[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.