    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [October 9, 1997]
    [Pages 1334-1337]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner
    October 9, 1997

        Thank you. Only a fool would speak after both a Baptist minister and
    a rabbi. [Laughter] Thank you, Steve. And I thank Vernon and Ann for
    having us here. Hillary and I and Chelsea, we've been here a lot over
    the last several years. This has often been a home away from home and on
    occasion, in difficult times, a real refuge for us. This is the largest
    crowd with whom I have ever dined in this room, with the fewest number
    of people related to Vernon and Ann. [Laughter] But we're all family in
    a way here, and I thank you for being here.
        I thought what might be good to do tonight is maybe I would just
    talk a couple of minutes and follow up on something that Vernon and
    Steve talked about, and then see if any of you

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    had any questions or comments you wanted to make or anything you wanted
    to say.
        Let me begin by thanking you for helping tonight and, for many of
    you, over many years. I've been feeling rather nostalgic lately, as you
    might imagine. Last week was the sixth anniversary of the date I
    declared for President. And we just took Chelsea off to school. A couple
    of days from now is my 22d wedding anniversary. I'm not feeling so young
    anymore. And almost five-eighths of my Presidency is over, which I have
    a difficult time believing.
        Let me tell you why I think what we're doing is important. I never
    will forget when I was trying to make up my mind whether to run for
    President in 1991. I didn't especially feel compelled to do it. I was
    having the most wonderful time of my life as a Governor, enjoying
    enormous success, great approval from our people; our family, our
    friends, everything was going great. I was very concerned then that our
    country seemed to be sort of lurching toward this new century and this
    incredible new era without any real strategy for how to proceed.
        And I was also concerned, very frankly, about the quality of the
    political debate in Washington in both parties. It seemed to me kind of
    stale and not very helpful. There was a lot of emphasis on what I
    thought of as ``old think,'' you know--liberal-conservative, left-right,
    in yesterday's terms--and a whole lot of emphasis on the politics of
    personal destruction which, regrettably, I have not quite succeeded in
    eliminating from Washington. It may be part of human nature.
        I read a great biography of General Grant the other day, pointing
    out that his commander in the Union Army, even though he kept winning
    and his men loved him and everybody thought he was great, was trying to
    replace him until finally he won at Vicksburg and no one could question
    whether he was the lead dog in the hunt--whereupon the guy immediately
    rushed to Lincoln and started talking about how great he was. So maybe
    this is just part of this town and the way it works.
        But I didn't like it very much, because it seemed to me then--it
    seems to me now--that we have all these incredible opportunities, but we
    have to be thinking about them in the right way. There is a great role
    and a need for two parties in this country, but they need to be having a
    principled debate about the future, not yesterday's debate about things
    that don't really matter anymore.
        And so, I set about doing what wound up winning the campaign in '92,
    saying that we had to focus on keeping the American dream alive,
    reasserting America's leadership in the world, and rebuilding America's
    community at home, and that we needed to focus on the future, not the
    past; on change, not the status quo; on unity, not division; on policies
    that helped everybody, not just a few. And I think it's fair to say it's
    worked pretty well, because not only is the economy doing well but crime
    has dropped for 5 years in a row. We have the biggest drop in welfare
    rolls in history now--3.6 million people tonight are living in families
    with payrolls who were living in families with welfare checks 4 years
    ago. That's something our country can be proud of. We have advanced the
    cause of the environment and public health. The country is better off.
        But if I look ahead to the future, I will say again, the reason this
    is important, why you're here tonight, and the reason it's important
    that we continue to be active in the political process and not be
    apologetic or believe there's anything wrong with it, is that we still
    have these huge decisions to make and we desperately need a principled
    debate about the future. That's what we owe our children. That's what we
    owe this country.
