    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [November 4, 1997]
    [Pages 1496-1499]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Dinner for Senator John F. Kerry
    November 4, 1997

        Thank you very much, John, Teresa, ladies and gentlemen. First of
    all, I would very much like to thank Senator Kerry for explaining the
    commitments he made in the last election, because we were all wondering
    why we were here tonight. [Laughter] And now we know we've come to help
    Reverend Kerry keep his vow of poverty. [Laughter]
        Let me say on a only slightly more serious note, I liked a lot of
    things about the campaign of 1996. I liked the fact that we were able to
    go out and finally say that there were two different visions of this
    country. The American people voted for one of them in 1994; they voted
    for another one in 1992. They fought us on everything we tried to do
    with the economy, with crime, with welfare, with the environment. The
    results were in, and the American people made a judgment.
        And John Kerry in many ways had to run the most difficult of all
    races for an incumbent, because he had to run against a sitting Governor
    who was immensely popular and was not sort of a cardboard cutout of the
    contract on America. And I was absolutely determined that if I could do
    anything to help him get reelected, I would do it. And I loved every
    minute of every day I ever spent in Massachusetts, and I was tickled
    that he won.
        And I might say, in the campaign that he had to put together to win,
    with the grassroots support and the intensity, it was--Massachusetts
    became the only State in the country where every single Republican
    running for Federal office was removed. And it was a great, great
    effort. And it is not because--contrary to what a lot people think--the
    State is a doctrinaire liberal State; that's just not true. Those of you
    who live there know that. [Laughter]
        So, I'm glad to be here. I'm also glad to be here because I do
    consider that John and Teresa are sort of soulmates of mine and
    Hillary's and our whole crew. They believe in the nobility of public
    service, and they believe in the imperatives of change.
        You know, when I came here back in '93, one of the reasons I ran for
    President is that I really thought our country was getting in deeper and
    deeper and deeper trouble and drifting more and dividing more because
    Washington continued to be dominated by the same old stale debates and
    name-calling and categorizing that didn't bear much relationship to the
    real world in which I lived.
        You know, on the budget, are you going to cut taxes and explode the
    deficit, or spend more money and just run it up a little less? On crime,
    were you tough or soft? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. I never
    met anybody who was for crime. I'm still looking for the first person to
    come and say, you know, ``My policy is, vote for me and I'll bring you
    more crime.'' [Laughter] We should either treat everyone on welfare as
    if they're pikers who are milking the system, or just give them more
    money for the same system--all these things that you heard in these
    debates and it was--it was so jangling. And I realize a lot of it--now I
    know a lot of it is the way it is presented to the people through the
    interlocutors. But what we tried to do was to change the way people
    thought.
        And I agree with John--a lot of--I'm not sure that it's all that
    clear to the American people that that's been done, but it is true. I
    said, you know, on the economy, why don't we cut

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    the deficit and balance the budget and find a way to spend more money on
    education and research and technology? If we had the right priorities
    and right discipline, we could do that. And everybody said I was crazy,
    but 4 years later--we started with a $290 billion deficit, we have one
    that's $22 billion now, and we're spending more money on education. We
    just opened the doors of college to all Americans that are willing to
    work for it in this last balanced budget, thanks in no small measure to
    John Kerry's support and the fact that he stepped up to the plate in
    1993 and helped us when everybody in the other party said I was bringing
    a recession to America.
        On welfare, we said able-bodied people should be required to work,
    but don't take away the guarantee of health care and nutrition from
    those children, and give child care to the parents, because the most
    important job any of us ever have is taking care of our children.
        On education, we said we want to spend more money, but we want to
    raise standards, too. On crime, we said, yes, be tough, but how about
    being smart for a change. Put more police on the streets, and take the
    assault weapons off the street. If somebody's got a criminal or a mental
    health history, don't let them buy a gun. That may seem common sense to
    you, but the leaders of the other party and almost all their members
    opposed us on every single one of those things.
