever hosted here, 34 democratically
    elected leaders from this entire hemisphere joining hands together, not
    because we agree on everything but because we agree on the important
    things and because we believe in the promise of freedom; we believe in
    the promise of democracy; we believe in the promise of open, free trade;
    we believe in the promise of the human potential of the people of the
    United States and every other country here.
        And so we come here representing people from the tip of Alaska to
    the tip of Argentina, to plan and to build and to dream for all of you
    and for your children. Because we believe in the promise of America, we
    are elated that others have embraced the challenge and the promise of
    freedom and democracy and free enterprise. I know you wish us well, and
    if this meeting turns out to have the profound historic significance
    that it should, I hope for the rest of your life you will remember how
    hard you worked on it and be justly proud.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:15 p.m. at the Sheraton Bal Harbour. In
    his remarks, he referred to Gov. Lawton Chiles of Florida and his wife,
    Rhea; Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay and his wife, Anne; and Senator Bob Graham
    and his wife, Adele.