[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
[June 11, 1995]
[Pages 861-865]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Fundraising Dinner for Senator John Kerry in Boston, 
Massachusetts
June 11, 1995

    Thank you very much, Senator Kerry. Thank you for your remarks and 
for your example. Teresa, congratulations. I could listen to you talk 
all night long. Senator Kennedy got so wound up, you'd have thought he 
was on the ballot next week again. [Laughter] That's why he won. He 
believed in what he was doing, and that's why he won. Thank you for your 
spirit and your courage and your unflagging energy. Vicki, it's nice to 
see you. Senator Leahy, Congressman Kennedy, Congressman Markey, 
Congressman Meehan, my note says that Congressman Frank's here--he may 
not be or he may--are you here? Thank you. I want to tell you something: 
When nobody else will stand up, Barney will. He's got--where I come 
from--thank you--thank you very much. I was going to say, where I come 
from, that counts for something, and I've never forgotten it. Your State 
chair, Joan Menard, and your wonderful, wonderful mayor, Tom Menino, I 
thank him so much. President Bulger, it's always good to be here with 
you. I have kissed the Blarney Stone, paid homage, done everything I'm 
supposed to do here tonight. The mayor of Galway was--is he here still? 
Where is he at? Anyway, I think--you know, I have to go back to Ireland, 
and I was wondering if you would consent to be my tour guide if I go 
back, give me a little direction. Speaker Flaherty, the Secretary of 
State Galvin, Auditor DeNucci, and Elaine Schuster, thank you so much. 
You are indefatigable. I am so impressed by how you keep coming back and 
helping us in our need. And sometimes I think we take our friends for 
granted, folks, and we should never do that, and I thank you.

[[Page 862]]

    Somebody told me my friend Governor Dukakis is here. Is he here? 
Hello, Mike. Stand up. God bless you. Thank you.
    I've had a rather interesting day, you know? [Laughter] I got up at 
5:30 this morning, and it's been a hard week at the White House. We're 
dealing with--you know, I had to veto the rescission bill last week, and 
we were dealing with a lot of other things, but overarching everything, 
of course, was the fate of Captain O'Grady. And it was a few days before 
we even knew for sure he was alive. And the whole remarkable story is 
beginning to come out, and of course, we're going to receive him at the 
White House tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to that. I know all 
America will be rallied and full of joy and energy.
    But anyway, I was pretty tired anyway, and I rolled out of bed at 
5:30 this morning, and I hauled up to New Hampshire, and I spoke at the 
Dartmouth commencement and shook hands with about 1,600 students. And 
then I went to a reception and shook hands with a couple hundred more 
people. I went to Claremont, and Speaker Gingrich and I did our little 
town hall meeting. And I thought it was a good thing, good thing for 
America, and I hope you did, too. We didn't get into all of the issues, 
but we got into some of them. And we had a civilized way, I think, of 
explaining what the differences are.
    What I'd like to talk about a little bit tonight is why I'm still 
here and why I'm glad you're here. I was looking at Ted Kennedy give his 
speech so brilliantly tonight and wanting to cheer every word, and then 
I watched Teresa speak and I watched John speak and I watched John's 
movie, and I'm feeling sort of mellow. I got to thinking, you know, it's 
a miracle any of us are still around, you know, the whole complex of 
circumstances that brings any person to any point in time, where you're 
in a position to do whatever it is we're trying to do now. It's a great 
privilege. It's an honor.
    And so I was thinking to myself, in this time when our tide is 
supposed to be out and theirs is supposed to be in, why would I not 
leave my party? Why am I proud to be here with John Kerry? Why was I 
proud when Ted Kennedy fought back and won? And I'd like to tell you why 
I am, based on what I know and what I see as your President.
    We are getting back to first principles today, really getting back 
to first principles. Sometimes I get in trouble in Washington when I'm 
in these arguments with--because I forget that things I assume everybody 
else agrees with, a bunch of folks in the Congress now don't agree with 
at all. But that's not all bad. We're going to have this huge debate.
    For example, one of the issues that now is really open for debate is 
whether most of these social problems that Senator Kerry talked about 
are caused by economic and political and social factors or whether 
they're largely personal and cultural, that is, they can only be fixed 
by people just stopping doing what they're doing wrong and beginning to 
behave.
    Now, there's some truth to that, isn't there? I mean, at one level 
that's just self-evident that people should behave, and if they don't do 
what they're supposed to do, nothing the rest of us can do will make 
anybody get an education or make anybody put a gun down or make anybody 
stay out of a gang. That is self-evident at one level.
    But if you have the opportunity to do what I have done, which is to 
sit with Mayor Menino and his youth council, you know that it makes a 
whole lot of difference if somebody is trying to help these kids make 
the right decision. So I'm a Democrat because I believe the problems are 
personal and cultural, but not exclusively personal and cultural, and I 
think we're put on this Earth to try to help other people make the most 
of their lives, and we're better off when we do that, and I have learned 
that.
    I hear these--there's a big debate in Washington about if the 
Government is not very good, what should we do, what is the most 
important thing? And some people think balancing the budget as quickly 
as possible is the most important thing, no matter what the 
consequences. I think it's an important thing; that's why we worked hard 
on our deficit reduction package. We got interest rates down. We got the 
economy coming back. We have over 6 million jobs to show for it. It is 
not an insignificant thing.
    But it is not the only thing, because it's not as if this country's 
not worth anything, you know. When we invest in the education of our 
people, when we invest in medical research, when we invest in the things 
that make us richer and smarter and stronger, we have assets, and they 
bring us things.
    And I would tell you we have a budget deficit, but we also have an 
education deficit in this

