[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
[January 21, 1997]
[Pages 49-54]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to a Democratic National Committee Meeting
January 21, 1997

    Thank you. Please be seated. Thank you. You know, maybe the Vice 
President should stay up all night more often. [Laughter] He's on a roll 
today.
    I received on Saturday, a day early, very courteously from the New 
York Times, a copy of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, just preceding 
the day of the Inauguration, and it had a lot of nice things in it--an 
article about whether I believed in anything. [Laughter] The conclusion 
was accurate: that I believed in civil rights and that I believed that 
Government can do good things for people that they can't do on their 
own.
    But far more important, the Sunday crossword puzzle had as its theme 
``Inauguration,'' with several very clever clues like ``Movie about 
Presidential aspirations''--``Hope Dreams,'' instead of ``Hoop Dreams.'' 
You get it? But the most important clue in the whole thing was 
``Mathematical rules governing the Vice President's macarena.'' And the 
answer was ``Al-Gore-rhythms.'' [Laughter] And it struck me that a major 
part of the history of this time will be the ``Al-Gore-rhythms'' that 
have reverberated across America.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I come here more than anything else to thank 
you, to thank our outgoing leaders and our incoming leaders, to

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thank the members of the Democratic National Committee and all those 
whom you represent who are active in our party, who were there in that 
vast crowd yesterday along the parade route and even more of them who 
were back home just watching and cheering on television.
    I was asked many times yesterday how it felt the second time around. 
And I always said, ``Better. It feels better.'' Better because America 
is better than it was 4 years ago. And you should feel a great deal of 
pride in that.
    Just before I left to come over here, one of my staff members told 
me that Newsweek is about to issue the book it puts out every 4 years on 
the Presidential election, and the title this year is ``Back From the 
Dead.'' [Laughter] Well, I have some mixed feelings about that, because 
I always felt the pulse. [Laughter] But for your role in bringing us 
back from whatever it was we were in right after 1994's election, I 
thank you, and I hope you'll always be very proud of it.
    I want to say a special word of thanks, as the Vice President did, 
to Senator Chris Dodd for going all across this country and for being a 
powerful and eloquent voice and for proving that politics can be noble 
and can be fun and that we need not be ashamed of being Democrats or 
being involved in the American political system. I want to thank Don 
Fowler, who has toiled in our vineyards for decades, for being willing 
to leave his comfortable and encouraging surroundings and come up here 
and live in what is not always the most hospitable climate for 2 years 
to fight this battle.
    Their efforts resulted not only in the first Democrat to be 
reelected in 60 years but to gains in the House and to gains in the 
statehouses across the country. We celebrate the election of the first 
Asian-American Governor in the history of America and the first woman 
Governor of New Hampshire in the history of America; one million small 
donors now, one million ordinary citizens sending in their money to 
support the Democratic Party; and a real revival of State parties 
throughout the country, a revival, which, I might add, we must continue 
and strengthen and build upon.
    I want to thank the Democrats who helped in our Inaugural: Terry 
McAuliffe, Ann Jordan, Craig Smith, and Deb Willhite. And a special word 
of thanks to the man who oversaw it all, whom you honored earlier here 
today, Harold Ickes, for this Inauguration, for two brilliant national 
conventions, for the beginning of an organization in New York, which 
after 5 years of effort produced 1.6 million votes in plurality for the 
Clinton/Gore ticket in 1996.
    I would like to say a special word of thanks, and I can't enumerate 
them all, but I would be remiss if I did not say a special word of 
thanks to the American labor movement for the support it has given to 
our efforts and to our progress. And a special word of thanks for their 
role in one of the still untold stories of the last 4 years--the 
teachers of this country for the advances we continue to make in 
investment and opportunity for education in the last 4 years.
    I want to thank Roy Romer and Steve Grossman for their willingness 
to come into this great party and to build it and to go forward. Roy 
Romer and I have been friends for a very long time now. I think it would 
be no offense to any of our colleagues if I would say that, at least 
when I left the governorship in 1992--I think it was true then; I think 
it is true now--there is no Governor in America more respected or who 
has accomplished more than Roy Romer, not a single one in either party. 
Today, he is recognized as being the person who knows the most about 
education and our national drive toward having high standards. He has 
proved in Colorado that you can be for restoring the environment and 
growing the economy. He has proved that you can care about families and 
children and do things that will help them along their way in life. He 
is an unreconstructed, clear reformer and a brilliant consensus builder 
and a great, strong voice, and I thank him for his willingness to do 
this.
    I want to thank my friend Steve Grossman who has labored in our 
vineyard. He's been a State party chair and active in our finance 
operations. He's been a success in business and a success in running 
AIPAC. I told him if he could get everybody in AIPAC to get along, he 
could certainly get everybody in the Democratic Committee to get along. 
