    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [December 11, 1997]
    [Pages 1752-1756]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in Miami
    December 11, 1997

        Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much. Mr. Mayor, Mrs.
    Penelas, Lieutenant Governor MacKay, and to Chris and Gene and Mitch
    Berger--I thank all three of them for all the work they did to make this
    night a sterling success. I thank Governor Romer and Dan Dutko and Alan
    Solomont for the work that the DNC has done. And about the only thing
    harder than being President on a regular basis is trying to do a standup
    comedy routine at a fundraiser. And I thought they were both great, so
    let's give them another hand. I thought they were great. [Applause]
        You know, I have a lot of friends in this crowd tonight. Many of you
    have been with me for a long time. And today I had two immensely
    satisfying experiences. First, I went out on a Coast Guard cutter and
    met with a number

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    of people in the Coast Guard who are working to protect the borders of
    our country here off the coast of southern Florida. In the last year
    they have had a 1,000 percent increase in the number of arrests and a
    300 percent increase in the volume of drug confiscations because of
    their efforts. And I just went to encourage them and to thank them. And
    then we had, earlier today, a marvelous kick-off fundraiser for
    Lieutenant Governor Buddy MacKay's campaign for Governor. And many of
    you said something to me about that.
        I want to thank you for being here for the Democratic Party. I want
    to thank you for being here for the people of south Florida, for the
    people of Miami-Dade County. This State has been extraordinarily good to
    me. My first real victory, when I started running for President, was in
    the Florida Democratic Convention straw poll in December of 1991. I will
    never forget that.
        And we came very close to carrying Florida in 1992. And I strongly
    felt that we could and would carry it in 1996 because of the opportunity
    that so many of you gave me to work with you--for sensible immigration
    policies, for sensible policies toward our neighbors in this hemisphere,
    for sensible policies on crime and drugs and housing and economic
    growth, for sensible partnerships for the State of Florida, and one of
    the most important things we've done since I've been President, for an
    aggressive effort to save the Florida Everglades. Thank you all for the
    opportunities you have given me.
        If you look at Florida, which in so many ways represents where
    America is going, with all of its opportunities and its challenges, a
    State full of people who are older--well, we're all getting older, and
    life expectancies are going up. And I don't know about you, but with
    every passing day I like that more and more. I think that's a fine idea.
    [Laughter] Florida, a State where people from all over the world are
    living here--we're all getting more diverse all over America; a State
    with high-tech employment and with people who are dying to work who
    don't have much education; a State with a lot of innovative partnerships
    to solve problems like crime and drugs, and on occasion, too much crime
    and drugs; a State with enormous economic growth and a passionate
    commitment to the environment, with a profound challenge about how to
    save this often fragile environment and maintain the adequacy of a clean
    water supply and the strength of your commitment to clean air and the
    strength of your commitment to basically preserving the ecostructure
    that makes everybody else get in a car or get in an airplane and come to
    Florida.
        So you ought to be on the forefront of the Democratic Party of the
    21st century. You know, we started my campaign for President in '96, and
    they said, ``Well, what does the map look like?'' And I said, ``I'll
    tell you one thing; it looks like Florida will be in our camp this time.
    And that's my priority.'' And let me say, I was the only guy in the
    meeting who thought that. [Laughter] But I spent a lot of time here; I
    knew what kind of people were leading Florida into the 21st century. I
    knew what the challenges were; I knew what the opportunities were; I
    knew what the passionate commitment to going forward together was.
        And I never will forget this--we had our first campaign meeting--I
    said, ``Look, don't tell me we can't win Florida.'' They said ``Nobody
    has won it in 20 years, and President Carter came from a State that
    bordered Florida.'' I said, ``Everybody in this room raise your hands
    who has been there the most times.'' I won that. I'd been to Florida
    more than any of the people who were advising me. And I said, ``We're
    going to target Florida; we're going to win Florida. And what's going to
    happen is, early on election night they're going to have one of those
    funny little maps that are on television and Florida is going to blink
    on and off, on and off, on and off, and the whole country will go nuts
    and say the election is over.'' And that's exactly what happened, and I
    thank you for that. It was a great day.
        Now, what is it that we're trying to do? First, why are you here?
    What is the purpose of politics? What is politics? Does it deserve a
    good name or a bad name? The people who give it a bad name ought to
    think a long time. The reason this country is around here, after 220
    years plus, as the oldest consistent democracy in human history, is
    because of politics. Politics is how free people work together to work
    their will and make their decisions and reach their principled
    compromise. And the framework within which it works is the system that
    has taken us from the Constitutional Convention to this moment. And I
    say to you, I think the purpose of it still is to preserve the liberty
    and the integrity of the American people and to give the American people
    a framework in which

