[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
[July 26, 1997]
[Pages 1005-1006]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Closing Remarks at the Lake Tahoe Presidential Forum in Incline Village
July 26, 1997

    Let me say, first of all, again I'd like to thank Senator Reid for 
getting my commitment to do this. When I was a boy, I grew up in a town 
that permitted me to grow up next to a national park, next to a national 
forest, in a community surrounded by three lakes, one of which was 
virtually destroyed. I feel like I have been through a lot of these 
things, and I feel very much at home here.
    And the second thing I'd like to do once more is to thank the Vice 
President for all he's done to sensitize me about these issues and to 
educate me. I made a joke about it earlier, but it's not funny; it's 
true.
    The third thing I'd like to do is to say to all of you, I leave here 
basically with three different conclusions or commitments in my own 
mind. One is the one that Senator Feinstein and Mr. Upton and Governor 
Miller and others, Congressman Fazio pressed home, is we don't have an 
unlimited amount of time; we have to keep intensifying our efforts. You 
have done more than anyone could ever have expected you to do, and we 
have to do our part. So I got the message, and we'll stay after it.
    The second point again I want to reiterate is that you have done 
something here which, if we can properly publicize it, will help your 
Nation very much, because you have proved that you can bring all these 
people together and demolish the false choice between the environment 
and the economy. And that's very important, because there are lots of 
other places we have to do it and issues that affect local communities, 
the Nation as a whole, and in some cases, our entire globe.
    The final thing I'd like to leave you with is that you have also 
proved that there is a way of doing things that makes community-based 
solutions work, to go back to the Congressman's point. Community-based 
solutions only work when people come together, agree on a common goal, 
share values, and are willing to give up a little of their own turf in 
order to work together to a common goal.
    But I ask you to compare--compare just for a moment--if you want to 
appreciate the significance of what you are achieving here, compare what 
you have done--look at this group just sitting around here today--with 
the fact that in Bosnia today we can't even get the parties

[[Page 1006]]

to agree on what their currency will look like, but we just recently got 
reinstituted a cease-fire in Northern Ireland for people who are 
fighting over things that happened 600 years ago that the young college 
students would like to let go of and their elders won't let them.
    Now, I mean, I don't want to--I'm not overdramatizing this. Mature 
societies, to preserve our life on this globe, when we're going to have 
a global economy, a global society, and a global environment, are going 
to have to be able to find community-based ways of bringing shared 
values and common cause together and overcoming false choices, like 
education and the environment--I mean the economy and the environment--
and also overcoming past divisions.
    And this is a mark of the kind of society it will take to preserve 
America's greatness for the next 100 years in a lot of ways. How, for 
example, can we have--we believed that we could reduce the budget 
deficit and increase our investment in education. Everybody said it 
couldn't be done; we did it. We believed that we could reduce the size 
of Government and, in the Vice President's terms, make it cost less and 
do more. There are 300,000 fewer people working for the Federal 
Government, but we're far more active--look here, today--in many 
important areas than we ever were before.
    We have to be able to get these false dividing lines out of our 
minds and the idea that we have to fight with each other if we're 
different out of our minds. We've got to flush this out of our 
collective systems. This is a huge issue. If you look at the coming 
racial and ethnic and religious diversity in our country, we have to 
follow the model you have established here for reconciling our 
differences, celebrating them, and then coming together as one America. 
I say this because President Truman once said that most of his job was 
trying to convince people to do things that they ought to do without his 
having to ask them in the first place. [Laughter] Now, that was sort of 
a down-home way of saying what the President has to do is to always 
imagine where we're going and try to make sure people are thinking about 
it in the right way.
    I didn't think, even myself, when I came to Washington, we'd ever be 
able to do what we did on this balanced budget agreement, to get huge 
majorities of both parties in both Houses to vote for it. I just don't 
accept the kind of old divisions and inevitable choices that basically 
rob us of the future we could create in a very dynamic time, when you 
get everybody together and, as Mr. Upton said earlier, whole new 
possibilities open up.
    I want you to think about this, because you will have other 
challenges that don't relate to the environment and Lake Tahoe that can 
be dealt with in exactly this way. And our country and our world is 
going to have to mature to the point where we bring to bear on other 
challenges the way you have gone about dealing with this.
    And I was sitting here, hanging on every word everybody said, and 
saying, what I would give to see this kind of thing happening in 
Sarajevo today, in Belfast today, in Gaza today, in Washington, DC, 
today. [Laughter] What I would give. And I think you need to think about 
that.
    So I will end with a laugh, but I'm dead serious. You think about 
this. Think about the kind of world you want to make for your children 
and grandchildren. You cannot--this is a dynamic time. The best days of 
this country are still ahead, but we have to deal with our most profound 
challenges in this way.
    Democracies only do things when a real majority of people really 
want to do them. And we have this enormous set of opportunities, and you 
have shown us here not only how to deal with the environmental 
challenges but how we ought to come together to make the most of our 
common future. And for that, I am very, very grateful. And you may be 
sure, I will be giving you a lot of free publicity around the country--
[laughter]--in the days and months ahead.
    Thank you, and God bless you. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:47 p.m. at the Hyatt Hotel. In his 
remarks, he referred to John Upton, member, Eldorado County, CA, board 
of supervisors.