    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
    [March 13, 1997]
    [Pages 307-310]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Dinner in
    Aventura, Florida
    March 13, 1997

        Thank you very much. I have these elaborate notes I just wrote out.
    [Laughter] I am so glad to be here. I believe Senator Graham and
    Lieutenant Governor MacKay and Senator Torricelli. I tried to get Bob to
    say that so many of you were glad he was here so you could hear someone
    speak without an accent. [Laughter] I believe this is the first time I
    have been to Florida to give a public speech since the election, and so
    let me begin by saying, thank you, thank you, thank you.
        This has been a wonderful day for me. I began by going to North
    Carolina to speak to the North Carolina Legislature about education and
    welfare reform. And Governor Jim Hunt of North Carolina was the Governor
    of North Carolina in 1979, when Bob Graham was the Governor of Florida,
    and the Secretary of Education, Dick Riley, was the Governor of South
    Carolina, and I was the Governor of Arkansas. And we had all these
    wonderful ideas, and we were very young. And I have been friends with
    Bob and Adele for a long time, and I'm honored to be here in their
    behalf tonight.
        I thank Senator Torricelli for being here. Senator Harkin, I thank
    him for coming. Lieutenant Governor MacKay, thank you very much.
    Somebody told me Bill Nelson was here. I don't know if he is or not, but
    if he's not, tell him I mentioned his name. And if he is, he'll know I
    did. [Laughter]
        It's wonderful to see Elaine Bloom and Ron Silver again. And Dante,
    they told me you were 80 years old, but I don't believe it. It's just
    another one of your lies, the way politicians are. [Laughter] It looks
    good on you. It looks great on you. You should have been--they had this
    great story in the New York Times Sunday Magazine--I don't know if you
    saw it--about how old isn't old anymore. And it really was about, I
    hope, all of us. And I don't know anyone who is younger in heart and
    spirit than Dante Fascell.
        Let me also say that I'm very proud of all of you who have helped
    Bob Graham and helped Buddy MacKay and helped a lot of us. And I'm proud
    of those of you who have helped me and have stood with me. And I hope
    you're proud of it, too.
        Well over a year ago, we had a meeting talking about the 1996
    campaign. And a lot of these so-called experts said in this meeting in
    Washington that we had to target the States we won last time and just
    try to hold most of them, that we certainly couldn't expect to expand
    our base and we couldn't--I said, ``Oh yes we can. There's two places we
    lost last time we're going to win this time.'' And they said, ``Where?''
    And I said, ``We're going to win in Arizona, where no Democrat has won
    since 1948.'' And they thought I had lost my mind. And I said, ``We're
    going to win in Florida.'' And they said, ``You're nuts.'' They said,
    ``You know, Lawton Chiles won in Florida, but he has all that she-coon
    language and all that stuff''--or he-coon. [Laughter] And I said, ``I
    can talk like that.'' They said, ``Yeah, but they won't believe you
    anymore. You've been living in Washington 4 years.'' [Laughter]
        And I said--I swear this is true--we had this big argument, and it
    was that great story about how Abraham Lincoln had a meeting of his
    Cabinet and the vote was seven to one. And he said that seven of them
    wanted to do one thing, and he wanted to do the other thing, and he
    said, ``The ayes have it.'' [Laughter] ``Seven no's, one `I,' the I's
    have it.'' That's the way it was.
        And I told them all--over a year before the election, I said,
    ``Here's what's going to happen on election night. We will win Florida.
    And it's on the East Coast and it will come up early and they will gasp
    and they will say, `This thing is over. Turn out the light.' '' And
    that's exactly what happened, thanks to you, and I thank you for it. And
    I told them it was going to happen.
        And it happened not just because of the campaign but because of the
    work that we were able to do together with Bob Graham and Governor
    Chiles and Lieutenant Governor MacKay and so many others, the work we
    were able to do with the Summit of the Americas, with moving the
    Southern Command, with dealing with the aftermath of the hurricane, with
    promoting the economy, with dealing the issues that so gripped us for 4
    years on and off around our relations with Cuba and with the importance

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    of the Cuban-American community here, with the restoration work we have
    begun and that we intend to finish on the Everglades, and any number of
    other issues. This administration built a partnership with the people of
    Florida for the future, and you were good enough to reward us with your
    votes in November, and I am very, very grateful.
