    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [February 15, 1996]
    [Pages 265-271]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Dinner in New York City
    February 15, 1996

        Thank you so very much. I told the Vice President when we were
    outside and James Earl Jones was speaking that we ought to go out here
    and smile and quit while we're ahead. [Laughter] And I did tell him, I
    confess, that I thought it was kind of a bad deal that he got to be
    introduced by James Earl Jones and he introduces me all the time. But
    James Earl Jones fails the first test of Presidential introductions that
    the Vice President passes with flying colors, which is, whenever
    possible, always, always be introduced by someone you have appointed to
    high office. [Laughter]
        Don't you think it's wonderful what a sense of humor the Vice
    President has developed? I think--I actually resent it myself.
    [Laughter] I used to have a sense of humor, but they told me it wasn't
    Presidential. So, like everything else that's really enjoyable, in this
    administration the Vice President gets to do it. [Laughter]
        Let me say to all of you who are here, to the people who cochaired
    this dinner and all those who sold tickets and all of you who have come
    out on this third-time's-the charm--[laughter]--to the leaders of the
    Democratic Party who are here; to James Earl Jones, who I admire so very
    much, I thank you for being here and for your wonderful words and for
    your support. To Lesley Gore and to the orchestra, all the musicians, I
    thought they were terrific. And I think it's okay if Lesley Gore tells
    people she's kin to Al. After I became President, I found out I had all
    kinds of relatives I didn't know that I had. And it makes for
    interesting reading. [Laughter]
        I want to thank Mayor Dinkins and the members of the New York City
    government, the Members of Congress who are here, the borough presidents
    who are here, and all of you who have come to be a part of this evening.
        You know, I guess that because this is in all probability my last
    campaign, unless someday I run for the school board--[laughter]--I'm a
    little bit nostalgic. And I was in this hotel at a fundraiser almost 4
    years ago to this week. Some of you were here that night. And I'm

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    thinking tonight--and I ask all of you to give your prayers to our
    wonderful friend Paul Carey, who is battling an illness but is doing
    better. And he can't be here, but I want to think about him because he
    was here with me in that campaign. And so I'm kind of counting my
    blessings tonight and remembering that.
        The Vice President has graciously bragged on me because it's
    unseemly to do it for yourself, even in an election year. What I would
    like to talk about tonight is the--kind of the time in which we're
    living and why the things that we have done commend us for reelection,
    but why we don't deserve to be reelected just based on our record
    because there is so much more to be done.
        What are the fundamental facts of this time? A democratic system can
    only work if it preserves the freedom and liberty of all citizens and is
    flexible enough to adjust to the challenges of every time. It is no
    accident that we're the longest lasting democracy in human history. It
    isn't easy to keep meeting the challenges. It's no accident that Haiti,
    which the Vice President mentioned, after being a nation, an independent
    nation for almost 200 years, just had its very first transfer of power
    from one democratically elected President to another.
        This is a wonderful system of government, but it's not always easy
    to get a majority of the people, first, to zealously guard their own
    freedoms and those of their neighbors and to respect those who are
    different from them, and secondly, to make the decisions necessary or to
    let their leaders make the decisions necessary to keep meeting the
    challenges of each moment.
        I believe, as I have said on many occasions, that we are living
    through the period of greatest change in the way we work and live and
    relate to each other in a hundred years; that this moment represents the
    most fundamental change since we moved from being primarily a rural
    people to being primarily a people who lived in towns and cities, since
    we moved from being primarily an agricultural economy to an economy
    primarily based on industry.
        This information age represents dramatic changes in the nature of
    work. There's more muscle--excuse me--more mind and less muscle in work.
    And as people in New York read every week, it represents dramatic
    changes in the nature of work organizations. There are more small
    businesses, and big businesses keep getting smaller. There are fewer
    levels between the people at the top and the people actually
    implementing decisions. There has been an enormous growth in small
    business, as the Vice President said, but an enormous downsizing of
    bigger companies.
        This era represents an enormous, dramatic change in the way
    information is communicated. Bill Gates in his recent book said that the
    information age, based on the digital chip, represents the most profound
    revolution in communications since Guttenberg printed the first Bible
    500 years ago. And, obviously, when you're dealing with changes this
    profound, which also include the change in markets--money markets,
    markets in goods, and markets in services--to global markets, it is
    clear that there must be changes in Government. It is also clear that
    there will be changes in the patterns of people's lives.
        And whenever in our history and, I believe, whenever in any society
    in human history there has been a great uprooting, you always see
    enormous opportunity for the gifted, the clever, the understanding, the
    lucky, and the well-prepared. But you also see a lot of people feeling
    insecure and disoriented because they feel that they're working hard and
    playing by the rules and their future seems to be drifting away. And
    that represents the remarkable paradox of the present moment.