        Now, let me just give you a few. The major challenges confronting
    America for the remainder of this century and for the foreseeable future
    will be those posed by the globalization of the economy and the society,
    and the changing nature of the way we work and live as a result of the
    information and technology revolution. Among other things, one big
    challenge will be, how do you maintain individual opportunity and give
    everybody who is willing to work a chance with all this dynamism in the
    economy, number one? Number two, how do you make sure that we have the
    requisite set of policies--and maybe most important--to keep this
    economy going and competitive? That's what I think the fast-track issue
    is about. Number three, since we have a higher percentage of Americans
    than ever before in the workplace, how do we help people balance better
    the demands of work and family, since the most important job anyone ever
    has is still raising children properly? Nothing else compares to that.
    If we fail at that,

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    we can all work like crazy, and then when we're gone, the whole thing
    will crater.
        On the other hand, people shouldn't be asked to choose and face not
    succeeding as a parent because they can't balance these demands. That's
    why I worked so hard for the family leave act and the Kennedy-Kassebaum
    health care bill and the part of the balanced budget that will enable us
    to provide health insurance for 5 million more kids and working families
    who don't have it, because we have to find a way for people to succeed
    at rebuilding childhood in America and strong families and still keep
    growing this economy like crazy.
        The third thing that I want to say--or the fourth one, on
    globalization--we also, it seems to me, as Americans, have to put our
    minds more to bringing the strategies that have brought so many of us so
    much prosperity into the areas that have not been affected one way or
    the other by the good things that are happening. And I think we
    shouldn't miss that. There are areas that have not been affected one way
    or the other, that just are still static, and they are a great market
    for America. They're a great growth potential. They're a great potential
    strength for our future. So, there's that set of challenges.
        Then I think we have a set of generational challenges. I think we
    have to not only preserve Medicare and Social Security for future
    generations but we have to do it in a way that frees us up to focus on
    the fact that an enormous number of our children are still born into and
    reared in poverty and are, therefore, relatively disadvantaged compared
    to those of us who are not young. And we pay a big price for that.
        The next big challenge I think we have is, how do we deal with the
    very real and, I'm convinced, quite profound environmental challenges
    that will be presented to the world if China, India, and other countries
    grow quite wealthy, if they all get rich the same way we did? The
    President of China is about to come visit me, and we once had an
    interesting conversation in New York when he said, ``Sometimes I think
    the United States is trying to contain us. And we don't want to be a
    threat to you, and we don't want you to think we are.'' And I said,
    ``The only threat you propose to us right now is I'm afraid you want to
    get rich the same way we did, because if you do it in exactly the same
    way we did, all your cities will be clogged with pollution and will be
    heating up the atmosphere so fast that nothing I do will turn it
    around.'' And I could tell he'd never thought about it in those terms.
        This climate change issue, I think, is a very real issue. It's only
    one of many environmental challenges we have to face, but we have to
    prove that we can do it in a way that permits us to continue to grow the
    economy and doesn't make us look like we're trying to hold down people
    in countries that at long last are beginning to come into their own and
    give their kids a better future. It's a huge challenge. Science and
    technology--how are we going to deal with the potentials of it? Are
    there ethical dilemmas? I think there are. I've talked about them in
    some cases. But the United States has to maintain its leadership in
    these areas.
        Just two more that I think are very important. The world we're
    living in now, with no cold war and no clear divisions, gives us both an
    enormous opportunity to advance peace and freedom and democracy and our
    own security and prosperity, but it also presents us with a whole lot of
    new challenges that cross national lines. I don't know how many of you
    saw the article that was in our local paper within the last 2 weeks
    about how the South American drug cartels are linking up with the
    Russian mafia gangs who are far more diversified in their operations.
    So, they're becoming a cash cow for people who don't have as much money
    but have more connections in more different illegal and violent
    activities. That's just one little example of what happens.
        If you break down all these barriers to information, to movement, to
    money--all the things that are making it possible for many of you to do
    so well in the world--organized forces of destruction can equally take
    advantage of those declining barriers to cause us new and different
    problems. So you will have--in our lifetime, we'll have to face problems
    of terrorism, organized crime and drugs, and ethnic and racial and
    religious hatreds spawning wars, not to mention the fact that diseases
    will travel across international borders more quickly, especially if
    there are compounding environmental problems.
