    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [June 10, 1996]
    [Pages 888-890]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Saxophone Club in Culver City, California
    June 10, 1996

        The President. Thank you very much.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. Thank you. First of all, let me say a special thank
    you to Don Fowler, the chairman of the Democratic Party, for coming out
    here to California with me. Thank you, Don. I want to thank Alec Baldwin
    for his years of support and for his wonderful, loyal devotion to this
    country. You know, I heard Alec up here giving this speech, and I
    thought, if he ever gets tired of making movies, he'd be a pretty good
    candidate, wouldn't he? [Laughter] He did well. I want to thank Joe
    Walsh and his band. And since he played ``Rocky Mountain Way''--you may
    not know that since you've been in here, Colorado won the Stanley Cup,
    the hockey championship tonight, so I thought that was good. I want to
    thank John Fogerty for all of his music and everything he's done over
    the years. Thank you, John. I thank my good friend Whoopi Goldberg for
    being here earlier. She had to leave, but I know she was great and did a
    great job for you.

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        And let me thank all of you who have been part of the Saxophone
    Club, especially the people who have been working on it. There are
    people here who have been working on this idea of the Saxophone Club for
    years now. And the whole idea was we would find a way for Americans who
    maybe didn't have a lot of money to participate, to contribute, to be a
    part of our political campaign and our movement to change America,
    beginning back in 1992, especially younger Americans.
        And as I look out at you tonight, I know you've been having a good
    time, and we ought to spend most of our time just sort of listening to
    music and chanting, ``Four more years!'' It's been a hard week; I like
    hearing that. [Laughter] But I'd like for you to think just for a couple
    of minutes about what this election is about, because most of you are
    considerably younger than I am, and most of you therefore have a much
    bigger stake in the consequences of the election in the future than I
    do. And I want you to think about it.
        When I was out here shaking hands during the music, one young woman
    over here said, ``Take care of us, Mr. President.'' And I said, ``I'm
    sure trying to do that.'' And I am. But what does that mean? What does
    that mean? If you think about all the things that are going on in our
    country today and in our world, all these incredible changes, most of
    them are working out pretty well for most of you. The future is going to
    be a time when there will be more different things for people to do to
    live out their dreams than at any point in human history.
        And if we do the right things in America, the best days of this
    country are still ahead of us, because there's no country in the world
    that is capable of creating opportunity for so many people; no country
    in the world as capable of bringing together so many different peoples
    across all the racial and ethnic and religious and other lines that
    divide us, into a common family; no nation in the world so capable of
    leading the world toward greater peace and freedom and human dignity and
    prosperity. And that's really what this election is all about.
        You are lucky enough to be living through the period of greatest
    change that our country has experienced in the way we work, the way we
    live, and the way we relate to the rest of the world in 100 years, since
    we've moved from farm to factory and from the country to the city. Now
    we're moving from a national economy and the cold war to a global
    village, away from an industrial age to one dominated by information,
    technology, computers. Bill Gates, the great computer genius, says that
    the microchip has launched the greatest revolution in communication not
    in 100 years but in 500 years. That's what all of you have inherited.
    And we have to decide what we're going to do with it. And that's what
    this whole debate is about.
        I believe the purpose of my office and your Government is to, first
    and foremost, create opportunity for everybody; to give every person,
    without regard to where they start in life, a chance to live out their
    dreams. I believe that, therefore, it is worth fighting to do what we've
    done. We've cut the deficit by more than half. Our economy has produced
    almost 10 million new jobs. We're moving forward in a dramatic way. I
    think that's important.
        But not everybody has the opportunity to participate in this, and I
    won't be satisfied until everybody does. That's why, if you will reelect
    me, I'll do everything I can to guarantee that every single American
    citizen has a guarantee of 2 more years of education after high school--
    for every single, solitary person--that every American will be able to
    afford to go to college, and that you will be able to deduct the cost of
    college tuition from your income taxes, that every American will always
    have access to lifetime education. Most of you will be doing things 10
    or 20 years from now--or many of you will--you'll be doing work that
    literally has not even been invented yet. And if I could do one thing
    for this country as President to create a structure of opportunity that
    would carry us way into the next century, it would be create a seamless
    web of lifetime education that every American could move in and out of,
    just like rolling down a river--very important.
        Second thing I want to say to you is, it's very fashionable for
    people to condemn Government and say that Government is the source of
    all of our problems. But Government is nothing more or less than the
    rest of us; it is our reflection. And there are things we have to do in
    common. We need safe streets in common. We need a clean environment in
    common. We need a commitment to maintaining our own security against
    terrorism and dangerous weapons and drug runners and organized crime in
    common. We need these things in common.

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        And so when people tell you that they're going to get the Government
    off your back, you just remember it was our administration that reduced
    the size of the Federal Government by 240,000 people. But when
    California had an earthquake, when California had a fire, when
    California was broken down by the cutbacks in defense, you did not need
    weakness. You needed people to come in and help with the emergencies, to
    help with defense conversion, to help to rebuild this State, to help to
    rebuild this country.
        Audience member. Four more years!
        The President. And I just want to say one other thing. Every
    election time we're asked to blame one another for our problems. You
    just think about it. Every election time, somebody comes along, they
    find out who is not happy, and they try to tell you some other group of
    Americans you can blame for your difficulties. But the truth is, we're
    going into the future, up or down, together. The truth is, no great
    democracy has ever existed with as much diversity as this one has today.
    This county where we are tonight, this single county, has people from
    150 different racial and ethnic groups. And I say, thank God for it. It
    is our ticket to success in a global economy.
        So if you believe with me that this election is about creating
    opportunity for every American, not a guarantee but an opportunity to
    live out your dreams; and if you believe we have to do some things in
    common, give our children safe streets and a clean environment, good
    schools and a brighter future; and if you believe that this country
    still has a mission to stand up for freedom and decency and honor around
    the world wherever we can, so that we can grow together in a world
    that's coming together instead of coming apart, that's what's worth
    fighting for in this election.
        This is not an election like 1992, where it's change against the
    status quo. This is an election where there are two very different
    deeply held views of change. And you have to pick which road you're
    going to walk right into the next century and what your country's road
    will be for 20 or 30 or 50 years. That is the choice that devolves on
    you. And I'll say again, most of you in this crowd tonight are younger
    than I am. Most of you still have more tomorrows than yesterdays. Your
    life, your children, your grandchildren's life, that's what's really at
    stake.
        We're having a great time. I want you to love being in the Saxophone
    Club. I want you to go to more rallies and scream and shout and say
    hallelujah and have a good time and show everybody that we like what
    we're doing and we believe in it and we're feeling good. I want you to
    do that. But I don't want you to forget that this enterprise in which
    we're engaged is by no means resolved. This election is 4 months and 3
    weeks and 1 day away. [Laughter] And that is an eternity. And I'm
    telling you, every one of you, every day between now and then, every
    single one of you will come in contact with someone that you can
    influence, someone you can get involved in a discussion about your
    country, someone you can force to think about the problems and the
    promise of America in a different way, someone you can convince that
    their vote makes a difference, that they really can shape the future of
    this country.
        So I want to ask you, if you like being here tonight, if you're
    proud of what you're doing, if you believe in what we are trying to do
    together, then promise yourself when you walk out of here you're going
    to be a good citizen every single day between now and election day,
    November, and you will have the future that you deserve and that you can
    dream of.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:40 p.m. at the Smash Box photography
    studios. In his remarks, he referred to Donald L. Fowler, national
    chairman, Democratic National Committee; actor Alec Baldwin; musicians
    Joe Walsh and John Fogerty; and comedienne Whoopi Goldberg.