    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [August 8, 1996]
    [Pages 1285-1288]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Saxophone Club in Santa Monica, California
    August 8, 1996

        Thank you very much. I am delighted to be here. I want to thank all
    of you for coming. I want to thank the cochairs of this event and Hannah
    Bond, the director of the Saxophone

    [[Page 1286]]

    Club. Thank you all very much. I want to thank Dave Koz and his band,
    and B.J. and the Boys. And I want to say to my good friend Whoopi
    Goldberg--she is a national marvel, isn't she? And here she was tonight
    actually playing it straight. And that just shows you how serious she is
    about winning this election. If you're as serious as she is, we're going
    to be okay in November. I also saw Magic Johnson over there. I thank him
    for being here tonight. Thank you, Magic.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I want to be brief tonight so I can get out
    and shake hands and say hello to you, but I want to say just a couple of
    things--just bear with me for a moment in all your exuberance and
    let's--just be serious with me just for a minute.
        I want to tell you a couple of stories. One is that yesterday
    Hillary and Chelsea and I had the privilege of welcoming the Olympic
    team to the White House. And we're real proud of them. And the day
    before, we saw the Paralympic team off to Atlanta to do their thing, and
    it was an incredible event. And of course, we had a chance to go down
    and speak to our Olympic team and visit the Olympics right before the
    games began.
        And so I've been thinking a lot during this whole period and that
    long night when I stayed up all night after the bomb blew up in the park
    and we didn't quite know what had happened for a while, what is it that
    makes people love the Olympics so much, besides the fact that we all
    love sports? And I think that there are two or three things that make us
    love it even if we don't like sports so much. You know, we had 77,000
    people who saw the women's soccer final. I mean, people really got into
    this.
        Now, what is it that we like about it? Well, first of all, you've
    got people from 197 different countries, and they're all getting along
    for a change. They're all getting along for a change. Right before I
    went to the dining hall, the North Korean and South Korean teams had sat
    at adjoining tables and had talked. I've been trying to get them to talk
    for 3\1/2\ years with no luck. [Laughter]
        Secondly, they work the way we think the world ought to work. I
    mean, there's a set of rules and people follow them. And as long as
    you're following rules, the other people all respect you, even if you're
    different from them. And you can't win any medals if you sneak into your
    opponent's room at night and break his legs or if you stand up at a
    microphone like this and talk about what a terrible person your opponent
    is, how they're no good and corrupt and dishonest. You've just got to
    reach down deep inside and do your best, and everybody gets a chance,
    but nobody gets a guarantee. And most people don't win medals, but
    everybody is better off when it's all over. And we all feel good.
        And in America we especially feel good because there were 197
    different nations represented; there are representatives from 150 of
    those different countries in Los Angeles County tonight as we speak. So
    we identify with that, and we like it.
        Now, I'll tell you a second story. I was up in Salinas today, and we
    were celebrating this remarkable effort they've made with all their
    community organizations to reach out to all the children in trouble and
    break this epidemic of gangs they have there and dramatically lower the
    murder rate among young people. And I went there to celebrate what
    they've done and also to point out that we announced today that for the
    first time in 7 long years the crime rate is going down among people
    under 18--for the first time in 7 years.
        But it turns out that there was a gold medal winner from Salinas who
    was a member of our 4 by 400 relay team, a very handsome young man who
    showed up and got a bigger hand than the President did. It was terrific.
    And he has a twin brother who came within less than a second of making
    the Olympic team himself. And it turns out that at one point when these
    kids were very young they were so poor they were living in a car. But
    the fellow has an Olympic Gold Medal, an American dream story.
        Now, what's all that got to do with this election? This election, in
    my opinion, is about what this country is going to look like when we
    start the new century and the new millennium and, for those of you young
    people who are in the Saxophone Club, what it's going to look like when
    you're my age and you have children. And what I want it to look like is
    a country where everybody, wherever they start out in life, no matter
    how poor they are, what their race is, what their station in life is,
    has a chance to live out their dreams if they're willing to be
    responsible and work for it. I want this to be a country where we relish
    our diversity, where we celebrate our differences and say, ``We're not
    bound by any race or region or creed. We're

