[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
[February 3, 1997]
[Pages 105-107]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the Democratic Governors Association Dinner
February 3, 1997

    Thank you. Thank you, Governor Dean, for that wonderful 
introduction. And I thank the orchestra for playing me in. [Laughter] 
Thank you, Governor Rossello, for your leadership here

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in the DGA. And to our DNC general chair, Governor Roy Romer, thank you 
for agreeing to do that. I hope it made the Democratic Governors feel 
better; it sure made me feel better when you did it. Our Democratic 
national chairman, Steve Grossman, thank you for being here tonight. And 
thank you, Santita, for singing again. You got me in a good humor before 
I had to come out and speak.
    You all know that the Vice President is coming over later. I'm just 
the warmup act. [Laughter] But that's probably as it should be. At least 
that's what he asked me to say right before I left the White House. 
[Laughter]
    I thank you for understanding why I can't be here all evening. As 
you know, the State of the Union is tomorrow night, and I hope that the 
Governors who are here will be staying for it. We have a place for all 
of you.
    It's a very different city than it was a year ago. A year ago, we 
had a cold wave and a cold wave in politics so bad that it shut the 
Government down. And the American people had something to say about it 
in the months ahead after that and then definitively in November. And 
it's a lot warmer outside this year than it was last year. And I like 
it.
    All of you know that I have been deeply indebted to my own 
experience as a Governor and to the Democratic Governors for many of the 
ideas that we have brought to bear over the last 4 years. Our country 
has produced 11.2 million jobs for the first time in history in a 4-year 
Presidential administration. We have--crime has come down in every year. 
The welfare rolls have dropped by 2\1/4\ million, the largest amount in 
history. Inequality among working people has started back down again, 
after a 20-year increase, with particular drops for single parents 
working to support their children; the elderly; and African-Americans.
    In the last 4 years, thanks to the work that we have done together, 
we have, first of all, reversed our country's addiction to supply-side 
economics and substituted for it an economics based on investing in 
people, expanding trade, reducing the deficit, and ultimately balancing 
the budget in the right way.
    We have restored the family and community as the centerpiece of our 
social agenda with initiatives like the family and medical leave law, 
which we celebrated the fourth anniversary of just this week and which I 
hope to expand in this coming session of the Congress, and I hope you 
will help me do that.
    When it comes to crime and welfare, we replaced rhetoric with 
action, and that's why results have flowed. We have redefined the role 
of the Government. No longer do the American people believe, and no 
longer are they being told, that Government is the enemy. They know that 
the role of Government is to be our partner to give us the tools to 
solve our problems and to create the conditions in which Americans can 
flourish.
    And finally, we have reaffirmed the importance of our national 
community. No longer is it commonplace in our national politics to see 
victory come from dividing Americans by race, by gender, or in any other 
way. And I'm proud of that, perhaps proudest of all that we have rebuked 
the people who want to divide us as a nation. That's what the Democratic 
Party is all about.
    In the next 4 years--well, you have to wait until tomorrow night to 
hear about that. [Laughter] But let me say that in the next 4 years, I 
will still depend upon the Democratic Governors for your ideas; two of 
them you know I have embraced with particular vigor: the HOPE 
scholarship, pioneered by Governor Zell Miller in Georgia, and the idea 
of providing national certification to the most excellent teachers in 
America, pioneered by Governor Jim Hunt in North Carolina. I thank you 
both for that.
    What I want to leave you with is that I think in the last 4 years 
we've basically unlocked the potential of our country by fixing a lot of 
things that were wrong and by redefining what the stakes are. In the 
next 4 years, we have to take initiatives to shape America for the next 
50 years. And what I want you to think about when you go back home is 
this: It's not very often that a country has a period of such enormous 
peace and prosperity and yet is still confronted by such great 
challenges. And what has brought us to this moment in history is the 
incredible rate and scope of change of the time in which we live.
    We're not just moving into a new century and a new millennium; we're 
moving into a whole new way of doing things. It's changing the way 
family life works. It's changing the way work life works. It's changing 
the way people relate to each other in society and across national 
borders. It poses particular challenges for

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our educators but also challenges for all the rest of us.
    We're also learning a lot of things that impose new responsibilities 
on us. I know that the Democratic Governors heard from my friend Rob 
Reiner, who is sitting out here at this table, who is passionately 
concerned about what happens to children from the time they're born 
until they're 2 or 3 years old. We now know things about those years 
that we never knew before. And that imposes upon us responsibilities we 
never had before because we now know we can prevent problems from 
occurring we didn't think we could, and we can unleash potential we 
didn't know was there and that requires us to behave in a different way.
    So tomorrow night, I'm going to try to talk about the next steps I 
think we have to take. But I want you to think in big terms about this. 
Every time a Governor is elected who has real vision and real 
understanding and a real willingness to take prudent risks to tap the 
potential of this moment, we have advanced the cause of freedom and 
democracy, and we've given more people a chance to light up their own 
lives. That's really what all this is about.
    Democracies normally don't do very well in times of peace and 
prosperity. They sort of get complacent and kind of go to the golf 
course twice a week. [Laughter] Sounds like a good idea to me. 
[Laughter] Unfortunately, we don't have that luxury now, not if we're 
going to do what we ought to do.
    So that's what this is about tonight. In the next 2 years, we'll be 
seeing 38 Governors' races come up for a vote of the people, affecting 
80 percent of the people who live in this country. And the decisions 
that will be made by those Governors will chart the course for the next 
century. This is a very, very important time to be making these 
judgments. And I can tell you, having now been President for 4 years and 
having been a Governor for 12 years--I could tell you a lot of things 
about that--[laughter]--but the point I want to make is there are a lot 
of things that a President can do and a lot of things a President can't. 
There are some things that can and will only be done by the Governors of 
this country, working with people throughout the States. It matters a 
great deal. You know that. That's why you're here tonight.
    But as you think about this tonight and tomorrow night at the State 
of the Union and the work that I'm going to help you do in the next 2 
years to try to make sure we elect more people from our party to the 
statehouses to move this country forward, just remember, usually 
democracies get lazy in times of peace and prosperity. The changes and 
the challenges of this time do not permit us to do this. If we do it, we 
will regret it for a very long time. If we don't, you ain't seen nothing 
yet.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 6:40 p.m. in the Regency Ballroom at the 
Omni Shoreham Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Howard Dean of 
Vermont, chair, Democratic Governors Association; Gov. Pedro Rossello of 
Puerto Rico; Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado; singer Santita Jackson; and Rob 
Reiner, founder, I Am Your Child campaign.