        And we were just determined to break new ground. John understood it
    from the beginning. He knew that we had to break new ground not only to
    make the Democratic Party a majority party but, far more important, to
    bring the country together and to move it into a new century. And I'm
    proud to be here for that reason.
        Today he was one of a majority of our caucus voting to invoke
    cloture on the fast-track legislation, which I think is a very good
    thing for America. It will give me a chance not only to break down more
    barriers to our goods and services but also will give me more leverage
    to do what those who oppose us in our party say they want, which is to
    lift the labor and environmental standards that other countries observe,
    as well. So I feel comfortable here because I think we're engaged in an
    important enterprise.
        I also want to say a special word about the campaign finance reform
    issue because John's worked very hard on that. He didn't take any PAC
    money running for Senator. I didn't take any PAC money when I ran for
    President. And I started off being the next-to-least well-known person
    in the field in New Hampshire.
        Now, some say, well, is there any difference between the two parties
    because the Democrats raised so-called soft money? All I know is what
    John just said: All of our Senators, 100 percent of them, said, ``Bring
    the bill up; we'll vote for it.''
        But I think it's also important that you understand what's driving
    campaign finance reform. I do not believe that campaigns are too costly
    and require contributions that are too large because people like you are
    running up to us throwing big checks at us to try to get major
    influence. I think what happens is people like you worry that people
    like us are going to get beat if we don't have enough money to buy
    increasingly expensive advertising. In other words, this is not a
    supply-driven problem. This is a demand-driven problem. And some of the
    people that excoriate us the most over this campaign finance problem--I
    haven't noticed any of them calling me and offering to give all the
    people who observe stricter limits free or reduced air time. That is the
    problem. So we have to find a way solve it. It's more likely that we'll
    solve it because John Kerry is in the Senate. And it's important because
    the faith of ordinary citizens need to be restored in the day-to-day
    processes of our institutions--all of them.
        You know, when we denigrate other people in terms of their motives
    and what they're doing to institutions, when we attack people
    personally, when we pretend that people are somehow ethically inferior
    to ourselves--when we do that, any of us, whether we're in public life
    or the press or whatever--we may gain a short-term advantage, but in the
    end what we do is we increase public disillusionment with all
    institutions. And that's what all the surveys show is going on.
        I had a fascinating conversation with Senator Dole not long after
    the election. He came by the White House and we sat and talked. And I
    said, ``You know, Bob, you've been here in this town a lot longer than I
    have.'' He said, ``Yeah, that's what I tried to convince the voters
    of.'' [Laughter] And we were having a great talk. And I said, ``Now,
    tell me the truth. Is politics in Washington more honest or less honest
    today than it was 30 years ago?'' He said,

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    ``My Lord, it's not even close.'' He said, ``It's far more honest today
    than it's ever been. There's far less corruption, far less
    impropriety.'' He said, ``It's by far the best it's ever been.''
        Why don't the American people think that? And insofar as any of us
    ever contribute to their not thinking that, we ought to reconsider our
    positions. We need to fix the campaign finance system because it's over
    20 years old; it's no longer consistent with the present realities of
    campaigning. But many of the very people who say, ``All those
    politicians, they're all raising too much money,'' a lot of those people
    vote for the people who have the most effective negative television ads
    on, or just the most television ads on.
        So we have to say this is an American responsibility. We have to
    work through it. And we need to find a commonsense solution to this, not
    a name-calling solution. But we'll do it. We always figure out how to do
    these things. It's more likely that we'll do it because John Kerry was
    reelected to the Senate.
        Let me just make one general point. If you look at the fight we had
    over the Contract With America, if you look at what we tried to do with
    the economy, with the environment, with crime, with welfare, all these
    issues, if you look at the arguments we have over affirmative action or
    over whether we should open positions of public service to gays and
    lesbians, or any of these issues, you see a contrasting view of how we
    should define our American community. And in a funny way, that may be
    the most important issue of all.
