    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [January 31, 1995]
    [Pages 137-144]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the New England Presidential Dinner in Boston
    January 31, 1995

        Thank you very much. You know, for a President who has been derided
    from time to time on the pages of the Wall Street Journal and other
    places for being too concerned with diversity, I feel that I should
    apologize tonight for giving you such an overconcentration of Irish
    blarney in the last three speakers. [Laughter] I hardly know what to
    say. And even if I do, I'll just repeat something. [Laughter]
        They were wonderful. I want to say first to Senator Kerry, I thank
    you for your leadership and your wise counsel to me on so many things;
    for your occasional constructive criticism, which is always helpful--
    [laughter]--and for always thinking about how we can reach out to people
    who aren't in this room and who have been vulnerable to the siren's song
    of the other party. We should do more of that, because we're working
    hard to represent them and to help them.
        I also want to say that when you introduced Teresa tonight, I was
    sitting here thinking that next only to the President of the United
    States, you're about to become the most over-married man in the whole
    country. [Laughter] And I congratulate you both, and I wish you well and
    Godspeed.
        I want to say how elated I was to be a part of a couple of events
    for Senator Kennedy up here in the last campaign. Whatever labels you
    put on Democrats, the truth is that all elections are about two things:
    whether a majority of the people identify with you and think you're on
    their side and whether you've got a message for the future. In this last
    election, without apology, with great energy and gusto and courage, when
    all the national trends were going the other way and when no one could
    any longer seriously claim that Massachusetts was just a different
    State, Ted Kennedy told the people of this State what he stood for, what
    he had done, and most importantly of all, why he wanted another term. He
    made the election about the future and the people of Massachusetts, and
    he won. And if the Democrats will make the elections of 1996 about the
    people of the United States and the future of our country, we will win
    as well.
        I want to thank Alan and Fred and all the others on the committee.
    They're the only people I know who are more indefatigable than I am when
    it comes to trying to push our party's agenda and move this country
    forward. They're the sort of ``Energizer bunnies'' of the national
    Democratic Party, and I am grateful. [Laughter]
        I wish I could put them on television the way Mario Cuomo and Ann
    Richards were. Did you all see them on the Super Bowl? I don't know
    about you, but I've had three dozen bags of Doritos since then.
    [Laughter] I can hardly walk. And I want them to stay on. I mean, write
    Doritos and tell them you ate lots of those Doritos and that's the only
    way we can get equal time with the Republicans on the airwaves.
    [Laughter]
        I want to thank your party chair, Joan Menard, and Reverend Charles
    Stith, my longtime friend; your secretary of state; president Billy
    Bulger; Speaker Flaherty; and the attorney general; all the others who
    are here; and a special word of thanks to your wonderful mayor, Tom
    Menino, for making me feel so welcome here today.
        You know, when Senator Kerry and Senator Kennedy and I went with the
    mayor to meet with that youth council today and they had a young person
    from every part of this great city, from all different ethnic
    backgrounds, and obviously different sets of personal conditions, and we
    were sitting there just having a family conversation about what these
    young people were interested in. And they kept asking me, ``Well, here's
    a problem.'' But they didn't ask me, ``What are you going to do about
    it?'' They said, ``What do you think we can do about it?'' It was
    astonishing. Over and over, ``What do you think we can do about it?''
    And I thought to myself, if we got enough kids like this all over
    America, our country is in pretty good

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    shape. And it's a great tribute to Boston and to the ethic of
    citizenship and service, which is vibrant and alive and burning here.
        I was so glad to--appreciate what Senator Dodd said about the
    national service program. I know all of you must be very proud of Eli
    Segal from Boston for the way he has run that program. It is a brilliant
    thing that is lining up possibilities all across our country: immunizing
    children in south Texas; rebuilding housing projects in Detroit; helping
    people in all the natural disasters in California; restocking the salmon
    in the Pacific Northwest. You cannot imagine what those young people are
    doing all across this country. And I have to tell you that if it hadn't
    been for Eli Segal I'm not sure we ever could have done it, the way he
    conceived it and executed it. And the next time he comes home to Boston
    give him a pat on the back, because he's been magnificent.