        And let me say quickly, Bob Graham is very important to this
    country, not just to the Democratic Party but to the country. I have
    told many people this, so I'm not saying this out of school. I was a
    Governor forever. Most people thought that I just couldn't get a
    promotion--I was Governor forever. I was Governor in the seventies,
    Governor in the eighties, Governor in the nineties. I served with 150
    people. And I found something to learn from all of them, and I enjoyed
    knowing them all. But if I had to name the 5 best Governors out of the
    150 I served with, Bob Graham would be on the list and near the top.
        You know what he's doing with all these little notes that he--you
    see him make all these little notes. I'm surprised Mitchell Berger
    hadn't quit supporting him. He's destroyed more trees with those note
    pads than any single person in America. [Laughter] But he'll be writing
    notes now before the thing's over. And there's probably vaults full of
    Graham's notebooks after all these years.
        But I'll tell you what he's doing is--he's doing with those notes--
    is the same thing he's doing with his work days that he's done with such
    discipline and faithfulness over all these years. He has this crazy idea
    that politics is about more than words and rhetoric, it's about people
    and action and change and moving forward and making things better.
        And there are lots of folks who can give good speeches but not so
    many people who can give good service along with good speeches. And Bob
    Graham is constantly striving to understand what is going on and where
    we ought to be going and how to put together what is going on with where
    we ought to be going. And he does it in a way that is almost unique in
    public life. And so I'm glad you're here for him, but I want you to know
    we need him. And I was afraid he wouldn't run for Senator again because
    Washington is--MacKay said, ``So was I.'' [Laughter]
        You might as well have a laugh here, because the further you get
    away from where people live in American politics--now I gave you a
    laugh; now be serious. [Laughter] And this is serious. I was afraid he
    wouldn't run again, because the further you get away from where people
    live in American politics and the more distance there is between where
    you work and where people live and the more intermediaries there are
    between you and the people you represent, the more likely it is that
    words and rhetoric will matter more and deeds will matter less.
        And I can say that as someone who was a Governor for many years of
    what my opponent in 1992 affectionately referred to as a ``small
    Southern State,'' where people expected me to run my office like a
    country store. If somebody called up, they expected me to call them
    back; if somebody walked in, they expected to see me; if somebody had a
    problem, they expected me to deal with it. It was an action-oriented
    job. And you got graded at election time based on whether you actually
    produced anything or not.
        And we have to struggle always in Washington against the temptation
    to make the day's work about ourselves and what we can say about each
    other in political parties and across the kind of rhetorical walls that
    exist there, instead of about you. And Bob Graham is a daily breath of
    fresh air, because he gets up every day, and he thinks about you and
    what he can do to change things for the better for you.
        And he is an inspiration to everybody who really knows him, who
    understands after a few years of observation what the work days are
    about and what all those little notebooks are about. They're about a guy
    that does not want to live his life in vain and is not running to get a
    lot of votes just to have his ego stroked. He actually wants to use the
    power of the job he holds to change things for the better. And that is a
    great and good thing, and we need more of it in Washington, not less.
    And so you need to send him back.
        The second point I want to make is that the results are fairly
    satisfactory for what we've been working on the last 4 years. We
    reversed trickle-down economics and installed an economic theory based
    on investment in our people, reducing the deficit, and expanding trade.
    And to show for it, the country has produced 11\1/2\ million jobs in 4
    years for the first time in any Presidential term. Bob Graham cast the
    decisive vote

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    to make sure that we could pass that plan. And we did a good thing.
        We reversed decades of social decline. We had the biggest drop in
    welfare rolls in the history of the country in the last 4 years, and in
    each of the last 4 years, the crime rate went down. We had a tough crime
    bill, and we had a sensible approach to welfare reform. We restored
    family and community at the center of our social policy with things like
    the family and medical leave law and the effort to deal with the
    damaging effects of advertising and selling and marketing tobacco to
    children.
        We reasserted the leadership of the country in the cause for peace
    around the world. I don't know how many of you tonight came up to me and
    had detailed conversations with me about the Middle East peace process.