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    bound by the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of
    Independence. If you'll sign onto that, you're fine by me, and we like
    it.''
        And I want this to be a country that stands up for peace and freedom
    around the world and tells people that it's wrong to have a situation
    you've got in Bosnia, Burundi, the Middle East, or Ireland or anyplace
    where people are killed or persecuted because they're different from
    somebody else, from religion or race or ethnicity.
        And if we do that, the next century is going to be the greatest era
    of human possibility that has ever existed. There are children in school
    today that within 10 years will be doing jobs that have not been
    invented yet, that have not been imagined yet. And more people will have
    more chances to live out their dreams than ever before. That's what I'm
    working for.
        I was so elated yesterday that I got to participate in a comment
    about our space scientists discovering this piece of meteorite from Mars
    that took 16 million years to get here and has been hanging around in
    Antarctica for Lord knows how many thousands of years but seems to have
    evidence of a fossilized micro-organism--incredible thing. But whether
    it's--whatever pans out of it, what it shows is that there is a
    magnificent world out there of things we still don't know. And the
    explosion of knowledge and technology, if we can make sure everybody has
    a fair chance and if we can learn to live together amidst all our
    differences and if we can keep moving the world forward in a more
    peaceful way, it's going to be an incredible time out there.
        Now, that is what this election is all about. And I want you to make
    just three simple arguments to people in the next 88 days. Number one,
    take President Reagan's test: Are we better off than we were 4 years
    ago? Well, if the test is the first time the deficit has gone down in
    all 4 years of a President's term since the 1840's, 10 million more
    jobs, 4.4 million more homeowners, 10 million people refinance their
    mortgages, a record number of new small businesses, a record number of
    new businesses owned by women and minorities--if that's the test--record
    exports--we're better off than we were. If the test is 4 years in a row
    of a declining crime rate, 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers that
    don't have handguns because of the Brady bill, then we're better off. If
    the test is 12 million Americans who got to take some time off from work
    when there was a baby born or a sick parent without losing their job,
    we're better off. If the test is no nuclear missiles pointed at the
    American people for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age,
    we're better off. So are we better off? Yes, we are.
        Second question: What is the alternative? [Laughter] The answer is,
    you don't have to guess; you know what they will do, too. They've
    already done it once; I just vetoed it the first time. And I don't
    believe we can become a greater, stronger nation by saying we're going
    to balance the budget and using that as an excuse to wreck our ability
    to protect the environment for future generations or cutting back on
    education at a time when we need to be spending more for education--we
    ought to make sure that nobody who needs to go is ever deprived of the
    right to go to college, and everybody ought to get 2 more years of
    education--or running away from our obligations to provide health care
    to poor children and pregnant women and families with someone in it with
    a disability or seniors.
        So there's a big difference here in what we think our obligations
    are. I believe the role of Government is not to be a bureaucratic pain
    in the neck. We have reduced the size of Government. We have put it on
    the side of creating jobs and promoting the economy. But I believe this:
    I think we have an obligation to protect the environment, to hold people
    together, and to give people the tools they need to make the most of
    their own lives. That is what we have to be doing, and that's what I'm
    committed to.
        And the last thing I want to say to you is it's a big, bright world
    out there, but it matters what decisions people make. Don't let anybody
    tell you this is an election without consequences. This is an election
    of massive consequence in every single policy area you can think of.
        You know, we've got 1.3 million fewer people on welfare than we had
    4 years ago. We've got 1\1/2\ million fewer people on food stamps. I'm
    all for looking for new and innovative ways to move people from welfare
    to work. That's why I signed that welfare bill. But it was wrong of the
    Congress to deny any access to benefits to legal immigrants who work
    here and pay taxes and through no fault of their own get in trouble. You
    know, you think about it Monday when you go to work. How many people
    come here

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    and they work hard and they pay their taxes and through no fault of
    their own they get in a car wreck or they develop a serious illness. And
    this Congress wants to say to people they shouldn't even be entitled to
    a little help even if they've been paying their taxes, even if they've
    been in the military, legal immigrants that join the military.
        Don't let this election become an excuse to divide us from anybody
    who is here lawfully, obeying the law, paying their taxes, doing their
    part; we ought to go and grow together. We shouldn't be divided on this.
    Don't do that.
        If you want to know what we're going to do in the next 4 years, I'll
    tell you what we're going to do. We've gotten our house in order in the
    first 4 years. In the second 4 years, we're going to be dedicated to
    giving every single American the chance to participate in the economy
    that is emerging, to participate in the society that is emerging, and to
    know that we can grow the economy and preserve the environment and to
    know that we can be fair to our children and our parents and still have
    enough left for ourselves. We, in short, are going to go forward
    together. We are not going to be divided. And that is the central
    decision facing the American people.
        There is too much out there for all of us if we'll just keep our
    heads on straight, listen to our heart, and say we're going to do it
    together. That's the spirit that we celebrated in the Olympics, and we
    need to make American life more that way.
        Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:04 p.m. at the Armand Hammer Museum of
    Art. In his remarks, he referred to comedienne Whoopi Goldberg and
    former NBA basketball player Earvin (Magic) Johnson.