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    they can work together to meet the challenges of each new age so that we
    increase opportunity and so that we have a responsible citizenry and so
    that we continue to come together as a community.
        If you look at the whole history of America, every period of crisis
    has required us to redefine our commitment to our national unity and has
    required us to ask ourselves, what does it mean, our Constitution, in
    this context? What does it mean to say all of us are created equal by
    God? What does it mean to say we have an indissoluble Union? What has
    that got to do with the immigration decisions we have to make? What has
    that got to do with the education decisions we have to make? What has
    that got to do with the economic decisions we have to make or the
    environmental or health care or you-name-it decisions? That's what this
    is about.
        And when I ran for President and came to Florida and asked the
    people here to help me, I said that we had to change the political
    debate in this country. The Democratic Party needed to take its oldest
    values and adopt some new ideas, and we needed to be unselfconsciously,
    unapologetically for policies that favored the future over the past,
    that favored everyone over a few, and that favored unity over division.
    And I was sick and tired of the politics of personal destruction and
    division which people seem almost pathologically trapped in in
    Washington, DC. And I'm still tired of it, and that's why this country
    is doing better.
        I had what many people thought was a terminal disability when I ran
    for President: I hadn't been in Washington for 20 years. But I had been
    in a place where people got up every day and went to work and tried to
    make the best of their own lives and tried to make sense of what was
    going on in this country. And so, together, you and I, my friends, we
    began to change America. We began to change the direction. We began to
    change the old debate over the role of Government.
        I mean, to read in the papers for years what was going on in
    Washington was like--the Democrats said Government can do everything,
    and the Republicans said Government can do nothing. The truth is, I
    never heard a Democrat say that, but they said we said it--[laughter]--
    and they often get away with labeling us.
        And I said we've tried for 12 years their way. For 12 years we've
    tried just railing about problems and talking tough and doing nothing
    about crime or welfare. For 12 years we've tried campaigning against the
    Government and talking about how it's the problem, and I've seen the
    debt quadruple in this country. How about if we say the role of
    Government is to give people the tools and establish the conditions for
    people to make the most of their own lives, to build strong careers and
    strong families and strong communities and a strong Nation; and that
    Government should be seen as a partner, not sitting on the sidelines,
    not trying to dictate from Washington but giving people the tools to do
    what has to be done? I've always believed the American people could do
    anything given a fair chance, given the tools, given a hand up.
        And you know, I heard a lot of railing over the years about how we
    were the party of handouts. I always wanted the Democrats to be the
    party of the hand up. And I think that's what we are today, and I think
    the results show that we have been right in that.
        I say that because if your friends and neighbors come up to you in
    this Governor's race next year and they ask you, well, why are you for
    the Democrat--or in the Congress races or in the Senate race--you ought
    to say, ``Listen, I'm for Democrats because we believe that everybody
    ought to have an opportunity, everybody ought to be a responsible
    citizen and serve, and everybody ought to be part of a unified American
    community. We are not for demonizing, denigrating, or segregating any
    group of Americans who otherwise are law-abiding, go to work, go to
    school, pay their taxes, and do what they're supposed to do. I am a
    Democrat because our policies were right, and theirs were wrong.''
        When we said we're going to reduce the deficit and grow the economy,
    in Washington all the Republicans voted against us. They said we were
    going to bring down the economy. Five years later, 14 million jobs
    later, the lowest unemployment rate in 24 years later, we now know our
    position was right, theirs was wrong. You need to tell the people of
    Florida they all need to come home to the Democratic Party to build a
    better future.
        Now, when--I worried about Governor Chiles having to run for
    reelection 4 years ago because they said, ``All the Democrats are trying
    to take our guns away. Nobody in rural Florida is going to be able to go
    hunting anymore. Bill Clinton betrayed his Arkansas roots, passing that

