[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
[June 16, 1997]
[Pages 749-753]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner
June 16, 1997

    Thank you very much. Steve gave such a good speech, if I had any 
sense I would just sit down. [Laughter] But I thank you for it. Let me 
thank Joel and David and Monte and Jeff and Ira and everyone else who is 
responsible for this tonight. I thank Carol Pensky and Cynthia Friedman 
for their leadership in our party. I thank Secretary Babbitt for coming 
tonight, and Ann Lewis from the White House for coming, and Craig Smith, 
my political director. There may be more people here. I'll hear about it 
tomorrow if there are. [Laughter] I thank Senator Lautenberg and Senator 
Feinstein, Dick, and Senator Lieberman and Hadassah, thank you all for 
being here.
    I really appreciate, more than anything else I suppose, the fact 
that there has been established between our administration and I hope 
between me personally and the American Jewish community a bond of trust 
which is rooted in our shared values for what America ought to become 
here at home and for our longing for an honorable and lasting peace in 
the Middle East. And I thank those of you who mentioned to me, going 
through the line tonight, my speech in San Diego a couple of days ago. 
And I would like to talk a little about that and about the Middle East 
in what I would call a proper context.
    In 1991, when I was attempting to decide whether to enter the 
Democratic primaries and

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only my mother thought I could be elected--[laughter]--night after night 
I would sit at home and say, ``Why do you want to do this? You know, you 
could say, well, every little boy and now, I hope, every little girl can 
want to grow up to be President, but that's not a very good reason for 
other people to vote for you, the fact that you'd just as soon live in 
the White House as somewhere else.'' And I was deeply disturbed because 
I didn't think the country was moving to prepare for the new century.
    It was an unusual time because I'd actually had a very good 
relationship with President Bush. I was very often the designated 
Democrat to deal with the White House. I had no burning, negative 
passions--I don't understand them very well, anyway, I think. But I 
really felt that my country was not preparing for the future.
    And so I sat down, almost 6 years ago now, and wrote out what I 
wanted America to be like in the 21st century. And now I have said it 
over and over again probably a thousand, maybe two, three thousand 
times, and a lot of people are sick of hearing it. But it's important 
that you know that every day as President I still think about what I 
wrote 6 years ago.
    I said that I wanted my Nation in the 21st century, first of all, to 
have the American dream of opportunity alive for every person here, 
without regard to their race, their background, their starting point in 
life. I wanted all of our citizens to be responsible, to take 
responsibility for themselves, their families, and others in their 
communities. I wanted America to be the world's leading force for peace 
and freedom and prosperity a generation from now, just as we are today. 
And I wanted us to become closer as one community with all of our 
diversity.
    And I realized that if you ask the question, what do you want the 
country to look like 30 years from now, then you begin--and you answer 
that, you're much more likely to ask and answer the right questions 
about what are you going to do tomorrow. Because then it became clear to 
me that the first thing we had to do was to scrap the economic policy we 
were following and adopt one that made some sense, that we had to find a 
way to get rid of the terrible deficits we had and still invest in our 
future.
    Most people said you couldn't cut the deficit and invest more in 
education and technology and research. I thought you could. We know--the 
record is in now. The deficit has gone down 77 percent in 4 years before 
this last agreement, and we have invested more. And the country is 
better off, and our economy has produced a record number of new jobs, 
biggest decline in income inequality among working families, something 
very important to most of you, since the 1960's.
    I thought we could have a crime strategy that was more than tough 
talk. I mean, everybody--you can't have a free country if people are 
terrified of their own personal security. And I thought the Democrats 
had made a mistake not taking that issue on--but taking it on in a real 
way, not just a rhetorical way. So I worked with Senator Feinstein to 
ban assault weapons. And we worked to pass the Brady bill. And we heard 
all these talks, and a lot of our people lost seats in '94 because they 
had the guts to vote for the assault weapons ban and the Brady bill. And 
they were all told, ``Oh, you're going to lose your gun.'' Well, as I 
said in '96 in New Hampshire, I said, ``A lot of you voted against our 
people in '94 because they told you we were going to take your guns.'' 
And I said, ``I want everybody who lost their guns to vote for 
Republicans for Congress and everybody who didn't to vote for the 
Democrats.'' [Laughter] And they were all laughing. But 186,000 felons, 
fugitives, and stalkers have lost their guns.
    Last year we had the biggest drop in crime in 35 years, putting 
these police officers on the street, and we're moving forward with this 
juvenile justice strategy. Based on what's been working in Steve and 
Alan's hometown of Boston, there has not been a single child killed with 
a handgun in a year and a half.
    So we're working. We had the biggest drop in welfare rolls in 
history. Things are moving. You may have seen last week, something that 
I was told by the cynics would never happen--in the International Math 
and Science Survey, our fourth graders scored way above the national 
average in math and science. They said, ``Oh, no, America's kids are too 
poor. They're too racially diverse. You'll never get this done.'' But 
our educators have been working on this since 1984 all over America.
    So then I got hired again in '96--[laughter]--and I said to myself, 
``Well, now what are we going to do?'' I love to tell this story. I told 
this story where I was earlier tonight. When I ran for reelection as 
Governor one time, a guy came up to me and said, ``You going to run 
again, Bill?'' And I said, ``If I do, will you