[[Page 863]]

country. It is not solely a money problem, but money is related to it. 
One of my rules of politics is, when somebody tells you it's not a money 
problem, you can bet your life they're talking about somebody else's 
problem. [Laughter] You think about that.
    Yes, there is a budget deficit, but there is an investment deficit 
in people. And so, let us find a way to balance the budget and still 
invest in the education and training and empowerment of all of these 
people we expect to lead us into the 21st century. That's why I am a 
Democrat, and I'm glad to be one, because I believe that.
    If you believe, as some say now, that the Government can't do 
anything right and always burdens the private sector, then obviously it 
makes logical sense to rewrite the environmental laws of the country by 
letting the people who are covered by those laws, who in the course of 
their economic activities damage our environment, rewrite the laws. 
Because if you have no faith in Government at all, then you're not doing 
anything wrong by letting the polluters rewrite the laws. Because 
Government is by definition bad, what is public is bad, what is private 
is good, if that's what you believe.
    Senator Kerry sponsored, I think, two of the only environmental 
pieces, except the California desert bill, that passed the Congress last 
year, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and another piece of legislation. 
We thank you for that.
    See, I just don't believe that. And Republicans used not to believe 
that. Richard Nixon signed the law creating the Environmental Protection 
Act. Richard Nixon signed the first Clean Water Act. Teddy Roosevelt was 
the first and perhaps still the greatest of all environmental 
Presidents. There were only 20 head of buffalo left in the entire United 
States when Teddy Roosevelt set aside the buffalo preserve out West. If 
you ever go out there, you ought to go see it. It's a big deal. And it's 
stood for all kinds of other values.
    And when I was a boy growing up in the woods and in my little 
national park in my hometown, I was really grateful to Teddy Roosevelt. 
And I always thought that using the power of the Government to protect 
our natural heritage was not really a partisan deal, it was something we 
had all agreed upon that we had to do, because all of our short-term 
impulses sometimes have to be subordinated to the long-term good of the 
United States. All of them, all of them do. So that's why I'm still 
here.
    If you believe that the market always solves all problems and 
therefore the Government messes it up, it's understandable why you'd be 
against raising the minimum wage. But to me, this country's done pretty 
well in the 20th century, raising the minimum wage on a pretty regular 
basis. And now if we don't raise it this year, it's going to be at the 
lowest level in 40 years next year. And I'm telling you--we always talk 
about how we want to reform welfare and people ought to go to work--let 
me tell you something, folks, there are thousands, tens of thousands of 
people that get up in this country every day--in fact, a few million--
and go to work for the minimum wage. And a lot of them are the sole 
support of their children.
    What kind of courage does that take? Who can live on that? And they 
get up, and they show up for work every day, and they work for their 
minimum wage. And they trudge home, and very often they live in a place 
that's hard to live in, and their kids are exposed to problems that most 
of our children aren't. And they always pay their taxes, and they never 
break the law, and they just do the best they can. They are real 
American heroes. I think we ought to raise the minimum wage. I think 
that's the right thing to do.
    So that's why I'm proud to be a Democrat. We could lose every 
election in the country, and I'd still be right there, because I 
couldn't get over that. I could never get over that. And I say that not 
to be critical of other folks who really have different views but just 
to tell you that I feel very fortunate just to be able to stand here 
tonight. And I'm the first person in my family that ever got a college 
education. I had student loans, and I paid them back, but I needed them 
badly. And I always thought it was our job to go up or down together.
    And one of the things that has struck me so much in the last 2 
months--they've been pretty difficult, emotional months for America. And 
they're sort of bracketed, if I will just take the last 6 or 7 weeks, by 
our national heartbreak in Oklahoma City and our national exultation at 
this remarkable young Air Force captain who kept himself alive for 6 
days, when people were all around him, and I mean literally all around 
him, with guns in their hand, wanting at least to imprison him and 
probably to kill him. And we get together at times like this and we 
feel,

