    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
    [September 25, 1994]
    [Pages 1616-1620]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Bethel A.M.E. Church in New York City
    September 25, 1994

        The President. Thank you so much.

    [At this point, the President was interrupted by the sound of a siren.]

        The President. That's my introduction there, you hear it? [Laughter]
    Pastor Mackey, thank you. Thank you very much. Pastor Mackey, first let
    me say on behalf of my family, we are glad to be here in this church
    with its great history going back to 1819, running the Underground
    Railroad to help people to freedom. I'm also glad to be here in this
    African Methodist Episcopal church because your church has a long
    history with my home State, Arkansas, and my hometown, Little Rock,
    where Bishop Allen came a long time ago as part of his effort to found
    this church. I also want to thank you, if I might, for just letting us
    come here and worship. And I would like to say that for Hillary and for
    Chelsea and for me, this has been a great morning. And I'm sure I can
    say that all three of us are very grateful to all of you just for
    letting us come in here and to be with you.
        I got a good lesson out of the briefest sermon I've heard in a long
    time. [Laughter] And I got a good lesson out of one of the most
    beautiful songs I have heard in a long time. I loved all the music. You
    know, I like music and even as I get older and I can't sing quite in
    tune anymore--I heard that fine man singing, ``Work

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    on Me.'' [Laughter] So I need to be here, and I need to hear that. And
    then I heard your pastor say, ``There is always a word from the Lord.''
        I am grateful to be here with all these people who are my friends,
    with the Governor, about whom I will say more in a moment, and Carl
    McCall and my dear friend Ruth Messinger and Mark Green and Denny
    Farrell and Senator Paterson, Assemblyman Wright, and Karen Burstein who
    wants to be your attorney general. That's the best job I ever had. I was
    attorney general of my State, and you don't have to hire people or fire
    them. You don't have to raise taxes or cut programs. And if she ever
    does anything unpopular, she can just say the constitution made her do
    it. [Laughter] I hope you'll give her the chance to do it. And I want to
    say a special word of thanks about my friend Charlie Rangel, for what he
    said. You know, Charlie talked about Haiti. Let me say that for Hillary
    and for me, for both of us, he has been a wonderful friend and partner
    in so many ways. But I want to use him today in a way to get into what I
    want to talk about briefly.
        Charlie mentioned Haiti and how the people were defenseless and poor
    and how hard it is for me to convince some people that our interest is
    at stake there, although I think more and more Americans are seeing that
    what we are doing there is good and supports democracy throughout our
    hemisphere--which is nothing more than saying our neighborhood--helps to
    end human rights violations that we find intolerable everywhere but
    unconscionable on our doorstep, and offers them a chance at stability.
        But it is an example of what I ran for President about. I thought I
    had two jobs to get us into the next century. One is to move this
    country forward, just to get us to face our problems again--jobs,
    education, drugs, violence, crime, health care--just to face the
    problems and go to work on them instead of just talking about them all
    the time. And the other was to bring this country together instead of
    letting it drift apart and to try to bring the world together across the
    lines of race and region and income and religion.
        I have just finished reading, late last night, a book about World
    War II and President and Mrs. Roosevelt. And I am reminded, as I think
    of our brave soldiers from all over the country and all their
    backgrounds doing their work today in Haiti, that in World War II,
    African-Americans were kept segregated in units in the Army until the
    Battle of the Bulge at the end of the war, when they had so many
    casualties that blacks and whites had to fight together. And they didn't
    do it very long before they found out they liked it very well. And the
    only complaint recorded in this book I read was that some of the white
    officers said that their black comrades were so ferocious they could
    hardly get them to quit fighting even when they needed to rest. I am
    reminded that in World War II we put Japanese-Americans in concentration
    camps, and then we let their children serve. And a Japanese outfit had
    the highest casualties of any American outfit in World War II. And in
    this book, I saw the picture painted by the author of the military
    people going to the concentration camps to give the parents of the dead
    boys their medals while they were keeping them behind bars because we
    were fighting Japan, a country they had given up.
        When I was fighting to build an economic partnership with Mexico, I
    was reminded in so many of our endeavors, Mexican-American soldiers have
    had the highest rate of casualties. I look at Charlie Rangel who served
    his country in uniform bravely and his son who served as a United States
    Marine, and I think to myself, this is a country that, if we can figure
    out how to live together, will be strong all the way through the next
    century; because the world is getting smaller, and if people who are
    different can find oneness, there is nothing that can stop them.
        That is why the South Africans wanted the United States to help run
    the election and spend a few million dollars for an honest election that
    produced the President, Nelson Mandela, who is coming here to see me in
    a few days. That is why the people in Ireland, having fought for 800
    years against one another, wish the people of the United States to be
    involved in trying to bring an end to their conflict. That is why the
    Israelis and the Arabs wish the United States to be involved in bringing
    an end to that horrible, horrible period of violence in the Middle East.
    This is a very great country.
        Even in the moment of great tension one week ago today in Haiti,
    when I did not know whether we would actually have to shoot our way in
    there, the de facto military leaders told our delegation there,
    President Carter, General Powell, and Senator Nunn, ``Well, if the
    President is determined to do this, if the United

