[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book II)]
[October 22, 1994]
[Pages 1837-1843]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Dinner for Gubernatorial Candidate Kathleen Brown in
San Francisco, California
October 22, 1994

    The President. Thank you so much. I'm just curious, can you hear me 
in the back of the room? [Applause] Good.
    I was listening to Kathleen give that speech----
    Audience members. Louder, louder.

[[Page 1838]]

    The President. I know, there's something wrong with the sound 
system, isn't there? Can someone turn the sound up? There's something 
wrong with it.
    Well, I'm sorry, you'll just have to listen. [Laughter]
    I was thinking when Kathleen was speaking that I was glad that she 
didn't run against me in 1992. And then I was thinking when she was 
speaking, we will now know what happened when ``Mrs. Wilson'' gets a lot 
of write-in votes from Modesto on election day.
    You know, I really looked forward to this, to coming out to 
California and giving you a progress report, talking about what this 
election is all about. I care a lot about this Governor's race. I used 
to be a Governor. In some ways it was the best job I ever had. At least 
I had an easier time defending myself. [Laughter] The truth is, I 
wouldn't trade this for anything.
    But if you will bear with me, even in this festive atmosphere, I 
want to talk tonight pretty seriously to you about what is at stake in 
these national elections, including Senator Feinstein's race and the 
congressional races, and then why what is at stake here in California is 
just like that and why, even though it's a different issue and a 
different race, what is underlying the contest is the same and why you 
have to make the same decision. And I want to do it because, after all, 
for the next 2 weeks and some odd days, you need to spend more time 
talking to the people who aren't in this room than the people who are if 
you want to make a difference in this election.
    When I was elected President, thanks in no small measure to the 
overwhelming support of the people of the State of California, I went to 
Washington determined to do everything I could to rebuild the American 
dream and to bring the American people together, to make sure that we 
move into the next century able to compete and win, to make sure that 
our children are not the first generation to do worse than their 
parents, to make sure that all this incredible diversity we have in 
America was the engine of our strength and unity, not the instrument of 
our undoing. That is why I wanted to be President. And I went there 
hoping, because I was determined to take our Democratic Party in a 
different direction, that the Republicans would at least meet me 
halfway, or would you believe 5 percent? [Laughter]
    Well, we've been there 21 months. And here are the facts: We have 
made a real start in making the Government work for ordinary Americans, 
in bringing the economy back, in making the world more peaceful and more 
secure for Americans to live and to grow and to flourish in. And in this 
election we do not pretend that there is nothing left to be done. We ask 
only that the American people look at what has been done, look at what 
our opponents have done, look at what they offer for the future. We ask 
them not to go back to the dark days of trickle-down economics and 
divisive social policy but to go forward into the 21st century with 
confidence.
    I got tickled, the Republican House leader, Mr. Gingrich, in a rare 
moment of candor the other day said that his whole--that their whole 
mission in life, all of them, the Republicans in Washington, the 
leaders, was to make sure Americans thought I was the enemy of normal 
people. Well, you know, the truth is he's done a pretty good job of that 
in a place or two. [Laughter] I thought to myself, now, what does that 
mean? I understand it partly because I grew up in the South, like a lot 
of you who are immigrants to California from that part of America. And I 
mean, I was raised on that kind of politics. If you couldn't think of 
anything to be for and you wanted to get in, just demonize your 
opponent. And if people are mad and angry and upset about something 
else, maybe they could just transfer all that onto the election. And 
just like a kid in a snit on a playground, if you make a decision when 
you're mad, normally you don't know what you're doing. So you run the 
risk of being for that which you're against and being against that which 
you're really for.
    Now, that's the risk in the California Governor's race, that's the 
risk in the California Senate race, and that's the risk in these 
Congress races all over the country. If you can get people all mad and 
then transfer their anger and frustration to somebody with a ``D'' 
beside of their name and make them the enemy, then you wind up doing 
that which you would not do if you were thinking.
    It reminds me--you know, one of the primary jobs of any parent is to 
try to raise their children not to make important decisions when they're 
just stomp-down furious. And in my part of the country--you know, I was 
born in a little town in south Arkansas about 20 miles from the Lou-