        I want to thank my longtime friend Don Fowler for agreeing to join
    this team with Senator Dodd. The real reason Don came up here tonight is
    so there would be two southern rednecks book-ending all these Irish guys
    when they were talking. [Laughter]
        Don understands what part of our problems are. Everybody talks about
    change, but Clinton's ninth law of politics is, everyone is for change
    in general but against it in particular. [Laughter] Everybody is for
    lowering the deficit. The problem is when you have to lower it--that's
    what Senator Kennedy was talking about--we didn't get much help when we
    actually had to do it. It's kind of like everybody is for going to the
    dentist, but if I tell you I made you an appointment for 7:30 in the
    morning, you'd have second thoughts. [Laughter]
        So to whatever extent I bear a responsibility for some of our
    party's difficulties because I had a drill to the tooth of America for
    the last 2 years, trying to whip this thing back in shape, I regret
    that. But I don't regret the fact that we do have the economy back on
    track; we do have the deficit coming down; we do have this country in a
    position now where we can think about how to give tax relief to hard-
    working Americans and invest in education and still continue to bring
    the deficit down. I don't regret that. It was tough. It was hard. And I
    thank the people of the Congress who did it.
        You know, Don and I come from part of the country where it's been
    hard to be a Democrat for over 20 years now. And part of it is this
    whole deal, everybody is for change in general but against it in
    particular. One of my favorite stories from my previous life as Governor
    of Arkansas was going to the 100th birthday party of somebody with my
    junior Senator, David Pryor. We went up to this guy. We were amazed at
    what good shape he was in--astonished. I said, ``You know, you have all
    your faculties. You hear well. You see well. You speak well.'' He said,
    ``Yeah.'' And I said, ``You're really just in great shape, aren't you?''
    He said, ``I am.'' And I said, ``Boy, I bet you've seen a lot of
    changes.'' He said, ``Son, I sure have, and I've been against every one
    of them.'' [Laughter] The more you think about that, the sadder it'll
    get. But anyway, there it is.
        There is some of that out there. But our people also really do want
    change. They want us to stick up for the principles of the Democratic
    Party, but they also want us to reach out a hand of partnership. And as
    your President, I have to be the leader of our party and the leader of
    our country. I feel very indebted to Chris Dodd and to Don Fowler for
    being willing to put aside a lot of their other activities to take the
    time to help to rebuild and reinvigorate and revitalize our party.
        I know in my bones, I can feel it, that if we can stay true to our
    principles and clarify our vision for the American people and say what
    we are doing and where we want this country to go, that the fact that we
    honestly represent and care more about the vast majority of the American
    people will manifest itself, not simply in Massachusetts but throughout
    the United States within the next 2 years. And that should be our common
    commitment and our common cause.
        The whole purpose of politics, after all, is to improve the life of
    people. Read the Declaration of Independence. As I said in the State of
    the Union, nobody's really done any better than that. We pledge our
    lives and our fortunes and our sacred honor to the idea that all of us
    are created equal and endowed by God with the rights of life, liberty,
    and the pursuit of happiness, not a guarantee of happiness but the right
    to pursue it, the right to succeed, the right to fail.
        For 200 years, we've had to work to refine that phrase like a piece
    of steel. And we reach a certain point and we realize, oh, we've got a
    whole new set of circumstances or our under-

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    standing was painfully limited. That's what the Gettysburg Address was
    all about.
        I don't know if you read Gary Wills' terrific book ``Lincoln at
    Gettysburg,'' but he basically argues that Mr. Lincoln rewrote the
    Constitution with the Gettysburg Address by making the spirit of the
    Constitution the letter. That's what it was all about. He said: How
    could we be so dumb to have slavery and say all people are created
    equal? So from now on, that's what this means.
