    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [September 20, 1997]
    [Pages 1204-1205]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in San Francisco
    September 20, 1997

        Hillary and I are trying to get used to our first 48 hours of the
    empty nest syndrome. [Laughter] And so we found the youngest couple we
    could to host this dinner tonight--[laughter]--who have 17 years to
    worry about this happening.
        I want to thank Halsey and Deborah for taking us in. And thank you,
    John and Ann and Brook and Sandy and Jeanne, all of you who sponsored
    this dinner tonight.
        I will be very brief. I'm obviously in a rather reflective mood, as
    all of you who have ever sent a child off to college would be at this
    moment. I am profoundly grateful for the chance I've had to serve as
    President, grateful for the support I have received in two elections
    from the people of California, and particularly appreciative of the
    unprecedented help I have had not only in elections but as President
    from the communities represented in this room--sometimes directly
    working with us on hooking up more of our classrooms and libraries to
    the Internet, providing the software, the hardware, the training of
    teachers, sometimes indirectly, by continuing to advance the frontiers
    of knowledge and grow the economy.
        I want to leave you basically with a simple thought as we break up
    and go to dinner. I came to this job 5 years ago with what I thought was
    a very clear, simple vision. I recognized a lot of the details I didn't
    know, although I thought I knew a lot about the basic economic issues
    and the basic educational issues and the basic social policies before
    the country. But I wanted to prepare America for a new century. I wanted
    to create opportunity, make sure that we could create, together,
    opportunity for everybody who would work for it. I wanted us to come
    together, instead of be driven apart, by our diversity. And I wanted us
    to continue to lead the world toward peace and freedom and prosperity.
        The first thing we had to do was fix a lot of things that weren't
    working, that just didn't make any sense. One was our economic policy;
    so we adopted a new one designed to invest in our people, balance the
    budget, and expand trade in American products and services. It has
    worked. You have made it work. Millions of other Americans have made it
    work. But no one can seriously question that fiscal responsibility,
    investing in people and technology and our future, expanding American
    trade makes sense. And it's basically taken a burden off the backs of
    the American people in our productive capacity and also tried to play to
    our strengths.
        The second thing we tried to do is to basically make America
    habitable again by having a serious anticrime policy that built on what
    was working on the streets. Now no one seriously questions that the
    Brady bill and the assault weapons ban and the 100,000 more police--that
    that was the right approach. And it's a good thing to have crime going
    down dramatically. People, just friends of mine who aren't even in
    politics, comment from time to time now as they travel from American
    city to American city how much safer it is in city X, Y, or Z than it
    used to be.
        We have changed the way the Government works. We had the biggest
    reduction in welfare rolls in history. The Federal Government has
    300,000 fewer people working for it than it did the day I became
    President. And we are trying, slowly but surely, to modernize it.
        I saw someone out of your general line of work was in Washington the
    other day saying that most people out here operated at 3 times faster
    than normal business life; most people in Government operate 3 times
    slower. Therefore, you're nine to one ahead of us. [Laughter] I don't
    know who said that, but I think the math is right and the
    characterization is roughly accurate. But I'm trying to change that.

    [[Page 1205]]

        So tonight, as I think about the future of all those young people
    who started college yesterday, I think America is very well poised for
    the future. But I think things are changing so rapidly we have to
    recognize that a lot of our systems still don't work as well as they
    should, especially the education system. And more importantly, I think
    we should be focusing on what we need to make work for the future. How
    can we now provide the kind of institutional and environmental framework
    to guarantee that America will work well 20, 30, 40 years from now, to
    give America a chance to succeed, to give these dreams that our children
    have a chance to prevail?
        The one huge issue we have to face is how to continue to grow the
    economy while improving dramatically our capacity to preserve the
    environment. I'm convinced the climate change challenge is real, and yet
    there are no simple, easy answers about how to transition our economy
    from where it is now to where it needs to go.
        Another problem we haven't resolved is, how can people reconcile
    work and family? More and more people are working and raising children,
    and we need them to succeed at both. Desperately, we need people to
    succeed at both. And that means we have to have new arrangements. And
    then there's all the technology questions that you're more familiar with
    than I am.
        We have succeeded, I think dramatically, in reducing the nuclear
    threat. And we're going to do more the next 3 years. But our children
    will live in a world where terrorism, organized crime crossing national
    borders using high technology, drug trafficking, and people who have
    high-tech weapons but very primitive designs rooted in ethnic,
    religious, and racial hatreds, can cause a lot of trouble to a lot of
    people who 10 years ago would have never even bought into it. But now,
    because the world is so mobile and borders are so open and porous, we
    all become more vulnerable. So we have to figure out ways to protect
    privacy and yet give ourselves the common capacity to promote public
    safety.
        So what I'd like to talk about tonight over dinner is, what about
    all those things in the future? I'm very glad the country is in better
    shape than it was 5 years ago, but we still have a lot to do to give our
    children the country that they deserve and to feel like all of us have
    done our job. And anything you can do to help, I'll be very grateful
    for.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:09 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Halsey Minor, chairman and chief
    executive officer, The Computer Network (CNET), and his wife, Deborah;
    John Doerr, partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, and his wife,
    Ann; Brook Byers, partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers; and
    Sanford R. (Sandy) Robertson, chairman, Robertson, Stephens & Co., and
    his wife, Jeanne.