    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [July 6, 1995]
    [Pages 1047-1057]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at Georgetown University
    July 6, 1995

        Thank you very much, my good friend Father O'Donovan. You just gave
    the speech in 5 minutes; there's nothing for me to say. [Laughter] I
    thank you for welcoming me back. I thank the members of our
    administration who are here: Secretary Riley and Deputy Secretary Kunin,
    Ambassador Raiser, Director of the USIA Joe Duffy, Chairmen Sheldon
    Hackney and Jane Alexander, and Penn Kemble, the Deputy Director of the
    USIA. And I thank my former classmates, some of whom I see out here, and
    my friends and people around this country who have done so much to try
    to strengthen the bonds of American citizenship.
        Today I want to have more of a conversation than deliver a formal
    speech, about the great debate now raging in our Nation, not so much
    over what we should do but over how we should resolve the great
    questions of our time here in Washington and in communities all across
    our country. I want to talk about the obligations of citizenship, the
    obligations imposed on the President and people in power and the
    obligations imposed on all Americans.
        Two days ago we celebrated the 219th birthday of our democracy. The
    Declaration of Independence was also clearly a declaration of
    citizenship: `` . . . all men are created equal, . . . endowed by their
    Creator with certain unalienable rights, . . . among these are Life,
    Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.'' It was also manifestly a
    declaration of citizenship in a different way. It was a declaration of
    interdependence: `` . . . for the support of this Declaration, with a
    firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge
    . . . our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.'' The distinguished
    American historian Samuel Eliot Morison, in his ``History of the
    American People,'' wrote of these words, ``These words are more
    revolutionary than anything written by Robespierre, Marx, or Lenin, more
    explosive than the atom, a continual challenge to ourselves as well as
    an inspiration to the oppressed of all the world.''
        What is the challenge to ourselves at the dawn of the 21st century,
    and how shall we meet it? First of all, we must remember that the
    Declaration of Independence was written as a commitment for all
    Americans at all times, not just in time of war or great national
    crisis.
        My argument to you is pretty straightforward. I believe we face
    challenges of truly historic dimensions, challenges here at home perhaps
    greater than any we faced since the beginning of this century we are
    about to finish and the dawn of the industrial era. But they are not
    greater challenges in their own way than the ones we faced at our birth,
    greater challenges than those of slavery and civil war, greater than
    those of World War I or the Depression or World War II. And they can be
    solved, though they are profound. What are they?
        Most people my age grew up in an America dominated by middle class
    dreams and middle class values, the life we wanted to live and the kind
    of people we wanted to be--dreams that inspired those who were born into
    the middle class; dreams that restrained and directed the lives of those
    who were much more successful and more powerful; dreams that animated
    the strivings of those who were poor because of the condition of their
    birth or because they came here as immigrants; middle class dreams that
    there would be reward for work and that the future of our children would
    be better than the lives we enjoyed; middle class values, strong
    families and faith, safe streets, secure futures.
        These things are very much threatened today, threatened by 20 years
    of stagnant incomes, of harder work by good Americans for the same or
    lower pay, of increasing inequality of incomes, and increasing
    insecurity in jobs and retirement and health care. They are threatened