        And you look what happened when Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow
    Wilson tried to redefine the obligations of our National Government to
    protect the American people from the abuses of the industrial age, or
    when Franklin Roosevelt ran on a platform of limited government and
    balancing the budget but realized that he couldn't let the country go
    into the tubes, that he had to lift people's spirits and lift their
    circumstances and give them ways to work together.
        If you look at some of our most difficult times, they're the times
    of transition when we're moving from one era to another and people can't
    give you a clear road map. In the middle of the Depression, I remember
    my grandfather telling me as poor as people were, there was a certain
    happiness of spirit people felt after Roosevelt got in, and everybody
    knew that they were working together and they were going somewhere.
        I told a lot of people over the last month I'd just been astonished
    every time I go to California and I see those poor people. They've had
    an earthquake. They've had floods. They've had fires. Some of the
    happiest people I've ever met are people in those relief shelters in
    California. They get together from all walks of life. I was in one of
    those flood relief shelters the other day in northern California in a
    little unincorporated town called Rio Linda where Mr. Limbaugh had his
    first radio program. [Laughter] And I was in a little Methodist church
    talking to all these people and this old gal came up to me and put her
    arm around me, and she said, ``Mr. President, I'm a Republican, but I'm
    sure glad to see you.'' Like I was going to fall out or something. Why?
    Because they were there, they didn't care what their party was or their
    philosophy. They were there trying to do something good. And they felt
    that they were part of something bigger than themselves.
        In a period of transition like this, we're going from the cold war
    era and the industrial age to the post-cold-war era and an information
    age. We're going through enormous changes in the way work is organized
    and the way the society works. We've got all these cultural tensions in
    our country just eating people up. In times like this, people tend to be
    disoriented and out of focus. And it is difficult for them to do the
    work of citizenship and to believe that we can come together and do the
    things we ought to do. And we have to find ways to recreate in ordinary,
    normal circumstances the spirit that I see when adversity strikes
    America. That's what the mayor did by bringing those kids into that
    youth council today. And that's what we have to do as Americans.
        The Democrats need to forthrightly say, we believe, even in the 21st
    century, even in the information age, even when we trade in our
    mainframes for our PC's, there is a role for us working together as a
    people; that the market is a wonderful thing and we want it to work, but
    it won't solve all the problems; that we still need the public sector to
    expand opportunity even as it shrinks bureaucracy, to empower people to
    make the most of their own lives no matter what their circumstances, to
    enhance our security at home and abroad.
        And we don't have all the answers, because a lot of the problems are
    new. But we know that if we are guided by what I call the New Covenant,
    the idea that we will create opportunity and challenge the American
    people to be more responsible and that's how we'll build our communities
    and restore citizenship, we can do quite well.
        It's amazing how many things I've had to do as President that I knew
    would be unpopular, like that economic plan. It wasn't unpopular in
    Massachusetts because Ted Kennedy defended his vote. And if everybody
    else had done that, they'd have found the results more satisfactory. I
    remember when--but we had to do that. We couldn't just keep ballooning
    the deficit. We'd never have gotten interest rates down in 1993. We
    would never have gotten this economy going again. We had to do it. And
    we have to continue to do things that are unpopular.
        It was unpopular to say that the time had come for the dictators in
    Haiti to go, but it had to be done. We had to stand up for freedom in
    our hemisphere. We couldn't deal with the consequences of walking away
    from that and

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    the commitment we had made. We had to do it. It was unpopular, but it
    had to be done.
        And I know the surveys say that by 80 to 15, or whatever they said,
    the American people either didn't agree or didn't understand what in the
    world I'm up to in Mexico. But I want to say to you, it might be
    unpopular, but in a time of transition it's the right thing to do.
