    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [December 1, 1997]
    [Pages 1686-1688]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Dinner Honoring
    Evan Bayh
    December 1, 1997

        Thank you very much. Governor, Senator Bayh, Lieutenant Governor
    Kernan, Senator Kerrey, Senator Torricelli. Ladies and gentlemen, first,
    thank you very much for being here for Evan Bayh tonight. You could
    probably tell that--you might have told a lot of things looking

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    at that. You could probably tell we were good friends. When you heard
    him speak, you might have been thinking, ``There is Joe DiMaggio; why is
    he introducing Lou Gehrig?'' [Laughter] And then he started talking
    about what was on Jefferson's gravestone; I thought, my God, it's not--
    bad enough that he's younger and better looking, now he's about to write
    my epitaph. [Laughter] But I was spared.
        Evan and Susan Bayh have been very close friends of Hillary's and
    mine for a long time now. I do remember when he was elected the youngest
    Governor in America, a position that I once held. And I remember how
    well he served. I remember when Senator Kerrey and I used to sit in the
    Governors meetings and think about how crazy things were in Washington,
    and we couldn't imagine how people lived and worked here, what strange
    decisions were made. We don't have any excuse for being here, Senator
    Kerrey and I. [Laughter] Senator Torricelli was always in the Congress;
    he didn't know any better. [Laughter] We were actually out there in the
    real world with Evan Bayh. And here is he about to jump off the same
    cliff.
        I want to tell you seriously that, you know, you meet a lot of
    people in this business and most of them are good people, honest people.
    They work hard; they try to do the right thing. Governor Bayh is one of
    the most extraordinarily talented and fundamentally decent people I have
    ever met in more than two decades in public life now.
        He also gets things done. He ran a great State, had a good economy,
    advanced the cause of education, had the biggest drop in welfare rolls
    of any State in the United States with a compassionate and commonsense
    welfare reform. And he embodies what I believe our party, and indeed our
    country, ought to stand for on the edge of a new century.
        I have spent a lot of time these last 5 years, with varying degrees
    of success--I'm grateful for that which we've had--trying to get our
    Nation to grasp the nettle before us, to do the things which need to be
    done in this dramatically new time to get us into a new century with the
    American dream alive for everybody who is responsible enough to work for
    it, and with our country coming together as one America when so many
    other people around the world are divided, and to maintain our
    leadership in the world for peace and prosperity and freedom.
        Evan Bayh embodies the kind of America I am trying to move us
    toward. I believe he will win next November. I believe he will render
    great service to our country. I believe you will always be proud that
    you were here on this night about a year before the election. And I hope
    that, together, those of us--we four in this room that either are now or
    I think soon will be serving in the Federal Government--will be able
    over the next 3 years to continue to move this country forward, based on
    what we believe in: building up, not tearing down; bringing together,
    not dividing; embracing the future, not the past.
        I've spent a lot of time in the last year going back to read
    American history. I was glad to--I love to go around with Senator
    Torricelli; we make a pretty good dog-and-pony show, and I'm always
    learning something from what he has to say. But I love the reference to
    the American Revolution and the beginning of our country.
        I really think that our country has been blessed by enormous
    political endurance. No other great democracy is as old as we are now,
    partly because we've had the good sense to maintain in various guises a
    two-party system that had consequences because the parties embraced
    different ideas with different consequences for the American people and
    partly because one of our parties always, against all the fears and
    reluctance of the moment, embodied the idea of the Nation and was
    willing to embrace the logical extension of the plain meaning of the
    American Constitution in each new time.
        In the beginning, it was George Washington and John Marshall and
    their heirs. In the Civil War, a new party, the Republican Party, was
    required to stand up for the idea of the Union and the logical extension
    of the Constitution that slavery could not coexist in a country
    dedicated to the proposition that all of us were created equal. And that
    was the position the Republican Party occupied through the Presidency of
    Theodore Roosevelt, during which time they reflected great credit on
    America and did great things for America.
        From the time of Woodrow Wilson to the present day, our party, the
    Democratic Party, has more clearly, more unambiguously, more
    consistently embodied the idea of the Nation

    [[Page 1688]]

    and extending the Constitution in its logical meaning to the challenges
    of the moment, from the end of the Progressive Era through the
    Depression, through World War II, through the beginning of the cold war
    under Harry Truman, through the New Frontier and the Great Society down
    to the present day.
        I don't think anyone questions the fact that our country is stronger
    today than it was 5 years ago because we have worked hard, not always
    succeeding, but succeeding far more often than failing, to bring to the
    country a new direction consistent with the age-old meaning of our
    obligation to form a more perfect Union.
        I am very proud of that. I am enormously grateful for the chance
    that I have had to serve. And I am very comforted that someone of Evan
    Bayh's quality would present himself to serve in the United States
    Senate, to join Bob Torricelli and Bob Kerrey and our other hardy band,
    who often stand alone against some honest philosophical differences and
    some downright political chicanery, from time to time, for what I
    believe is necessary to move us forward.
        I wish we had more like him; then I could get Bill Lee confirmed as
    head of the Civil Rights Division. I wish we had more like him; then you
    wouldn't see mainstream judges with impeccable credentials held up
    purely for political reasons. I wish we had more like him; then we could
    see the right kind of entitlement reform and the right sort of policies
    to enable our people to balance work and family and the right sort of
    policies to expand trade but help people who are left behind put their
    lives together and become a part of the American mainstream again.
        But it's a good thing for our country that Evan Bayh is presenting
    himself for the Senate. I think he'll be elected. And I think he'll do
    just as good as that as Joe DiMaggio was at baseball. [Laughter]
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:16 p.m. at the Hotel Carlton. In his
    remarks, he referred to senatorial candidate Evan Bayh, former Indiana
    Governor, and his wife, Susan; former Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana; and
    Lt. Gov. Joe Kernan of Indiana.