    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [October 4, 1997]
    [Pages 1289-1293]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Dinner for Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Don Beyer in
    Arlington, Virginia
    October 4, 1997

        Thank you. Well, Don, I can say yes to almost everything you asked
    for. [Laughter] I don't know about the car deal. We'll have to negotiate
    that. [Laughter] Everything else, put me down for a ``yes.'' [Laughter]
        Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the warm welcome, and thank you
    for being here for Don and Megan. Thank you for inviting me. I want to
    begin by expressing my enormous admiration and gratitude for the
    friendships of two people in this audience with whom I served as
    Governor, Chuck Robb and Gerry Baliles, two of the greatest Governors
    Virginia ever saw.
        In addition to everything Don said, I also would be remiss if I did
    not thank Gerry for his leadership of the special commission I
    established on the future of the airline industry. When we started,
    every airline company in America but one was losing money. We were in
    terrible shape. But it is a very different situation today, thanks in no
    small measure to the recommendations that Gerry Baliles made several
    years ago that we have implemented. And the country is in your debt, and
    we thank you, sir.
        And I also want you to know from my point of view, I'm not sure
    there is a person in the United States Senate, given his background, his
    constituency, the battles he's been through, that when he was really
    needed, showed more consistent personal courage as a public figure than
    Chuck Robb has these last 5 years. And I am very grateful to him for
    that.
        I think the most battle-hardened veterans of war would tell you that
    there are many different ways of displaying courage and very few people
    can display them in every way you should in life. Everyone knew what a
    great battlefield record Chuck Robb had, but I have seen him stand up
    under withering personal attacks. I have seen him take votes that people
    in much safer constituencies than his would not take. I have seen him
    honorably and in a friendly manner disagree with his President when he
    thought I was wrong, and every time I knew he was doing exactly what he
    thought was right. And you should be very, very proud of that.
        I want to compliment your whole Democratic team. I was glad to see
    Bill Dolan out there, and I miss L.F. Payne in Congress, but it will be
    nice seeing him in State office in Virginia. And thank you both for
    running, and thank you for being a part of this.
        Let me say that I have been especially enthusiastic about Don
    Beyer's campaign for Governor, for what I think are good reasons. But I
    think the stakes are also very high. Everybody knows that in general
    Virginia has been a Republican State that able Democrats have been able
    to beat the odds in on occasion in the

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    last 20 years. I have enjoyed a lot of friends and a lot of support from
    this State for which I am very grateful.
        But I want you to understand why I think this governorship is
    important to the future of the country. And if you'll give me a few
    minutes, this is not exactly a political speech, but you have just a--
    not very long before the election, and I want you to understand what I
    believe the significance of this election is to the children of this
    State, to the future of this State, and perhaps for the message it might
    send to our whole country as we move into next year when there will be
    36 Governors' races like this throughout the country.
        It was--just 2 days ago marked the 6th anniversary of my formal
    entry into the race for President on October 3, 1991. I can't believe it
    was so long ago. [Laughter] At that time, I had been Governor for quite
    a long while, and I was Democrat by heritage, instinct, and conviction.
    I was extremely frustrated by the state of play in our national debate
    because I thought there was too much hot air, too much rhetoric, too
    much sort of tired old fights replaying themselves over and over again
    in Washington that had very little to do with the future that I was
    struggling to build for our people in our State.
        And I said, ``Look, I have a vision of what our country should be
    like in the 21st century, and I don't think we're moving there. I
    believe that we ought to be a nation in which everyone who takes the
    responsibility for doing so should have an opportunity to make the most
    of his or her own life. I believe we ought to be a country in which we
    are coming together across the lines that divide us into one America,
    not being divided for short-term political gain. And I believe we ought
    to be a country that continues to lead the world for peace and freedom
    and prosperity. And if we are going to be that kind of country, that
    means we have to take a new direction. We have to favor policies that
    are pushing the future, not the past. We have to lead, not follow. We
    have to work for unity, not division. We have to work for people, not
    power politics. And we have to work in a way that supports progressive
    change, not the status quo.''
        And that means that we have to do things very differently. It also
    means that we need a different kind of Government, a Government that
    doesn't try to do everything but doesn't pretend it can do nothing.
    That's the new Republican message, basically: Government is the enemy
    and people don't need any help.
        My view is that the role of Government is to give people the tools
    to make the most of their own lives and to try to create the conditions
    in which they can succeed in doing that. That's what I believe.
        For almost 5 years now we've been implementing that approach. And
    uncomfortably for our opponents, there is now a record on which people
    can make a judgment. And I'm really proud that America is better off
    today than it was 5 years ago, much better off. We believed that we
    could have an economic policy that reduced the deficit and balanced the
    budget and still have money left over to invest in our future, in our
    children, in education. We believed that we could expand trade in ways
    that both were free and fair. And the results have given us the
    strongest economy in generations.
        We believed we could fight crime in ways that were tough but also
    smart, to try to keep kids out of trouble as well as punishing those who
    got into trouble. And we believed we ought to put 100,000 police on the
    street and we ought to take the assault weapons off the street. And I
    saw a lot of good people--and we didn't think it would kill anybody if
    they had to wait a while to buy a handgun until we checked out whether
    they had a criminal record.
        Now, the results are in, and crime is dropping. And I believe that
    new approach is one of the reasons every single law enforcement group in
    this State endorsed Don Beyer for Governor, because they know--
    [applause].
        We believe we had to end the culture of poverty and welfare
    dependency in a way that was not just tough but was also pro-family. But
    it was one thing to require people to go to work, but you had to do it
    in a way that also supported our fundamental and most important job,
    which is the raising of our children. So we could be tough on work, but
    we had to be good to children. And that's why we said no when the people
    in the other party tried to take away the guarantee of health care and
    nutrition to our children, and why we said, ``If you want to require
    people to go to work, make sure they have job training and make sure
    they've got child care when they go to work so their kids will be all
    right, and then we'll be successful.''