[[Page 1839]]

isiana border. And I don't know how many of you have ever been down 
there, but there are a lot of Cajuns in Louisiana who literally came 
from Acadia before and populated the State. And they developed a special 
way of speaking and even a sort of a hybrid language and an incredible 
body of humor. And when I was a young man, I used to make a habit of 
collecting these Cajun jokes. But I remember one which illustrates what 
we are in danger of seeing happening in this election if we don't turn 
it around and get people to thinking and not just feeling anger, a story 
about these two Cajun fellows named Rene and Jacques. And Jacques walks 
down the street, and he meets his friend Jean. And Jean says, ``Jacques, 
I always see in your pocket your $5 cigars. And they ain't there today. 
Why ain't they there anymore?'' And he said, ``You know, that no-good 
Rene, every time he sees me, he says, `Hey, Jacques, how you doing?' He 
hits me in the pocket. He ruins my $5 cigars.'' He said, ``Yes, I 
understand that, but how come you replace the cigars with dynamite?'' He 
said, ``Don't you know the next time he does that, you'll get killed?'' 
He said, ``Yeah, I know that, but I'll blow his hand off, too.'' 
[Laughter] You think about that. That's what's going on here. That's 
what's going on here.
    We have made a beginning for a change in having the National 
Government honor work and family. That's what the family leave law was 
all about, so people could take a little time off when their kids were 
born or their parents were sick without losing their jobs; in immunizing 
2 million children under the age of 2 by 1996; in expanding Head Start; 
in giving 19 States permission to try their own plans to move people 
from welfare to work with dignity; in giving tax cuts to 15 million 
working families with children, so nobody who works full-time will raise 
their children in poverty. I think that's a pretty good beginning.
    We've made a major, major start in developing a system of lifetime 
learning and training, so people don't stay unemployed for a long time 
and so young people can live in a world where they may have to change 
work seven times in a lifetime.
    We've signed just a couple of days ago the new elementary and 
secondary education act, which cuts off--[applause]--there are some 
educators here. You know why the educators are clapping? Because this 
act recognizes that all the real magic in education occurs in the 
classroom. And instead of having the Federal Government send a check to 
California with a string on it 3,000 miles long, accompanied by a 
gazillion rules, this act says: Here are the standards you must meet, 
here are the people you must help, here is the money; you figure out how 
to do it and be accountable for it. We're going to empower you to 
educate our children.
    In our budget we changed the system of student loans to save $4.3 
billion in tax money, to cut student fees by $2 billion to enable 20 
million Americans over the next couple of years to have lower interest, 
longer repayment options on their student loans so everybody can borrow 
the money to go to college who needs it in this country. And I think 
that's a pretty good beginning. And I don't think it's bad for normal 
Americans.
    We passed the crime bill and the Brady bill, and they tried to stop 
us. The Republicans cussed the Government for years. You know, that used 
to be how they made their bread and butter. Before immigration and 
crime, there was how bad the Government was. But they never shrunk it 
because all their crowd wanted those jobs in Washington. Also they knew 
if they ever made it smaller they wouldn't have anybody to kick around 
anymore.
    So we made it smaller, the Democrats. We reduced the size of the 
Federal Government, already more than 70,000 fewer people working in 
Washington bureaucracies than when I became President. And when our plan 
goes through, it will be the smallest Government since John Kennedy was 
President of the United States.
    And here's the really important thing: What did we do with the 
money? We gave it to you to fight crime. It's going to California; it's 
going to New York; it's going to Texas; it's going to Montana. It's 
going back to the grassroots of America to hire those police officers, 
to have those prevention programs, to build those prison cells, to give 
the American people a chance to be safer on their streets. That's what 
we did with the money. I think it was a pretty good swap. I wish they'd 
helped us do it.
    Now, when we lowered the Federal deficit 3 years in a row for the 
first time since Truman and exploded opportunities for trade and exports 
for California and a lot of other places and increased our investment in 
education and training and provided for increased incentives for people