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    by 30 years of social problems of profound implications: of family
    break-ups, of a rising tide of violence and drugs, of declining birth
    rates among successful married couples and rising birth rates among
    young people who are not married. They are threatened by the failure of
    public institutions to respond, the failure of bureaucracies encrusted
    in yesterday's prerogatives and not meeting the challenges of today and
    tomorrow--the schools, the law enforcement agencies, the governments and
    their economic and other policies. They are threatened by the sheer pace
    and scope of change, as technology and ideas and money and decisions
    move across the globe at breathtaking rates, and every great opportunity
    seems to carry within it the seeds of a great problem.
        So that we have anomalies everywhere: Abroad, the cold war ends, but
    we see the rise and the threat of technology-based destruction--sarin
    gas exploding in the subway in Japan, the bomb exploding in Oklahoma
    City. The Soviet Union is no more, and so they worry now in the Baltics
    about becoming a conduit for drug trafficking, and they worry in Russia
    about their banks being taken over by organized crime. And here at home,
    it all seems so confusing--the highest growth rates in a decade, the
    stock market at an all-time high, almost 7 million more jobs, more
    millionaires and new businesses than ever before, but most people
    working harder for less, feeling more insecure.
        I saw it just the other day, this cartoon, which you probably can't
    see, but I'll read it to you. There's a politician--maybe it's supposed
    to be me--[laughter]--up here giving a speech at a banquet, one of those
    interminable banquets we all attend. And here's a waiter serving one of
    the attendees. The politician says, ``The current recovery has created
    over 7.8 million jobs.'' The waiter says, ``And I've got three of
    them.'' [Laughter]
        In 1991, as Father O'Donovan said, I came here to Georgetown to talk
    about these challenges and laid out my philosophy about how we as a
    people, not just as a government but as a people, ought to meet them. I
    called it the New Covenant. I will repeat briefly what I said then
    because I don't believe I can do any better today than I did then in
    terms of what I honestly believe we ought to be doing.
        I think we have to create more opportunity and demand more
    responsibility. I think we have to give citizens more say and provide
    them a more responsive, less bureaucratic Government. I think we have to
    do these things because we are literally a community, an American family
    that is going up or down together, whether we like it or not. If we're
    going to have middle class dreams and middle class values, we have to do
    things as private citizens, and we have to do things in partnership
    through our public agencies and through our other associations.
        In 1994, when the Republicans won a majority in Congress, they
    offered a different view which they called their ``Contract With
    America.'' In their view, most of our problems were personal and
    cultural; the Government tended to make them worse because it was
    bureaucratic and wedded to the past and more interested in regulating
    and choking off the free enterprise system and promoting the welfare
    state; and therefore, what we should do is to balance the budget as soon
    as possible, cut taxes as much as possible, deregulate business
    completely if possible, and cut our investments in things like welfare
    as much as possible.
        As you know, I thought there were different things that ought to be
    done because I believed in partnership. I believed in supporting
    community initiatives that were working and preventing things before
    they happened, instead of just punishing bad behavior after it occurred,
    and trying to empower people to make the most of their own lives. So I
    believed that there were things we could do here in Washington to help,
    whether it was family leave, or tougher child support enforcement, or
    reforming the pension system to save the pensions of over 8 million
    American workers, or investing more in education, making college more
    affordable.
        What I believe grows largely out of my personal history, and a lot
    of it happened to me a long time before I came to Georgetown and read in
    books things that made me convinced that I was basically right. I grew
    up in a small town in a poor State. When I was born at the end of World
    War II, my State's per capita income was barely half the national
    average. I was the first person in my family to go to college. When I
    was a boy, I lived for a while on a farm without an indoor toilet. It
    makes a good story, not as good as being born in a log cabin, but it's
    true. [Laughter]
        I had a stepfather without a high school diploma and a grandfather,
    whom I loved above all people almost, who had a sixth-grade education. I
    lived in a segregated society, and I

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    lived in a family, as has now been well-documented, with problems of
    alcohol and, later, drug abuse. I learned a lot about what I call the
    New Covenant, about the importance of responsibility and opportunity.
        I lived in a family where everybody worked hard and where kids were
    expected to study hard. But I also had a lot of opportunity that was
    given to me by my community. I had good teachers and good schools. And
    when I needed them, I got scholarships and jobs. I saw what happened to
    good people who had no opportunity because they happened to be black or
    because they happened to be poor and white and isolated in the hills and
    hollows of the mountains of my State.
        I saw what happened in my own family to people who were good people
    but didn't behave responsibly. My stepfather was very responsible toward
    me but not very responsible toward himself. Anybody who's ever lived in
    a family with an alcoholic knows that there is nothing you can do for
    somebody else they are not prepared to do for themselves. And my
    brother, after all of his struggles with drug addiction, which included
    even serving some time in jail, I am sometimes more proud of him than I
    am of what I've done because he has a family and a son and a life, not
    because of the love and support that we all gave him but because of what
    he did for himself.
        So my whole political philosophy is basically rooted in what I think
    works. It works for families and communities, and it worked pretty well
    for our country for a long time. If you look at recent American history,
    our country has never been perfect because none of us are, but we did
    always seem to be going in the right direction.
        I remember when I was a boy in the fifties and sixties--I remember
    like it was yesterday when I graduated from high school in 1964, and we
    had about 3-percent unemployment, about 3- or 4-percent real growth, and
    very modest inflation. And we all just assumed that the American dream
    would work out all right if we could ever whip racism. If we could just
    whip that and make sure all poor people had a chance to work their way
    into the middle class, we could just almost put this country on
    automatic. I know that's hard to believe, but that's basically what we
    thought back then. If we could just somehow lift this awful racial
    burden off our shoulders and learn how to live together, we could just
    roll on.
        And then in the sixties and the seventies and the eighties, the
    results got a lot more mixed. Contrary to what a lot of people say now
    in retrospect, the sixties were not all bad. A lot of good things
    happened. A lot of people passionately believed that they had a
    responsibility to help one another achieve the fullest of their God-
    given potential. And a lot of the important advances in civil rights and
    in education and in fighting poverty really made a difference. But it
    was also a time when many people began to have such profound cultural
    clashes that more and more people dropped out and became more self-
    indulgent.
        Contrary to popular retrospect, a lot of good things happened in the
    seventies. We made a national commitment as a country to defend our
    environment. This is a safer, cleaner, healthier place because of what
    we've done for the last 25 years. We decided in a bipartisan way that
    the workplace ought to be safer; too many people were dying in the
    workplace. If any of you have ever spent any time in a factory, seen
    people walking around without all their fingers, you can appreciate
    that.
        But it was also a time when we became profoundly disillusioned
    because of Watergate and a lot of other things. We really began to
    suspect that we couldn't trust our leaders or our institutions. And it
    was the beginning of the decline of middle class dreams for middle class
    people. In the sixties, the riots in the cities showed that more and
    more poor people began to doubt whether they would ever be able to work
    their way into the middle class. In the seventies, people who were in
    the middle class began to worry about whether they would ever be able to
    stay or what that meant. It began 20 years ago.
        Then in the eighties, it was also a very mixed bag. It was a time
    when people exalted greed and short-term profit. It was a time when we
    built in, by bipartisan conspiracy in this community, the first
    structural deficit in the history of the United States of America and
    exploded our debt while we were reducing our investment in our most
    profound problems, while we spent the tax cuts and behaved just like the
    rest of the country, worrying about the short run. But it was also a
    time, let's not forget, where all across the country there was a renewed
    awareness of the dangers of drugs and drug use began to go down, smoking
    declined, voluntarism in-