    Today, 2 weeks and a few days after the Mexican crisis presented itself,
    after meeting with the leaders of both parties in the Congress, I
    decided to commit to a loan guarantee of $20 billion, not $40 billion,
    from the Emergency Stabilization Fund, something within the control of
    the President, with the support of the leaders of Congress of both
    parties.
        We've now gotten countries, other countries through the
    International Monetary Fund, to kick in about half what we need, which
    is a good thing. But we couldn't wait for 2 more weeks of congressional
    debate. I don't blame the Congressmen for wanting to ask questions. I
    don't blame them for not wanting to vote on this. It's a hard sell. It's
    pretty hard to explain in south Boston or up in Dover, New Hampshire,
    why this is a good deal for people in New England.
        But here's the basic problem. Those folks got into a little economic
    trouble, but they didn't deserve as much as they got, because a lot of
    the international financial markets today are controlled by a hundred
    thousand different forces and when a speculative fervor starts in one
    direction, sometimes it's hard for it to stop when there's been some
    proper economic balance struck. But they've got a good democracy. They
    believe in free market economics. They buy tons of our products. They're
    our third biggest trading partner.
        Why is this in the interest of the people of New England? Well, New
    Hampshire's unemployment rate was 7.4 percent when I took office, and
    it's 3.8 percent now. And a big reason is they're exporting more. That's
    just one example.
        So our third biggest trading partner is in trouble. And they didn't
    ask us for a grant. They didn't ask us for a loan. They didn't ask us
    for a bailout. They said, ``Would you cosign this note? And by the way,
    if we get in trouble and can't pay, we've got a whole bunch of oil and
    we'll give you some. You can sell it and put the money in the bank.''
    That's pretty good collateral. Near as I can figure, even 10 years from
    now we'll still be burning oil. We'll be able to use it. We'll be able
    to turn it into money. It will be worth something at the bank. And they
    said, would you help? So we got a $40 billion trading arrangement. It's
    jobs for Americans, folks. Those who say, ``Well, Clinton is just
    bailing out rich investors on Wall Street; most of them will do just
    fine.'' But if we lose markets, if we lose possibilities--a lot of
    people here have built factories and shut them down. They're hard to
    start up again when you've shut them down. You've got to go through up
    and down times, but it's an important thing. It's American jobs.
        We share a vast border down there. We have problems along that
    border, illegal immigration and narcotics trafficking. This government's
    trying to help us with both. If you have an economic and a political
    collapse, we have more illegal immigration, more narcotics trafficking,
    more misery on the streets of America, more anxiety for American
    taxpayers.
        This is the right thing to do, and I was glad to take responsibility
    for it. And I know it's not popular, but in a time of change not all
    decisions which have to be made when they have to be made can possibly
    be popular. So I hope you will support it anyway. It's in the interest
    of building the future of the United States. [Applause] Thank you. Thank
    you. Thank you very much.
        So much has been said tonight; there's not much more for me to say.
    But I want to make a couple of points about what I hope to achieve this
    year in this new environment for all of our people. And I'd like to
    begin by telling you a story.
        When my last Secretary of the Treasury, Lloyd Bentsen, was at his
    last Cabinet meeting, preparing to go home to Texas after more than
    three decades of public service to a well-deserved retirement, with the
    reputation of being not only one of the wealthiest members of my Cabinet
    but one of the most conservative--a man who inspired great confidence
    all over the world for his policies and his personal strength--he said
    to us as he left, ``You know what I'm most worried about? Here I am in
    my seventies, having had the chance to work for my country all these
    years, having enjoyed all the successes America could bring in the
    private sector and the public sector. You know what I'm most worried
    about? I'm worried about the growing inequality in America and the fact

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    that so many Americans are working harder and harder and harder and
    falling behind. And I don't know how we can preserve our country as we
    know it unless we can figure out a solution to this problem. And I wish
    that I had left you with one before I retired.'' Everybody in that
    Cabinet room was just almost dumbstruck. What did he mean? He meant that
    something has changed since President Kennedy said, ``A rising tide
    lifts all boats.'' It doesn't.