[[Page 1840]]

to put free enterprise into isolated urban and rural areas, 4.6 million 
new jobs--in 1994 we've had more high-wage jobs come into this American 
economy than in the previous 5 years combined. Is California slower than 
the rest of the country at coming back? Yes. Why? Well, you had the 
earthquake, and you had 21 percent of America's defense budget. So it's 
taking a little longer. But your unemployment is one percentage point 
lower than it was when I became President. And I'll say a little more 
about the things we've done to try to make sure that 1995 and 1996 are 
even better years for California. The point is not that we have done 
everything that needs to be done, but we are plainly moving in the right 
direction and the country is better off than it was 21 months ago.
    Now, we did it in a different way, too. I don't think this was 
abnormal. I have more than twice as many women and more than twice as 
many minorities in my Cabinet as ever served any other President. I 
didn't think that was abnormal. At this point in our Presidency, we've 
appointed more than twice as many women, more than twice as many 
African-Americans, and 3 times as many Hispanics as well as more Asians 
to the court than all the three previous Presidents combined at this 
point in their Presidency. But since our judicial appointees have a 
higher percentage of them rated well-qualified by the Bar Association, I 
don't see what's so abnormal about that. Why shouldn't the bench look 
like America? Why shouldn't the administration look like America?
    And let me ask you this. Is the fact that Russian missiles are not 
pointed at your children for the first time since the dawn of the 
nuclear age an abnormal thing? I think that's pretty good. I think it's 
a good thing for America that we reached agreement with China not to 
export missiles that are dangerous. I think it's a good thing that we're 
making progress there. I think it's a good thing that we are 
contributing to peace in the Middle East and we helped the South 
Africans with their elections and we're contributing to peace in 
Northern Ireland. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing 
that we did not let Saddam Hussein again become an aggressor. And a good 
thing--I think it's a good thing that President Aristide went home to 
Haiti.
    Do we still have problems in this country and in this world? You bet 
we do. But we are moving in the right direction. The last thing in the 
wide world we need to do, because there are people who have not yet 
gotten a raise or people who still feel insecure in their jobs, because 
another one million Americans lost their health insurance last year and 
they're all in working families----
    Audience member. What about 186?
    The President. ----because of all these things, there are problems. 
So what's the answer? Turn around and go back where we came from? I 
don't think so. Give it to the people that haven't tried to solve the 
problems? I don't think so.
    Audience member. Help us out on 186.
    The President. You, look----
    Audience member. Help us out on 186.
    The President. Do you want to give this speech?
    Audience member. No, but I----
    The President. Do you know the first thing about manners?
    Audience member. We need your help.
    The President. Let me tell you something, I made a statement about 
it yesterday and if you will just be quiet, I'll talk some more. But I 
cannot talk if you're going to talk.
    I tried to solve the health care problem in a way that I thought was 
right. If the people want to solve it in California, you can do it. 
[Applause] Thank you.
    Now, what's all that got to do with this election? You think about 
it. What did they do? I want you to know what they did, because it's 
just like what the Governor is doing here. If you like the fact that we 
passed family leave and the Brady bill and the crime bill and the 
college loans, their leadership fought against every one of them, and 
now they're coming back to people and saying we ought to do something 
about crime and all the other problems in America.
    They had their chance, and they were against them all. At the end of 
the legislative session, they blocked campaign finance reform, they 
blocked lobby reform, they killed the Superfund bill. You know, the 
Superfund bill cleans up toxic dumps. In the Superfund bill we had 
chemical companies, labor unions, and the Sierra Club wanting to pass 
it. I never saw those folks for the same thing in my life. I never 
thought they would be for anything. Do you know who was against the 
Superfund bill? Slightly more than 40 Republican Senators. That's it. 
And do you know why? Because they would rather have left the poison in 
the ground