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    creased. And there was a remarkable explosion of productivity in the
    industrial sector in America, and the American economy began to go
    through the changes necessary to be competitive.
        In the nineties, everybody knows, I think, that there's been a sort
    of a sobering increase in personal values of commitment. You see it in
    the decline in the divorce rate and the increase in healthy habits among
    many people. You see more commitment expressed in groups and by
    individuals all across the country. You see it in people reaffirming
    their commitment to the families in small and large ways: the remarkable
    husband and wife minister team that I introduced in the State of the
    Union, the Reverend Cherrys, and their AME Zion Church near here, now
    one of the two or three biggest churches in America, founded on family
    outreach; the phenomenal success of this Promise-Keepers organization--
    you can fill any football stadium in America. It's an astonishing thing,
    because people want to do the right thing, and they want to get their
    families and their lives back together. And that's encouraging.
        But let us not forget that these profound problems endure. Middle
    class dreams and middle class values, the things which have shaped our
    life and our experience and our expectations, are still very, very much
    at risk.
        I will say again: We have all these aggregate indices that the
    economy has done well: almost 7 million new jobs, the stock market's
    over 4,500, all the things that you know. But while average income has
    gone up, median income, the person in the middle, has declined in the
    last 2 years. A sense of job security has declined with all the
    downsizing. More and more people are temporary workers. This is the only
    advanced country in the world where there's a smaller percentage of
    people under 65 in the work force with health insurance today than 10
    years ago.
        Millions of American people go home at night from their work and sit
    down to dinner and look at their children and wonder what they have done
    wrong, what did they ever do to fail. And they're riddled with worries
    about it. Millions more who are poor have simply given up on ever being
    able to work their way into a stable lifestyle. And that, doubtless, is
    fueling some of the disturbing increase in casual drug use among very
    young people and the rise in violence among young people. That threatens
    middle class values. In almost every major city in America the crime
    rate is down. Hallelujah! In almost every place in America, the rate of
    random violence among young people is up, even as the overall crime rate
    drops.
        Government is struggling to change, and I'm proud of the changes we
    have made. But no one really believes that Government is fully adjusted
    to the demands of the 21st century and the information age. It clearly
    must still be less bureaucratic, more empowering, rely more on
    incentives if we still have to reduce spending and we have to find a way
    to do it while increasing our investment in the things that will
    determine our ability to live middle class dreams.
        Politics has become more and more fractured, just like the rest of
    our lives; pluralized. It's exciting in some ways. But as we divide into
    more and more and more sharply defined organized groups around more and
    more and more stratified issues, as we communicate more and more with
    people in extreme rhetoric through mass mailings or sometimes semi-
    hysterical messages right before election on the telephone or 30-second
    ads designed far more to inflame than to inform, as we see politicians
    actually getting language lessons on how to turn their adversaries into
    aliens, it is difficult to draw the conclusion that our political system
    is producing the sort of discussion that will give us the kind of
    results we need.
        But our citizens, even though their confidence in the future has
    been clouded and their doubts about their leaders and their institutions
    are profound, want something better. You could see it in the way they
    turned out for the town meetings in 1992. You could see it in the
    overwhelming, I mean literally overwhelming, response that I have
    received from people of all political parties to the simple act of
    having a decent, open conversation with the Speaker of the House in
    Claremont, New Hampshire. People know we need to do better. And deep
    down inside, our people know this is a very great country capable of
    meeting our challenges.
        So what are the conclusions I draw from this? First of all, don't
    kid yourself. There are real reasons for ordinary voters to be angry,
    frustrated, and downright disoriented. How could our politics not be
    confusing when people's lives are so confusing and frustrating and seem
    to be so full of contradictory developments?
        Secondly, this is now, as it has ever been, fertile ground for
    groups that claim a monopoly