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    Nations is determined to do this, we want the Americans here because we
    trust them.'' I say that because if we can just face our challenges and
    move forward and come together, we're going to be all right.
        Now, when the pastor said, ``There is always a word from the Lord,''
    I looked at the program and I saw the word from the Lord, Isaiah 40:31,
    ``They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They will
    mount up with wings as eagles.'' But I want to talk to you about the
    rest of the verse, ``They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk
    and not faint.''
        Now, I have a simple message for you today. The people who don't
    want us to get together and who have a very different idea about moving
    forward than most of us do are hoping and praying that you will grow
    weary, that you will not run, that you will not walk, that you will just
    grow weary.
        Look at Mr. McCall here. How many times do people all over America
    say, ``If only our children had more role models, if only men would take
    responsibility for their families and their communities and set a good
    example and lift our children up.'' Oh, how many times do you hear it
    said? Well, folks, you've got a chance to send a message to this entire
    country that people who make something of themselves and who stand for
    something good and who work for what is right will be rewarded without
    regard to their background, that we are going to go forward and we are
    going to do it together. And if you will not grow weary, you can do it.
        And let me say something about Governor Cuomo. His greatest failing
    is he speaks about me better than he speaks about himself. [Laughter] By
    the time he got through nominating me for President in New York, he had
    me convinced I ought to have the job. [Laughter] I grew 3 inches sitting
    out there in the pew today just listening to him talk.
        They say, ``Well, the Governor will have a hard time getting
    reelected; after all, he's running for a fourth term.'' I know about
    that. I did that one time. And I was out in a little booth in the State
    fair in Little Rock--I want you to listen to this, this could be about
    him instead of me, this is how it happened--and every year at the State
    fair in my little rural State, I would go to the fair and have a
    Governor's Day. And anybody could come up and talk to the Governor and
    say whatever they wanted. And I lived in a rural State where most people
    call me by my first name, including my enemies, and they said whatever
    they wanted. [Laughter] And so I listened to this all day. And I was
    having to decide whether I would run for reelection. I had been Governor
    a long time. And along toward the end of the day, an old man in overalls
    came up to me, and he said, ``Bill, you going to run again?'' I said,
    ``I don't know. If I do, will you vote for me?'' He said, ``Yes, I will.
    I always have.'' And I said, ``Well, aren't you sick of me after all
    these years?'' He said, ``No, but everybody else I know is.'' [Laughter]
    And then he said, ``But what do you expect? All you have done is nag us.
    You're always trying to get us to do something else, always pushing us
    on jobs and education and taking care of kids.'' And he said, ``You
    know, it's just hard to take all that. But you know something? It's
    beginning to work, and I'm going to stick with it.'' And I went all
    across my State and told that story on myself. But I told the last part,
    too, and the people sent me back.
        How many times in the Bible--I think two or three times--does our
    Saviour say, ``A prophet is not with honor except in his own land''?
    Most places would give anything to have a leader like Governor Cuomo.
    And you can say, ``Well, he's been there a long time.'' Let me tell you
    something: In a lot of ways, this is his first term and it just started,
    because it's the first time we've had a chance to work together as
    partners.
        I ask you to consider the problems of America, the breakdown of
    community, the breakdown of family, the rise of drugs and violence and
    gangs, the things that grip you here every day. Do you think that just
    started yesterday? That's been going on for 30 years. I told my wife and
    daughter as we were coming up here today that when I was a young man
    living in England, I used to come back to the United States when I was
    sent over there for a couple of years, and I would land in New York. And
    unlike most people like me, I mean, here I was--and I had an even bigger
    accent back then--I took the transportation, and I got off at 125th and
    Lennox--[laughter]--every time I came back here, and I walked alone
    through Harlem because I was fascinated by it. I wanted to see the
    people. I wanted to talk to the people. I wanted to see what they were
    up against. Even then I can remember some people, back

