    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
    [June 30, 1997]
    [Pages 849-851]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in New York City
    June 30, 1997

        Thank you very much. Well, you heard Lauren say that Al Gore is the
    most influential Vice President in history--I let him have all the
    jokes. [Laughter]
        I do want to thank my good friend Peter Duchin and his orchestra for
    being here tonight. And I want to thank Mr. Billy Porter for that
    wonderful song he sang, and thank you, Denise Rich, for writing the
    song--it was wonderful--and the group, you were all great. Thank you.
    You're going to hear a lot more from that young fellow, I predict. If I
    could sing like that, I'd be in a different line of work. [Laughter]
        I want to thank Wynton Marsalis, who has always been there for us,
    repeatedly. We were having a discussion around the dinner table tonight
    about Wynton Marsalis, a man I admire enormously. And I said, I believe
    that he is the only musician in the world who is the best at what he
    does in both classical and jazz music. And then someone pointed out that
    Yo Yo Ma, with the ``Appalachian Suite,'' had come pretty close. And
    he's helped us, too. So I don't care; you can take your choice.
    [Laughter] But he's a magnificent man. And thank you, Lauren Bacall, for
    being who you are and for being there for us for all these years. Thank
    you.
        Thanks for being here. You know, one of my immutable laws of
    politics is that no one should ever have to listen to a speech after 11
    o'clock at night. And I'm not running again, anyway; therefore, I will
    let you out by midnight. [Laughter] I'll be very brief.
        I want you to remember the last thing the Vice President said. You
    have helped bring your country to this point through your support, and
    you are helping us to continue to take it in the direction that it is
    now headed, which is very different from 5 years ago.
        I am so grateful to have had the chance to serve as President. I'm
    grateful especially to the people of New York, who gave us right at 60
    percent of the vote in the last election and a huge plurality of well
    over 1.7 million votes, about 25 percent of our total--just under 25
    percent of our total national plurality came from the generosity of the
    people of New York State, and I will never forget that. Judith Hope, our
    State Democratic chair, told me that we carried President Roosevelt's
    home county, which is apparently something that never happened when he
    was here. [Laughter] That's just because they didn't know me as well,
    and I thank them for that. [Laughter]
        Let me say to you, when you go home tonight and you get up tomorrow
    and you think about why you do all this, I think the most useful
    question you can ask yourself is, what would you like your country to
    look like in 30 years? What would you like your country to look like
    when your children or your grandchildren are your age? That's a question
    I try to force myself to ask and answer every single day I do this job.
        And it may sound trite now because I've said it so many times, but I
    don't have any better definition of that answer than I did when I
    started, more than 6 years ago now: I want my country to be a place
    where the American dream is alive for everybody who is responsible
    enough to work for it. I want our country to

    [[Page 850]]