[Laughter] He took the reins of the Massachusetts party in 1991 and '92 
after the '90 elections when they were at a low ebb and began the 
process of rebuilding, which led in 1996 to the first all-Democratic 
delegation for Congress in Massachusetts since 1872 and, just as an 
aside, a 62 percent vote for the Clinton/Gore ticket in the election.
    Yesterday I said that I wanted us to build a land of new promise in 
America in the next

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century, with a new kind of Government, a new sense of responsibility, 
and a new spirit of community at home, in the world, and in our dealings 
with each other. I called for a spirit of reconciliation, and I think, 
to me, as much as anything else it means we have to give each other the 
benefit of the doubt.
    I thank Reverend Jackson for his moving comments on the legacy of 
Martin Luther King in our church service yesterday. One person told me 
this morning that the spirit of reconciliation may have been represented 
more vividly yesterday than anything else by the fact that we had 
Christians and Jews and Muslims in the same house of worship, and we had 
white Pentecostals and African-Americans singing the same song and 
finding the same soul yesterday.
    What I'd like to take a few minutes to do, because there is always 
some question about this, before we look forward to the future, I want 
you to be proud of the legacy you have made, and I want you to 
understand very clearly what it is in the last 4 years. Over the last 30 
years, until the last two elections, our friends in the Republican Party 
were moving toward a dominance of the Presidency in the national 
political debate, and there were positive elements in their message. 
They stood for a strong defense. They stood for a strong economy rooted 
in free enterprise. They said that they would stand for the basic values 
of our country. But they also divided us in certain ways that at least 
we Democrats do not agree with. Beginning nearly 30 years ago, they 
began to subtly use, and then sometimes not so subtly use, rhetoric to 
divide our people one from another, first on race, and then later there 
were divisions based on religion and politics, which made it much more 
difficult for us to come together.
    Then, starting in 1981, they advanced two other elements. One was 
supply-side economics; we Democrats called it trickle-down. And the 
argument was that there really is a Santa Claus, that the deficits don't 
matter, and that they'll go away anyway with supply-side economics if we 
just cut taxes, particularly for people in upper incomes. And in 
addition to that there was the clear, explicit, expressed argument that 
Government is the problem with America.
    Now, I would argue to you that in the last 4 years, part of the 
historic legacy of our administration and our Democrats in Congress and 
in America is that we ended the illusion of supply-side economics, not 
until it had quadrupled our national debt, tripled our annual deficit, 
but early enough to stop it from causing permanent disaster. And we 
ended the notion that Government is the problem. It was very powerful 
rhetorically, but the American people never knew what it meant until the 
other party won the Congress in 1995 and had the Government shut down 
twice over the battle of the budget. But make no mistake, our view 
prevailed, and you should be proud of it.
    And we have not ended but we have at least eased this notion that we 
can advance our country by becoming divided one against the other. 
People know that as they become ever more multiracial, multiethnic, 
multireligious, that is a recipe for destruction. In fairness, I think 
the awful tragedy of Oklahoma City had a lot to do with our coming of 
age. We realized that we could not love our country and hate our 
Government, that the people who work for our Government were our 
neighbors and friends, they had children, too, in their child care 
centers while their mothers and fathers went to work every day.
    But I think the fact that the Democratic Party was a clear and 
constant voice for reconciliation and for not permitting our racial or 
our religious or our political differences to consume us has made this 
country a better place and has dramatically changed the political debate 
forever as we look toward the future. That is a part of your legacy, and 
you should be proud of it.
    I also want to tell you that there are at least six things that are 
a part of our positive legacy that I think we should go forward with. 
They must be the basis of our mobilizing our State parties, of 
recruiting good, new candidates, of getting people to show up when you 
have these meetings back home, and of making people proud to be 
Democrats and of making people believe that they ought to send a small 
check to the Democratic Party on a regular basis. If they don't want big 
money and organized money to dominate the process, they have to give the 
little money. And they must do that for positive reasons.
    Let's be candid. One of the most interesting things that happened in 
the last year was we had a huge upsurge of giving among ordinary 
Democrats when we were standing against the budget and reversing supply-
side economics and reversing the idea that Government was the problem. 
And after the battles had been won

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against the negative forces, there weren't so many people that thought 
they needed to send the small checks again. They said, ``Well, President 
Clinton and Vice President Gore are going to get reelected.'' But the 
question is, what are we going to do? So you need to know what the 
positive legacy of the last 4 years is so you will be ennobled and 
emboldened about what we can accomplish in the next 4.
