    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [November 4, 1996]
    [Pages 2062-2065]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks in Lexington, Kentucky
    November 4, 1996

        The President. Thank you.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. Thank you. Hello, Kentucky! Thank you very much.
    Thank you. Mayor Miller, Governor Patton, Senator Ford, Lieutenant
    Governor Henry, Mayor Abramson, Chairman Babbage, and Steve Beshear----

    [At this point, there was a disturbance in the audience.]

        The President. Let me ask you--wait, wait, folks. If you pay
    attention to him, you're just rewarding him. So why don't we make a deal
    and we'll ignore him. I have a totally different attitude about this
    than a lot of people do. I always welcome people from the opposition to
    our rallies, because unlike them, my America includes everybody who's
    willing to work hard. And I'm always glad to see them.
        I'm always even willing to sort of be quiet and let them talk, but
    they never want to stop, because what they really want is to stop me
    from talking and you from hearing. And if I was running against the
    record we've established and the ideas for the future, and I had to
    carry that budget I vetoed around on my back the way they do, maybe I'd
    be trying to shout my opponents down, too, but I hope not. I hope not.
        So we've had enough smear and smear and smear, and why don't we just
    take a few minutes on this beautiful, beautiful fall night in Kentucky
    to think about our future. And if we get interrupted, let's just keep
    thinking about our future.
        I want to thank all the young people who came here tonight,
    especially, because the election is more about you than anyone else. I
    want to thank all the entertainers who came: Kevin Cronin, the Central
    Kentucky Youth Orchestra, Carol and Vanessa Det, Black Voices, and the
    marching bands of Harrison County, Nicholson County, Mercer County, and
    Lafayette County. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ashley Judd, for
    coming. Thank you. Now, Coach Pitino, we're both defending our titles,
    and maybe I'll see you in the White House again next year.
        Let me say on this beautiful day, what is really at stake here,
    clearly, beyond any doubt, is what this country will look like when we
    cross that bridge just 4 years from now into a new century and a new
    millennium. And all of you who are students here and probably everybody
    who is in this audience understands that we're going through a huge
    change in how we work and live, how we relate to each other and the

    [[Page 2063]]