        Overwhelmingly, this is an age of possibility. The Vice President
    recited the economic statistics; I need not repeat them. But what we
    know is that this is an unusual time because in these 3 years we've seen
    our economy produce 8 million jobs, a record number of new small
    businesses, a record number of self-made millionaires--a remarkable and
    very good thing, not people who inherited their wealth but people who
    went out and made it with the opportunities that this country provided.
    And yet, still, about half our people have not gotten a raise in terms
    of real purchasing power in a decade or more.
        We know that these entrepreneurs are exploding. We know, for
    example, that businesses owned by women alone, just businesses owned by
    women, have created more new jobs than the Fortune 500 have laid off in
    the last 3 years. But that's not very helpful if you're one of the
    people my age who is, you know, 49 or 50 years old and your kids are
    ready to go to college and you're one of the ones that got laid off, and
    all you've ever been is a middle manager in a very big company, and you
    can't

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    imagine how you can ever find another job making what you made doing
    roughly what you used to do. What are you to do now? So that is the
    paradox we're trying to come to grips with.
        If you look at the other great challenge I think we face, which is
    to live up to our values and to come together as a country instead of
    being driven apart by this change, you see the same sort of thing. We
    should be ecstatic. The crime rate is down; the welfare rolls are down;
    the food stamp rolls are down; the poverty rolls are down; the teen
    pregnancy rate is down. This country is coming together. The
    commissioner of police of the city of New York was on the front page,
    the cover of one of our major news magazines with a serious question
    implying we may have turned the corner in our efforts to whip violent
    crime. That is something to be celebrating about. And yet, we all know
    that all those things that are going down are still too high. So our
    work is not yet done.
        If you look at the role America has played in the world, we should
    be rejoicing for the reasons the Vice President has said and for others.
    There are no more nuclear missiles pointed at any children in the United
    States. I'm proud of that. If the Russians follow the lead of the United
    States Senate and adopt a START II treaty, we will reduce by two-thirds
    the nuclear arsenals of both countries. We have gotten almost 180
    countries to agree to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty and promise
    never, never to develop nuclear missiles. This year I believe we will
    get a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty for the whole world. This is
    a remarkable thing.
        And I am profoundly grateful for what this Nation has been able to
    do, to work with other countries, to fight terrorism, and to fight
    organized crime, and to fight drugs. I am profoundly grateful for the
    role we played in the liberation of South Africa, and the role we played
    in Haiti, in the Middle East, in Northern Ireland, and Bosnia. But you
    know as well as I do that this work is ongoing; that even though the
    nuclear cloud is not hanging over us as it once did, we still face
    serious, serious obstacles to doing everything we need to do.
        There's a lot out there to do when one fanatic can break open a vial
    of sarin gas in a subway station in Tokyo and kill hundreds of people;
    when one fanatic in the United States can get on the Internet and find
    through high-tech means the very low-tech way of making a bomb, like the
    bomb that destroyed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. When our open
    borders can lead terrorists into our country and allow them to come
    here, and they do their mischief and then leave and go to countries from
    which we cannot have them returned, we still have security challenges.
        Now, I would say to you, on balance, you should be pleased with
    where this country is and where we're going. The economic direction is
    right. The social direction is right. The national security direction is
    right. We are opening the American dream to more people. We are coming
    together around our basic values. We are still the world's leading force
    for peace and freedom, but we have a very challenging agenda for the
    future. And it is that agenda on which I hope this election campaign
    will be waged, not the cheap, silly, divisive, distractive issues that
    will undermine our ability to unleash the potential of every American
    and do right by this great country.
        In my State of the Union I said there were seven great challenges
    facing this country. I don't want to talk about all of them tonight; I
    want to emphasize one or two. But I want to talk about one or two and
    remind you of all of them. We must--we must continue to fight for
    stronger families and better childhoods for all of our children. We must
    open up the opportunities of the 21st century to every American by
    giving everybody a world-class educational opportunity, based on high
    standards and high expectations and high technology and high
    opportunity. We must find a way to capture and maintain and even
    accelerate the dynamism of this wonderful new economy and at the same
    time provide a higher measure of economic security for every American
    family willing to work for it.
        We must continue the fight against crime until we meet the real test
    of any civilized society, which is not a zero crime rate--there will
    never be a time when we won't have crime and violence--but there is a
    test that you can apply in your own home, to your own personal
    experience. We will have done what we should do in crime when you feel
    in your bones that it is the exception, not the rule; when you turn on
    the evening news and you read about the latest murder, the latest rape,
    the latest madness, you think it is the exception and you're surprised,
    not numb to it. And until we reach

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    that point, we have to keep working on it as one of our highest national
    priorities.