[[Page 1841]]

than let Dianne Feinstein come home to California and say, ``I helped to 
clean it up.'' That's the truth. That is the truth.
    And now they've got this contract. I want you to see if you can 
remember if you've ever heard this before. Here is their deal--you heard 
Senator Boxer's litany here--``Let that crowd run the Senate and make 
Mr. Gingrich the Speaker, and here is what we'll do for you''--this is 
great, this sounds great--``here's what we'll do. We'll give everybody a 
tax cut, and if you're rich we'll give you a huge tax cut. And we will 
revitalize Star Wars, and we will increase defense spending, and we will 
balance the budget.'' Does that sound familiar? And what happened the 
last time we did that? We exploded the deficit. We face cuts in 
Medicare, veterans benefits, everything else. We ran the economy into 
the ditch and sent our jobs overseas, and it'll happen again. You have 
to say no, no, no, no, no. No!
    Audience members. No! No! No!
    The President. The cynicism of these people, it's unbelievable. It's 
unbelievable.
    I've got to tell you about one more filibuster. They tried to 
filibuster the California desert bill. They almost got that done, and 
finally, there were some Republican Senators who cared enough about the 
environment and were so overcome with embarrassment at what the rest of 
them were doing that they bailed out and broke the filibuster. But it 
was weird. We had a guy from Wyoming leading a filibuster against the 
California desert bill so he could help that guy from Texas buy the 
California Senate seat. [Laughter] I mean, it was amazing. That's what 
was going on. That's what goes on up there. You've got to say no to 
that.
    Now, what's that got to do with this race? Kathleen and I were 
talking about it the other day. Listen to this. Five million Americans 
who live in California benefit from the family leave bill; 1,650,000 
Americans who live in California will be eligible for lower interest 
college loans. The crime bill will bring another $900 million to 
California for 10,200 police officers, among other things. Over 2 
million California families got tax cuts. And they fought it all.
    Now, if you look at what's happened in California since I became 
President--I didn't come out here and point the finger at Governor 
Wilson. I just sort of said, ``These folks are in trouble, and I ought 
to help.'' The first thing we did was to take off all the controls on a 
lot of high tech exports so we could sell more. And California benefited 
more than any other State from that.
    And then we started a program that the previous administration had 
literally refused to start, to help places where bases had closed or 
where companies had lost defense contracts to do defense conversion. And 
California has gotten more than one-third of all the defense conversion 
money given out by the Federal Government in the last 2 years to help 
rebuild this economy for the 21st century.
    When the earthquake came along, you wound up with $11 billion. And 
unlike the last earthquake in northern California, this time the 
Government paid for 90 percent of it from Washington, not 75 percent, 
because we knew that you needed the help. And we did it in record time.
    They talk about immigration. What have we done? We are cutting 
spending overall, and yet we increased funding to help the States deal 
with immigration costs by a third. We doubled the border guards along 
San Diego's border. We have for the first time paid for some of the 
criminal justice costs. And we have paid to ship some people who have 
been convicted of crimes out of the country. And your Governor calls my 
effort pathetic? He made the problem happen when he was in the Senate. 
And when he came back here and he had his President in Washington, he 
never issued a peep for more money or a peep of blame or responsibility. 
Never.
    And when I took office, I knew this was a problem. I didn't care if 
you had a Republican Governor. You could have had somebody in the 
``purple party'' for all I cared. You had a problem. And I have tried to 
help you solve it. The Attorney General has been to southern California. 
We have also started dealing with the sewage problems down there. We 
have done a lot of other things. We never sought to place any blame on 
anybody else. We were just trying to help. That's what Governors should 
be doing, building people's lives, building the economy, building 
people's future. That's the kind of partner I would like to have in 
Sacramento so we could do even more things. Now, you think about that. 
You think about that.
    What else has happened since our administration came in? Well, we're 
selling California rice to Japan for the first time in history. We got 
enough shipbuilding contracts to NASCO at San Diego to save 4,000 jobs, 
and the Livermore