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        That approach has given us the biggest drop in welfare rolls in
    history and the lowest percentage of Americans on welfare since 1970.
    After 20 years of immigration and a lot of people from all over the
    world who were on low income, we still have the lowest percentage of our
    people on welfare we've had since 1970. So it worked.
        We also reduced the size of the Government by 300,000 people, got
    rid of 16,000 pages of regulation, and gave more authority back to State
    and local government, forged more partnerships with the private sector.
    All that worked.
        And now we are looking to facing the future. And that's where the
    Governors come in. The job of Governor is now more important than it was
    5 years ago. Why? Because Governors have more responsibility. And what
    is their responsibility? Well, if we know what the right path is on
    crime, if we know what the right path is on welfare, if we are
    practicing fiscal responsibility, what does it take to create that
    vision in the lives of the American people, to create opportunity for
    all responsible people? What does it take to bring us together across
    the lines that divide us? What does it take to keep America strong,
    leading the world?
        Well, among other things, it takes an unlimited commitment, in my
    judgment, to the proposition that we have to preserve our environment
    while we grow our economy. That means Don Beyer should be Governor of
    Virginia.
        Our administration has passed the Safe Drinking Water Act. We've
    cleaned up millions of tons of chemicals from the air. We're tightening
    air pollution regulations. We are working very hard across a whole broad
    span of things. We have cleaned up more toxic waste dumps in 4 years
    than the previous administrations did in the last 12, and we're going to
    clean up 500 more.
        But there are still some things that the States have to do, and that
    we have to work in partnership with the States on. The pfiesteria thing
    is one issue. The Chesapeake is another. It matters who the Governor is.
    I'm telling you, if you care about the environment, it is not enough to
    vote for Members of Congress and for the Presidency on environmental
    issues. It really matters what the environmental philosophy of the
    Governor of Virginia is, and it will have a lot to do with your future.
    That's the first thing.
        The second big issue: One of the major contributions of the
    Democrats in Congress to this balanced budget agreement was the biggest
    expansion in health care for children since Medicaid was enacted in
    1965: $24 billion to provide enough money to insure 5 million more
    children in America, and almost all of them in working families who
    don't have health insurance. About half the kids in the country don't
    have health insurance.
        How are we going to do that? In a partnership with the States. You
    need a Governor who believes that these kids ought to have health
    insurance and who will be devoted to implementing that program in the
    proper way. Virginia has a lot of people who are working hard to raise
    their children. They show up for work every day; they pay their taxes;
    they ought to see that their kids have health insurance. It will not
    happen unless this legislation which we passed is actually made real in
    the lives of the children of Virginia. And it will matter a very great
    deal who the Governor is. That's another reason to be for Don Beyer for
    Governor of Virginia.
        The third reason--and in my judgment, even though it's not the last
    point I want to make, it is still the overriding point--is the question
    of education. Virginia has been devoted to the cause of education for a
    long time--perhaps the best system of higher education in the United
    States, certainly one of the four or five best systems in the country,
    in Virginia. You know that.
        We also know that our system of K through 12 education is not as
    good as it ought to be. And there's a lot of ferment and debate in
    America about that. Don asked me to veto any attempt to divert public
    school money to the private schools. That's my speech. I agree with
    that. I'm all for more choices for people within the public schools, and
    I understand why people make other choices, and I like privately funded
    scholarship programs for private schools. But the truth is that most of
    our public schools today are underfunded, not overfunded. You will not
    make education better for the vast majority of people by further
    weakening the funding level. They should be held accountable. Standards
    should be raised. We should improve them.
        But what are we going to do? There are a lot of things that I could
    talk about. We could stay here until dawn talking about education. But
    I'll just mention two that Don has made