        These are new challenges. We have to be thinking about them. We
    cannot afford to be mired in a debate that either makes us smaller than
    we are, keeps us torn up and upset all the time, or distracts us away
    from the real challenges of our people. And I have to say,

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    you know, you've all heard me say this in the beginning, but I think the
    two most important things that we can really do for our own people are
    make sure that we give genuine excellence of education to every child
    and give everybody in America the opportunity to go to college who is
    willing to go and work for it, and find a way to make a strength rather
    than a weakness of our diversity.
        I can't tell you--I don't want to embarrass him, but I had a
    wonderful talk with Dr. Wong at dinner, whom I admire so much, and he
    was telling me that he and the President of China graduated from the
    same university from the same department a few years apart. So we have
    an American, who has done a great thing in our country, who can be a
    part of our attempts to have a peaceful future with China.
        We also have people from India, from Pakistan, from every country in
    Latin America, from every country in Europe, from every country in
    Africa. This is an incredible gift, and we should not blow it. And a lot
    of people think I talk about this more than I should, but it's great. If
    you saw what I saw and the way I see it, how much time I have to spend
    getting people around the world to stop killing each other and
    essentially stop behaving on primitive or childish impulses, whether
    it's in Bosnia or the Middle East, or Rwanda and Burundi, or Northern
    Ireland, and you realize that these people--oftentimes they go along for
    years and they do just fine, and then something snaps, they're poorly
    led, and they disintegrate into destructive behavior. We need to be able
    to be a model to the world that will stand as a stern rebuke to that
    kind of conduct so that we can spread it around.
        Now, these are the kinds of things that political debates ought to
    be about. We will always have a difference with our friends in the
    Republican Party, but it's not yesterday's difference. Fundamentally, I
    believe that what we stand for is--if I could just sort of ad lib with
    the quote that Steve gave about relationships--what we believe is that
    our individual lives are more fulfilled when we work together through
    strong units--families, communities, businesses--and that Government is
    one of those, and that there are some things we have to do together that
    we can only do through Government, that we can't do in other ways.
        And I say that as the man who downsized the Government more than
    President Reagan did, gave more authority to State and local
    governments, and privatized more operations than President Reagan did,
    but stood strongly for doing more in education and health care and
    research, in science and technology, in environmental action than
    Presidents of the other party and Members of Congress of the other
    party.
        I think this is what we're about. And we have to be--we have to
    imagine the future and then try to define it. And we should welcome a
    principled debate on the other side. We should welcome debates within
    our party. I noticed there has been a lot of publicity lately about the
    debates within the Republican Party about whether they should just keep
    on their Government-hating tirade or whether they should have a more
    sophisticated view, and they're debating that. I think that's a healthy
    thing for them. And it will be a good thing for the country.
        We need this. And that's what you're contributing to. I'm telling
    you, if we find a way to really provide opportunity for everybody, if we
    find a way to resolve our intergenerational responsibilities, if we can
    find a way to grow the economy and preserve the environment and even
    improve it, if we can keep America ahead of the curves and live together
    as one country, and finally, if I or my successors can persuade a heavy
    majority of the American people that we have to lead in this world that
    we no longer dominate--the most frustrating thing for me in terms of
    communication is, no matter how many talks I give or how many times I
    give this speech, most Americans, I think, still don't--they may trust
    me to do it, but they still don't necessarily agree that it's in our
    interest to be involved in an aggressive way with other countries and
    their future. But if we can do these things, the best days of this
    country are still out there.
        And that is what your contribution is about. It's about giving us a
    chance to do that, and I hope you'll be very proud of it. You ought to
    be happy with the results today, but the main results will come when
    most of us aren't around anymore. And that's just as it should be.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:35 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to Steve Grossman, national chair, Democratic
    National Committee; dinner hosts Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., and his wife,
    Ann; President Jiang Zemin of China; and dinner guest Dr. C.J. Wong.