    rest of the world. And the real issue here is whether we're going to
    make a decision to do things together that will help each other have a
    chance to make the most of our own lives, live up to our God-given
    capacities, and build together stronger families and communities and
    States and nations or whether we're better off being told that we're on
    our own.
        Now, all these issues have been debated to death, I guess, so let me
    just give you some personal examples out of my life. A couple of nights
    ago I was in Denver, Colorado, and we had a rally like this--it wasn't
    as big; it was at night and in a little--in an inside place--but I was
    going along the row like this, shaking hands. Here's what happened to me
    in about 5 minutes. In each case, I want you to listen and see if you
    identify with it.
        I met a young woman who was a victim of domestic violence who
    thanked me for setting up the violence against women section at the
    Justice Department and working to stop violence against women and
    children and setting up that hotline.
        I met a man who was doing ground-breaking research against
    Parkinson's disease who got a research grant because of an initiative of
    our administration. And he had fire in his eyes when he said, ``We are
    going to cure this disease; we're going to whip it; we're going to get
    to the point where we have 100 percent cure rate.''
        And then I met a man who told me that he and his wife had just
    adopted a young child, and because of the family and medical leave law
    she was home with the child, getting the child accustomed to being in a
    new environment and they were not going to lose her job and her income
    because of it, because of the family and medical leave law.
        And then I met three women who were breast cancer survivors who
    thanked me for fighting hard for the research funding in the budgets of
    the last 4 years that include more women and more research. We've
    uncovered two of the genes that cause breast cancer, and we may well be
    able not only to cure it but prevent it in the next few years.
        And then--just walking down the line now--and then I met a young
    person who went back to school on the AmeriCorps program after serving
    in his community and then got some money to pay his way to college.
        And then I met a young woman who was a police officer in a smaller
    Colorado town, thanking me for our police program that Wendell Ford
    voted for to put 100,000 more police on the streets of America because
    they were getting 5 more.
        And then I met a young man who told me that he was a dropout and had
    given up on his life, but he heard me talking about the importance of
    going back to school. He found out about the changes that we've made in
    the student loan program and what we were trying to do, and he said, ``I
    got one of those new loans and now I'm going back to school and I'm
    going to get a degree in microbiology. I didn't just get in, I got in in
    a big way,'' he said.
        Now, that's just one ropeline. Every issue I talk to you about,
    every single one, my opponent and the leaders of the other party opposed
    us on the initiatives which made those things possible--every single
    one. That is what is at stake here. When I said we ought to pass a crime
    bill that puts 100,000 police on the street, they said, ``It won't do
    any good, and you'll never do it.'' Then when they passed their budget,
    they must have been worried about us doing it because they tried to stop
    me from doing it. But we've only funded about half those police
    officers. It's a 5-year program; you will decide whether we finish the
    job.
        Now, here are the facts. The crime rate has gone down 4 years in a
    row. We have a 10-year low in American crime. If we bring it down for 8
    years in a row we might make our streets, our schools, our neighborhoods
    safe for all of America's children. I believe we're right and they're
    wrong. But you have to decide.
        You have to decide so many of these issues. But if you strip them
    all away, you look at what is really at stake: What is it that we should
    be doing together to help each other make the most of our own lives?
    Now, we have had some time to see whether this approach works or not.
    Compared to 4 years ago, we have 10.7 million more jobs, record numbers
    of new small businesses, incomes are going up again, the lowest rates of
    unemployment and inflation in 27 years.
        I met a woman--we were just in Cleveland, Hillary and I were--I met
    a woman who was crying and had a picture of her house because she had
    been able to buy a house because we have a 15-year high in
    homeownership, which is what happens if you drive the deficit down 63
    percent and get those interest rates down.

    [[Page 2064]]

        So the country is moving in the right direction. And the real
    question before you is, what do you want it to look like 4 years from
    now? This is the last day of my last campaign. I will never seek office
    again unless I go home and run for the school board someday. [Laughter]
    This election is about your future. It's about what America will look
    like when your children are your age. And I tell you, we are on the
    verge of the greatest age of possibility in human history. The young
    people in this audience will have more chances to live out their dreams
    than any generation has ever had. There are many of you in this audience
    who before long will be doing jobs that have not been invented yet. Many
    of you will be doing jobs that have not even been imagined yet.
        When I became President, there were 3 million people working in
    their homes. Today, there are 12 million. Four years from now there will
    be 40 million people. That's just one example. Things are changing so
    fast that we're building a supercomputer with IBM that will do more
    calculations in a second than you can do on your hand-held calculator in
    30,000 years. Things are changing.
        We have differences on the budget. We have differences on crime. We
    have differences on the environment. I believe we can preserve the
    environment and grow the economy, and I don't think we can grow the
    economy over the long run unless we do preserve the environment. It's an
    honest difference of opinion.
        We have differences on issues like Medicare and Medicaid. The
    Medicaid program for 30 years has allowed families to maintain a middle
    class lifestyle, even if a member of their family was severely disabled,
    because people could work and still get some help for medical care for
    their loved ones. It's enabled people to go into nursing homes in their
    later years, and it has national standards of quality care. It's enabled
    poor children to get good care from the moment they're born. They wanted
    to take away that 30-year guarantee. I thought it was wrong. You can
    decide. I think that's one of the things we ought to do together.
        But the most important issue before you is your education and the
    education of those who will come behind. Because in a world that is
    changing as it is, if you really want all the American people to have a
    chance to go into that future together, we've got to guarantee all our
    children world-class education. I want that to be the lasting legacy of
    this administration.
        And I ask you to think of this. There are still 40 percent of the 8-
    year-olds in America who cannot read a book on their own. But I have a
    plan to mobilize one million volunteers to go out to the parents and the
    teachers of this country and help teach those kids to read. We got
    200,000 more work-study slots out of this last budget for college
    students; I want 100,000 of them to go to young people who say, ``Send
    me. I will go. I will teach the children to read.'' Will you help? Will
    you help us do that? [Applause]
        You heard Wendell Ford talking about my dream that within 4 years
    every classroom and library and every school in America can be hooked up
    to the information superhighway. Think what it would mean if the
    children in the most remote Appalachian schools and the children in the
    biggest, poorest urban school districts were, together with the students
    in the richest, middle class, suburban, urban, rural school districts
    all over America--the first time ever, all these kids got access to the
    same information in the same way at the same time. That would
    revolutionize learning in America. It would explode the potential of our
    children. Will you help us do that? [Applause]
        The last thing I want to say is, I am very proud that we've reformed
    the student loan program to make it less costly and to let people pay
    their loans back as a percentage of their incomes so no young person
    need fear going broke when you borrow money to go to college. I'm proud
    that 70,000 young people are in AmeriCorps, I'm proud that we got the
    biggest increase in Pell grants in 20 years, but we must do more. I want
    to open the doors of college to all Americans, and if you give me 4 more
    years, that's exactly what I intend to do.
        Now, I want to make 2 years of college after high school as
    universal as a diploma in high school is today, and we can do that
    simply by saying, you can deduct from your tax bill, dollar for dollar,
    the cost of a typical community college tuition. I want to open the
    doors to all 4-year colleges and to graduate school by saying you can
    deduct from your tax bill up to $10,000 of tax deduction for the college
    tuition at any college and university in the United States today. Will
    you help us do that? Will you? [Applause]