[[Page 864]]

even in the midst of tragedy, better about ourselves because we are part 
of something bigger than ourselves. We really feel like we're Americans 
again. And I guess the reason I still belong to this party is, I think 
we ought to feel like we're Americans again every day. I think we ought 
to be working together every day.
    And I want you to think about this one issue to illustrate it. It 
relates to Senator Kerry. There are a lot of things I like about John 
Kerry. I like the use--and I mean this is a positive way--I like the use 
that he has made of his experience in the war in Vietnam, which was the 
seminal experience of our generation. I like what it has done to his 
sense of conscience, his sense of responsibility, his sense of reaching 
out even to Vietnam. I like the fact that it has made him feel a much 
greater sense of accountability for power. Once you see power exercised 
in a way that you think is unaccountable, that is erroneous, and you 
can't change it quick enough to save people that you're trying to save, 
it makes you interested in things like what we did with Mr. Noriega or 
what the BCCI issue was all about or what the S&L bailout turned out to 
be. It makes you interested in accountability, and I like that.
    I like the fact that he's kind of like me, he's interested in all of 
these technology, future-oriented issues and basically has a rosy view 
of tomorrow. But the thing I really like is that he cares, still, as a 
United States Senator, about the issue that still has the capacity to 
tear the heart out of this country, which is the rising tide of violence 
among young people.
    Let me tell you that the crime rate is going down in almost every 
major city in America. It's a cause for celebration. It's a tribute to 
enlightened leadership. It's a tribute to the police forces of this 
country. It means that our crime bill strategy, which Senator Kennedy 
and Senator Kerry worked hard for, was the right one to put more police 
officers on the street and to emphasize prevention as well as 
punishment. It means all that.
    But in spite of all of that, underneath all of those numbers, there 
is an almost astonishing rising tide of random violence among children. 
And I'll tell you this one story, from my hometown, Little Rock, 
Arkansas. Just a few days ago--I get the local hometown paper, and I try 
to read it; it kind of keeps me rooted. And there is this remarkable 
story, and I only saw the top--I saw this beautiful picture of this 
schoolchild and these little questions this child had answered in the 
picture--big color picture--``If I could do anything, I would have 
people be nice to each other.'' ``I wish people''--blank, you know, it 
was one of those fill-in-the-blanks things. ``I wish people wouldn't 
ever join gangs.'' ``I want to live a long time.'' ``When I grow up, I 
want to be a police officer.''
    I got to laughing, and then I looked at the headline and the whole 
thing. And this child whose picture was here in the corner with this--
``This is what I want to do, and I want people to be nice and no gangs, 
no violence''--this child and a brother and a sister, the three of them, 
young children, 10, 12, and 14, as I remember, were lined up and 
assassinated, assassinated by apparently three young men, only one of 
them using a weapon, because they had an older sister or half-sister who 
allegedly was involved in the death of one of these other people's 
siblings. So their idea of retribution was to go wipe these kids out.
    And I'm not trying to get you down about this, but what I'm trying 
to do is to say to you that a lot of this political rhetoric that we 
engage in is very divorced from reality. And this country is in a 
strange position now, because I'm telling you, I still think we're in 
the best position for the future of any major country in the world: We 
have the strongest economy, the most vital business sector; we are well-
connected with the rest of the world; we're the most ethnically diverse. 
Everything is great. But underneath this, we've got these kids that 
literally are so disconnected, so numb, so unreached that they are 
killing each other almost without remorse and really believing that 
nobody loves them and what difference does it make and if they live to 
be over 21, it will be more than they expect.
    This Nation cannot tolerate that. And the only way we will ever turn 
it around is to reexamine every single thing we are doing, yes, and be 
willing to change it if necessary. But we also have to make a commitment 
that somehow we're going to do, on a national basis, what the mayor here 
is trying to do with this youth council. Because all these kids start 
out as good kids. You know, when they're 6 months old, they haven't 
decided that they're going to grow up and wipe somebody out. And things 
happen that make them unable to imagine the life that we take for 
granted.