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    important. One is technology. We now know that, properly implemented,
    technology in our schools can, for example, do things--we know that it
    will help the brilliant kids who already know more than their parents do
    about computers. [Laughter] We know that. But what we now know is, that
    properly implemented in the early grades, technology can help children
    who have learning problems, can lift reading levels, can lift
    comprehension levels. We know that.
        And in our budget we have funds that would put us on the way toward
    making sure we hook up every library and school classroom to the
    Internet by the year 2000. He wants to have one computer for every five
    students. That is the future of America. That's another good reason to
    be for Don Beyer for Governor of Virginia.
        You already heard Don express his opinion about the standards issue,
    whether we should have national standards and a national exam. And you
    know that his opponent is against it. Let me tell you, if there was ever
    an example of the conflict between ideology and reality, this is it.
    There is not a single major country in the world, except the United
    States, that does not have national standards for what constitutes
    adequate knowledge in the dominant language of the country, in
    mathematics, in science, and a number of other things--only the United
    States.
        Now, we have said, ``Well, we don't want to do that because we've
    always had local control of the schools. We don't want the Federal
    Government to engage in some power grab.'' And that's the sort of
    ideological hit we're taking for doing this. Let me remind you that the
    first call for national standards and national exams to measure them
    came at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville in 1989, endorsed
    by President George Bush--I stayed up all night long writing that
    national education goals statement--endorsed by Republican and
    Democratic Governors alike. The Republican Governors were insisting on
    it.
        I got elected. We said, ``Let's do it.'' All of a sudden they said,
    ``The Federal Government is trying to take over the schools.''
    [Laughter] Mathematics is the same in Virginia and Vermont. [Laughter]
    Language is the same in Michigan and Maine. This is crazy.
        Furthermore, our plan simply says that the States can voluntarily
    participate or not. The local school districts can voluntarily
    participate or not. The Federal Government's sole role in the bill that
    Chuck Robb voted for that passed 87 to 12 in the Senate is to pay for
    the development of the test to be supervised by the bipartisan or
    nonpartisan national board established by Congress, with Republican and
    Democrats and educators on it--already supervising tests given in 40
    States but to only selected students--so that every fourth grader could
    take a reading test. If the kids have not been here long enough,
    obviously they shouldn't be held to a knowledge in English that they
    couldn't possibly make. So that's not a problem; we're not going to
    unfairly discriminate against the children of immigrants.
        Nothing in this test can be used to hold back kids. This test is
    designed to say: If you don't know what you need to know, here is a
    roadmap; here's what you should know; here's what you don't know; here's
    what your teacher, here's what your schools can do to make sure you get
    up to snuff. I think the kids that are the most disadvantaged kids in
    the country have the biggest stake in the success of this national
    standards program. How will we ever get all our public schools up unless
    there are high standards by which we can measure them?
        Now, if there was ever an issue which ought to determine--with no
    other issues taken into account--the outcome of a Governor's race in any
    State in America, it should be the education standards issue. And in
    Virginia, which is proud of itself, from the time of Thomas Jefferson,
    in leading the country in education, surely you ought to send a message
    to the country that Virginia will vote for national standards of
    excellence for all our children in the next election, and not against
    it--surely.
        And there's one last issue I want you to think about, because I
    think it sends a big message to the country. We are in the process of
    becoming a truly multiracial, multiethnic democracy in a way that no
    other nation is. Now, India is bigger than we are and, believe it or
    not, they have even more languages spoken within their border. Russia
    has many, many different languages spoken, many different ethnic groups.
    But the difference is, almost all the people who are in different groups
    live only with their own group on their own piece of land, and they're
    not nearly as blended as we are. With all of our problems of
    segregation, we are clearly becoming the most integrated, multiracial,
    multiethnic, multireligious democracy in the world.

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        And as I'm sure virtually everyone is this room knows, based on the
    best evidence we have, the most diverse school district in the United
    States is Fairfax County, Virginia--in the entire country. Look around
    this room. We've got all different kinds of people, all different
    backgrounds. In a global economy, in a global society, where the real
    threats to our future are threats that can cross national borders--
    terrorist groups, drug traffickers, international criminal gangs, people
    robbing accounts through clever uses of computers--whether we can work
    together and live together and solve our problems together will
    determine our success as a nation.
        I think the person who is elected Governor of Virginia sends a clear
    signal about what this State, which was at the base of our founding and
    wants to be in the vanguard of our future, believes about whether we can
    build one America. And that's another big reason to be for Don Beyer for
    Governor of Virginia.
        I worked with Chuck Robb. I worked with Gerry Baliles. I worked with
    Doug Wilder. I want to work in a new way with Don Beyer. But I want you
    to do it not for me and not because we really want to say our new
    Democratic Party is accepted in Virginia but because we're building a
    new America for the 21st century, because we have within our hands the
    capacity to build a future better than any past the United States has
    ever had, able to put all of you in this room and all the people you
    represent together in an incredible kaleidoscope of opportunity,
    achievement, and common endeavor.
        But it really will matter who your Governor is; what the priorities
    are; whether we are for the future, not the past; change, not the status
    quo; unity, not division; people, not politics. That's what Don Beyer
    represents. You've got a few weeks to go out and make sure that he wins
    on election night, and I want you to do it.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:35 p.m. in Chesapeake Hall at the
    National Airport Hilton Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Mr.
    Beyer's wife, Megan; William D. Dolan III, Democratic candidate for
    attorney general of Virginia; L.F. Payne, Jr., Democratic candidate for
    Lieutenant Governor of Virginia; and L. Douglas Wilder, former Virginia
    Governor.