    [[Page 2065]]

        Folks, let me say, in our politics today there is too little
    discussion of these issues and too much finger-pointing and insulting.
    In the end, when you're like me and you come to the end of more than 20
    years of endeavor, I have to tell you something. I want to say this for
    our friends on the other side, too. Most of the people I've known in
    over 20 years of public life in both parties, people with different--who
    have disagreed with me, people who ran against me for office, most of
    the people I've known loved our country, worked hard, and were honest
    people. We just have honest differences of opinion.
        Today, I still feel that way. But you must also understand the
    honest differences of opinion. And you are now the judges in that court
    of public opinion. These differences are being brought to you. Are we
    going to say, ``You're on your own,'' or are we going to build a bridge
    to the 21st century we can all walk across? Is our education program
    going to be abolishing the Department of Education or opening the doors
    of college to every single American who wants to go?
        These are the decisions for you to make. This is a very great
    country. Its best days are still ahead. You can make sure that the 21st
    century is a time of unparalleled opportunity for all Americans, and you
    can do it only if you decide that we have to work together without
    regard to race, region, religion, or income. We've got to work together.
    We've got to be able to say to one another, ``If you are willing to show
    up tomorrow and say you believe in this country and its timeless values,
    you're ready to show up for work or school and do your part, we don't
    need to know anything else about you. You are part of our America, and
    we're going to build the greatest country the world has ever seen in the
    21st century.'' Will you help us do it?
        Audience members. Yes!
        The President. Will you be there tomorrow?
        Audience members. Yes!
        The President. Will you elect Steve Beshear to the Senate?
        Audience members. Yes!
        The President. We need you. Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank
    you.

    Note: The President spoke at 5:15 p.m. at the University of Kentucky. In
    his remarks, he referred to Mayor Pam Miller of Lexington; Gov. Paul E.
    Patton and Lt. Gov. Steve Henry of Kentucky; Mayor Jerry E. Abramson of
    Louisville; Bob Babbage, chair, Kentucky Democratic Party; Steve
    Beshear, Kentucky senatorial candidate; actress Ashley Judd; and Rick
    Pitino, University of Kentucky men's basketball coach.