        We must continue the fight to preserve, maintain, and even enhance
    our natural environment. We must reject once and for all the totally
    destructive notion that we can only grow this economy if we continue to
    destroy the environment. That is a terrible idea. It won't work. It will
    undermine our economy. It will destroy our quality of life. And it's
    nice to have the Vice President at work every day reminding me of that
    ultimate truth.
        We must maintain our leadership for peace and freedom. In New York,
    we have a lot of people who deal with the rest of the world. You have a
    lot of wonderful Jewish-Americans and Americans of Arabic descent who
    want me to continue to fight for peace in the Middle East. You have a
    lot of people involved in world trade who want me to continue to reach
    out to Latin America and to Asia. But many of our fellow Americans are
    so burdened by the moment that I get the feeling when they see me on
    television talking about Ireland or Bosnia or whatever, they look and
    they say, ``Well, you're doing all right and as long as you don't mess
    up I'll let you do that, but I really kind of wish we didn't have to
    fool with that.'' But let me remind you, we do have to fool with that.
        If you want those countries in Latin America to cooperate with us in
    breaking the drug gangs--and remember, in the last 3 years, 7 of the 8
    leaders of the Cali drug cartel have been put behind bars, thanks to
    that kind of cooperation--if you want that to happen, we have to be good
    neighbors with the Latin Americans. They, after all, are risking their
    lives. At least we have to have good trade partnerships and other
    partnerships.
        If you want Europe to grow as an open community instead of a closed
    community, if you want Americans to have a fair shake at selling our
    goods, our services, and growing our economy in partnership with the
    Europeans, we have to be partners in the common security of democracy
    and freedom there. And that's part of what Bosnia is all about, apart
    from the fact that it is the right thing to do. So I ask you all to
    support that, to support your country when we stand up for peace and
    freedom.
        And finally, our last challenge is we have got to give the American
    people again a Government that does more, costs less, and most
    important, is worthy of their trust. But we also have to have a group of
    Americans who understand what their responsibilities are at this time.
    People can't be looking down their nose at the Government if they don't
    do their part to raise their kids, if they don't do their part to
    educate their kids, if they're not willing to do their part to work with
    their local police officers or their part to demand grassroots
    environmental reform or their part to show up and vote. So we have to
    have this kind of balance.
        In this new era, we will change the way the Government works. You
    heard the Vice President say it. I heard our friends in the other party
    for years lambast and rail against big Government. All I know is, it was
    still pretty big when we showed up, and now it's the smallest it's been
    since 1965. I heard them rail against Government regulation. All I know
    is, when we showed up there were 86,000 pages of Government regulations,
    and we're getting rid of 16,000 pages of them. I heard these things, but
    I never saw anything done. We are trying to give the American people a
    Government that's not so big, that's not antiquated, that's not some
    dinosaur of the age we used to live in instead of the one we're moving
    toward. But that does not mean we need a weak Government. It does not
    mean we can go back to the time when people were left to fend for
    themselves.
        If you were to ask me, ``What is the one lesson you have learned in
    the last 3 years, Mr. President?'' I would say to you, I have learned
    that when this country is together, America never loses. And we have to
    solve our problems together. That means the Government has a role. That
    means citizens, that means families, that means community institutions,
    that means the private sector, that means the churches and synagogues,
    that means all of us have to do something together. And we all have a
    role to play. And to pretend otherwise is ridiculous.
        And let me just give you a couple of examples of what I think we
    ought to be doing and one example that affects New York that shows you
    what is still wrong with things in Washington. And I believe there are
    laws we ought to change. I still--I can't understand why Congress won't
    pass a campaign finance reform bill. They all say they're for it, but
    they won't do it. [Applause] And actually, most of you in this room
    should be clapping louder. It would save you a lot of money if we passed
    it. [Laughter]

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        I can't understand why they won't pass the line item veto. They said
    they thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread until they
    took over the Congress. I'd like to have it. I'll use it, and it will
    help to bring the deficit down.
        But the way we operate is fundamentally important, and let me just
    give you one example. This telecommunications bill reflects the way our
    country ought to work. It will create tens of thousands, perhaps
    hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs. It will dramatically increase
    Americans' access to information, to education, to entertainment. And it
    will be done in a way that brings us together because it protects the
    ability of all the players in telecommunications to have their fair
    chance to compete, the small as well as the large. It protects the
    ability of people to know that there will be a diversity of opinions
    still available to them. And it gives a preference to our schools and to
    our libraries and to our hospitals, so they can be on the information
    superhighway no matter where they are and all our children have a chance
    to go into the 21st century.
