[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
[October 5, 1994]
[Pages 1708-1710]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the Senator George Mitchell Scholarship Fund Dinner
October 5, 1994

    Thank you very much. Senator Cohen, Senator Dole, Senator Mitchell, 
my fellow Americans. I've already heard enough tonight to build the 
speeches for the next year on. [Laughter]
    First of all, I come here in all sincerity to say that I believe if 
the decision were made on the merits, Bob Dole and not George Mitchell 
would be the baseball commissioner, because Bob Dole is much better at 
keeping his team out on strike. [Laughter] I also have to tell you that 
I really admire Bill Cohen. They call me Slick Willie--[laughter]--I 
mean, he's so erudite, you know, he writes all these books--stands up 
there and smiles at Senator Dole with that little twist of the head and 
says, ``I'm one of those errant ones.'' That's right, I have gotten one 
vote out of him in the last 2 years. [Laughter] Bill's last book was 
called ``Murder in the Senate.'' The longer I stay here, the more 
appealing that book gets. [Laughter]
    I will never forget the night George Mitchell said he just had to 
tell me something. I thought he was going to give me another piece of 
advice, tell me how I was messing up, talk about how we were going to 
achieve the Elysian Fields. And then he said he wasn't going to run for 
reelection. It's really--it's not very pleasant to see a grown man cry 
anytime, especially when it's the President. [Laughter] I begged; I 
pleaded; I wept. I called him back in the middle of the night, and I got 
him up, and I thought maybe he would be in a weakened condition, you 
know, if I woke him up. [Laughter] I have one last idea. I will ask Ken 
Burns to do a

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special on the Senate and scrap ``Baseball'' if Mitchell will stay in 
the Senate, and then he can be the star. [Laughter] And I called Burns 
about it today. And he said, ``I like this. You know,'' he said, ``when 
I did this baseball thing, it was a retrospective on decade after 
decade. But I could do one on the Senate in real time, and it would just 
seem like decade after decade.'' [Laughter]
    Well, anyway, I'm about adjusted to the fact that George won't be 
around next year, but I want to say seriously, I don't believe that any 
of us would function very well in this town if we tried to do anything 
on our own. One of the reasons I ran for President is I thought this 
country was too divided. I thought we needed a greater spirit of 
partnership. I thought people had either excessive or too restricted 
notions about the Government and that we didn't work together very well.
    Ironically, I was elected to President of this country without 
knowing the majority leader of the Senate very well. But I could never 
have asked for a better partner. Last year, despite all the smoke and 
mirrors and conflict, according to Congressional Quarterly, it was the 
most successful year of partnership between a President and a Congress 
since the end of World War II, except for 1953, President Eisenhower's 
first year, and 1965, President Johnson's first year after his election.
    Now, that was in no small measure because of George Mitchell. And 
there are a lot of things that we can rejoice about, even where we 
disagreed with the methods. The country's deficit's gone down 2 years in 
a row for the first time in 20 years, and next year will make 3 years in 
a row for the first time since Mr. Truman was here. We passed NAFTA. We 
passed national service, something that I'm convinced may revolutionize 
America from the grassroots up. We reorganized the student loan program, 
and now millions of middle class young people can afford to go to 
college and need not shy away from it. In every State in this country 
and every community, there is somebody who's got a job or access to an 
apprenticeship program or a better student loan or a place in a Head 
Start program or a childhood immunization because of the labors of 
George Mitchell in the last year and a half alone.
    I cannot tell you what it has meant to me to have the honor of 
working with him on a daily basis. He has this almost magical blend of 
ability and discipline, of pragmatism and principle, of flexibility and 
fight. His powers of concentration and persuasion are legion. He really 
does bring a sense of balance to every debate. No matter how strongly I 
feel something, if he thinks I'm wrong, I'm afraid to talk to him 
because I think there's a 90 percent chance he will convince me that I 
had it all wrong all along. I don't know why he's not that persuasive 
with Senator Dole. [Laughter]
    He is truly a leader in the best sense. He has vision. He tries to 
get things done that he believes are right. He has the skill to do it, 
but because he's never lost the common touch, he's able to keep the 
trust and the confidence of the people who sent him here.
    You know, I was watching that film, and there was a picture of 
George along toward the end of the film sitting at a plant in his 
shirtsleeves, talking to the workers. Now, every one of us who ever ran 
for office in any State in America has had a picture taken like that. 
But if you've looked at as many of those films as I have, you can tell 
the people who went there for the first time when they were in the shot 
and the people who just do it all the time and would just as soon be 
there as on the floor of the Senate. George Mitchell is the latter 
category.
    I have made a joke to many of you that of all the Members of 
Congress, from the freshmen to the most senior, the Republicans and the 
Democrats, George Mitchell is the only person who never comes to the 
White House without some young person from his home State in tow. I 
honestly believe--you know, Maine's not a very big State, and I can 
appreciate that. Mitchell's been here 14 years; I believe he has 
personally brought enough people to the White House that he could never 
be defeated, just because of them, their parents, their spouses, and 
their siblings. He couldn't lose. I don't know how he's ever had time to 
go to the meetings; he's always so busy making sure I don't miss my 
picture with a person from Maine. [Laughter] Just this week he was here, 
and I almost got back in the White House, and I thought, ``He forgot.'' 
And I was walking to the door, and he said, ``Wait a minute, wait a 
minute, Mr. President. Here's somebody from my home State I want you to 
meet.'' [Laughter] And it's become a joke between us now. And we're all 
laughing about it, but I tell you, the most important thing for all of 
us is to never forget who sent us here. And if you're President in this

[[Page 1710]]

day and age and you try to do anything, you've got to be willing to be 
misunderstood from time to time. I often tell people, and I try to 
actually feel this way every day, that the important thing for us is not 
what the American people think of us every day but whether we think of 
them every day. George Mitchell has thought of the people who sent him 
here every day he has been here for 14 years. I have no doubt of that.
    Let me just say one last thing. A lot of the things that we say 
around here, we say so often that they seem trite-sounding, and then we 
stop saying them because they lose their feeling. But you cannot be an 
immigrant's child in this country and become majority leader of the 
Senate; you cannot rise from the roots that Senator Dole came out of in 
Russell, Kansas; you can't be somebody like me who had the privilege--
and I mean this sincerely--for a brief period in my early childhood to 
live in a place that didn't have any indoor plumbing, so I never got to 
forget what other people had to live like, and have the gifts that we 
have been given without knowing that our primary obligation is not to 
solve every problem that is before us but to leave this country well 
enough off that the American dream is still alive for everybody that 
comes after us.
    And that is why this scholarship tonight is so important to me, 
because you could not do anything for George Mitchell that would be more 
fitting. It's better than a statue. It's better than a plaque. It's 
better than an endowment for some other purpose, because what you are 
doing is giving him a chance in his name to create other George 
Mitchells, to give other young people a chance to live out their dreams, 
and to prove that the dream that made him what he is is still alive and 
real in this country today.
    I thank you for that, because I have known very few Americans that 
remotely embodied the qualities of this country in their purest sense as 
well as George Mitchell does. And this gift you have given him does that 
as well.
    Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Senator Mitchell.

Note: The President spoke at 9:13 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.