[[Page 865]]

    You know that wonderful line from Yeats, ``Too long a sacrifice can 
make a stone of the heart.'' We have a lot of kids whose hearts turned 
to stone. Now, I don't pretend for a moment that if John Kerry and I win 
reelection in 1996 that by 1998, on July 16th, every teenager in this 
country will all of a sudden turn into an Eagle Scout and no one will 
ever pick up a gun or a knife. But I do think it makes a difference. I 
do believe it makes a difference whether the people who hold public 
office imagine that they must make connections with people that are 
different from themselves and feel that we have a collective 
responsibility not only to seize our opportunities but also to beat back 
our problems.
    I say this again not to depress you, because I believe that our 
Nation is in the best position of any country to seize the opportunities 
of the 21st century but only, only if we understand that every single 
opportunity in this chaotic and fast-changing world has within it the 
seeds of destruction.
    And this is one example: Oh, it's wonderful if you can take 
advantage of the global economy, but if you can't you're going to be one 
of the 60 percent of American workers that are working harder today for 
less money than you were making 10 years ago. It's wonderful if you can 
hook into the Internet and you're a rural kid somewhere out in the 
Mountain West and find the whole world at your fingertips. But if you're 
a paranoid crazy, you can also learn how to make a bomb. It's wonderful 
that we can move around all over the world, but it also makes us more 
vulnerable to terrorism.
    Every one of these leads us to the same conclusion. It is folly for 
us to believe that we can live and function and make the most of our own 
lives all by ourselves. Whether we like it or not, beyond our families, 
we have work, we have communities, we have States, and we are part of a 
country.
    Near the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln said, ``We cannot be 
enemies, we must be friends.'' We conduct our national politics as if we 
are trying to segment each other into different groups of enemies and 
demonize our Government as the instrument of our common coming together.
    You are here, every one of you, because you know better. So I will 
say to you in the end, the reason I hope you will work hard to reelect 
John Kerry is that his life is an example of understanding, down to the 
fiber of his being, that we must go forward together and that every time 
we lose a child, we lose a part of ourselves. And no, we're not making 
excuses for other people's irresponsible behavior. No, we're not taking 
onto ourselves things that we cannot achieve. But we do understand that 
in this imperfect world, the thing that makes America great is when 
America is together. We have been divided long enough. We have been 
distracted long enough. We have demonized each other long enough. There 
are children out there to be saved and a world to be made, and that is 
what we intend to do.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 9 p.m. at the Park Plaza Hotel. In his 
remarks, he referred to Senator Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz; Senator 
Edward M. Kennedy's wife, Victoria; William Bulger, Massachusetts Senate 
president; Charles Flaherty, Massachusetts House speaker; William 
Galvin, Massachusetts secretary of the Commonwealth; Joe DeNucci, 
Massachusetts auditor; and Elaine Shuster, Democratic Party activist.