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vote for me?'' He said, ``Probably. What are you going to say?'' I said, 
``Well, I'm going to say I did a good job.'' He said, ``Hell, that's 
what I hired to you to do.'' He said, ``That's not a reason to vote for 
you.'' [Laughter] You think about it. I mean, it's an interesting thing.
    So I asked myself, ``What are we going to do?'' So I asked the right 
question again. Where are we going to be in 30 years? What do we still 
have to do? That's what this balanced budget agreement is all about. It 
balances the budget and has the biggest investment in education in 
history and opens the doors of college to all Americans and pays for 
examinations in math and science for every fourth and eighth grader in 
the country to see if we're really committed to national academic 
standards. It helps to bring economic opportunity and empowerment into 
the inner cities. It's the right thing to do. So that's the first thing 
I wanted to do.
    The second thing I wanted to do was to continue to expand our 
leadership in world trade, something that's controversial in both 
parties. But it seems to me like we have evidence now. You know, we have 
a 4.8 percent unemployment, the lowest unemployment in 24 years, and we 
had 200 separate trade agreements in the last 4 years. And we're selling 
more overseas than ever before, and we're the number one exporter in the 
world again. And I personally do not believe we need to be afraid of 
making a trade agreement with Chile or Argentina or Brazil, for that 
matter. And I think it would be a terrible mistake for us to walk away 
from the chance to reach out to Latin America, to Africa, to Asia, and 
build closer ties and a better, brighter future.
    And the fourth thing I wanted to do was to recognize that we have a 
problem. I don't care how well we're doing, as long as 20 percent of the 
kids in this country are living below the poverty line and are in 
physical isolation from most of the rest of us, we've got a problem. 
That's really what the Presidents' Summit of Service was all about in 
Philadelphia. It was about saying every child ought to have a safe place 
to grow up, ought to have a decent school, ought to have health care--
all three of those things we try to deal with in our budget, by the 
way--ought to have a personal mentor, and ought to have a chance to 
serve in the community. And I thought the Summit of Service is important 
because it would mobilize volunteers all over America to support and 
reinforce and carry out the things I'm trying to get done in this budget 
and in the juvenile crime bill before the Congress.
    And then the last thing that I wanted to do was focus on race and 
ethnic and religious differences, which is why I went to San Diego. Why? 
Because if we have a growing economy, a good educational system, the 
crime rate is down, the welfare rolls are down, and we're doing better 
by kids, and we can't get along when there is no race in the majority in 
this country, the rest of it will come unraveled. And if we can't get 
along, we will not have the moral force we need to do what needs to be 
done in the Middle East, in Bosnia, in Africa, and in Northern Ireland, 
and who knows what's going to happen 10, 15, 20, 30 years from now.
    In Hawaii--Hawaii is the only State in the country today where there 
is no majority race. In 3 years, there will be none in California. In 
somewhere between 30 and 50 years, there will be none in the United 
States. It depends on immigration and birth patterns, but somewhere 
between 30 and 50 years from now, we will test the theory that I have 
heard politicians talk about or read them talk about for a century, 
which is that this is not a nation of place or race, it's a nation of 
ideals. We are about to find out. And it seems to me that it would be 
better for us to find out at a time when we have no riots in the 
streets, we have no immediate emergencies, we're at the peak of our 
economic strength and our international influence, when we could take 
back--sort of step back and say, ``Now, let's ask this question together 
one more time. What do we want to be like in 30 years?'' That's what 
that whole business in San Diego was about.
    So I hope all of you will participate in that, because this is 
something that has been of passionate significance to the Jewish 
community for a long time. I really do believe that my life is 
diminished every time a synagogue is defaced. And I believe when they 
burned that mosque in the South a couple years ago, it diminished my 
life. And I believe when those churches were burned, it diminished my 
life. And I think that you do. And so I ask you to help us participate 
in that.
    I also have invited you all privately--I will say this publicly; I'm 
not ashamed to say it--you care passionately, all of you, about getting 
peace in the Middle East. We cannot let this process become unraveled. I 
cannot tell you how

