[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.