        I'm honored by the fact that in 1994 we had the best growth in 10
    years, the best personal income growth in 10 years, the lowest combined
    rates of unemployment and inflation in 25 years. That is a very good
    thing. We should be proud of that. And the economic management and
    discipline of this administration certainly had something to do with it.
    And the dramatic improvements in productivity of American businesses and
    working people had the lion's share to do with it. And the fact that
    we're opening new trading opportunities had something to do with it. And
    the fact that our Commerce Department and others, as has been said, are
    trying to sell American products and services--it all had something to
    do with it.
        But the hard, cold fact is, people say, ``Well, why doesn't the
    administration get credit for this?'' Senator Kennedy alluded to it.
    Well, one reason is a lot of people are still working a longer work week
    than they were 15 years ago. They're spending more for the essentials of
    life, but their wages haven't kept up with inflation. Another million
    Americans in working families lost their health insurance last year,
    once again making us the nly--and I reiterate--the only advanced country
    in the world with a smaller percentage of working families with health
    insurance today than had health insurance 10 years ago.
        There was even a study last week that said the average working adult
    is spending an hour a night less at sleep. So if you have less time for
    leisure, if you're not sure you can even afford a vacation, much less
    send your kids to college, and you keep reading how great the statistics
    are, and all the rest of your information you get from some more
    negative source, it's not hard to understand how people are a little
    disoriented. Plus, the fundamental fact is we are moving from one time
    to another, and we aren't there yet, in our minds and in our experience.
        Therefore, it should not be surprising, and we should not complain
    if those of us in public life sometimes become the object of resentment
    when we can't figure out how to explain in clear, unambiguous terms that
    cut through the fog of the national debate what is going on and what we
    are trying to do about it and what the people have to do about it.
        That is the great challenge we face today. But we should be
    optimistic about it. With all my heart, I believe the best days of this
    country are ahead of us. But we have to find a way for the American tide
    to lift every boat in America. We have to find a way for everybody
    willing to work hard to do well. We have to find a way to keep the
    American dream alive for everyone, to grow the middle class and shrink
    the under class. We have to find a way to rebuild our sense of security.
        I can think of no better way to explain it than what I have been
    trying to say for 3 years now: Our job is to create more opportunity and
    to challenge the American people to assume more responsibility. We have
    tried to do that. We are now in a position where it is my judgment that
    what we need to do in this coming session of Congress is, first of all,
    to keep the recovery going; secondly, not to let the deficit explode;
    thirdly, not to permit the fever for cutting Government and cutting
    regulation undercut the fundamental social compact in this country.
        One of the reasons people are so torn up and upset is they're not
    sure what the deal is anymore. The harder they work, the more insecure
    they feel.
        So I say, you want to cut spending, to our friends in the Republican
    Party, let us have at it. We have cut $255 billion in spending. I'm
    going to send you another $140 billion in spending cuts. I am all for
    it. But let's not cut Head Start for children or the school-to-work
    program for the non-college bound kids. Let's not cut the nutrition
    programs and the food programs that keep our people alive. Let's don't
    do that. You want to cut taxes? That's all right. I'm for that. But
    let's not cut more than we can pay for. Let's not play funny numbers.
    Let's not pay for tax cuts by cutting Medicare. Let's cut spending that
    we can do without. We can do that. Let's do that.
        And more importantly, in my judgment, is let's not fool people. What
    we're trying to do is to raise incomes. A tax cut raises incomes

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    in the short run. We ought to do it in a way that raises incomes in the
    long run. That's why I favor--in this education State, it ought to be
    popular--finally giving the American people a tax deduction for all
    education expenses after high school. We ought to do that. Why? Because
    that lowers taxes and raises income in the short run, but far more
    important, it raises income in the long run, and not only the incomes of
    the people claiming a tax deduction but the incomes of every single
    American, because we have to do a better job of getting more education
    for everybody.