        Let me say this: We did an event in Union City, New Jersey, today
    which the Vice President talked about, which is the antithesis of what
    everybody worries about in the economy. All this anxiety in the economy
    really is rooted in the fact that people are afraid that there's
    something about this technological revolution that mandates inequality
    in wages and stagnant wages and people being permanently dislocated. But
    if you saw these kids today--kids that came from immigrant families,
    kids that were poor, kids that never would have been able to dream of
    this before--all of them fluent in the use of their computers, all of
    them being able to go home and have access to computers at home, all of
    them having taught their parents how to use computers so that their
    parents are E-mailing the principal and finding out back and forth how
    the kids are doing, you would see that the answer is not to go back or
    put up walls around this country, the answer is to see this
    technological revolution through until it benefits every single American
    and gives us the future that we need.
        And that is an example of how we ought to do it. We fought very hard
    for those public interest provisions of the telecommunications bill. But
    in the end, the bill passed almost unanimously. And it is a good thing
    for America, and it hooks us into the future. Now, that's an example of
    what should be done.
        An example of what should not be done, that most people in this room
    are familiar with, was the outrageous political treatment of my
    intention to nominate Felix Rohatyn to be the Vice Chairman of the
    Federal Reserve. And he is here tonight. I think we all ought to give
    him a hand. Felix, where are you? Stand up there. Let's give him a hand.
    [Applause]
        If you believe that we should give everybody a raise when the
    economy does better and you don't want to engage in class warfare; if
    you believe all these people that are inevitably downsized when big
    corporations become smaller should have the opportunity to go on with
    their lives and you don't want to engage in class warfare; if you are
    perplexed by how we can generate 8 million new jobs and record numbers
    of new businesses and still have half the Americans not get a raise, one
    clear area where we ought to debate is whether the conventional wisdom
    about how fast this economy can grow is right. That ought to be debated.
    It ought to be debated within the commitment to deficit reduction and a
    balanced budget. I think we've established our commitment to that. It
    ought to be debated within a commitment not to let inflation get out of
    hand.
        But the truth is, nobody but nobody knows for sure that this economy
    can't grow any faster in the information age than it did between 1970
    and 1995. The truth is, if you want to get jobs into Brooklyn, into the
    Bronx, into the Mississippi Delta, into the rural areas of America; if
    you want to see people who work hard and work harder today than they did
    25 years ago, on the average, get the rewards, one of the most obvious
    things you have to do is to see whether or not this economy can grow a
    little faster. I'm telling you, if this economy grew at an average of
    2.7 percent instead of 2.5 percent, all the arguments we are now having
    in Washington over balancing the budget would be gone like that--two-
    tenths of a percent--over, history, out.
        I believed, based on repeated conversations I have had with business
    leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, in this country over the last 3
    years, talking about the very rapid growth and productivity in our
    manufacturing sector, the increasing growth in productivity in our
    service sector, and the fact that we have such an open economy, that
    competition is an incredible

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    pressure against inflation, far more than ever before--and I'll just
    give you one example. When we put out our deficit reduction plan in `93
    and the interest rates dropped, there was a housing boom. And what
    always happens when there's a housing boom happened; lumber prices went
    up because they got tight. Except lumber prices this time did not lead
    to a new inflation. Why? Because we got flooded with lumber from other
    countries because we have an open economy. So we had our housing boom
    and no inflation.
        Now, it seems to me a good thing for the President to do to say,
    wouldn't it be nice to have a debate within a controlled framework, with
    serious people with a lifetime of achievement, to see if we can't give
    Americans a raise who are working hard; to see if we can't minimize
    inequality as we move to this new economy; and to see if we can't do it
    the old-fashioned American way, with opportunity and not class warfare?
        That's what I wanted to see done. And that's why I wanted to put
    Felix Rohatyn on the Federal Reserve. But the politics of Washington
    said, no, we insist on the conventional wisdom; we insist on holding
    people down; we don't even think it's worth debating. Over and out. That
    is wrong, and we must end that kind of thinking if we want this country
    to grow and prosper and become what it ought to be.
        The last thing I want to say is this: The most important thing about
    this election is that you and everybody like you in this whole country
    remembers that it's not about me or whoever the Republicans decide to
    nominate when they get through with their business. This election is
    about you and people like you. It's about all those people that served
    your food tonight. It's about everybody in between. And this country is
    still here after all this time, still doing well, still the envy of the
    world because most of the time most of us do the right thing.