    One, we replaced supply-side economics with invest-and-grow 
economics, reducing the deficit, investing more in education and science 
and technology, standing for free and fair trade around the world. And 
that's what produced the largest number of jobs in any 4-year term in 
history, record small businesses, and declining inequality among working 
people for the first time in 20 years. That's a part of your legacy, and 
you should be proud of it.
    Number two, we reversed the expansion of social problems which 
people thought were inevitable. The crime rate has dropped now in all 4 
years. The crime bill is working. The welfare rolls have had their 
biggest reduction in history as people have moved from welfare to work. 
People are dying to go to work if the jobs are out there for them, if 
the training is out there for them, and if there is a system there to 
move people through. And that indicates what we have to do in the years 
ahead. Child support collection is up 50 percent. You should be proud of 
these things.
    Just 4 years ago, most people thought the crime rate was going to go 
on forever. Now we can visualize a time when our children can walk 
safely from home to school, to play in the park across the street and 
not fear that somebody will come up to them and try to shoot them or 
sell them dope. We can do that now because that is what we have done in 
the last 4 years. We've turned these things around. That is a huge 
surpassing achievement, part of your legacy, and you should be proud of 
it.
    We Democrats have restored the primacy of family and community to 
our social policies. That's what the Family and Medical Leave Act was 
all about. That's what the earned-income tax credit, which is now giving 
tax reductions to people with incomes up to $30,000 a year who have 
children in their home, was all about. That's what our reforms in 
retirement--we secured the retirement of 40 million people, made it 
easier for people in small business to get retirement. That's what it 
was all about, putting family and community in the center of our social 
concern. That's what the Vice President and Henry Cisneros were doing 
with the empowerment zone initiative, trying to let people and 
communities all across America seize control of their situation and make 
it better. That's what we were doing with the V-chip. That's what we 
were doing in trying to protect our children against tobacco 
advertisements. That's what we were doing with the zero tolerance for 
guns and drugs in schools, putting family and community back at the 
center of our concern, so that now no one thinks of family values as 
being the Government is the problem, the Government is the enemy.
    Now, the question is, what can we do together to build strong 
families and strong communities. That's part of our legacy, and you 
ought to be proud of it.
    The fourth thing we did, again I say, was not only to stand against 
the forces of division but to say that community is a good thing, that 
we'll be better off in the future in the global society if we can all 
work together and learn together and build new ties that bind us 
together. We'll be better off. You can see that in what we did with 
affirmative action. Mend it, yes, but don't end it until it's not needed 
anymore. You can see it with what we did with immigration. Protect the 
borders, yes. People are in the criminal justice system, send them home. 
Be tough on the workplace. Don't let people go in and take jobs away 
from American workers because their employers want to bring in people to 
work for slave wages. But don't denigrate the immigrants who have made 
this country a great land. Except for the Native Americans, we're all 
from somewhere else.
    You can see it in our response to the church burnings. You can see 
it in response to what we did with the Religious Freedom Restoration 
Act, trying to liberate people from the notion that there was never a 
time when they could express their religious convictions in a public 
forum. You can see it in what was done here after Oklahoma City or in 
response to the militias. We are affirmatively building an American 
community. It is part of the legacy of this administration and this 
party, and you should be proud of it. You can see it in the way we've 
reasserted the role of America's leadership around the world, and yes, 
you can see it in the way we have resolved the fight over Government.

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    I was curious to see how people commented about that. Government is 
not the problem. Government is not the solution. We have to be the 
solution. Government is the instrument by which we give each other the 
tools to make the most of our own lives, which means that we have 
downsized the Government with the Vice President's reinventing 
Government initiative. But there are times when the Government should do 
more, more on family leave, more on helping people succeed at home and 
at work, more in opening the doors of college education to everyone, 
more in investing in early childhood education. And we can't rest until 
the people who are still shut out of the health care system, especially 
the children of poor working people, have access to it.
    Now, you have to make this legacy apparent to the folks back home. 
And in order to do it, we have got to end the divisions in thinking in 
our mind. We all talk about how the so-called bipolar world is over--
freedom versus communism--but the bipolar mind is still holding us back. 
We think you can balance the budget and invest in the future. We think 
we cannot only protect but improve the environment and grow the economy. 
We think we can be strong at home, and in order to do it we have to be 
strong abroad and vice versa. We don't believe that every issue has to 
go into a Democrat or a Republican or a liberal or a conservative box.
    I think you can make a compelling case that balancing the budget in 
a proper way is a very liberal thing to do because otherwise we'll never 
have the political support in this country or the money to invest in the 
future of the people that are otherwise left out.
    I think you can make a case that educating--investing in the 
education of our children and providing families decent health care when 
the kids are young is a very conservative thing to do, because otherwise 
you cannot conserve the basic strength and security and values of the 
country over the long run.