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    on middle class values and old-fashioned virtue. And it's easy to blame
    the Government when people don't feel any positive results. It's easy to
    blame groups of others when people have to have somebody to blame for
    their own problems, when they are working as hard as they can and they
    can't keep up.
        But there is real reason for hope, my fellow Americans. This is,
    after all, the most productive country in the world. We do a better job
    of dealing with racial and ethnic diversity and trying to find some way
    to bring out the best in all of our people than any other country with
    this much diversity in the world.
        We have an environment that is cleaner and safer and healthier than
    it used to be. We still have the lead in many important areas that will
    determine the shape of societies in the 21st century. There is a real
    willingness among our people to try bold change. And most important of
    all, most Americans are still living by middle class values and hanging
    on to middle class dreams. And everywhere in this country there are
    examples of people who have taken their future into their own hands,
    worked with their friends and neighbors, broken through bureaucracy, and
    solved problems. If there is anything I would say to you, it is that you
    can find, somewhere in America, somebody who has solved every problem
    you are worried about.
        So there is reason for hope. And I would say, to me the real heroes
    in this country are the people that are out there making things work and
    the people who show up for work every day, even though they're barely at
    and maybe even below the poverty line, but they still work full-time,
    obey the law, pay their taxes, and raise their kids the best they can.
    That's what this country is really all about. And so there is really no
    cause for the kind of hand-wringing and cynicism that dominates too much
    of the public debate today.
        What do we have to do now? First of all, we've got to have this
    debate that is looming over Washington. We have to have it. It's a good
    thing. We are debating things now we thought were settled for decades.
    We are now back to fundamental issues that were debated like this 50,
    60, 70 years ago. There is a group who believe that our problems are
    primarily personal and cultural. Cultural is a--basically a word that
    means, in this context, there are a whole lot of persons doing the same
    bad thing. [Laughter] And that's what people--and then if everybody
    would just sort of straighten up and fly right, why, things would be
    hunky-dory. And why don't they do it?
        Now, I--you can see that with just two reasons--I'll give you two
    examples. And I made you laugh, but let's be serious. These people are
    honest and genuine in their beliefs. I will give you two examples that
    are sort of--stand out, but there are a hundred more that are more
    modulated: The NRA's position on gun violence, the Brady bill, and the
    assault weapons ban. Their position is: Guns don't kill people, people
    do. Find the people who do wrong, throw them in jail, and throw the key
    away. Punish wrongdoers. Do not infringe upon my right to keep and bear
    arms, even to keep and bear arsenals or artillery or assault weapons. Do
    not do that because I have not done anything wrong, and I have no
    intention of doing anything wrong. Why are you making me wait 5 days to
    get a handgun? What do you care if I want an AK-47 or an Uzi to go out
    and engage in some sort of sporting contest to see who's a better shot?
    I obey the law. I pay my taxes. I don't give you any grief. Why are you
    on my back? The Constitution says I can do this. Punish wrongdoers. I am
    sick and tired of my life being inconvenienced for what other people do.
        Second example is the one that dominated the headlines in the last
    couple of days, what Senator Helms said about AIDS: ``I'm sick and tired
    of spending money on research and treatment for a disease that could be
    ended tomorrow if everybody just straightened up and fly right. I'm
    tired of it. Why should I spend taxpayer--I've got a budget to balance.
    We're cutting aid to Africa. We're cutting education. We're cutting
    Medicare. Why should we spend money on treatment and research for a
    disease that is a product of people's wrongdoing? Illicit sex and bad
    drugs, dirty needles--let's just stop it.''
        Now, at one level, forgetting about those two examples, this
    argument is self-evidently right. Go back to what I told you about my
    family. A lot of you are nodding your heads about yours. There is a
    sense in which there is nothing the Government can do for anybody that
    will displace the negative impact of personal misconduct. And unless
    people are willing to work hard and do the best they can and advance
    themselves and their families, the ability of com-

