[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
[September 20, 1997]
[Pages 1204-1205]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Dinner in San Francisco
September 20, 1997

    Hillary and I are trying to get used to our first 48 hours of the 
empty nest syndrome. [Laughter] And so we found the youngest couple we 
could to host this dinner tonight--[laughter]--who have 17 years to 
worry about this happening.
    I want to thank Halsey and Deborah for taking us in. And thank you, 
John and Ann and Brook and Sandy and Jeanne, all of you who sponsored 
this dinner tonight.
    I will be very brief. I'm obviously in a rather reflective mood, as 
all of you who have ever sent a child off to college would be at this 
moment. I am profoundly grateful for the chance I've had to serve as 
President, grateful for the support I have received in two elections 
from the people of California, and particularly appreciative of the 
unprecedented help I have had not only in elections but as President 
from the communities represented in this room--sometimes directly 
working with us on hooking up more of our classrooms and libraries to 
the Internet, providing the software, the hardware, the training of 
teachers, sometimes indirectly, by continuing to advance the frontiers 
of knowledge and grow the economy.
    I want to leave you basically with a simple thought as we break up 
and go to dinner. I came to this job 5 years ago with what I thought was 
a very clear, simple vision. I recognized a lot of the details I didn't 
know, although I thought I knew a lot about the basic economic issues 
and the basic educational issues and the basic social policies before 
the country. But I wanted to prepare America for a new century. I wanted 
to create opportunity, make sure that we could create, together, 
opportunity for everybody who would work for it. I wanted us to come 
together, instead of be driven apart, by our diversity. And I wanted us 
to continue to lead the world toward peace and freedom and prosperity.
    The first thing we had to do was fix a lot of things that weren't 
working, that just didn't make any sense. One was our economic policy; 
so we adopted a new one designed to invest in our people, balance the 
budget, and expand trade in American products and services. It has 
worked. You have made it work. Millions of other Americans have made it 
work. But no one can seriously question that fiscal responsibility, 
investing in people and technology and our future, expanding American 
trade makes sense. And it's basically taken a burden off the backs of 
the American people in our productive capacity and also tried to play to 
our strengths.
    The second thing we tried to do is to basically make America 
habitable again by having a serious anticrime policy that built on what 
was working on the streets. Now no one seriously questions that the 
Brady bill and the assault weapons ban and the 100,000 more police--that 
that was the right approach. And it's a good thing to have crime going 
down dramatically. People, just friends of mine who aren't even in 
politics, comment from time to time now as they travel from American 
city to American city how much safer it is in city X, Y, or Z than it 
used to be.
    We have changed the way the Government works. We had the biggest 
reduction in welfare rolls in history. The Federal Government has 
300,000 fewer people working for it than it did the day I became 
President. And we are trying, slowly but surely, to modernize it.
    I saw someone out of your general line of work was in Washington the 
other day saying that most people out here operated at 3 times faster 
than normal business life; most people in Government operate 3 times 
slower. Therefore, you're nine to one ahead of us. [Laughter] I don't 
know who said that, but I think the math is right and the 
characterization is roughly accurate. But I'm trying to change that.

[[Page 1205]]

    So tonight, as I think about the future of all those young people 
who started college yesterday, I think America is very well poised for 
the future. But I think things are changing so rapidly we have to 
recognize that a lot of our systems still don't work as well as they 
should, especially the education system. And more importantly, I think 
we should be focusing on what we need to make work for the future. How 
can we now provide the kind of institutional and environmental framework 
to guarantee that America will work well 20, 30, 40 years from now, to 
give America a chance to succeed, to give these dreams that our children 
have a chance to prevail?
    The one huge issue we have to face is how to continue to grow the 
economy while improving dramatically our capacity to preserve the 
environment. I'm convinced the climate change challenge is real, and yet 
there are no simple, easy answers about how to transition our economy 
from where it is now to where it needs to go.
    Another problem we haven't resolved is, how can people reconcile 
work and family? More and more people are working and raising children, 
and we need them to succeed at both. Desperately, we need people to 
succeed at both. And that means we have to have new arrangements. And 
then there's all the technology questions that you're more familiar with 
than I am.
    We have succeeded, I think dramatically, in reducing the nuclear 
threat. And we're going to do more the next 3 years. But our children 
will live in a world where terrorism, organized crime crossing national 
borders using high technology, drug trafficking, and people who have 
high-tech weapons but very primitive designs rooted in ethnic, 
religious, and racial hatreds, can cause a lot of trouble to a lot of 
people who 10 years ago would have never even bought into it. But now, 
because the world is so mobile and borders are so open and porous, we 
all become more vulnerable. So we have to figure out ways to protect 
privacy and yet give ourselves the common capacity to promote public 
safety.
    So what I'd like to talk about tonight over dinner is, what about 
all those things in the future? I'm very glad the country is in better 
shape than it was 5 years ago, but we still have a lot to do to give our 
children the country that they deserve and to feel like all of us have 
done our job. And anything you can do to help, I'll be very grateful 
for.
    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 8:09 p.m. at a private residence. In his 
remarks, he referred to dinner hosts Halsey Minor, chairman and chief 
executive officer, The Computer Network (CNET), and his wife, Deborah; 
John Doerr, partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, and his wife, 
Ann; Brook Byers, partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers; and 
Sanford R. (Sandy) Robertson, chairman, Robertson, Stephens & Co., and 
his wife, Jeanne.