    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [October 23, 1996]
    [Pages 1907-1910]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Presidential Unity Fund Reception
    October 23, 1996

        Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for being here, and thank
    you for your enthusiasm. I was tired when I walked in, but I'm not tired
    anymore. [Laughter] You've given me a lot of energy. I see that--do you
    see that young man there patting on his father's head? That young girl?
    [Laughter] Dad, someday you may wish people couldn't tell the
    difference. [Laughter] That is the postcard for what this election is
    all about, right there. That's the picture. That is the picture.
        I want to--if I might, I'd like to join Senator Daschle in thanking
    my friend and our friend and America's friend Wynton Marsalis for his
    brilliant play here tonight and for--[inaudible]--thank you.
        I thank Senator Chris Dodd, who gives a better stump speech than
    anyone, for declining to

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    speak tonight because he said you will like it if the program's
    shorter--[laughter]--but you have no idea. Remember that Chris Dodd
    agreed to be the chairman of the Democratic Committee when no one
    thought we would be here 2 years ago, and he has gone all across this
    country spreading our message and sticking up for us, and I'm grateful
    to him.
        Let me also tell you that I agree that Tom Daschle will be a great
    majority leader, that Dick Gephardt will be a great Speaker, and what I
    want you to know--[applause]--clap for them, that's good. Clap for them.
    [Applause] But what I want you to know is that I've had the opportunity
    to work with them together now for a couple of years, in the beginning
    under very, very difficult circumstances, and see this whole thing turn
    full circle as they stood by me when I vetoed the Republican budget and
    they shut the Government down and I said, ``Can we hold our ranks
    together, no matter how much they shut it down?'' When the other side
    said to me, ``Well, you guys care too much about Government. You will
    wilt when we shut the Government down,'' Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt
    did not wilt. And that spoke volumes to the country about where we stood
    and what we were fighting for and what we wanted to do.
        They also worked hard to put together constructive proposals for our
    own balanced budget that we could all agree with and work for, and to
    continue to press our agenda until, in the end, we were even able to
    pass a significant percentage of it in the closing weeks of this
    Congress, when the majority had to go home and face the voters, too. And
    so I want you to know that I have enormous confidence in their ability
    to participate in leading our country into the 21st century, and the
    American people will be very proud of the work that they do together and
    that we do together. And I thank them from the bottom of my heart for
    what they have done and what they will do and what they represent for
    the future of our country. You should be proud of them.
        You know, we're getting very close to the end of this election now,
    and I only want to make a couple of points to you. The first is, I just
    came back from a fascinating trip, and today I was in Florida, and
    yesterday evening. In Miami I talked to the newly elected mayor of Dade
    County--they adopted a new form of government--Alex Penelas, who is a
    34-year-old, young, progressive leader. And the first thing he said to
    me was, ``Henry Cisneros has been a brilliant Secretary of HUD, and
    because of his support we were able to take hundreds and hundreds of
    people off the streets and out of the ranks of homelessness in Miami. No
    one else has been able to do that.''
        Then Governor Chiles and Senator Graham and I went with
    Congresswoman Corrine Brown up to Daytona Beach, and I met with four
    women today who were part of the Florida welfare reform project that we
    had worked with them to help put together, four women who'd had immense
    challenges and difficulties in their lives, women who desperately wanted
    to be working and to be productive members of society and wanted their
    children to be able to look up to them, to be able to see them go to
    work every day. And they were involved in the program, and each of them
    was about to come out and to go to work. One of those young women
    introduced me today when I spoke to a big crowd in Daytona Beach.
        And I couldn't help thinking, as I was on my way back up here to see
    you, that sometimes in Washington it's easy to forget and in America,
    out there in the country, it's awfully easy to forget the incredible
    impact that what we do here can have on people's lives out in the
    country.
        So I would say to you, in the closing days of this election,
    anything you can do to remind people that every single person,
    especially younger voters who often don't vote in the same percentages
    as older voters do, that there is a huge practical impact on their lives
    that will be substantially different, depending on the choices they make
    in this election, is something you ought to do. It will affect millions
    of people in terms of their access to education, in terms of the quality
    of the education they get. It will affect all of us in terms of our
    commitment to protect our environment as we grow our economy. It will
    have a profound impact on how we deal with the challenges of the coming
    retirement of the baby boomers. It will have a terrific impact on
    whether we continue to reach out to the rest of the world. Perhaps most
    profoundly, it will have an amazing impact on whether we decide to grow
    together or continue to practice the politics of division, which may
    help politicians get elected at election time but don't create jobs,
    don't care for children, and don't solve the problems of the country. So
    I