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    mon action, no matter how well-meaning, won't work.
        You look at every social program that's working in every community,
    and there are lots of them. I was just in New Haven for the opening of
    the Special Olympics, and I spent a lot of time with the LEAP program up
    there. It's an incredible program where these college students work with
    inner-city kids in the cities helping them rebuild their lives. But if
    the kids don't want to do it and won't behave, there's nothing these
    college kids can do to help them. So let's give them that. At a certain
    level, this is self-evidently true.
        But what is the problem? These problems are our problems. They're
    not just single problems. If there's a big crime rate and a whole lot of
    people getting killed with guns, that affects all the rest of us because
    some of us are likely to get shot.
        Now, I see the Brady bill in a totally different way because I see
    these problems as community problems. And I think a public response is
    all right. And I think saying to people who have the line I said, I
    think we ought to say to people, ``Look, it is just not out of line for
    you to be asked to undergo the minor inconvenience of waiting 5 days to
    get a handgun, until we can computerize all the records, because, look
    here, in the last year and a half, there are 40,000 people who had
    criminal records or mental health histories who didn't get handguns, and
    they're not out there shooting people because you went through a minor
    inconvenience. You don't gripe when you go through a metal detector at
    an airport anymore, because you are very aware of the connection between
    this minor inconvenience to you and the fact that the plane might blow
    up, and you don't want that plane to blow up or be hijacked.''
        Well, look at the level of violence in America. It's the same thing.
    I don't have a problem with saying, ``Look, these assault weapons are
    primarily designed to kill people. That's their primary purpose. And I'm
    sorry if you don't have a new one that you can take out in the woods
    somewhere to a shooting contest, but you'll get over it. Shoot with
    something else.'' [Laughter] ``It's worth it.'' [Applause] I'm glad
    you're clapping. I'm glad you agree with me, but remember, the other
    people are good people who honestly believe what they say. That's the
    importance of this debate. It's the attitudes. We have to--we're having
    this debate.
        The NRA that I knew as a child, the NRA that I knew as a Governor,
    for years, were the people who did hunter education programs, the people
    that helped me resolve land boundary disputes when retirees would come
    to the mountains in the northern part of my State and go into
    unincorporated areas, and who could and couldn't hunt on whose land. And
    they actually helped save people's lives, and they solved a lot of
    problems. I mean, this is a different--these are deeply held world views
    about working--but the way I look at it is it's like the airport metal
    detector.
        I'll give you another example. It might not be popular in this
    group. I agree with the Supreme Court decision on requiring people who
    want to be on high school athletic teams to take drug tests, not because
    I think all kids are bad, not because I think they all use drugs, but
    because casual drug use is going up among young people again. It is a
    privilege to play on the football team. It is a privilege to be in the
    band. It is a privilege to have access to all these activities. And I
    say it's like going through the airport metal detector. You ought to be
    willing to do that to help get the scourge of drugs out of your school
    and keep kids off drugs. That's what I believe, because I see it as a
    common problem. So we all have to give up a little and go through a
    little inconvenience to help solve problems and pull the country
    together and push it forward. But this is a huge debate.
        Look at the AIDS debate. You may think it's a little harder. First
    of all, the truth is not everybody who has AIDS gets it from sex or drug
    needles. I've got a picture on my desk at the White House of a little
    boy named Ricky Ray. He and his family were treated horribly by people
    who were afraid of AIDS when they first got it through blood
    transfusions, he and his brother. And he died right after my election. I
    keep his picture on my table to remember that. Elizabeth Glaser was a
    good friend of mine. She and the daughter she lost and her wonderful son
    that survived her, they didn't get AIDS through misconduct. So that's
    just wrong. I know a fine woman doctor in Texas who got AIDS because she
    was treating AIDS patients and she got the tiniest pinprick in her
    finger, a million-to-one, 2-million-to-one chance. But secondly, and
    more to the point, the gay people who have AIDS are still our sons, our
    brothers, our cousins, our citizens. They're Americans,