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    when the drug of choice was heroin, leaning in corners with needles in
    their arms. This didn't just happen overnight, friends.
        And these economic problems that we've got, they've been going--the
    social problems, 30 years. What are the economic problems? Not only do
    we have a lot of people out of work, we've got a lot of people working
    like crazy never getting a raise, right? And they are worried about
    losing their health care, or they're worried about losing their
    pensions. How long has that been going on? Twenty years. Twenty years we
    have been struggling to organize ourselves and to educate ourselves and
    to be competitive in a global economy.
        And then our governmental policies, how long did we hear from our
    Government that the real answer was, to all of our problems, bad-mouth
    the Federal Government, lower taxes on the wealthiest of Americans,
    burden the middle class, reduce investment in our future, and explode
    the debt? And all the time, the people that were in cussed the
    Government as they were doing their best to stay in the Government and
    keep drawing those checks. That happened for 12 years, right?
        I have been President for 20 months, not 30 years, not 20 years, not
    10 years. When Mario Cuomo became Governor, it was all he could do to
    stand up against the tide of walking away from the States, walking away
    from the cities, walking away from the people. And in 20 months, because
    we're working together--my partner Mr. Rangel and I, my partner Governor
    Cuomo and I, we're all working together with people in the private
    sector--we brought our national deficit down for 3 years in a row for
    the first time since Mr. Truman was President. We've done something the
    other party said they were for, but never did: We have reduced the size
    of the Federal Government. It's going to be as small as it was when Mr.
    Kennedy was President, at the end of my term. But we gave all the money
    back to you to pay for the crime bill the Governor talked about. We
    empowered the communities and the States to hire the police, to build
    the prisons, to have the drug education, the drug treatment, the other
    programs for the kids, the job programs. We at least got the health care
    debate into both Houses of Congress and on the floor for the first time
    in American history, and we've got to keep doing that.
        We've had 4.3 million new jobs, manufacturing jobs increasing for
    almost a year now, the longest period they've increased in a decade. Our
    country was voted the most productive country in the world by a panel of
    international economists just the other day for the first time in 9
    years. Just this week, I signed a bill that will help Harlem, that will
    help New York City, that will point $4.8 billion into special banks to
    loan money to poor folks who can't borrow money to go into business,
    just this week, something I specifically pledged to do when I ran for
    President.
        Now what's happening? We're having an election in which there are 30
    years of social problems, 20 years of economic problems, and 12 years of
    politics bad-mouthing the Government. And we've done more in any 20-
    month period than anybody has in a month of Sundays. But a lot of people
    have not felt it yet, and they cannot know it, as the Governor said,
    because there's no way for them to get the information except in an
    election where we tell people.
        So we now find a situation in which the people may actually go out
    and vote for the very things that they are against, because they don't
    know what has happened in 20 months and they see the wake of the last 30
    years; an election which depends largely, on its outcome, on those same
    people's ability to bad-mouth those of us that are trying to move the
    country forward and bring the country together, so you will be weary and
    stay home and not mount up with wings as eagles, not run or walk without
    growing weary or fainting.
        One day a long time ago, I suffered a terrible setback in my public
    life. I was trying to do something for the people of my State. It was a
    very bad day for me, not personally but because I had failed to help
    hundreds of people I had worked to help. And my secretary, who was a
    great woman of faith, kept one of those Scripture calendars on her desk.
    And I was alone in my office, almost in tears, and she looked at the
    calendar for the first time and ripped off the calendar piece and
    brought it into me and gave me what has ever since been my favorite
    verse of Scripture from St. Paul's letter to the Galatians: ``Let us not
    grow weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not
    lose heart.''
        I say to you today, my fellow Americans, we've just been here 20
    months. We're 4.3 million jobs better. We're a crime bill better. We're

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    the immunization bill better; 2 million kids are going to get their
    shots by '96. We're 200,000 more children in Head Start better. We're
    coming together more.
        Do not lose heart. Show up. Talk to the people in your
    neighborhoods; tell them to show up. Scripture says we're supposed to be
    good citizens, too. Mario Cuomo is the heart that you must not lose. Mr.
    McCall is the heart that you must not lose. These people are the heart
    that you must not lose. Do not let a moment pass. When the movement is
    in the forward direction and the feelings are not there yet, stay
    strong, mount up, go forward.
        God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:39 p.m. In his remarks, he referred to
    Rev. O'Neil Mackey, Sr., pastor, Bethel A.M.E. Church; H. Carl McCall,
    New York State comptroller; Ruth W. Messinger, Manhattan Borough
    president; Mark Green, New York City public advocate; Herman D. (Denny)
    Farrell and Keith L. Wright, members, New York State Assembly; and David
    Paterson, New York State senator.