        We also ought to raise the minimum wage. Senator Kennedy is right
    about that. Now, I just want to say a word about this. I know that
    there's a conventional theory that, well, most people on the minimum
    wage are young people in middle class households, going home to nice
    homes at night, and they don't need a raise. Well, the statistics show
    that about 40 percent of the gains of the minimum wage go to people in
    the middle 60 percent. But about 45 percent go to people in the lower 20
    percent of our income brackets. There's a lot of women out there raising
    children on a minimum wage, and people can't live on $4.25 an hour.
        And the other night on our television in Washington there was a
    little snippet on some people who were working in a factory in a rural
    area not very far from Washington. And a television interviewer went out
    and interviewed these ladies that were working in this operation. And
    this wonderful woman was interviewed. And he went through all the
    economic arguments against raising the minimum wage: ``They say they're
    going to, if we raise the minimum wage, take your job away and put it
    into a machine.'' And she looked at the camera, and she said, ``Honey,
    I'll take my chances.'' [Laughter] And I'll tell you what, I'll bet you
    if anybody in this room were working for $4.25 an hour, you'd take your
    chances. Let's give them the chance. What do you say? I think we ought
    to.
        I want welfare reform. I met last Saturday with Republicans and
    Democrats. Senator Kennedy was there. We talked about the welfare
    system. People that hate welfare most are the people that are trapped on
    it. I may be the only President that ever had the privilege of spending
    hours talking to people on welfare. It doesn't work.
        But what should our goal be? Should our goal be to say we are
    frustrated, we think there are a lot of deadbeats on welfare, and we
    want to punish them? Or should our goal be to say there ought to be a
    limit to this system; we want to move people from welfare to work and we
    want to move people to the point where they can be good parents and good
    workers, and the system we have has all the wrong incentives; let's
    change them? That's what our goal ought to be. We can liberate people.
    If we're going to shrink the under class, we have to reform the welfare
    system, but the goal of it ought to be how to train for a job, how to
    get a job, how to keep a job, and how to be a better parent. And that is
    going to be what drives me in this debate.
        So that's what I hope we'll do: go for the middle class bill of
    rights; pass the minimum wage; pass welfare reform; let's keep cutting
    the size of the Government. You know, if we don't do anything else--I
    got tickled when Senator Kennedy was up here talking about it--but if we
    don't pass another law, in 3 years the Federal Government will be the
    smallest it's been since John Kennedy was President of the United States
    because of reductions voted by Democrats 100 percent. And I'm proud of
    that.
        We should never be the party of yesterday's Government. We should
    never be the party of undue regulation. We should never be the party of
    things that don't make sense. The average person, when they pay money in
    April, thinks that they don't get their money's worth when they send
    their check to the Federal Government. That's what they think. And too
    often they have been absolutely right. We shouldn't defend that. We
    should be in the forefront. But when we are, as we have been for the
    last 2 years, we shouldn't keep it a secret. We need to tell it. We need
    to make sure people know it.
        But I also will tell you that I have challenged the Republican
    leadership in Congress to make some move on health care. We lost another
    million Americans last year. The health care costs have moderated,
    thanks to what a lot of you in this room are doing who are in health
    care. But we still have serious problems with the costs going up more
    rapidly than inflation, and we still cannot continue in the face of
    plain evidence that every year we'll go on being the only successful
    country in the world to lose

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    working people from the rolls of the health insured. We can't continue
    to walk away from this problem.
        So maybe we did bite off more than we can chew last year. But as I
    said so many times, I'm still proud of the First Lady for trying to give
    health care to everybody in this country. And I don't think we should be
    ashamed of it. [Applause] Thank you. So I think we've got a lot to do.