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    too. They're obeying the law and working hard. They're entitled to be
    treated like everybody else. And the drug users, there's nobody in this
    country that hates that any more than I do because I've lived with it in
    my family. But I fail to see why we would want to hasten people's demise
    because they paid a terrible price for their abuse.
        You know, smoking causes lung cancer, but we don't propose to stop
    treating lung cancer or stop doing research to find a cure. Right? Drunk
    driving causes a lot of highway deaths, but we don't propose to stop
    trying to make cars safer. Do we? I don't think so.
        So I just disagree with this. Why do we have to make this choice?
    Why can't we say to people, look, you've got to behave if you want your
    life to work, but we have common problems, and we are going to have some
    common responses. I don't understand why it's got to be an either/or
    thing. That's not the way we live our lives. Why should we conduct our
    public debates in this way?
        And the best example of all to me that our problems are both
    personal and cultural and economic, political, and social is the whole
    condition of the middle class economically. I think it requires public
    and private decisionmaking. Family values, most families have them. But
    most families are working harder for less so they have less time and
    less money to spend with their children. Now, that's just a fact. That's
    not good for family values. And I don't believe exhortation alone can
    turn it around. It's going to require some common action. I think that
    what we did with the family leave law supported family values. I think
    that we can have a welfare reform law that requires parental
    responsibility, has tough work requirements, but invests in child care
    and supports family values.
        I think we can have a tax system that gives breaks to people to help
    them raise their kids and educate themselves and their children, and
    that would support family values. I think we can have an education
    system that empowers people to make the most of their own lives, and I
    think that is profoundly supportive of family values. And I do not
    believe the Government can do it alone. I believe there are other things
    that have to be done by people themselves and also by employers.
        One of our major newspapers had an article yesterday on the front
    page, or the day before, saying in the new world economy the employers
    call all the shots, talking about how more and more workers were
    temporary workers, more and more people felt insecure. You know, it's
    all very well to exhort people. But if they're out there really busting
    it, doing everything they can and falling further behind, and they're
    not being treated fairly by people who can afford to treat them fairly,
    then that's something else again, isn't it?
        The global economy, automation, the decline of unionization, and the
    inadequate response of too many employers to these changes have led to a
    profound weakening of the condition of many American workers. There
    aren't many companies like NUCOR, a nonunion company, a steel company,
    where people get a fairly low base hourly wage, but they get a weekly
    bonus; nobody's ever been laid off; every employee with a college kid,
    student--a child who's college age, gets about $2,500 a year as a
    college allowance; and the pay of the executives is tied to the
    performance of the company and cannot go up by a higher percentage than
    the pay of the workers goes up.
        Now, by contrast, in the 12 years before I took office--this is all
    in the private sector--the top management of our companies' pay went up
    by 4 times what their workers' pay went up and 3 times what their
    profits went up percentagewise. And that trend has largely continued, if
    anything accelerated, even though we limited the tax subsidy for it in
    1993.
        So I would say to you that there are some things that mere
    exhortation to good conduct will not solve, that require other responses
    that are public or that are private but go beyond just saying these are
    personal or cultural problems.
        I also think that if we want to maintain a public response, there
    must be a relentless effort to change but not to eviscerate the
    Government. We have tried weak Government, nonexistent Government, in a
    complex industrial society where powerful interests that are driven only
    by short-term considerations call all the shots. We tried it decades and
    decades ago. It didn't work out very well. It didn't even produce a very
    good economic policy. It had something to do with the onset of the
    Depression.
        On the other hand, we know that an insensitive, overly bureaucratic,
    yesterday-oriented, special-interest-dominated Government can be just as
    big a nightmare. We've done what we could

    [[Page 1054]]

    to change that. The Government has 150,000 fewer people working today
    than it did when I took office. We've gotten rid of thousands of
    regulations and hundreds of programs. We have a few shining stars like
    the Small Business Administration, which today has a budget that's 40
    percent lower than it did when I took office, that's making twice as
    many loans, has dramatically increased the loans to women and
    minorities, has not decreased loans to white males, and hasn't made a
    loan to a single unqualified person.
        We can do these things. I wish I had all day to talk to you about
    what the Secretary of Education has done in the Education Department to
    try to make it work better and make common sense and involve parents and
    promote things like greater choice of schools and the building of
    charter schools and character education in the schools. It's not an
    either/or thing. You don't have to choose between being personally right
    and having common goals.
        So that's my side of the argument. That's why I think my New
    Covenant formulation is better to solve the problems of middle class
    dreams and middle class values than the Republican contract. But perhaps
    the most important thing is not whether I'm right or they are, the
    important thing is how are we going to resolve this and what are
    citizens going to do. How can we resolve the debate?
        I believe--and you've got to decide whether you believe this--I
    believe that a democracy requires a certain amount of common ground. I
    do not believe you can solve complex questions like this at the
    grassroots level or at the national level or anywhere in between if you
    have too much extremism of rhetoric and excessive partisanship. Times
    are changing too fast. We need to keep our eyes open. We need to keep
    our ears open. We need to be flexible. We need to have new solutions
    based on old values. I just don't think we can get there unless we can
    establish some common ground.
        And that seems to me to impose certain specific responsibilities on
    citizens and on political leaders. And if I might, just let me say them.
    They may be painfully self-evident, but I don't think they're
    irrelevant. Every citizen in this country's got to say, ``What do I have
    to do for myself or my family,'' or nothing else counts. The truth is
    that nobody can repeal the laws of the global economy, and people that
    don't have a certain level of education and skills are not going to be
    employable in good jobs with long-term prospects. And that's just a
    fact. The truth is that if every child in this country had both parents
    contributing to his or her support and nourishment and emotional
    stability and education and future, we'd have almost no poor kids,
    instead of having over 20 percent of our children born in poverty. Those
    things are true.
        The second thing is, more of our citizens have got to say, ``What
    should I do in my community?'' You know, it's not just enough to bemoan
    the rising crime rate or how kids are behaving and whatever. That's just
    not enough. It is not enough, not when you have example after example
    after example, from this LEAP program I mentioned, the ``I Have A
    Dream'' Program, to the world-famous Habitat for Humanity program, to
    all these local initiatives, support corporations that are now going
    around the country revolutionizing slum housing and giving poor working
    people decent places to live, to the work of the Catholic social
    missions in Washington, DC, and other places.
        It is not enough to say that. People have to ask themselves, ``What
    should I be doing through my church or my community organizations?''
    People who feel very strongly about one of the most contentious issues
    in our society, abortion, ought to look at the United Pentecostal
    Church. They'll adopt any child born, no matter what race, no matter how
    disabled, no matter what their problems are. There is a positive,
    constructive outlet for people who are worried about every problem in
    this country if they will go seek it out. And there is nothing the rest
    of us can do that will replace that kind of energy.
        The fourth thing that I think--the third thing I think citizens have
    to do that is also important, people have to say, ``What is my job as a
    citizen who is a voter? I am in control here. I run the store. I get to
    throw this crowd out on a regular basis. That's a big responsibility.
    We're the board of directors of America. Are we making good decisions?
    Are we making good decisions? Do we approach these decisions in the
    right frame of mind? Do we have enough information? Do we know what
    we're doing?''
        I can tell you, the American people are hungry for information. When
    I announced my balanced budget and we put it on the Internet, one of our
    people at the White House told me there were a few hours when we were
    get-