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    would ask you, every one of you who can be here tonight, you know people
    all across this country. And take a little time in the next 13 days to
    talk about that.
        I was in Michigan before I went to Florida, and we broke ground on a
    new airport there so that Michigan will spend $1,600,000,000, partly
    Federal money, doing something that we did together. That's Government;
    it's not bad. It's something that we had to do together because no one
    could do it alone; very few people can write a check for that kind of
    money. And it will enable them to reach out to the rest of the world.
        But this is the interesting thing. When I thought of Michigan as a
    child and even when I ran for President in 1992, I thought of it as the
    auto capital of the world. It's also a place where countless numbers of
    people from my home State poured out of Arkansas and places like it in
    the forties and fifties going to Michigan because they could get a good
    job in the factory and they could actually support their families and
    have a decent house and send their kids to college. Michigan has
    increased its exports more than any other State since I've been
    President. And now in Wayne County, where Detroit is, there are people
    from 140 different racial and ethnic groups--Wayne County, Michigan--one
    county in America. When you go anyplace in America now, you can't help
    but be struck by the fact that this vibrant democracy of ours still is a
    magnet for people from all over the world, in all different kinds of
    places, and especially to those of you who are younger.
        You think about what I have to spend my time on as your President in
    terms of foreign affairs, the Middle East, Bosnia, Northern Ireland,
    trying to stop terrorism, trying to stop the development of dangerous
    weapons programs, chemical and biological weapons. How much of that is
    rooted in racial, ethnic, religious, tribal hatred? How much of that is
    rooted in the fact that all over the world, people who are otherwise
    cultivated, intelligent, caring people--people that you would be honored
    to be with in some sort of personal circumstance because you think
    they're doing a good job raising their children and they seem to be nice
    people--still persist in defining themselves not in terms of what they
    are and who they are but in terms of who they are not, who believe that
    they cannot think highly of themselves unless there is some group of
    people that they can look down on. And if you tell the truth, there's
    not a person in this room, me included, that at some point in your life
    hasn't fallen into that trap, ``Well, at least I'm not them.''
        The great genius of America is that for all of the problems that we
    still have--when the church burnings arise, or when the terrible tragedy
    of Oklahoma City occurred, born of an irrational hatred of our
    Government--we basically are beating that historical trend. We are
    trying to create a world in the 21st century in which all of you can
    raise your children with genuine respect for people who are different
    from you because you share the values of the Constitution and because
    you want to be responsible, productive citizens.
        This is a matter of enormous moment. The future that the young
    people in this audience have is breathtaking. A lot of you in a few
    years will be doing jobs that haven't been invented yet; some of you
    will be doing jobs that haven't been imagined yet. You'll have more
    opportunities to live out your dreams, to imagine things and then make
    them happen in your lives, than any generation of people in all of human
    history. But it will only happen if you can preserve some of the old-
    fashioned virtues that have gotten us here after 220 years.
        And so I say to you, that's another big thing. And that's why I've
    tried so hard in this election to keep talking about the issues and to
    keep trying to bring people together and keep telling Americans, look,
    this is a godsend, this gift we have been given of all of this rich
    diversity, this fabric of America. Nobody is as well-positioned as the
    United States to move into that new millennium that starts just 4 years
    from now. That's another thing you need to think about saying.
        I've taken to asking everybody in my audiences now in the closing
    days of this campaign to take some time before they go to bed at night
    and just see if they could write down in a few words what they want our
    country to be like when we start the new century, what they want our
    country to be like when their children are their age or their
    grandchildren are their age. That's really what this is all about.
        And it happens to be because of the ideas and the philosophies that
    we have advanced that it is our party and this administration and what
    we're trying to do that has been given both the opportunity and the
    responsibility to carry

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    this message. It didn't have to be that way, but that's the way it's
    worked out.
        And so you know what all of the issues are, but you need to
    understand that underneath those issues, this idea of building a bridge
    to the 21st century that's wide enough and big enough for us all to walk
    across is a fundamental idea about the decision we're going to make
    about how we're going to live together and what kind of world your
    children will have to live in.
        And I want you to be enthusiastic and happy and have a good time
    tonight, but I want you to be in a position to really celebrate on
    November 5th. That's the night that matters. And so I say to you, there
    are--if you think hard enough about it, every single one of you can
    think of somebody you know that hasn't made up their mind yet for whom
    they'll vote or whether to vote. And one of the big questions in these
    elections--you know when you see all of these endless polls published
    every day, and there seems to be 10 or 15 points difference between them
    and you think, gosh, all those people are smart, and aren't there
    established methodologies and all that--you know what one of the biggest
    differences is in them? How skeptical the pollster is about whether the
    younger generation will vote, how skeptical the pollster is about
    whether young women, working for meager wages, struggling to make ends
    meet, often supporting their own children, sometimes without the child
    support they're entitled to, will be too exhausted, too frustrated, or
    too skeptical to show up and vote on November 5th.
        So I say, we've worked very hard to register people; we're working
    very hard to get our message out. You have been incredibly generous to
    us, far more than we could have possible expected; we're being outspent
    still heavily by the other side in most of these races. But we're still
    getting our message out there; we're still fighting the fight; we're
    still moving forward.
        So ask yourself, ``What do I want my country to be like in the 21st
    century?'' And then, ``What can I do in the next 13 days to make sure
    that happens?'' And then we'll have a big celebration on election night.
    Between now and then, just know I am grateful to you and know--never,
    never, never doubt there is an enormous connection between the decision
    you and your fellow Americans make and what kind of bridge we build to
    that bright new tomorrow.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:43 p.m. at the Sheraton Washington Hotel.
    In his remarks, he referred to musician Wynton Marsalis.