        And one of the things that I have a hard time dealing with is this
    alleged cynicism and skepticism among our people. Now, skepticism is a
    healthy thing at one level. But you tell me why the American people
    should be cynical when we have the lowest unemployment rate, the highest
    growth rate, the lowest deficit, and the brightest prospects of any
    advanced country in the world?
        People from other countries ask me all the time. They would give
    anything to have our problems. Of course we've got problems; problems
    are endemic to the human condition. But we see them as challenges and
    opportunities. And cynicism is a cheap, bogus, inadequate excuse for the
    inaction of our fellow citizens. And we've got to get rid of it.
        The other thing we have got to stop doing as a people--and I want
    you to pledge to me that as our supporters you will carry through this
    whole year doing this--we have got to stop using these elections to
    divide the American people in ways that benefit some politician at
    election time but cripple the ability of the United States to come
    together as one country. We have got to stop doing that.
        Tonight I looked up at my table and when the gentleman came to ask
    if we wanted any wine, and I saw a man serving me that I met in this
    kitchen 4 years ago last week. And some of you may remember the
    circumstances I faced 4 years ago last week. We were dropping like a
    rock in New Hampshire. My obituary had been written by every elated
    editorial writer in the country who always wanted one hide in every
    election. Everybody said we were going to single digits in New Hampshire
    and the whole thing was over. And Alan and Susan Patricof and I were
    laughing around the table. We had 700 people here; I thought we'd be
    lucky to have 70 people here after what I had been through the last few
    days.
        And I walked through the kitchen coming here, and I was feeling
    pretty sorry for myself, I'm ashamed to say. I was feeling pretty sorry
    for myself. And the man that came to my table tonight to serve us
    stopped me. And some of you heard this story, but I want to tell you--
    he's still here, he's still working for his family and for this hotel.
    And he said, ``Governor, my 10-year-old son is studying the Presidential
    elections. He has studied all the candidates, and he says I should vote
    for you.'' Well, that made me feel better. I didn't know there was a 10-
    year-old in all the State of New York who knew who I was. [Laughter]
        He said, ``But let me tell you something.'' He said, ``I'm an
    immigrant, and where I came from, we were very poor. And we're much
    better off here economically. But where we lived before, we were free.''
    He said, ``Here we have a park across the street from our apartment, but
    my boy can't play in that park unless I go with him. We have a school
    down the street from our apartment; my boy can't walk to school

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    unless I go with him. So if I do what my boy wants me to do and I vote
    for you, will you make my boy free?'' And I thought to myself, ``What
    have you been thinking about? This election is not about you. It's about
    him and people like him.''
        And let me tell you something: When we passed that crime bill and we
    put another 100,000 police on the street, and I see the crime rate going
    down in city after city after city in this country because we did that;
    when we passed the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban, and the
    Democrats lost the House of Representatives probably because so many of
    them sat up and voted for that one bill--but I could go to New Hampshire
    and say, we just had a great deer season in New Hampshire, and the air
    was full of ducks in Arkansas and every hunter I know shot them with the
    same gun they had last year, so the people who told you we were going to
    take your gun away were not telling you the truth. But I'll tell you
    something, there's over 40,000 crooks that couldn't get a gun because we
    passed the Brady bill.
        And I saw him tonight, I saw Dimitrios standing there, and I said,
    ``Your son is about 14 now?'' ``Yes.'' ``How's he doing?'' ``Fine.'' And
    I said, ``You got a message for me?'' He said, ``Yes. Keep fighting for
    the working people; it's still pretty tough out here.''
        This election is about you. It's about him. It's about our country.
    And yes, we have some challenges. But I'm telling you, these are high-
    class problems because this country is moving in the right direction.
    And don't let anybody tell you that your Government is inherently bad.
        James Carville's new book, which I commend to all of you, points out
    in the last 30 years we spent half of your tax money on three things:
    defense, Social Security, and Medicare. What did you get for it? We won
    the cold war. We cut the poverty rate among elderly citizens in half.
    And if you get to be old enough to be on Medicare, seniors in the United
    States have the highest life expectancy of any group of elderly people
    in the world.
        This is a very great country. If you do your part and we do ours,
    we're going to be just fine. Let's do that in 1996.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:45 p.m. at the Sheraton New York Hotel.
    In his remarks, he referred to actor James Earl Jones; entertainer
    Lesley Gore; David Dinkins, former New York City mayor; Alan Patricof,
    former Chair, White House Conference on Small Business Commission, and
    his wife, Susan; and waiter Dimitrios Theofanis.