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    neosocialist Brady bill, with the radical proposition that we ought not
    to be selling handguns to people who were felons, fugitives, and
    stalkers, and the radical idea that there's no point in letting people
    who are in gangs on streets in tough neighborhoods and cities have
    assault weapons that were designed to kill people, not hunt birds, and
    the radical proposition that after 30 years in which we tripled crime,
    violent crime in America, but only increased our police forces by 10
    percent, it might be a good thing if we put 100,000 police on the street
    and put them back in the neighborhoods where they can talk to people,
    work with people, and stop crime from happening in the first place.''
    That was our idea.
        Now, the other side made a lot of hay 3 or 4 years ago, told all
    these country people I was going to take their guns away--beat some of
    our Congressmen, gave our Governor here a little scare. But now we know.
    We also have the lowest crime rate in 24 years. No law-abiding Florida
    hunter has lost his gun. Over a quarter of a million felons, fugitives,
    and stalkers couldn't buy handguns. Thousands and thousands and
    thousands of people have not been able to get assault weapons to further
    gang warfare. The police are on the street. The preventive programs are
    out there. We've got the lowest crime rate in 24 years. It is not
    subject to debate. You ought to tell the people of Florida to join the
    new Democratic Party and be for a safer future for all of our children.
    That's what this is about.
        In the last balanced budget--thank goodness, we finally had a
    bipartisan balanced budget. But don't forget, at the time on the day,
    the very day, October 1st, that the new balanced budget law took effect,
    we had by then, under the old budget law passed in 1993--only by Members
    of our party--reduced the deficit by 92 percent from where it was the
    day I became your President--92 percent.
        So then we got a bipartisan balanced budget. What was our party's
    contribution? The biggest increase in child health since 1964; biggest
    increase in aid to education since the same time; biggest increase in
    helping people go to college through tax credits, Pell grants, work-
    study programs, IRA's you can save for and withdraw from tax-free for
    education, the biggest increase since the GI bill in 1945.
        We represent a commitment to excellence and opportunity in
    education. And that is the key to giving every American, no matter what
    his or her racial, ethnic, or economic background, a chance to succeed
    in the global economy of the 21st century. And that's another reason the
    people of Florida ought to support our approach, not only at the
    national level but in this Governor's race, because if we don't have
    excellence in education, we will never be able to bring the rainbow of
    people who live in Florida together into one America. And you need to be
    out there leading the charge for us in 1998 for educational excellence.
        There are lots of other things. I'm trying to pass a patients' bill
    of rights for people in HMO's, not because I'm against HMO's but because
    I think you ought to have access to quality and information, as well as
    affordable health care.
        I am determined to finish the job of helping the Everglades
    restoration and also to deal with this problem of global climate change.
    You think of what will happen in south Florida if the climate of the
    globe goes up somewhere between 2 and 5 or 6 degrees in the next 100
    years. I'll tell you what will happen. Sometime in the next 100 years,
    half of it will be under water. This is not a bunch of games we're
    playing here. We are trying to get people together to grow our economy
    and preserve the environment of our country and this globe long term.
        So the new fear is going to say, ``Oh, there goes the President;
    he's going to wreck the economy with this cockamamie idea about global
    warming.'' I'll tell you what will wreck the economy, is if we continue
    to have more and more and more extreme weather and we have disruption
    along all of our coasts and people don't feel that they are secure
    anymore because our generation refused to take responsible actions to
    reduce the pollution of the atmosphere.
        For 30 years, every time we've done something to clean up the air,
    the water, the food supply, clean up toxic waste dumps, people who
    weren't for it said we were going to wreck the economy. I have heard it
    for 5 years. Five years later, compared to the day I became President,
    there are fewer toxic waste dumps; the food is safer; the air is
    cleaner; the water is purer; and we've got 14 million new jobs and the
    lowest unemployment rate in 24 years. We can clean up the environment,
    and that's another reason you ought to be a Democrat. And I'm asking you
    for these things.

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        Finally, let me just make this last point. Mayor Penelas thanked me
    for the race initiative. To me, politics will always have a human face.
    Sometimes I read things people say, and they act like that's a weakness
    on my part, that I'm actually interested in people as individuals
    instead of as a great sea of unknown faces. But I am persuaded that even
    Presidents, when they get ready to breathe their last breath and they're
    laying down, they don't think about their greatest political triumph;
    they think about the people they loved, the people they like, what it
    was like in the springtime, what it was like when their children walked
    for the first time.
        All politics is about is about giving everybody a chance to live
    their dreams. We represent the party of tomorrow's dreams. And that's
    what you're here supporting tonight. I want you to redouble your efforts
    so we can do it more and more and more in 1998.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 8:15 p.m. at the Biltmore Hotel. In his
    remarks, he referred to Executive Mayor Alex Penelas of Miami-Dade
    County and his wife, Lilliam; Chris Korge, Gene Prescott, and Mitchell
    W. Berger, event chairs; Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado, national chair, and
    Alan D. Solomont, national finance chair, Democratic National Committee;
    Dan Dutko, chair, Victory Fund; and comedians Judy Gold and Carolyn
    Rhea.