    We're in a period of change. We've got to stop this. Who ever said 
the Republicans should own crime? I never met a Democrat who was happy 
to have his child mugged. Who ever said the Republicans own welfare 
reform? Those of us who've known people on welfare know how bad they 
want to get off. You have to help change the way people think about 
these things. And to do that, you have to help build a positive future.
    Now, in the State of the Union message, I will be talking more about 
the specific things that I want to do in the future. But I want to talk 
today about this whole issue of campaign finance reform for two reasons. 
One is campaign finance reform--elections are too expensive, and they 
take too much money, and it takes too much time to raise the money, and 
it always raises questions.
    But there's a bigger problem, which is the more that elections 
become the province of very expensive ad wars, the less people are 
likely to participate. I think the Democrats ought to be on record not 
only for campaign finance reform, but we need to find ways, Mr. 
Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairs, all the new officers here--we've got to find 
ways to encourage affirmatively the increase of participation of people 
at the polls.
    Reverend Jackson's spent his whole life going around and registering 
people to vote. If young voters had voted in 1996 in the same 
percentages they did in 1992, the election would have been even more 
dramatic in the outcome and the congressional results would have been 
different. We have to lift the participation of people. And we need to 
see campaign finance reform not only as restoring the trust of citizens 
in their Government but as one step of increasing the participation of 
people in our common affairs. You cannot have a national community if 
half the community doesn't show up. Everybody's got to be there.
    But we, the Democrats, have to continue to be and intensify our 
efforts for campaign finance reform, and it has to be a bipartisan 
solution. Today Senator John McCain and Senator Russ Feingold and 
Representative Chris Shays and Marty Meehan, in the House and the 
Senate, a Democrat, a Republican, are introducing their bipartisan 
campaign finance reform legislation. It is tough. It is balanced. It is 
credible. It should become the law of the land. We know from 
experience--I went through this for 4 years--that all you have to do to 
kill campaign finance reform is just not do it. Nobody ever wants a vote 
up on the tote board, ``I killed this bill'', so they just keep letting 
it die in the Senate with the filibuster.
    Delay will mean the death of reform one more time if it happens. So 
I ask Members of Congress in both parties to act now. While

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the public is watching, while the momentum is building, act now; don't 
delay. You've got a good bill. You've got a good forum. Resolve the 
differences and go forward.
    I also ask that we not wait. Today, let us resume our call to our 
friends in the Republican Party. Together, let's stop accepting soft 
money, even before the reform becomes law. If you will do it, we will do 
it. We have offered our hand, time and again. Why not just say yes?
    Today, as a first step, the Democratic Party has announced several 
changes unilaterally in the way we raise money. I thank the DNC for 
agreeing with the position that we took in the campaign not to accept 
contributions from noncitizens and foreign-owned businesses and for 
taking other steps to limit contributions that may otherwise raise 
questions about the integrity of the process. These are sound and 
necessary first steps in the reforms we need. We should go forward from 
there and take the next step.
    Now, let me say again, let's be realistic about this. There have 
been problems with this all along the way. But there's a great deal of 
interest in this in the press, and in the spirit of reconciliation let 
me say that we need to be candid about this. On the other side, our 
friends may not think that they have any interest in campaign finance 
reform. Why should they? They raise more money. They raise more foreign 
money. They raise more money in big contributions, and we take all the 
heat. It's a free ride.
    Secondly, let's be candid. Once you're in office, whether you're a 
Democrat or a Republican, if you've done a good job and you've got 
friends out there and they can relate to you, you at least know that 
maybe even if it's bad for your party or bad for your country, maybe you 
can protect yourself if some wave of hysteria comes along that threatens 
to wash you away, and at least if you can raise the money, you can have 
your own case heard. I say that to make this point: We hear a lot in 
America about the cynicism that exists between the public and the 
politicians or how cynical the press are about politicians. The problem 
with cynicism is that it always eventually becomes a two-way street. You 
cannot end cynicism unless all parties involved are willing to give each 
other the benefit of the doubt.
    And so I ask now for an honest, open effort to pass this bill. And I 
ask for an honest, open understanding that the Supreme Court decision 
allowing all of these third-party expenditures will complicate our task. 
But we can make it better if we will suspend our cynicism and instead 
put our energies into getting something done for America. Will you help 
us do that? Will all of you help us do that? Stand up if you believe in 
it. Stand up if you'll fight for it. We can do this, and I want you to 
help.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 4:14 p.m. at the Washington Hilton Hotel. 
In his remarks, he referred to Terence McAuliffe and Ann Dibble Jordan, 
cochairs, and Craig Smith and Debbie Willhite, co-executive directors, 
Presidential Inaugural Committee. A portion of these remarks could not 
be verified because the tape was incomplete.