[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.

[[Page 889]]

    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.

[[Page 890]]

    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.