[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
[June 9, 1996]
[Pages 884-885]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the Presidio in San Francisco, California
June 9, 1996

    Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Chandler, Mr. O'Neill, Mr. 
Mayor, it's wonderful to be back in San Francisco. Congresswoman Pelosi, 
Senator Boxer, Senator Feinstein, thank you all for your work on this 
magnificent project.
    You know, I always love coming here, but I especially love coming 
right here because that's my jogging route right there. [Laughter] 
Whenever I come to San Francisco I always go down there and run to the 
Golden Gate Bridge and back, so--and I didn't know exactly where we were 
going to do this on the Presidio today. I got driven around a little 
bit, so I got to see some other things that are being done here. When I 
finally realized that we were going to do this here, I didn't know 
whether I could actually sit still long enough for the program to 
unfold, instead of just racing away down there--or, as the case may be, 
kind of stumbling away down there--toward the bridge.
    I want to talk to you today about three little simple ideas that 
this magnificent place embodies, ideas that are easy to say but have a 
great deal to do with what kind of country we are and what kind of 
country we're going to be. When I think of the Presidio, I think of, 
first and foremost, preserving our incredible natural heritage and our 
important history. Second, I think about the obligation that the rest of 
the country has for defense conversion. And thirdly, I think about 
partnership, the kind of partnership that Jim Harvey's life embodied and 
that all the things that Mr. Chandler just mentioned represent.
    And I want you to think about all that today because in my opinion 
if this country is going to be what we all want it to be as we move into 
the next century, we have to keep going until every place that lost a 
lot because of the end of the cold war--which was a happy and wonderful 
event--has been fully restored to economic prosperity through a real 
commitment of all the American people to defense conversion. Because we 
cannot, over the long run, sustain an American economy in this new world 
unless we have a theory of sustainable development that puts the 
environment first, not last, and recognizes that we can grow the economy 
and still preserve our natural heritage. And because we cannot do a lot 
of what we need to do publicly and still continue to bring the deficit 
down unless we have partners: business partners, citizen partners, like 
the young people in the conservation corps, and others who are committed 
to making the most of our national potential.
    It was a brilliant thing that the late Congressman Burton did to 
provide for the fact that this would become a national park if ever the 
military should leave. But all over California you see now what can 
happen if there's a real commitment not to leave the people who fought 
the cold war for us behind; in Monterey, where Fort Ord is now the 
California State University at Monterey Bay; in Alameda, where 
machinists who once built Bradley fighting vehicles are now building 
electric cars for the 21st century; in Sacramento, where Packard Bell 
has now hired 3,600 people to assemble personal computers in a former 
Army depot. And now, of course, this newest of our national parks is 
showing the rest of our national parks the way to the future.
    I have to tell you that--the previous speaker sort of alluded to 
this, and with greater specificity when Senator Feinstein mentioned the 
California Desert Protection Act and how we got it and then we very 
nearly lost it last year. But all of our national parks are at risk. Too 
many of them have fallen into disrepair. We're working hard to protect 
them. There were some people who wanted to sell off a lot of them

[[Page 885]]

or privatize them or just let them continue to fall into disrepair. We 
have resisted that, and I think it's clear now that there is an 
overwhelming bipartisan consensus in the United States that our national 
parks are a part of our national treasure; that we have to nourish them, 
we have to maintain them, we have to improve them. And the last thing in 
the wide world we need to do is to get rid of any of them. We need to 
make them better, instead.
    But I will say again, in order to do this right, we're going to have 
to have a lot of support from citizens. The businesses now in this park 
are thriving, already helping to offset taxpayer costs. Here at Crissy 
Field, where de Havilland biplanes once touched down, this land will 
soon become the great common ground for all Americans: historic 
buildings, wide open areas for kids to play in, restored natural 
habitat. All the design and planning here have been undertaken through 
private, nonprofit campaigns. And as we have learned today from their 
smiling faces and strong voices, much of the work has been done by 
volunteers who are just as dedicated to this country's future as those 
who drilled with the 6th Army outside these hangars a generation ago.
    The Presidio bill now in the Congress that Congresswoman Pelosi 
worked so hard for and that Senator Boxer talked about and she and 
Senator Feinstein are working hard for has virtually no opposition. It 
calls for a public-private trust to oversee the Presidio's economic 
future, to preserve the park for future generations, to create a 
national park that will sustain itself without Government funds. So let 
me say again, I urge Congress to send me this bill in a clean and 
straightforward way. We simply cannot continue to have lawmaking 
paralyzed by the attempts to add to every single good bill that comes 
along in the Congress some objectionable provision. We need the Presidio 
bill. We need it now; we need it clean; we need it unhampered.
    Let me just say one other thing. I was thinking about my jogging and 
looking at Senator Cranston, and I remember in my earlier years, back 
when I had a private life when I was Governor, sometimes Senator 
Cranston and I would jog in Washington together. I was thinking about 
all the years that he devoted to public service here in California. When 
you look at something like the Presidio, when you see at least the 
natural beauty of it, forgetting about the buildings, you may think that 
it has been this way forever and that it would always be this way. But 
that is far from true. The trees above us, the eucalyptus, the Monterey 
cypress, believe it or not, were only planted 100 years ago. The 
Americans who planted them knew that they would never see them full 
grown. They would never walk under their shade, but they planted them 
anyway.
    We are now being asked to deal with a different sort of planning. 
Our country is going through a lot of changes. We have proved that we 
can come to grips with the challenges of the modern economy. The 
American people have produced almost 10 million jobs in the last 3\1/2\ 
years. And after a long dry spell, a lot of them are being produced here 
in California. But we cannot forget that what ought to animate us is a 
vision of what we want this place to be like 20 or 30 or 50 years from 
now.
    I know what I want it to be. I want the Presidio to exist in a 
country and a State where everybody who is willing to work for it can 
live up to their dreams; where people have good jobs, yes, but also 
children have safe streets and good schools; where everybody has access 
to a clean environment and natural beauty; where our country is still a 
force for peace and freedom and decency in the world; and where instead 
of being divided by all these incredible differences that make up the 
American people, we are united by them and our respect for our diversity 
and our shared values. It all begins, in a fundamental way, with 
preserving what God has given us, and there has been no richer gift than 
the Presidio. I'll do my part, and I want you to keep doing yours.
    Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 6:25 p.m. at Crissy Field. In his remarks, 
he referred to Robert Chandler, National Park Service project manager, 
the Presidio; Brian O'Neill, superintendent, Golden Gate National 
Recreation Area; Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco, CA; James R. 
Harvey, former chief executive officer, Transamerica, and former 
chairman, Presidio Council, Golden Gate National Park Association; 
former Representative Philip Burton; and former Senator Alan Cranston.