    [[Page 1055]]

    ting 50,000 requests an hour. The American people want to know things.
        So I say to every citizen, do you have the information you need? Do
    you ever have a discussion with somebody that's different from you, not
    just people who agree with you but somebody who's different? You ever
    listen to one of those radio programs that has the opposite point of
    view of yours, even if you have to grind your teeth? [Laughter] And what
    kind of language do you use when you talk to people who are of different
    political parties with different views? Is it the language of respect or
    the language of a suspect? How do you deal with people? This is a huge
    thing. What do you have to do for yourself and your family? What can you
    do in your community? What can you do as a citizen?
        Thomas Jefferson said he had no fear of the most extreme views in
    America being expressed with the greatest passion as long as reason had
    a chance--as long as reason had a chance. Citizens have to give reason a
    chance.
        What do the political leaders have to do? I would argue four things:
    Number one, we need more conversation and less combat; number two, when
    we differ we ought to offer an alternative; number three, we ought to
    look relentlessly at the long term and remind the American people that
    the problems we have developed over a long period of years; and number
    four, we shouldn't just berate the worst in America, we ought to spend
    more time celebrating the best.
        Those are four things that I think I should do and I think every
    other leader in this country ought to do. Conversation, not combat, is
    what I tried to do with the Speaker in New Hampshire, and I want to do
    more of it with others. I'm willing if they are. I think it would be
    good for America.
        Secondly, differ but present an alternative. That's why I presented
    a balanced budget. A lot of people said, ``This is dumb politics.'' The
    Republicans won the Congress by just saying no: No to deficit reduction,
    and call it a tax increase. Run away from your own health care plan, say
    they're trying to make the Government take over health care. That may
    be. But that's because this is a confusing time. It's still not the
    right thing to do.
        Americans don't want ``just say no'' politics. If they can get the
    truth, they'll make the right decision 99 times out of 100. And we have
    to offer an alternative. And so do they. We all should. When we differ,
    we should say what we're for, not just what we're against.
        The third thing is important, looking for the long term. I was
    really sad in 1994. I'll be honest with you, on election day I was sad.
    I kind of felt sorry for myself. I thought, ``Gosh, you know, the real
    problems in this country are these income problems,'' and ``Look what
    we've done with the family leave law. We cut taxes for families with
    incomes under $28,000 a year by $1,000 a year. We've done,'' and I
    reeled it all off. And I said, ``Gosh, I feel terrible.'' And then I
    realized, how could they possibly feel anything in 2 years? These income
    trends are huge, huge trends; huge, sweeping over two decades; fast
    international forces behind them; trillions of dollars of money moving
    across international borders working to find the lowest labor cost and
    pressing down; untold improvements in automation; so fast that you just
    can't create enough high-wage jobs to overcome the ones that are being
    depressed in some sectors of the economy. These are a huge deal. How
    could people have felt that? Nonetheless, our job is not to get
    reelected; it's to think about the long term because the problems are
    long-term problems.
        I want to read you what President Havel said in his Harvard
    commencement speech about this--more eloquent than anything I could say:
    ``The main task of the present generation of politicians is not, I
    think, to ingratiate themselves with the public through the decisions
    they take or their smiles on television. Their role is something quite
    different, to assume their share of responsibility for the long-range
    prospects of our world, and thus, to set an example for the public in
    whose sight they work. After all, politics is a matter of serving the
    community, which means that it is morality in practice.'' I could hardly
    have said it better.
        Fourth, maybe the most important thing is, we should not just
    condemn the worst, we ought to find the best and celebrate it and then
    relentlessly promote it as a model to be followed. You know, I kept
    President Bush's Points of Light Foundation when I became President. And
    we recognize those people every year because I believe in that. I
    always--I thought that was one of the best things he did. But I tried to
    institutionalize it in many ways.
        That's what AmeriCorps is all about. The national service program
    gives young people a chance to earn money for college by working