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many nights that I have had difficulty sleeping, racking my brain trying 
to come up with some new thing I could do or say to try to pierce the 
difficulties of the moment. But you have never been shy in telling me 
what you thought before, so don't start now--[laughter]--because every 
one of us now has a huge stake in this.
    There is some good news here in some areas, and over the next 
several days we'll be seeing some progress, but there are a lot of 
clouds on the horizon, and we have to keep working at it. But I want you 
to know that it's not off my radar screen. It's still right there where 
it was the first day I took office. And I'm going to be disappointed 
when I leave office if we haven't gone much further. And I still believe 
we can, and I want you to believe that, and I want you to help me.
    But I want you also to just think, just for a moment one more time 
about the implications of this racial--because what I want to do is to 
get everybody to buy into that vision that we should be one America, 
that we should celebrate all the differences between us, but think that 
what unites us is more important; that we should get out the facts, 
because I've learned that we don't have the facts. I was astonished in 
the Gallup poll, polling African-Americans and whites just about 
different racial issues. They asked African-Americans and whites what 
percentage of our population is black. And the five choices were less 
than 5, between 5 and 10, between 10 and 20, between 20 and 49, or over 
half. Those were the five choices.
    By far, the biggest plurality--there was not a majority for any 
answer--but by far, the most votes went to 20 to 49 percent. The most 
votes of whites, the most votes of blacks said between 20 and 49 percent 
of the American population is black. The correct answer is 12. But like 
40 percent of both thought that. So if we don't even know what the facts 
are among us, you can imagine all the things we don't know about in more 
sophisticated ways, on more critical questions.
    Then I want to try to get some honest dialog going in every 
community. And the Jewish community has been very active at this in a 
lot of communities, so I ask you for your help for the White House in 
this. Help this advisory board I have appointed to reach out to things 
that are working now and get something like this in every community.
    And finally, we're going to try to come up with some specific, 
concrete solutions to go forward. But this is a huge deal. We can't hold 
America together and we can't maintain our position of moral leadership 
in the world to be for peace in a world that is coming apart around 
racial, ethnic, tribal, and religious differences unless we can deal 
with this. And we need to start now, before we have to figure out what 
we're going to do when things start to fray.
    On balance, I'm very upbeat about our country and about the world. 
And there will always be difficulties. There will always be problems. It 
is endemic to human nature. But if we could follow the admonition of the 
Christian Bible to love your neighbor as yourself, or Rabbi Hillel, who 
said, ``What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man,'' which is, 
it seems to me, just about the same thing, then this race initiative 
will have been one well worth taking.
    So again I say, I thank you for your support. I ask for your advice 
and your continued support. And more than anything else, I ask you to 
help your fellow Americans think about what we want this country to look 
like when our grandchildren are where we are.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 9:54 p.m. in the John Hay Room at the Hay 
Adams Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Carol Pensky, treasurer, and 
Alan D. Solomont, national finance chair, Democratic National Committee; 
David Steiner, vice chair, Monte Friedkin, national chair, D. Jeffrey 
Hirschberg, vice chair, Ira N. Forman, executive director, and Joel 
Tauber, member, National Jewish Democratic Council; Cynthia Friedman, 
national chair, Women's Leadership Forum; Richard Blum, husband of 
Senator Dianne Feinstein; and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman's wife, 
Hadassah.

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