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labs just got a $2 billion research contract to help to build a high 
tech future here. I never thought of trying to blame somebody else. I 
just knew you needed help and you had great resources and it was time to 
start moving forward. And that's the kind of Governor you need.
    I want to say one thing about this immigration proposition. You 
know, I also came out against it yesterday. But I want to talk to you 
about this. I want to make two points about it. And I want--again, 
remember, you've got to spend the rest of this election talking to 
people outside this room. I want to make two points about it. Number 
one, I have really tried to help you with this problem, and we are 
making a difference. But why should we punish the kids because we're not 
smart enough to figure out how to stop their parents for coming here 
looking for work? And what does it do, really, for your treasury if kids 
are out of school so they'll be free to get in trouble? What does it do 
if kids don't go to the clinic so they'll be free to communicate 
diseases and other problems to other people? I don't know that you're 
going to save a split nickel on this deal.
    Now, let's solve the problem. We already deny welfare benefits to 
immigrants who are not here legally. There is a problem in the work 
place; there is a problem in enforcement. Let us go after it in a 
responsible way. It is a legitimate problem. When people don't have jobs 
themselves, they don't want someone else having a job who didn't even 
wait in line like all the other immigrants do every year to come here in 
a legal fashion. There is a problem. But this problem was largely 
created by politicians in previous years who wanted this to happen. And 
a lot of them are now trying to benefit from the very situation they 
created, and that is wrong. That is wrong.
    Now, let me say something else. If you've got a bunch of friends who 
are going to vote for that anyway, you ought to still talk them into 
voting for Kathleen Brown. And here is the argument you ought to use. 
Why in the wide world would you vote for Pete Wilson because he says 
he's for that if you are? Why would you waste two votes on that 
proposition when one will do just as well? [Laughter]
    Now, listen to this. What is the argument against Governor Wilson? 
What is Kathleen Brown's argument? That she represents vision and energy 
and ideas and she has a plan for the future. Not that the last 4 years 
would not have been challenging, no matter who had been Governor. There 
was defense cuts coming; there was a recession in the economy. What is 
the charge? Not that there were tough times but that the response was 
inadequate. It didn't reflect energy and compassion and leadership and 
planning.
    Now, if this election turns on an issue that will be over on the 
morning of November 9th, you will be giving another 4 year contract, 
this time with an explicit permission to lift not one finger to solve 
the real problems of California or to help build its future. That would 
be a mistake. That would be a mistake.
    So tell your friends, ``Look, I'm not for this thing. I wish I could 
talk you out of it. But if I can't, don't shoot yourself in the foot and 
vote twice when once will do.'' [Laughter] If you make a mistake on 
this, you're going to need a Governor even more than I do. You need a 
good Governor. Go do it right. And every time you worry about it and you 
get frustrated, you think about the story I told you about the guy that 
swapped cigars for dynamite. It happens all the time.
    Now, let me close by just saying this. Let me tell you what I really 
think will turn this election. I think it depends what frame of mind the 
people are in when they wake up on election day. This is an old-
fashioned election, right? Hope versus fear, the future versus the past, 
plan versus a wedge. That's what this is about. And you cannot blame 
people for being exercised and frustrated and angry. Most people in 
California have not felt the benefits of the recovery, in spite of the 
fact that we have put billions in here, every last thing I could think 
of to do. A lot of people have not felt it in their lives. They still 
feel uncertain and insecure.
    We have social problems in this country, the crime, the gangs, the 
drugs, the guns; this stuff has been building up for 30 years. Most 
hourly wage earners have had stagnant wages in America for 20 years. 
California has been through this trauma. These problems have been with 
us. And for 12 years we had this trickle-down economics approach and 
this divide-them-and-conquer social policy approach, which I have had 21 
months to work on. Now we're making a good start, but we have a ways to 
go before people can feel it inside.
    So you have got to leave this room and do two things. One is, if you 
can give her some more money so she doesn't get blown away on

[[Page 1843]]

television, you ought to do it. The second thing is to go out and talk 
to people about what this election is really all about and get them to 
unload all their frustration and their anger and try to get them to 
relax. And get them into a conversation, get them into a dialog.
    What I really think you ought to do is go out there and try to turn 
the lights on in California. If the lights are on, if people are up, if 
they're looking to the future, they will vote for Kathleen Brown because 
she's got a plan; she's got energy; she symbolizes the future. Turn the 
lights on! Turn the lights on! Turn the lights on!
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 8:53 p.m. at the Fairmont Hotel.