    [[Page 1056]]

    in grassroots community projects all across the country. When I was in
    New Haven at the LEAP program, I had AmeriCorps volunteers there. I was
    in Texas the other day walking the streets of an inner city and a girl
    with a college degree from another State was there working with welfare
    mothers because she was raised by a welfare mother who taught her to go
    to school, work hard, and get a college degree, and she did.
        We have to find a way to systematically see these things that work
    sweep across this country with high standards and high expectations and
    breaking through all this bureaucracy that keeps people from achieving.
    We can do that. And the President ought to do even more than I have done
    to celebrate the things that work, and I intend to do it and to do more
    of it.
        Now I believe, obviously, that my New Covenant approach is better
    than the Republican contract approach to deal with the problems of
    middle class dreams and middle class values. But when I ran for this
    job, I said I wanted to restore the American dream and to bring the
    American people together. I have now come to the conclusion, having
    watched this drama unfold here and all around our country in the last
    2\1/2\ years, that I cannot do the first unless we can do the latter. We
    can't restore the American dream unless we can find some way to bring
    the American people closer together. Therefore, how we resolve these
    differences is as important as what specific position we advocate.
        I think we have got to move beyond division and resentment to common
    ground. We've got to go beyond cynicism to a sense of possibility.
    America is an idea. We're not one race. We're not one ethnic group.
    We're not one religious group. We do share a common piece of ground
    here. But you read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution:
    This country is an idea. And it is still going now in our 220th year
    because we all had a sense of possibility. We never thought there was a
    mountain we couldn't climb, a river we couldn't ford, or a problem we
    couldn't solve. What's that great line in the wonderful new movie
    ``Apollo 13,'' ``Failure is not an option.'' You have to believe in
    possibility. And if you're cynical, you can't believe in possibility.
        We need to respect our differences and hear them, but it means
    instead of having shrill voices of discord, we need a chorus of harmony.
    In a chorus of harmony you know there are lots of differences, but you
    can hear all the voices. And that is important.
        And we've got to challenge every American in every sector of our
    society to do their part. We have to challenge in a positive way and
    hold accountable people who claim to be not responsible for any
    consequences of their actions that they did not specifically intend,
    whether it's in government, business, labor, entertainment, the media,
    religion, or community organizations. None of us can say we're not
    accountable for our actions because we did not intend those
    consequences, even if we made some contribution to them.
        Two days ago, on July 4th, the people of Oklahoma City raised their
    flags and their spirits to full mast for the first time since the awful
    tragedy of April 19th. Governor Keating and Mayor Norick led a
    celebration in Oklahoma City, which some of you may have seen on
    television, a celebration of honor and thanks for thousands of
    Oklahomans and other Americans who showed up and stood united in the
    face of that awful hatred and loss for what is best in our country.
        You know, Oklahoma City took a lot of the meanness out of America.
    It gave us a chance for more sober reflection. It gave us a chance to
    come to the same conclusion that Thomas Jefferson did in his first
    Inaugural. I want to read this to you with only this bit of history.
    Thomas Jefferson was elected the first time by the House of
    Representatives in a bitterly contested election in the first outbreak
    of completely excessive partisanship in American history. In that sense,
    it was a time not unlike this time. And this is what he said: ``Let us
    unite with our heart and mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that
    harmony and affection without which liberty and life itself are but
    dreary things.''
        We can redeem the promise of America for our children. We can
    certainly restore the American family for another full century if we
    commit to each other, as the Founders did, our lives, our fortunes, and
    our sacred honor. In our hour of greatest peril and greatest division,
    when we were fighting over the issue which we still have not fully
    resolved, Abraham Lincoln said, ``We are not enemies but friends. We
    must not be enemies.''
        My friends, amidst all our differences, let us find a new common
    ground.

    [[Page 1057]]

        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:24 a.m. in Gaston Hall. In his remarks,
    he referred to Father Leo J. O'Donovan, president, Georgetown
    University; Molly M. Raiser, Chief of Protocol, Department of State;
    Gov. Frank Keating of Oklahoma; and Mayor Ronald Norick of Oklahoma
    City, OK.