        My three little watch words are: opportunity, responsibility,
    community. Everybody ought to have an opportunity, everybody ought to be
    responsible, and everybody who is responsible should be part of our
    community. And if we can reach across all the lines that divide us to
    make one America, then everything else will probably come out all right.
    That's what I believe.
        But we are having a debate today that you could see in the '92
    election, in the '94 election, in the '96 election, that I predict will
    play itself out for another decade or so, about how we're going to
    define America in the 21st century: What will it mean to be an American?
    How will we define our country? And it's a debate we periodically have.
        The first time we had it, ironically, it was the predecessors of the
    Republican Party, the Federalists, who gave the right answer, when John
    Marshall became the Chief Justice of the United States and basically
    said there are times when there must be one Nation, one law guaranteeing
    the constitutional rights of the American people, the minority as well
    as the majority.
        Eighteen sixty, Abraham Lincoln redefined the Nation, said, ``If I
    have to give my life, I'll do that to keep the country together and to
    recognize the rights of people previously oppressed.''
        In the Progressive Era, Theodore Roosevelt, coming out against
    abuses of child labor, the preservation of our natural resources, using
    the power of the Nation to bring us together and to look to the future
    and to put our children first, redefined again the importance of our
    conscious working together as a Nation, and the Government as an
    instrument of citizens coming together.
        Then a funny thing happened. The mantle of carrying the Nation on
    shifted from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, and Woodrow
    Wilson took it up. And then it was reinvigorated under Franklin
    Roosevelt in the Depression and World War II and then under Harry
    Truman. And then after the war, there were, frankly, progressives in
    both parties who shared a consensus that maybe the cold war helped them
    to hold together. After all, it was a Democratic Congress and President
    Nixon that produced the EPA and the first Clean Air Act.
        Then in the last two decades, you have seen again a splitting apart
    of the consensus of what it means to be an American. We, as Democrats,
    believe that individual rights are important. We believe our individual
    values are important. We believe what happens to all children affects
    our children. We believe we don't have a child to waste. We're proud of
    our heritage, but we think we owe everybody else's as much respect. And
    we believe that our Government should not be a pain in the neck, it
    shouldn't be any bigger than necessary, but it ought to be strong enough
    to give people the tools to make the most of their own lives and to
    build strong families and strong communities.
        Increasingly, the other party has said that Government is the
    problem, and that we're bound together as a community if we say we
    believe in the same things, but we really don't have any enforceable
    obligations to one another. I disagree.

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        But if you look at the real debates we've had--on welfare reform, I
    had no problem with requiring everybody on welfare to go to work. I had
    a big problem with taking away the guarantee of health care and
    nutrition from their kids, for example. On crime, I had no problem with
    making people who did terrible things serve longer sentences. But I knew
    we'd lower crime more if we put 100,000 cops on the street and took the
    assault weapons off the street. And it turned out that was right. But
    those were joint decisions we made together for the common benefit of
    everyone.
        I want you to think about the political debates that we see just in
    the next 2 years, and you remember what I said tonight. And you will see
    people redefining their own allegiances based on new issues for a new
    time and what they think binds us together as a country.
        I'm convinced that we were able to win the White House because more
    and more people who thought they were Republican or independent, who
    lived in suburbs, began to feel common cause with their neighbors and be
    willing to make common policies that affected us all in ways that they
    didn't before--on the budget, on crime, on welfare, on education, you
    name it, across the board.
        But I think that's what makes our party special. It's not liberal/
    conservative. It's whether you believe that you are a piece of the main
    and a part of the whole, whether you really believe that your family
    will only be as good as it can be if everybody else's family has a
    chance, too. That is the single driving passion of our party today, and
    I think John Kerry embodies it. And I'm proud to be with him tonight.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:23 p.m. at a private residence. In his
    remarks, he referred to Senator Kerry's wife, Teresa; and William F.
    Weld, former Massachusetts Governor.