        Let me close with reminding you of this: The most important work of
    all still must be done by citizens. You know what we're doing here
    tonight? We're celebrating the right of citizens to have a say in their
    Government. That's what this fundraiser is. And most of you are
    unselfish. You know darn well if you were at one of their fundraisers,
    it probably would get you a bigger tax cut. Most of you are here because
    you believe in your country, because you want everything to go better
    for everybody, and because you know you'll do better in the long run if
    we have the discipline to bring the deficit down, to put in sensible
    economic policies, and to take care of the children of this country.
    That's why you're here. You're here because your view of your self-
    interest goes beyond tomorrow or the next day. You're here because, for
    whatever reason, you haven't become so disoriented in this time of
    change that you're stopping thinking about the long run. And I value
    that; I thank you for that.
        What we've got to do is to spread that to other people. The spirit I
    saw of those young children in the Mayor's council today, we have to
    spread that to other people. We can't allow resentment to take over. I
    don't know if you saw the--I was very gratified by the results of the
    public opinion survey today about Massachusetts voters. It was in the
    press today or yesterday, whenever it was. But--[applause]--before you
    clap, let me tell the rest of it. [Laughter] But that's a fascinating
    commentary. You know, my wife took a lot of hits when she fought for
    health care, and a lot of people said, well, she's got no business doing
    that, and all that stuff you heard. And so the survey said there's a
    dramatic difference between what women and men thought, particularly
    working women thought about what she had done. Now, why is that? Why
    would there be such difference? Because we're going through a period of
    real change, and people are disoriented, and it's tough out there. And
    this so-called angry white male phenomenon--there are objective reasons
    for that. People are working harder for less, and they feel like they're
    not getting what they deserve. They worry whether they're letting their
    own families down. And it's easy to play on people's fears and
    resentments. It's easy to build up people's anger. The hard work, the
    right thing to do, what we have to do is to channel all that frustration
    and anger into something good and positive. What we have to do is to say
    what we say to our children, ``Okay, be mad. Be angry. Scream. Let off
    steam, but what are you going to do? What about tomorrow, how are you
    going to change your life? What are we going to do together?''
        That is our job, every one of our jobs. And no President, no
    Congress, no program, nothing can change what citizens can change if we
    are determined to see one another as fellow citizens instead of enemies.
    Even when we're opponents, we shouldn't be enemies.
        So I ask you--there's enough brain power and education and
    understanding in this room to move Boston all the way to Washington,
    there's enough energy and innovation and creativity here. And I thank
    you for being here, and I thank you for supporting us. But tomorrow and
    the next day, look all your fellow citizens in the eye; when you drive
    to work and drive home, when you walk the streets, seek out people who
    are different, who have different views. Imagine what their lives are
    like.
        This is a difficult time. We're moving from one place to another.
    And we need to find our bearings. We cannot do it with division. We
    cannot do it with demonization. We cannot do it with the politics of
    destruction. We cannot do it just by giving vent to frustration. We have
    to build. Every time this country has gone through a period like this,
    every time, we are simply doing the work that has been done for 200
    years: We are redefining what we have to do so that all of us can pursue
    life, liberty, and happiness.
        We should be proud that we have the chance. We shouldn't be deterred
    by momentary adversity. If we keep our eyes on the prize, which is the
    human potential of every single American, we're going to do just fine.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:56 p.m. at the Park Plaza Hotel. In his
    remarks, he referred to Senator John F. Kerry and his fiance, Teresa

    [[Page 144]]

    Heinz; Senator Edward M. Kennedy; Alan Leventhal and Fred Seigel,
    fundraisers, Democratic National Committee; Mario Cuomo, former Governor
    of New York; Ann Richards, former Governor of Texas; Joan M. Menard,
    chair, Massachusetts Democratic Party; Rev. Charles Stith, who gave the
    invocation; Massachusetts State officials William Galvin, secretary of
    state, William Bulger, senate president, Charles Flaherty, house
    speaker, and L. Scott Harshbarger, attorney general; and Mayor Thomas
    Menino of Boston, MA.