    be a community that's coming together and celebrating the differences
    among us, not being driven apart by them. And I want us to lead the
    world for peace and freedom and prosperity well into the next century.
        We're a lot closer to that today than we were 5 years ago because of
    the condition of the economy; because we are ending the structural
    deficit in the Government; because we have developed a serious approach
    to move people from welfare to work, not to punish them or their
    children; because we developed a serious approach to reduce the crime
    rate and make people safer on their streets, not just talk tough about
    it; because we've made a good beginning in education and the environment
    and done a lot of things around the world.
        But we still have a lot to do. It really matters not only that we
    balance this budget but how we do it and whether we really empower
    people who need to be helped by this budget. If the budget we want
    passes, it will have--for people that tell you there's nothing very
    significant in it, you decide. It will have the biggest increase in
    children's health coverage since the passage of Medicaid in 1965. It
    will have the biggest increase in Federal support for education since
    1965. It will have the biggest increase in Federal support to help all
    kinds of people who need it go to college since the GI bill was passed
    52 years ago. I think it's a budget worth fighting for. It's a budget
    I'm very proud of.
        We still have a lot to do in other areas. We've got a lot to do in
    the area of the environment. We took a tough decision last week on clean
    air rules, and we're going to work with our cities and our businesses to
    meet those clean air rules, but it matters whether the air is clean.
    There are too many children with asthma in this country; there are too
    many problems. It matters.
        We're going to have to make some other tough decisions. The United
    States has 4 percent of the world's population; we produce 20 percent of
    the greenhouse gases that are warming our planet. It's led to the most
    disruptive weather patterns anybody can remember over the last 4 or 5
    years. We owe it to our children not to take a stable universe away from
    them. It's not very complicated. And can we find a way to grow our
    economy and do that? Of course we can. We're smart. We can do that. But
    we have to do it.
        We still have to find a way to honor the intergenerational compact
    that is the test of any great society. We do well by the elderly, and we
    don't do very well by the poor--the children in this country. Twenty
    percent of them are living below the poverty line, and it's hard for
    them to get the chances they need in life. And I am determined that
    before I leave office we will balance the intergenerational equities and
    take care of our children better, because we have to for our future.
        Finally, just let me say this. I knew something--I thought I knew
    something about people who couldn't get along with one another because
    of their differences, because I grew up in the segregated South. I
    thought I knew something about that. And then I became President, and I
    saw what happened in Bosnia and Rwanda and Burundi. And I saw what
    happened when my kinfolks in Ireland still insist on shooting each other
    over 600-year-old fights that children can barely explain. And I thought
    after we signed that first peace agreement in the Middle East we would
    have an irreversible process because people would see it just did not
    make any sense to hold onto old hatreds. But they die hard.
        And I don't care what anybody says--you know, yes, there is an
    entitlements issue that we have to face on Social Security, but my
    generation is not going to bankrupt our children and grandchildren.
    Fundamentally, that's an accounting problem; it'll get fixed. The
    biggest problem is whether we can muster the wisdom and strength of
    spirit to treat each other with respect and not just abide each other's
    differences of all kinds but to actually relish them and be glad that we
    have all this diversity in our country. Because if we can do that and
    then be united as one America by shared values, then we're way the best
    positioned democracy in the world for the next century. But this is a
    very important thing that you have to understand.
        So as you leave here tonight, I want you to think about that. We've
    still got a lot of work to do before the new century comes in. There are
    5 school districts in America with more than 100 different racial and
    ethnic groups among the students in them. Within 2 years, there will be
    12. Before you know it, there will be 20. There's only one State in the
    country that has no majority race, Hawaii. Within 3 to 5 years,
    California won't. Within 30 years, the United

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    States won't. We always say we're bound together by our shared values.
    We're about to find out. [Laughter] Hold on, we're about to find out.
        And every one of us who can be in this room tonight because of our
    financial or political position or whatever, we have a special
    responsibility to the people who will follow behind us. The United
    States has got an incredible opportunity here. And I'm going to keep
    trying to make peace in the Middle East and Northern Ireland and do what
    I can to help Africa. I'm going to do everything I can in this term to
    try to resolve the differences between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus.
    I'm going to support what's now going on, finally, where the Indians and
    Pakistanis are talking. I'm going to do all that. But just remember, all
    those people live in America.
        And we have other differences as well. Sometimes I think that we
    couldn't live if we couldn't look down on somebody who is different from
    us. Sometimes I wonder if it's just sort of endemic to human nature, you
    know. Every one of you has done this, I know--at least I have. I'll
    plead guilty. Haven't you had a bad day when you just were really down
    on yourself and you said, ``Well, no matter how bad I am, at least I'm
    not him or her''? I mean, it's almost like endemic, and we have to fight
    that because we are the most richly blessed country in the world. Here
    we are, going into this global society, and everybody's right here.
        And if we have the discipline to give excellence in education, if we
    have the discipline to preserve the environment while we grow the
    economy, if we have the discipline to eliminate the intergenerational
    imbalance and give children health care just like we give it to senior
    citizens, if we have the discipline to do these things and to continue
    to fulfill our responsibilities in the world, the best days of this
    country are still ahead of us, and the people in this room will not live
    to see them. And that's good. That's good. That's our responsibility.
    And that's what this administration is all about, and that's what your
    presence here is helping to further. And for that, we are profoundly
    grateful.
        God bless you, and thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:25 p.m. in the Ballroom at the Plaza
    Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to actress Lauren Bacall and
    musicians Peter Duchin, Billy Porter, Denise Rich, Wynton Marsalis, and
    Yo Yo Ma.