    I think it's a good thing that you can talk to your President about the
    Middle East peace process. I think it's a good thing that Monday, when
    we have the annual St. Patrick's Day celebration in the White House,
    that Irish-Americans, both Protestant and Catholic, will be able to talk
    to the President about the peace process in Northern Ireland.
        I think it's a good thing that I am going to meet President Yeltsin
    in just a few days in Helsinki to talk about what we can do to build
    stronger relations with each other, to have a strong and united and free
    Europe, and to reduce the threat of nuclear war more. I think these are
    good things, and I'm glad that the United States is a leading force for
    peace and freedom and a better future for the world.
        And I might say, I think it's a good thing that my supporters feel
    free to talk to me about issues relating to the United States and their
    relationships with Cuba, with the Middle East, with Northern Ireland,
    with the Everglades, or anything else you've got on your mind. That's
    the way the democratic system works, and I'm proud you're here and glad
    you talked to me about these things. I think it's one of your better
    programs.
        And finally, let me say, I think we've resolved this fight over the
    role of Government and the role of our community in our common life. You
    don't hear any of that rhetoric we lived with through '95 and early '96
    that the Government's inherently the enemy of the American people, that
    we're better off on our own, and that we don't have more in common than
    we do that divides us. And that's a good thing.
        And so now, we're in a position to really build that bridge to the
    next century in the next 4 years. And that is the last thing I leave you
    with and the final point. We've got a lot left to do. We still have to
    balance the budget. We've got to fix this welfare reform law and stop
    punishing legal immigrants who through no fault of their own need and
    deserve the help of the United States as well as the State of Florida.
    You need it to keep from having your State budget go bankrupt. But it is
    the morally right thing to do, and I want you to help us get it done.
        We have a lot to do around the world, but the last thing I want to
    say is, we have got to make education the most important domestic issue
    in this country in the next 4 years. I am striving to get every State in
    the country to agree that we should establish national standards first
    in reading and math and then expand it to other things in education.
    It's unbelievable to me; here we are in a global economy, and we've
    never had that. We have never had national education standards in
    America, as if somehow school boards with different student bodies could
    legislate differences in algebra or math or reading, and it's wrong. And
    we're going to do that. And we're going to open the doors of college to
    all Americans. And we're going to be able to go into the next century
    together because we're going to have the best educated citizens in the
    world, and that way, our diversity will be an asset instead of a
    liability. And I want every one of you committed to that.
        The last thing I'll say is this. Democracy requires vigorous
    involvement by people, and you have been vigorously involved. Some of
    you apparently have been paying for it lately, but I appreciate it, and
    I hope that you will always be proud of what you did for me but, more
    importantly, for your country and for your children and for your
    grandchildren. And when you get involved in these races in the next 2
    years, in 1998, and when you send Bob Graham to the Senate and you hold
    the Governor's office for someone who believes that we can grow Florida
    together and preserve the environment, even as we grow the economy and
    have a balanced and good and whole future, you'll be doing it not for
    yourselves primarily but for your children and your grandchildren.
        And that's why this country is still around here after 220 years. A
    friend of mine who

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    is a newspaper publisher from out West was in town the other day, and he
    was saying to me that he thought Abraham Lincoln and all of our
    forebears would be pretty happy if they looked at America now and saw
    that we had a vigorous, vital, two-party political system where people
    could participate, the country was doing well by any standard, our
    political system was cleaner than it was 30 years ago or 50 years ago or
    100 years ago, and more importantly, our country was producing results
    for the people and for the future.
        And that's what I want you to think about tomorrow when you wake up,
    determined to keep the people in office and elect people to office that
    will make it so, and even better, for our children and our
    grandchildren.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:55 p.m. at Turnberry Isle Resort. In his
    remarks, he referred to Gov. Lawton Chiles and Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay of
    Florida; Senator Bob Graham's wife, Adele; Bill Nelson, Florida State
    insurance commissioner; Elaine Bloom, Florida State representative; Ron
    Silver, Florida State senator; Dante Fascell, former U.S.
    Representative; Mitchell W. Berger, finance chair, Florida State
    Democratic Party; and President Boris Yeltsin of Russia.